But wait, it gets worse... Yesterday whilst digging, I found a broken sprinkler head. Six inches underground and several feet from any of the old sprinkler lines. In an area which had been covered completely by concrete. This morning my curiosity got the better of me and I went over and matched it against the stack of old sprinkler lines I pulled out. Found a perfect match.

What does this mean? It means that the original landscaper who I've already cursed at many times was even more inept than I've previously given him credit for. The sprinkler was broken off before the ditching was backfilled the first time and before the concrete was laid. This means that the sprinkler has been pouring water into the ground for its entire existence. It wasn't broken off by a lawnmower in intervening years. There's no way for me to have known that there should've been a sprinkler in that location. But you'd think that the person who designed the system should've had a clue that something was missing.

Again, I'll try to come up with an explanation that doesn't make him look so incredibly incompetent - but the sheer quantity of evidence is overwhelming. There were probably several workers. Probably illegal laborers because this was an extremely low-budget job. One of them knocked the sprinkler off while backfilling and threw it into another ditch to destroy the evidence. The main contractor or owner may have noticed that there wasn't a sprinkler in the location it was supposed to have been, but since it was already backfilled surmised that perhaps the laborers forgot to put one on the line at that location in the first place and since it was already backfilled decided to just ignore it, since there were several others that would cover this area. (Though huge sections of the yard had no coverage at all). See, it's possible to explain this...

It's one thing that all the Peanuts comics are re-runs. There have been enough that I don't remember them all. But today Doonesbury and Bizzaro both were re-runs as well. Doonesbury marked it as "classic" but it was only from last year some time. Bizarro is only from a few weeks back at most and there was nothing identifying it as a re-run. think I'll write to the Comic Guild and complain. Then write to the local paper and complain also, but suggest that if we're gonna' be stuck with repeats, let's bring in Calvin&Hobbes and Bloom County. I wouldn't mind seeing those again.