I'M DONE!

Although I spent pretty much a sleepless night last night, convinced that I would die of carbon monoxide poisoning in my sleep, I did manage to catch a few winks when all of a sudden we were startled awake with the sound of a thunk/explosion!  We jumped out of bed, DH with a baseball bat and flashlight, me dashing headlong to the basement stairs to see if the noise had come from there.  We discovered that the generator had stopped -- no electricity at all.  We went outside to see what had happened.  The indicator said that the coolant was too hot.  Ok.  We'll just have to fix it in the morning.

When morning came, however, this is what we found:

This is a generator fan belt, pretty much stripped and chewed up and slung around the insides of the generator enclosure.  That explained both the crashing sound and the cessation of function of the generator, for without the cooling effects of the fan, the whole thing would overheat.

Resigned, but undaunted, we marched off to the Napa Auto store to get a new belt.  Turns out they gave us the wrong size, even though we gave them the identical numbers off the old belt.  We'll have to exchange it tomorrow.

One good thing happened, though.  The electricity was restored to the development this morning.

While at the Napa store, DH got a lead on a new job, but it turned out that the shop owner talked bigger than he could deliver.  We saw no sign of any work having been brought in, worked on, or waiting for pick up while we were there. Back to the drawing board.

We're done.  We're fried.  One more thing is going to put us over the edge.  We rail against the gods who have made it their quest to test our mettle.  It's over.  Mother Nature and I have called it quits.