Ready for the sun

Well, it seems that we've run across a string of relatively expensive bad luck.

It started with the news that my car needed a water pump, and that pump would require the front end of the car to be removed and the engine torn apart to replace. $1200, plus the bleeder valve assembly which you can only get from a dealer is another $100 + labor if I don't do it myself.

On to the house. Now, I would suppose that this expensive string of difficulty could have started with the oven fire that brought us to replace the carpets and clean everything...however, I'll start new.

This week on Monday, Sandra informed me that the clothes washer had stopped working. It would only fill half way and then it wouldn't agitate because the water was too low. My response was "have the repairman take a look at this when he comes out to fix the dishwasher." I retired to guitar playing to forget about yet another broken appliance in my house.

An hour or so later, Sandra asks if I knew why the toilet upstairs wouldn't fill after flushing. I did not, but after looking at it I thought that the float assembly had a corroded switch and valve which caused it to stop working. She asked if those two could be related, to which I replied that I didn't see how they could be related, but anything was possible. I retired to the downstairs bathroom to get rid of a little water before bed.

Once down there, it looked like there was coffee grounds in the toilet bowl. "That's odd," I thought as I flushed them down. Lo and behold, the brown grounds were pouring into the bowl from the fresh water supply on the toilet. Now I was a little freaked out. I looked closely at it, and there were fine brown and yellow granules flowing into the toilet bowl. I went around the house, and sure enough, now every faucet in the house had sand coming through it. I had no idea what that could be, so we shut the water off and I went to buy some bottled water for the next day when we could get a plumber over.

The next day I called the city and asked if anyone else had an issue. The extremely helpful and super cool people at the city asked if we had a water softener, and if we could bypass it. I called Sandra and she bypassed the softener. She then ran the water clean. Booya! It wasn't a leaking main like I was now expecting. At any rate, the estimate for the softener, installed is $1100. To get one sized correctly for our family we will need one that is roughly $600 I figure, and then I'll have to sweat the pipes in myself. At this point, that just may be worth $500 to me.

Also, when turning off the water at the main I realized I could no longer put off replacing the main valve. The city was once again awesome to work with, they came out adn turned off the water and gave me a new meter that reports for itself wirelessly for the plumber. Plumber comes out and replaces the valve adn repairs my failed attempt at using compression fittings to replace the washer valve that was completely sealed by the softener garbage. $250.

I am coming to terms with the fact that I do not have a house. I have a large pit into which I have thrown my money for the past 8 years.

Update

Well, it has been a while since my last post. Things got away from us around here and blogging has had to take a back seat for a while. Commence the blogging...

I noticed that my last post was 12/23/2009. That was three days before our oven caught fire and our house was filled with dry-chem from my attempts to extinguish the flame. To make a long, boring story less long and boring, the element in the bottom of the oven arced and was burning like a fuse. I emptied a 5-pound extinguisher on it to no avail, followed by a partial 10-pounder. The white flame would dim a little when it got hit with the dry-chem, but then kick right back in at full speed a moment later. In case this ever happens to you, don't try an extinguisher on it. Pull your stove out from the wall and unplug it - because that killed the charge to the element and the flame went out. Funny thing about shooting a fire extinguisher into a small enclosed area...it comes right back out at you. So, into my face and the air came the majority of the dust, and once in the air into the air exchanger and HVAC ductwork of my house. Now we had dry-chem EVERYwhere!

(This is the point where I cuss long and loud.)

Again, to make the long boring story only slightly less long and boring, the insurance company was great and covered most everything. The downside was that my daughter and her husband and two boys were here with us for the holiday and we had a destroyed home and nothing on which to cook. To top it off, my daughter is pukey due to her pregnancy.

So - to save time and effort, a rundown:

1. Oven fire December 26th
2. Amber and Nick are expecting a boy (more about that later) whome they intend to name Taber Gregory
3. Replaced carpet in upstairs with wood laminate using money from insurance company
4. Replaced stove with insurance money
5. Replaced dishwasher due to unfortunate "wrecking crew" accident with old dishwasher
6. Spent an entire day clicking "refresh" but finally got the MN appliance rebate
7. Cut tip of my left-hand index finger with the table saw immediately after thinking "I should not reach so close to that moving blade"
8. Still employed and loving it at Marco in the Managed IT group
9. Marco is financially doing well and has weathered the storm nicely
10. Building guitar effects pedals in my spare time
11. Jeremiah's hockey season is over
12. Grace's first season of figure skating is over
13. Grace is continuing with the Stroia Ballet Company through the summer
14. Grace taking piano lessons, Jeremiah self-studying her lessons to play piano also
15. Jeremiah is taking violin lessons, Grace self-studying as well
16. Adrian is awarded "Tech of the Year" at Royal Tire where he is doing OTR tires and doing well
17. Sandra is getting heavily involved in HEY (ask me about it if you don't already know)
18. Sandra is, as always, awesome and my favorite part of every day
19. Jadyn insists on doing all things by herself
20. We're still alive and well, thanks to God for keeping us safe and sound through several trials
21. My Dodge needs a water pump, which means the whole front end needs to be removed
22. Decided to start my summer bike commuting to work a couple months early and not charge any car repairs
23. Playing in a little group with guys from Marco, which we are calling "Green Light Night"
24. Glad to be alive

So anyhow, that's everything I can think of in 10 minutes or less. I'm off to work on composing a drum track for a song Adrian is writing. We'll post to my MySpace music site when complete if Adrian deems it satisfactorily recorded.

Can't wait to hear from you all. I'm hoping to post more in the coming months, as long as I can keep my fingers out of saws...

The morning commute

Note to self:

An appropriate amount of clothing for morning commute at 40 degrees F:

2 short-sleeved t-shirts

1 long-sleeved t-shirt

1 light wind-breaker jacket

Long-john underwear

Cut-off Dickie's

Low-top Chuck Taylor tennis shoes

Stocking cap under the helmet

Biking gloves covered by brown cotton gloves

I was pretty comfortable and got a little warm toward the end of the ride. I think I prefer the headband-type ear warmer under my helmet over the stocking cap, too, since my head got very warm at times. But it was sure nice having the wind-breaker on those streets where the wind whipped through like a tunnel!

Not to mention when you are riding a fixed-gear bike you can actually hear birds singing in the morning.