I was back at the office today attending a training on the escrow process. Once again, the instructors confirmed my parents’ past suspicions and fears, this time about wire transfer fraud. My parents still insist on using cashiers’ checks for big transactions and sure enough, my parents are right again! Crooks are getting insanely good at following homebuying/selling email threads: at the very last minute on the day of closing, they’ll try to sneak in changes to the wire transfer instructions. Some thieves have even dropped by the escrow office handing the secretary written change instructions for their escrow officer. Super tricky!! Apparently, some people have lost $6ook from a botched wire and that money is gone forever. Even the FBI is unable to get it back. So crazy!

Overall, the training was good. I sat next to a Vietnamese lady… she says her family is in the restaurant business in San Jose and she is doing real estate part time. She just got her license. She seemed very friendly and pleasant. I was also talking to another newbie who told me to check the BRE website, bc they post license certificates and numbers online under your account before they even mail that shit out. Holy fuck, it was there! So I now have my number and issue date and I am ready to proceed with all my marketing materials, i.e. business cards and website. Woot, woot!

Back on the home front, it was a chaotic day. The plumbers returned to run the pressure test and we failed again, which means there is a leak somewhere in our system. So he rechecked all the exposed and accessible joints and no luck. I was then kinda pissed thinking that they should have made sure all was clear before installing the tankless bc now we can’t pass inspection. Long story short, the head foreman came by in the afternoon to meye with us. All of us are perplexed by the gas lines in the house. The original system was laid in the concrete slab, then at some point that system was abandoned and the gas lines were moved above ground, seemingly up towards the roof and yet there are no visible gas lines on the roof. I then proceeded to ask my neighborhood list if they knew the layout for this model of home. On hearing the word leak, people replied urging us to evacuate and call PGE immediately. Thankfully, the plumbers had explained that the leak was minor enough to be safe, and according to Bubs, they did warn us to NOT call PGE bc if the utility found any leak, the gas would be shut off indefinitely.

In the time that John hopped on the phone with his sister for thirty minutes, I fielded the neighborhood responses and called PGE thinking maybe they would have some special tools to help locate the leak. Yes, I should have remembered from last time that once you mention leak to PGE, they are at your door pronto to investigate. So of course, we had plans just the two of us in the city that immediately got canceled. When I told John that PGE was coming, he was furious bc he was convinced we would get our gas turned off. He basically reacted to me like I was retarded, and I got very upset. As it turns out though, PGE has different (lower) standards for testing and we passed no problem. On one hand I was relieved to keep the gas on. On the other hand, I also felt some reassurance that the house was indeed safe by two sources.

I also learned from my neighbors that there is a specialty leak detection service where they can identify the leak without cracking open all the drywall… I have placed a call to learn more. But after sitting down this evening to re-evaluate  everything, John and I have decided that we will proceed with the bathroom expansion, which will involve moving the gas lines inside the hallway washer/dryer area and THEN we’ll tackle the leak issue should the remodel not resolve it. Other items on the work order include running a gas line to the fireplace. The other option is for us to get the chimney swept and we can just burn duraflames. I dunno. Ugh.

Of course this evening, Marty’s appetite soured and he puked like three times today. I ate some popcorn shrimp the other day and left the tails on the coffee table. At night he got into them and I suspect that triggered some kidney issues. I just gave him 400ml of subcutaneous fluids. Hopefully he’ll feel better tomorrow. Sigh. Tessa is coming over again for daycare. I had mentioned before about ending with her on a good note and her last visit went surprisingly well without any incidents with Martin. Tomorrow she’ll be over just for the day. Hopefully, all will go well.