When it rains......it POURS!

This was a terrific week. I say that with all of the sarcasm you can imagine.  This week my car broke down, our air conditioner broke down, and the pool pump broke down.  Yes, all in the same week.  My car was in the shop for a few days and the air conditioner repair man spent about 6 hours here one day.  Then there is the pool.  We asked the local pool man to come out and see if he could diagnose the problem.  He said that we needed to replace our pump.  Yay, great news!  Ha! Anyway, Clinton dismantled the pump and we brought it to San Antonio to have it hooked up and tested. As it turns out, there was nothing wrong with it at all.  They told us that we probably had something clogging our line.  So, Clinton goes to Home Depot and purchases a few pieces of equipment to snake out the line from the pool to the house.  He spent about 5 hours outside and eventually came to the conclusion that he wasn't going to be able to do it with what he had.  He could get to the blockage but he couldn't clear it.  The next day I called a plumber out to see if he could work some magic.  He spent a few hours out there too, and even used the "big guns" machine (which they charge $65 to use plus the labor and service call fees) and he still couldn't get it.  He told us that we were gonna have to cut the line out to get whatever it was out of there.  Again, good news.  That evening, Clinton dug up the ground where the lines went into the pool and prepared to take the clogged one out of the ground, which happened to be in between two other lines.  He was not happy about this at all and decided to try one last thing.  He got a tennis ball from the garage and held it to one end of the line to let the water pressure build up.  He let it go and it spewed like Old Faithful, pushing everything out of the line!  We were soooo excited! After all of the money we spent trying to fix it, he ended up fixing it with a tennis ball!  We didn't care, though, we were just happy to have it fixed.  The clog was a giant piece of wood that somehow ended up in the pool and, eventually, the intake line.  This shows how well the pump worked after the clog was out: