In my last post I berated myself for not being productive when I had the chance before work. Well, folks… who is failing to be productive now? Who just fixed the clogged drain in the bathroom sink?
It was me! It was totally me!
You can’t see this, but as I type this I am emphatically patting myself on the back. Yeah, look at me being all plumbery and shit. I snaked the hell out of that drain and fixed it like a boss!
Of course, 20 minutes later I shaved for the first time in about two weeks so… yeah, it’s probably clogged again. Oh well, I will enjoy my self inflicted accolades while I can.
It’s 9:00 now, so let’s punch in and get some real work done!
The plumber went out to get some dinner. He expects he has about two hours more work to do tonight. It’s 600pm. I think we’re going to be working until after 9:00pm again tonight.
Insert the sign of frustration here.
Stressing out like nuts over here, kids. Like nuts.
The plumber just walked in the door. Here’s hoping he can wrap it up in two hours. Fingers crossed.
Years ago we had a problem with water leaking next to the tub. It ran through the floor and ate a big hole in the sub floor before pooling up in the cellar. That lead to us having the whole bathroom remodeled.
It kinda didn’t fix the problem. I’ve seen water coming into the cellar a couple of times. There’s some damaged wall board next to the tub. I don’t think it’s a leak, I think it’s just a shower curtain issue. If we are super careful and close it tightly and make sure nothing gets out then there’s no water in the cellar. If we’re lax in our shower curtain workflow then we get some water. Not much, but enough.
We had a plumber in this morning to take a look. He suggested having a contractor come in and try to tighten things up so no water drips out. He added a little calk along the edge of the tub but that will more likely just move any water away from the wall board a little. I think we just need to be extra careful with the shower curtain. We’ll keep an eye on things.
In the meantime, here is a picture of Robin the kitty looking all introspective. She’s pondering the meaning of life here, clearly.
I just got off the phone with the clinic that will be handling my weight loss surgery. I booked four appointments for the next 4-5 weeks or so. I believe two of those will be recurring throughout the next few months. This is happening, at least it looks like it’s happening. Any one of these appointments could result in someone putting a stop to the process. Maybe if there’s something amiss with my guts, or if the mental health folks decide I’m nuts, or if the dietitian thinks I’m unworthy, or if the surgeon thinks I’m a yutz… anything could derail this, but for this particular moment in time, we’re on track.
My heart has been pounding ever since the phone started ringing.
Unrelated note, there seems to be an issue getting our new furnace inspected by the city. We thought it was all set, but they had to come and look again today, and they might have to come again later as well. Not sure what’s going on, but here’s hoping this gets wrapped up quick like.
The drain in our bathroom sink clogged. I put some drain-o in yesterday and it helped a little, but it was still really slow. Jen ordered a drain snake. It was just a little plastic thing you stick into the drain from the top and it’s supposed to help you yank out clogs.
The only experience I had with snaking a drain was at my parents house in Tewksbury where we had to go into the bathroom tub drain from below. It was this crazy long wire with a snag at the end of it. I don’t think I am exaggerating by saying it was the nastiest, grossest experience of my life.
I tried the thing Jen bought today. I don’t think it was long enough to reach the bend in the pipe where you would expect the real nastiness to live. I put it into the drain, twisted it around, and brought it out. There was definitely some gunk stuck on it. That was nice. No hair though. Nothing that looked like an obvious clog source. I didn’t think there would be. I didn’t feel anything blocking the line. I tried a second time. I put it in past the drain stopper and immediately some gunk popped out.
Wait a tic… I ran the thing around the drain stopper itself, pulled it back out, lots of gunk. Was the clog stuck to the stopper itself? I ran some water into the sink. It drained out perfectly.
Hot damn! Look at me being all plumber and shit! I tried it in the other bathroom too…
We have gone through almost a full day with a new water heater. I just worked up the courage to go down cellar and see how things are looking after everyone finished their morning showering routine.
Spoiler alert: Everything is dry. Oh high praise to the plumbing gods and goddesses, our cellar is dry.
They left the bucket right where it was:
They capped off the old pipe when they took the old heater away:
They added some new piping:
They added some more new piping:
They added the new tankless water heater. They did have to remove one of the shelving units that some previous owner had built. I’m a little sad about that, but not having a flood in my house every day makes up for it, big time:
One day down and all is well. I still need to check on the back of the house to see what the exhaust they installed looks like. Other than that… and the enjoyment of our very hot showers this morning… I think that’s all she wrote on the Lake Asshole story. Fingers crossed, knock on wood and all that crap.
The folks who will be installing our new water heater are here. Work is underway. Please, oh gods of plumbing and water heating, allow this to be Lake Asshole’s (more recently known as Bucket Asshole) final day. Oh please, oh please. Thank you.
I mixed another song while I was waiting for them to get here this morning. Song number 44 of an expected 52.
50/90 is officially not fun anymore. At least the 50/90 website portion of the project. Last night while I slumbered someone commented on the song I posted before I went to bed suggesting that he could remaster it for me and asking if that would be okay. Then without ever getting a response he remastered it and posted a link to it.
Ummmm… No.
I know we’re all amateurs and trying to get better at what we do and all of those good things, but Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Fuck With My Stuff Without Permission. It’s really that simple. I made all of my song links private so no one can get to them but me. 99.999% of the people I’ve dealt with have been wonderful and supportive and the few comments I get are always great, but one guy had to Fuck With My Stuff Without Permission and just utterly ruined the whole experience for me.
I plan to keep posting songs there as private so that I get the little trophy next to my name, but that’s it. If I play the game again next year I will probably do it alone, without using the website at all.
As I was wrapping up in the shower this morning the water pressure dropped way down. Huh? Then the water turned brown. Ugh. Every tap in the house was giving dirty, ugly brown water. I sent a tweet to the city’s twitter account, but it was still not even 8:00am yet so I didn’t expect anything. I checked the taps in the kitchen and the bathrooms every 15 minutes or so for about an hour and now they are looking back to normal. I figured that would happen. Someone somewhere near here was having work done and something minor happened and it just took a while to clear out all the dirt.
I just re-read that paragraph and I think it does a good job of making me look like I know what I am talking about when I honestly haven’t a clue. Good work, Robbie.
What the hell is up with my work computer? Everything I need for work is running 100% perfectly. Everything else is running 100% perfectly too with the exception of the very page I am typing this post on. The WordPress.com post editor page comes up blank when I access it from the Vivaldi browser. Not always, only when I am logged in through a non-private window. I tried another tab. Nope. I tried another window. Nope. I tried logging out and logging back in again. Nope. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Vivaldi (without deleting my browsing data). Nope. If I log in through a private window it’s fine. That’s how I am bringing this life saving post to you right now, through the glory of the private window which still works. Now c’mon guys, I don’t want to have to uninstall again and delete all of my browser data and start from scratch. I can never remember my sync password. Don’t be a jerk like that.
I wonder if it’s a cache thing… can I clear the cache? How do you clear your cache in Vivaldi? To the Google I go! (Later. It’s 9:00. I have to work now. I’ll ask Mr Google later.)
Inside the Red Head's Head 