A Puzzling Journey - Part IX

Part IX - So... where were we?

I last left off the tale of my Puzzling Journey on a bit of a cliffhanger. We had bought a house, my release from the military was pending, and my little family and I were embarking on a very ambitious new chapter in our lives.

After a much-needed overhaul of the entire plumbing system of our new home, I was ready to convert the little one-car garage into a temporary shop prior to the 2025 holidays, and be up and running first thing in 2026… or so I thought. (Temporary because the plan is to build a larger addition next summer). The detached building had no insulation, rot from water infiltration, a flimsy garage door that was barely holding together, inadequate and poorly-built framing, rodent nests, and ladybugs in numbers approaching biblical-plague proportions in the walls. But crucially, it had no power whatsoever.

My father and I spent a couple weeks essentially rebuilding the garage from the inside out, installing a double-door entry after ripping out the existing garage door and converting it into a usable workspace. I then had a local electrician install a meter base and a 200-amp / 60-circuit electrical panel in mid-November (total overkill for my little business, I know, but ample room to grow, just in case!). He informed me that Hydro-Québec, our provincial power company, should be able to install the meter and run the cables from the nearby pole within 10 business days, maybe up to a month at most if there were any issues. Well, as you’ve no doubt guessed, there were issues.

The two main utility poles in front of our house were apparently riddled with woodpecker holes, and the transformer was inadequate to supply the needed current. So Hydro-Québec contracted a third-party company to come and install new poles. After some “engineering assessments”, they showed up in early February (that’s right, two and a half months after my panel and meter base were first installed…) to drill the holes and replace the existing poles. I watched them take two new poles off a flatbed truck and set up their auger rig. No more than 20 minutes later they put the poles back on the truck and left. I went out to talk to the guy refilling the holes they had started digging, and he told me they hit solid rock. He said he knew there was shallow bedrock all through this neighbourhood and had informed his supervisor, but was told to go and try with the smaller drill anyway. *sigh*. They eventually came back two weeks later with the proper equipment (which looked like the same truck to me, but what do I know, maybe it was a different drill bit…?) and finally installed the new poles. Hooray.

Over a month later, a Hydro-Québec crew ran the new wires and installed my meter on March 23rd. If you’re doing the math, that’s over four months after my panel was initially installed. So much for hitting the New Year with a productive start!

In the meantime, not letting these delays defeat me, I decided to run a couple extension cords from the house out to the shop, which meant I could power a small electric 1,500 W space heater to attempt to warm up the space in the frigid Québec winter (which, by the way, hit us early!), plug in one tool at a time, and try not to trip the breakers if I dared to run the dust collector and lights concurrently.

10 November 2025. A beautiful Fall day.

11 November 2025. Frigid Winter.

Slow going, frustrating, but I focused on getting the laser cutting and engraving started for the second production run of the Mercurius Temple. Not exactly what I had originally planned or envisioned, but through adversity...