Category: home repair

Back from a long weekend and, as always, hating to be at work.

Not that there’s anything to complain about with regard to my job. I just hate having to work. Call it a character flaw.

Friday was my Regular Day Off, so I stayed up late Thursday night playing WoW, slept in on Thursday, then went to IHOP for brunch with T–. After that we ran by Petsmart to pick up a new litter box for the cats, and spent some significant amount of time there just letting AB marvel at all the captive animals. She went wild.

Then in the evening we went to County Line Barbecue with D– for dinner, grabbed some flavored Rum on the way home, and played a little Rock Band before we turned on Tropic Thunder. T– didn’t exactly hate it, but it wasn’t enough to keep her up past 11:00, either. I made it to the end, and then some. I was up until 2-ish playing WoW.

Saturday morning T– went to a baby shower for N– at church (which is well-documented and beautifully-illustrated on N–‘s blog), and left me home alone. I did a little project for her (took down a pantry door and painted over the exposed wood from the hinges), and of course played some WoW. We had a pretty quiet afternoon, and then around 5:30 T– headed to her friend Rebecca’s to do some scrapbooking in the evening. I kept AB.

D– came over to help out, and brought the same pizza that had resulted in catastrophic emissions from AB the last time we’d tried the same setup, so I ran to McDonalds to get her a Happy Meal. I expected her to object, since we were eating the pizza right in front of her, but she just loves Happy Meals too much to have mustered any real resentment.

We tried to Cars and Lion King, and finally settled on hooking up the drums for Rock Band and AB pounded away until I put her to bed. After that, it was a fairly quiet night. Instead of jumping into WoW once AB was dealt with, I figured out how to recover the music from T–‘s iPod and spent the rest of the night trying to get it relabeled. Without even realizing it, I stayed up until 2:00 again working on that.

So Sunday morning I slept through church. T– and I took AB to Mazzio’s for lunch, and she got her pizza after all. She also counted up to six, with a little coaching. She can do her ABCs up to “G,” too, if she doesn’t know we’re listening. She keeps going after that, but it’s mostly gibberish.

Then Sunday night I intended to go to small groups, but I spent the afternoon feeling incredibly sick. I laid down to take a nap around 3:30, hoping I’d feel better after an hour, but T– woke me up to tell me she was leaving and talked me into staying in bed.

I got up about an hour later feeling better, and spent the rest of the evening on the computer, working on various projects.

Then yesterday I had off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We ran by N–‘s in the morning to check out her newly-appointed nursery and make a mess of her coffee table trinkets, then grabbed some barbecue from Steve’s Rib and took it home for lunch. Not a lot of variety in our meals this weekend, but a lot of deliciousness!

When AB went down for a nap, I got out some more paint and put a new coat on the fireplace mantel, which was showing some nasty signs of wear and tear. Luckily AB took a long nap, so all the paint was dry by the time she got up.

Then in the evening T– made some steaks for dinner, and we watched a couple new shows plus the first few episodes of season one of Psych. It was fun, and I got to sleep early enough that I was on time for work this morning, quite in spite of the holiday.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

So, yeah, I think I mentioned it yesterday, but I’m going to Chicago next week. I’ll be leaving Sunday evening, around 6:00, and getting in the following Saturday at 11:00 am. T– will pick me up from the airport and we’ll drive straight up to Topeka for our friend Julie’s wedding (unless I can get my flight swapped out for one that takes me back to Wichita, anyway).

Yesterday I got home from work determined to really finish my painting project. I got the ladder out again, got out the white paint, and went up on the wall to paint over the blue from the trim that had dripped past my painter’s tape (there were three spots of that), and to paint over the spots where the ladder had damaged the initial coat of white when I leaned it up against the house.

And, of course, when I climbed back down to move the ladder, it tore the paint again. I’d have thought it would be fully dried by then. But at that point I was able to climb up on it as an A-frame and fix the new tears, and that sufficed for all the rest of the work that had to be done.

I also painted a few coats of white over the walkway post that I had test-sanded, so it looks nice again. It had been the one (out of about six or seven) in the worst shape, and sanding it had revealed the wood underneath in even more places, so it’s a major improvement to have a couple coats of white on top of that. From the curb, anyway, our facade looks really nice now.

After I put that away, T– went to pick up some pizzas and D– came over to eat them. We watched Monday’s How I Met Your Mother, and some King of the Hill, and then when AB went to bed, we pulled out Rock Band, and I got to drum for the first time in a week and a half. Needless to say, I overdid it, and by the end of the night I was late getting to bed and my shoulders were killing me. Fun, though. Lots of fun. I wasn’t too rusty. I can still sight-read just about anything they can throw at me on Medium, and I cleared a handful of (really easy) songs on Hard. I’m going to have to learn some really tough patterns that currently completely befuddle me, before I can fully make that transition.

This morning I went to the Physical Therapist for the last time. We agreed that all of the tension she found this morning came from the painting (and she did some really good work fixing it all), and I can address any further problems I have with just the home stretches and exercises she’s taught me, so that’s that. I feel so much better than I did six weeks ago. Or even two weeks ago. It’s been an amazing experience.

In general, things are good. I have two pretty significant items that probably need announced, but I’ve been waiting on both of them until I fully understand how they’ll impact my life. That, of course, could be decades in the discovering, but I’ll try to get the info to you before then.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Yesterday was ass.

On an unrelated note: I recently discussed a Cabrel song called “Je t’Aimais, Je t’Aime et Je t’Aimerais” at length. Since then, I’ve been working on learning the song. I can sing along with all but the first verse at this point, but I do get a little confused when I try to sing it entirely on my own.

For one thing, I keep trying to remember how “CACTUS!” fits into it (or possibly it’s “CACTUSES!” — there’s no way to tell in French). Also, I end every other line with, “les acrobats…avec leur COSTUMES et les PApiers!” He really knows how to make that “pa” pop. I’m just saying. And, damn, I’ve never heard anyone get so excited about cactuses.

Also, for everyone who isn’t B– or E–, ignore those last two paragraphs. They’ll only be funny to them.

Okay, Wednesday night we talked about meeting at Moe’s Southwest Grill, but later switched that to Taco Cabana. Tragically, B– and E– didn’t get the message that we were switching locales, and as a result they were both at Moe’s when it was infiltrated by terrorists and they were shot dead. I spent the whole evening feeling guilty about it.

Anyway, K– and N– met us at Taco Cabana (D– was in South Carolina or some nonsense for work), and dinner was delicious. As long as I never try anything new, I always have a great dinner when we got to Taco Cabana. In fact, I may have just talked myself into going to the one by my work for lunch. Yum.

After dinner, I went home to play AoC while everyone else went to church. I got a lot accomplished in an hour and a half, and then when T– got home I was planning to chill out and watch some Lost, but then she pointed out that we should probably go ahead and get our stuff in the car for our trip to Tulsa on Thursday.

And then, while I was mentally inventorying everything we would need, it occurred to me that K–‘s badass gas-powered weedeater would probably do a much better job for what I needed to do than our puny electric one. So I gave him a call around 8:30, and headed over there to pick it up. It’s a twenty minute drive to get there, and then I helped him with a little bit of car repair (which mostly consisted of me just keeping him company, because I’m never all that helpful), and then I stopped at Wal-Mart on my way home to pick up some needed supplies, and by the time I got back to the house, it was 10:30 and we hadn’t even started loading the car.

In the end, we didn’t load the car. Remember the van we drove back from Little Rock on Sunday, as a favor to my sister’s in-laws? Well, we got permission to use that, and I’m so glad we did. We took the lawnmower, K–‘s weedeater, gas cans for both, several tools, two rakes, a cooler full of water and soda, and I had a bag with a change of clothes. Then, we brought all that home plus a million-pound air conditioner that had been in the kitchen window. There’s no way we could have gotten that all in the car. We barely could have managed the lawnmower and the air conditioner, and those were the two most important bits!

Anyway, we loaded up the van Wednesday night, and then yesterday woke up way too early (6:30, so forty-five minutes later than I usually get up, but still!), dropped AB off at the baby-sitter’s, and then headed for Tulsa. When we got in, T– dropped me off at the house, then she headed out to several of her accounts to do some work (the actual reason for the trip in the first place — I just tagged along to accomplish some extra stuff at the house, and save us the gas money of making the trip some weekend).

I started working around 9:30, and around 10:30 called T– and asked her to pick me up some sun screen when she came by with lunch. By that point, I was already burned.

I mowed the front yard first, which was probably knee-high in places. If you’ll recall, when I went up to Tulsa with Toby three or four weeks ago, I borrowed his lawnmower and cut the front yard. At the time, the back yard was too high to cut in a reasonable amount of time, so I just left.

Well, it’s been three or four weeks since then (and rainy weeks, too). The front yard had gotten up to knee-high. The back yard, I do not exaggerate, was shoulder-high in places. Most of the back yard was at least four feet tall.

It only stood a couple feet tall, though, because the strong wind had folded the grass over. If any of you has ever had to mow tall grass, you can imagine how bad that is. The lawnmower just rolls right over the long stems (longer than the width of the chopping area), and at best it cuts off the last three or four inches of the blade. It’s awful.

That’s what I brought the weedeater for. My goal was to cut the grass down to a reasonable length (maybe a 12-18 inches tall), then rake off the tall stems and bag them, then mow the lawn with the mower on its highest deck setting, then mow it again with the mower on a more reasonable height.

If that sounds like a lot of work, it is. Also, we have a huge back yard in Tulsa, especially now that the deck and that row of bushes is gone. Oy.

So, I did the two-pass mow on the front yard, then called T– to ask for sunscreen (so that was about an hour), then headed to the back yard to get started.

It was awful. I spent the first half hour trying to deal with this vine plant thing that we had chopped down back in April, but it came back. In a wicked way. It used to be this big ugly ball of vines and flowers over by the fence, but since we chopped it down, it sent out dozens of vines in all directions, hiding under the grass. Whenever the weedeater would catch the edge of one of those vines, it would twist all around the spinny part, and almost drag the weedeater out of my hand (because the vines were too thick for it to easily cut).

I ended up clearing to the stump of the vine, and then chasing down every single one of the vines that shot off in all directions. Some of them were eighteen, twenty feet long, snaking through the long grass in all directions. I pulled them all up, gathered them in one hand like I was holding up some infidel by his greasy braids, and then use the saw to chop them all loose.

Yeah, I’ve been playing a lot of AoC.

Anyway, that was extremely frustrating. After I got that cleaned up, I’d still only finished weedeating a patch about ten feet by five along the entrance to the yard. I went ahead and mowed that so I could feel like I’d accomplished something.

Bah. I’m not going into all the details, but the whole day was like that. I would run the weedeater for about hour, clearing a swath from east to west about five or six feet wide. Then I would rake it and run the lawnmower up and down (and maybe back up again) and then it was back to the weedeater.

T– finished up with her accounts around 3:30 and came to help me out. She did the short cut on the front yard while I finished weedeating the last section. Then she mowed in the back while I did some edging work in the front, and in the end we got everything cut, but not everything raked and bagged the way I’d wanted. I’m hoping none of the hay we left is thick enough to kill off the grass underneath.

This was all in preparation for hiring a guy to come take care of the lawn for us. The charge for that initial job would have been astronomical. As it is, we’ll be paying about $100 a month to keep the lawn in good shape which is a tough hit, but it’s one we should have been paying for the last two months (and we knew that all along).

The place does look a lot better now, though. At the end of the day, both of us exhausted and ready to leave, we remembered we still had to rip the bajillion-pound air conditioner out of the window. You may remember the last time I tried to do that. Well, this time wasn’t so bad. We’d learned from our experience, and got it out of the window in about half an hour. T– and I, against my expectations, were able to carry it the five feet to the waiting van, and get it loaded in the back.

Then we were both just dead tired, but we still had a two-hour drive ahead of us. It was seven o’clock when we left town, after grabbing some Long John Silvers for dinner (which we didn’t finish).

I did finish my first read-through of Heather’s book on my drive up there, and I’m excited about it. I had some problems with the last scene (I’m going to recommend she remove them entirely, and save them for the sequel). I spent most of the day working through how she might rearrange all the pieces of the ending, actually. Sometime around four I remembered that I’d brought an mp3 player, but whatever. I kept my mind busy.

On the way home we had to stop by K– and N–‘s to pick up AB, because they’d gotten her from the babysitter for us. We crashed on the couches, “just for a minute” and I almost didn’t have the energy to get back up when T– said it was time to go on home. When we got home, I couldn’t believe it was only nine.

We put AB to bed, I got some stuff ready for work this morning (and about half unloaded the van), and then I went to bed and just crashed.

Then, at 5:45 this morning, my alarm went off and I jumped out of bed to go turn it off…and almost crashed head-first into the closet door on my side of the bed. My back was stiff, my legs were sore, my neck and shoulders were on fire from the sunburn. Even my fingers hurt (they still do, surprisingly bad) from operating that weedeater for four or five hours. I turned off the alarm, crawled back into bed, and gave up several precious hours of leave time to recuperate.

I finally did get up around 8 and came in to work. Now, it’s time for lunch.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

It was, for the most part, a disappointing weekend, but it had its spots of sunshine.

Friday was my Regular Day Off, but I went in to the office for a few hours in the morning to make up for my late morning last Tuesday. Afterward, I had lunch with D– at On the Border, and then headed home.

I’d wanted to go to the gym early and then spend the rest of the afternoon programming — or maybe reading, I’m on to Watership Down, now, and it’s gripping — but Friday morning a guy from the gas company came out to investigate our ridiculously high gas bill (a free service the gas company provides), and he decided it was caused by the water leak in the bathtub.

I was pretty concerned by that, as the water leak had barely even started during that billing period, and so it suggested the leak was causing something like $40 a day in extra cost, so instead of spending my afternoon as planned, I spent it plumbing.

I took one of the old, rotten valve stems up to Lowe’s to see if I could find a replacement, but I didn’t have a lot of hope (it being a non-standard type). They had a little book there for reference, though, and I was able to find an exact match to the one I had. Just, y’know, they didn’t have it in stock.

I waited my turn and asked the salesman if they had any in stock (in the desperate hopes that I’d just missed it), but he said no. He went to the computer and looked up the manufacturer’s number and made a call, and told me it would take 10 days to have one shipped.

While he’s explaining this, a funny little old man standing behind me keeps grabbing at my sleeve and saying, “Excuse me. Sorry, excuse me.” And it’s clear from his manner that he has some advice to offer, but I was kind of hoping to let the salesman finish his explanation, then turn to this new guy. The salesman didn’t even pause in his spiel.

So, I finally turn to the guy, and he says, “You know Watonga cheese?” I just stared at him, completely blank. I had no idea what he was talking about. He asked again, “You know Watonga cheese?”

I just shrugged. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Well,” he said, “There’s this place called Watonga cheese on 39th Expressway, and right in the shadow of it is a little shop called The Faucet that has every faucet part you could imagine. You know, in case you need to get it today.”

I did, and I followed his brief directions (with some help from T– and Google Maps, via phone), and found The Faucet and as soon as I walked in the door the guy there took my ruined valve stem, stepped behind a shelf, and came back with a new one, quick as that.

I got home, and (after weeks of messing around with it), now knew enough that it was a simple process to swap out the old with the new. I replace both valve stems, turned the water back on at the main, and came in to test it.

The good news is, there was no hot water stream (as there had been for three expensive weeks). I did, however, still have the same cold water drip that had started this whole process. I didn’t cry or curse (somehow). I just called a plumber and scheduled a visit for this morning.

By that time, it was nearly five in the afternoon, and we had plans to do dinner with D– (and I didn’t feel particularly motivated anyway), so I never got to the gym. I didn’t get any programming done, either, but I think I finished a short chapter in my book before we went out.

We had Bennigan’s for dinner, and then went downtown to the Festival of the Arts. T– says we spent two hours there. I wasn’t really keeping track. It was a mess of people and a lot of uninteresting art being peddled by depressed-looking artists, but there were certainly spots of genius in there. The only piece we considered buying, though, looked like something you could pick up at Target. It would have been cute in AB’s room.

A little after 10:00, my dad and Josh showed up, and Josh stayed the night. I was exhausted, but we stayed up for an hour or so talking, and then I finally had to crash. I wish we’d had longer.

Saturday morning, T– went to the gym and I slept in. When I finally got up, I did some work around the house (little things, like taking out the garbage and putting away clean dishes), and then dad showed up again (he stayed the night with my sister), and T– showed off the work she’s doing in the back yard, and before I knew it the morning was over and I was making us late getting to lunch.

We went to Ted’s again, up in Edmond. It’s my sister’s favorite Mexican place, and my dad’s pretty partial to it, too. Lunch was good, and afterward we found ourselves on the north end of Edmond with an hour to go before my niece’s birthday party. We didn’t feel like spending the whole time driving home and back, so we went to a little playground in my sister’s neighborhood, and T– and AB played on the swings. I took a nap in the car.

Then we had the birthday party, which is already well-documented elsewhere. My aunt Darla and grandma came in from Dallas, and it was awesome to see them. After the party, they stopped by our house on their way home, and we got a little bit of time in a quieter environment to chat with them. It was fun.

After they left, D– came over and bought us pizza, then when AB went to bed D– and K– and I went out to Henry Hudson’s for some drinks. After everything else in the day, it was pleasantly relaxing.

Sunday morning after church we went to Carl’s Junior for lunch, and ate for free thanks to K–‘s participation at a water station along the Memorial Marathon that morning. All volunteers got coupons for a free combo meal, and he picked up enough for all of us. It was a nice treat.

Then I went to the gym (for the first time in five days), and spent the whole hour running — first on the elliptical, then on the treadmill. I’m going to try to do more jogging on the treadmill. It’s a good way to follow the exercise plan I’m using, and keep track of my goals and progress.

Afterward, T– and I went grocery shopping, and then we cooked hot dogs and brats for K– and N– and D–. D– had picked up Mario Kart for the Wii, and we spent the whole rest of the evening on that. It was much fun.

Then, this morning, our plumber came out and I just got a call from T– with the update. Turns out the valve stem seat is (and always was) wrong. It was a kitchen sink seat, rather than a bathtub one. He replaced it in no time, and we paid him $90 to fix a really simple problem that I never in my life would have figured out.

Anyway, the problem is fixed, now, and the leak is gone. Thank God for that. Looking back on it, it was a pretty fun weekend, but I spent most of Friday and Saturday in a bad mood over plumbing problems. That’s a shame.

I should have plenty of time to program over lunch today, though, and after the gym tonight, I figure I’ll get a lot of reading done. Nothing much to pout over. I’m hoping for a good week.

I couldn’t get it done.

I even left work early to make sure I had time to pick up all my supplies and get started before dinner.

I got home from Lowe’s at 4:00, thinking, “Wow, I’ll have time to get the whole project done before dinner!”

I was wrong. I spent the whole evening working on it, and when K– and N– came over after church, I had just made my first real breakthrough since I’d started at 4:00. K– and I together made a second discovery, which gave me most of the information I need to finish the job. I think.

I also spent about $85 on the project so far, and all of that is completely useless to me. Much of it can be returned (I hope), but that gives you an idea how much I thought I knew I was doing, and how many trips to Lowe’s I ended up making. The whole project, finished, should cost less than $30, and right now I still have to go buy all the parts I’ll actually need.

We did manage to get the pieces put back together, though, so I was able to turn the water back on last night. Small mercy, that. I’ll take another stab at fixing it over the weekend sometime.

After I’d gotten done with that, D– came by and asked if I could go out for a couple drinks. He’d had a worse day than I did (by far). We both needed it. So we dropped over to The Dugout and had beers and talked until about midnight. I was up for another hour after that, taking care of things that I hadn’t had a chance to do in the afternoon with all my focus on the plumbing problems, so I was totally beat by the time I crawled into bed.

And, y’know, I always hate that alarm clock going off at 5:45, but today was worse than most. Ugh.

Tonight I’ve got a trip to the gym, and then I think I’l probably go home and crash. I’ve been dragging all day, but I’ve got to get in my reps and sets. That’s just how it goes.

Stupid Thursdays….