This week’s PhotoHunter theme is “chipped”. Unfortunately, this is not a pleasant representation for us of chipped. In January, during the cold spell we had, our heater quit working once and our pipes froze twice. Then, because of how cold it had been, we just couldn’t force ourselves to get into the hot tub. We hadn’t used it for probably a month, and hadn’t put chemicals in either, so the cover was never raised. Then last week, we saw some water leaking out, and raised the cover to find an ice cube(a rather large one!). The heater had quit working, and the water had frozen. The photo you see is of my husband chipping out the ice. He chipped out as much as possible, then filled it with hot water to melt the rest. He then drained it, and refilled it. He replaced the heater, and is still in the process of finding out how many pipes froze and cracked. He’s chipping away the insulation to expose pipes in various areas, and slowly patching/repairing those cracked pipes. It’s a long process, and he still might have to call in the repair men, but at $85/hour, and no telling how many hours/days it would take them to repair, at least it’s a start. This has been one tough winter. On top of that, they raised our rates for gas. We got our gas bill today, and it was more than double what it was last month! And the rates were only supposed to have increased by 20%.