If your city only does the one water bill deal, water meters are cheap like $110 a piece (buy the metal ones, don’t buy the plastic ones) if one plastic meter cracks or dies you’ll be wishing you sprung for the metal ones.

I'm an IT Manager for a plastics company here.

Cape Coral residents take this very seriously.Many burrows are marked by 4 stakes around the burrow with flags or plastic tape around the stakes. 

It would not have been a big deal if they were to have notified us before they sent their handyman to the hardware store and charged us $55 labor + materials (1 wood post/1 plastic mailbox) to put a new mailbox in the already existing hole. 2.

I went out to the book store (man, this whole post is nostalgia central - phone books, book stores) and bought "Reader's Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself" book, learned how to glue plastic pipe and parts together, and fixed it, and the drywall, myself about a week later. 

I didn’t do anything except number 4 and 5 (I left the excess garbage on the curb in plastic garbage bags) and for the light switch.

Just purchse one of the back pack plastic garden sprayers and really soak the roof.I am assuming firbrglass/asphalt shingles not wood shingles.There is also a zinc product that works well and if you are installing a new roof you can purchase zinc strips that are installed beneath the cap shingles with a small 1/2 inch band showing it will keep the black stains from starting.

Son lives in the Inland Empire and asked if I would be willing to go to the house prior to meeting him and cover the roof with plastic.

DAP also makes a clear elastromeric sealant that is available at the big boxes which can be used  in a pinch.....we just prefer the other.Don't let roofers use plastic boots....you have to check them on this....use the aluminum based boots for a longer solution and run a bead of sealant around the upper edge of the rubber grommet that seals against the vent pipe.  

In fact, I'd rather have the original windows than new plastic ones.