Category: Life

Everyone out there, do me a favor.  Next time I mention that I’m thinking of doing some sort of home improvement project myself, just repeat those words to me.  “Just get a professional.”  It would certainly save me a bunch of time, frustration and body soreness in the long run.

Why do I mention this?  Well, this past weekend Jess and I decided it was finally time to get a water softener.  Our water in Meridian is super hard (with dissolved minerals, you sickos).  We’ve wanted to get a water softener since we moved in almost 2 years ago.  Our shower walls are slowly turning orange.  The funny thing is, we put aside most of the cash we got for the wedding in an envelope with the specific purpose of buying a water softener.  It just took us this long to actually pull the trigger.

Well, the time had come and Jess was able to convince me that we could totally install it ourselves.  And by “we”, she meant her dad and I.  So, Saturday morning we headed to Lowe’s full of resolve that it was to be that day.  We had grand plans to crank this mother out and be enjoying our soft water that evening.

Hang on there, Sparky.  As is always my problem with things like this, I don’t know what I don’t know.  I did know that having looked at the plumbing for the softener (that our house was built with) meant that piping was going to have to be cut.  See the above image. I guarantee this fact added at least a solid year to my procrastination.  There was no handy-dandy screw off ends here.  Also, this isn’t PVC pipe either.  It is something called PEX which I’d never heard of. Of course, this requires a special tool we gotta rent.

Having purchased all the crap we’d need and planned our attack we started in.  This PEX clamper-tool-dealy-thingy (which resembles bolt cutters) was a bitch and a half.  Let me tell ya, compressing that bastard took everything I had.  This was compounded by the fact that final rings needed to be compressed behind the water softener.  I’m basically dry humping the water heater trying to get enough leverage and strength to do it.  It very nearly didn’t happen. Not to mention that I could hardly get out of bed the next day with my back, shoulders and arms all jacked up.  When we were “finished” I didn’t have enough strength in my arms to even close the tool. But I digress.

Long story short, we get all of the new piping cut and connected.  It comes time to test for water fastness.  I am happy to report that NONE of the PEX ring seams had a single problem.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that the threaded pieces leading into the softener itself were dripping.  Very slowly, but dripping.  Shit.  Well, we disassemble and unscrew them… re-teflon-tape them and reassemble.  Same thing.  We tried tightening.  We tried more teflon.  We tightened some more.  No dice.  It was at this point where we were out of ideas.

Fortunately, we still had usable water (thanks to my massive PEXing) so we didn’t have to spend the weekend like backpackers in the wilderness or anything.  However, the bucket under the tubing told a different story.  Honestly, I’m just glad that at this point I didn’t have water cascading around the garage looking like Old Faithful.

This is what always seems to happen to me.  Every project I do I can get 80% of the way done.  Then comes some curve ball and I’m basically dead in the water (no pun intended).  Something on my end is always different from the instructions.  When that happens, I don’t have the knowledge necessary to adapt the plan and continue.  Usually at that point I get frustrated that I shot an entire Saturday on the project and am just going to have to call someone in anyway.  F-bombs and flying tools usually commence.

This morning, the good people from A-1 Plumbing came out.  The guy was really nice.  He even complimented me on my PEX seals.  He told me about a guy who tried this a few weeks ago and every single one of his PEX joints was leaking.  At least I got that going for me.  Anyway, a couple hours and 300 bucks later we are up and running.  Not to mention that there were a couple pieces that he did and I didn’t even know about which could have cause us MUCHO problems in the future.

I guess I’m just not enough of a “manly” man to know this stuff. It is time to admit to myself that I really don’t know what I’m doing.  I suppose I wouldn’t expect a plumber to build me a website either.  There is a reason these people exist.  Just bite the bullet, pay the money and have it done right.

Thus endeth the lesson…

This week will bring along my 36th birthday.  Holy crap, that sounds really bad.  THIRTY SIX?!  How in the hell did that happen?  I mean, I don’t feel significantly different from 32, or 28, or 25.  When you’re a kid, you think about when you’ll be an “adult”.  Honestly, I’m still wondering…  It’s gotta happen one of these days, right?

It occurred to me, that at 35 you are half of 70.  Granted life expectancy now is mid to late 70’s, but if you kick at 70, nobody looks a that as a great tragedy.  Whoa.  That is a sobering thought.

With such a birthday coming, I’ve been thinking about aging.  Stages of life, if you will.  Of course, we have the epic speech by Billy Crystal in City Slickers.  But I think I can expand on it a little bit. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I don’t personally know the older ranges… I’m educated guessing)

Age 0
You’re born.  You obviously don’t remember this, and probably for good reason.  Ye olde play-doh fun factory of life would probably not be something you want to look fondly back on.  You are the center of attention, even if you don’t know it.

Age 1-2
You start to figure things out.  The walking. The talking. “NO”.  You know… The essentials.  You may have some friends you recognize from day care.  The most important toy is always the one the other kid has.

Age 3-5
The last years before you enter the forced hierarchical structure that is school.  This is a golden time.  Your parents are the smartest people on the planet. I remember very well hanging out with Mom all day.  She worked from home sewing, so I would crawl around in the closet full of fabric and listen to daytime TV.  Occasionally make a run to the bank or grocery store.  All I knew was that my older sister wasn’t around and didn’t get to do any of this fun stuff.

Age 6-12
Now you’re in school.  You have a ready made gauge for ranking everyone.  When you’re in first grade, all you know is everything is new and you’re the youngest in the school (except for those wimpy kindergartners but they don’t even go to school all day).  Once you jump to 2nd grade, you realize what all the fuss is about.  You instantly know, you are not the youngest, and thus, the most lame.  Everyone older than you is cooler, everyone younger is not.  That is just the way it is. School is the dominating force in your life.  You spend the most time there.  The year feels SO long.  It might as well be 5 years between Christmases.

Continue reading “Another Year Older”

I guarantee I can beat it.  Here’s the story.

So, I’m working from home today.  I spent the last night coughing and nearly choking to death on phlegm to the point that I “slept” in the other bedroom so that I wouldn’t keep Jess up all night.  Upon arising  and hacking up a loogie the size of New Jersey, I decided that instead of subject my fellow coworkers to my respiratory issues, I would just log in and work from home.

Anyway, lunch time rolled around.  Jess reminded me that if I’m sick, I really should eat something.  I headed to the kitchen to see what I could find.  Ahh-ha… I know, I’ll have a nice big peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Haven’t had one of those in a while, that should hit the spot.  What else can I have?  Yes… good… we have a box of individual size bags of Sunchips that we got from Costco specifically for lunches.  Perfect.  Throw in a Pepsi and you have a pretty solid lunch.

I set about chowing down my sandwich (on 8 grain bread, I might add).  Trustworthy PB&J will never let you down. If it wasn’t for those things I probably would have starved to death in childhood.  Also, I’m a bit of a strange eater when it comes to lunch.  More often than not, I don’t mix foods together.  I eat one thing, finish it, move onto the next.  Don’t ask me why, I just do.  If it’s a burger and fries, the fries go first, then the burger.  But, if its a sandwich and chips, the sandwich goes first.  I know, I’m weird.

Sandwich done, I open the bag of Sunchips to finish off my lunch.  I’m happily munching away while I work, as I’ve done hundreds of times before.

Let me preface this next part for those that might be squeemish… proceed with caution.

As setting, let me state that my office is fairly dim.  I don’t have the overhead lights on, and the shaded window has drapes on it. Really, the only light is from my monitor and a bit from the hallway, which is plenty.

As I was about 3/4 of my way through the bag of Harvest Cheddar chips, I began to ponder what those dark spots were on the chips.  I had noticed them upon starting, but in the dim light they appeared to just be another “grain” in the chips or perhaps larger clumps of seasoning.  Ummm… no… I’m not that lucky.

After piecing together my more recent history with Sunchips, I was fairly certain that Harvest Cheddar chips really didn’t look like that normally. Something was amiss.   That is when I looked a little closer, and came to a horrible HORRIBLE realization.

That’s not seasoning.

Again, squeemish people move on now.

They were ants.  Dead ants, specifically.  All curled up on themselves like dead ants do.  The bottom of the bag was FULL of them.

For the record, I chugged the rest of my Pepsi in about 2.4 seconds.  I can’t say I totally felt the urge to puke, but it did cross my mind.

Now I specifically remember eating one chip that had 20 or so specks on it.  Thinking nothing of it, I popped in and chewed away happily.  Hindsight being 20/20 and all, I think it did taste a bit… off…

I think the worst part now is that I still have bits of the chips stuck in my teeth. Which, of course, means I’ve got bits of masticated dead ant in my teeth as well.

Ok… that thought is making me want to puke.  I’m off to brush and rinse with Listerine about 24 times.

Of course, I couldn’t NOT post a picture…

All told, I think I’m off Sunchips for awhile.  Oh, and Frito Lay?  Prepare to get a piece of my mind.