New homeowner lesson

Yesterday was a crazy day with a couple homeowner lessons to be learned. First, cold weather is coming this weekend, so it's time to turn the heater on. Without looking at the manual (I think of myself as pretty smart, so I knew I could set it on my own), I figured out how to change the day and time (which have been wrong since we moved in) and adjusted the temperature so the heater will start coming on. Good thing since we'll be leaving town for a couple days and I'd hate for Barb to freeze in the house while she watches Inara.

The second lesson was for the sprinklers. One of the moms on my walk the other day mentioned it might get to freezing temperatures this weekend, so she better hurry and blow out her sprinklers. Crap! With us leaving town, does this mean we should blow out our sprinklers too? I asked Shawn, so we both started scrambling to get someone out here before Noon on Sat. I couldn't find the gardener's phone number, so I called Jen (our agent) to get her advice and our neighbor Lisa to see if they could recommend someone to come do it. Shawn found a couple companies listed on Craigslist, so I called and left a message for one of them. Then at about 5pm last night, Lyle (our neighbor Lisa's husband) came over because he got our message. He said he could show me how to turn everything off if I'd like. Heck yeah I could use some help. We turned the sprinkler system off in the garage (now we'll be saving water until spring), then we turned the water off from the main valve in the basement, and then we went to the side of the house and he showed me the other main water valves to shut off. Lyle was even so kind to wrap the pipes in some sort of insulation to keep them from freezing as well. Come to find out he's a home inspector and one of the neighbors pulled up to get his mail as we were wrapping the pipes and he told me Lyle is the best handyman on the block. Yay a handy man to help me out! Lyle explained that it's not urgent to blow out the sprinklers this weekend; we should be fine. But he did say to do it before the end of the month. He said he'd be borrowing his dad's air compressor next weekend and doing his own sprinklers and if we would like, he could do ours for us. I told him that would be awesome and that Shawn would love for someone to show him how to do it, so he can do it himself next year. Lyle said he'd be more than happy to show Shawn and would call next weekend to set up a time to come over. Lyle rocks! I feel so lucky to have moved to the best block in the world and to have such awesome neighbors.