Tuesday - evening

Around 2:40 this afternoon, the machine just up and quit on me.  In the middle of pulling out a bucket full of dirt, it just went blink, blapz, bloot and nothing.  I tried restarting it, the thing wouldn't even bring up the screen.  

I called the rental place and after much adoo, they informed me they would be coming out tomorrow to fix it. Like, how am I supposed to get anything done? And why not today, it's not even close to their closing time?  But I didn't care that much, that much isn't big enough for the job.  It strains under the pressure of trying to dig through that clay.  I didn't realize it would have that much of an issue with it or I would have just rented the bigger machine and paid them to bring it out there.  

I know their bigger machine will cut right through that stuff, I have used one previously to do that trenching I had to do for the shed, installing the bathroom and the washer.  So, they still have to come out and fix that machine, it's sitting dead in the middle of my trench path and the bucket is sitting down in the trench.  I can't do anything until it's moved out of there.  

But yes, I pretty much wasted 5 hours on that machine getting a lot of nothing done.  I only made it 70 feet, I should have been able to get that entire job done in that much time and moved on to other, smaller projects I have earmarked for it.  2 trenches across driveways to install drainage pipe and trench along the main driveway to create a path for rainwater to travel on instead of just going all over the driveway, destroying the surface while it's doing it.  

It also didn't help that I couldn't find the inlet hole on the septic system. WHY did they backfill all of that in when they KNEW I would need access to that part of it? Why not just leave it open?  I spent at least an hour just trying to find that hole and contacted the contractor who installed it with pictures.  He finally called me and gave me his best guess. I did that and eventually found it.  

Wore me out, digging by hand and getting in and out of that trench for that full 5 hours.   To that end, I was kind of glad the machine broke.  I had an excuse to go home and eat - I ate nothing all day until  I finally got home - and tell them I need the bigger machine. Their "compromise" is that they will "only" charge me for half  a day. It takes like $100 off the bill.