Wednesday, 5/22

Oh, this is gonna be sooooo much fun!

That's right; I'm being sarcastic. What you see in the picture above is the first sign that the street on which I live is about to be torn up and rebuilt. For the next month we'll be fed water from a hydrant, Loraine will be keeping her car in my parent's garage, and (if past experience means anything) every single morning at 7am I'll be awoken by the sounds of earth movers moving earth, jackhammers hammering, and all kinds of beeps as all kinds of equipment back up and up and up.

It'll be glorious.

I'm not saying the street on which I live doesn't need the work. It REALLY needs the work. For the past several Springs, in fact, it's resembled a road you'd see in a third-world country. I have the pictures of the potholes to prove it. So I guess I can't complain too much about it being rebuilt. In fact, I should probably thank the city of Marquette for finally getting around to it.

But couldn't it be done in one day and, preferably, between the hours of 9am and 3pm that one day? That's possible, right?

I know...but a boy can dream, right? Hopefully, while it's being worked on we'll have enough water pressure for things like showers. On those rare occasions we need to use our car, we'll have to walk a few blocks to get it. And because we live in the middle of our block, just getting out of the house to walk down to get the car—or to get to work or just out to walk, like we always do—could mean dodging construction equipment, big holes, and dudes swinging shovels with wild abandon.

Did I mention it'll be fun?

Work is supposed to start next Tuesday—the day we get back from our visit downstate—and is slated to wrap by the end of June. However, I'm not optimistic that it'll actually be done by the end of June. A few years ago when they reconstructed Michigan, around the block from where I live, the one month project ended up being almost four, thanks to some unexpected difficulties found while digging up the street. Now, I'm not expecting them to find something unexpected when digging up our street, but being a history buff I do know how old our street it, and how long it's been since it's actually been rebuilt.

So we'll see.

Wish us luck. I'm sure we'll be fine, but just in case you see us and we look like we haven't slept in a month or if we're covered from head to foot in mud, know that's it's not our fault. All we did was try to get out of our house.

(jim@wmqt.com)