Busy, Busy, Busy

At some point last week the flap in the toilet tank decided to start leaking, so every twenty minutes or so it would flush itself. To no surprise, it was somewhere around midnight this all came to a head. I rousted myself out of bed, turned the valve off at the floor and went back to sleep.

The next day there was a puddle in the floor around the valve. Hmmm? Now the the valve was leaking. Throw some towels around it and get to it later.

The first attempt at fixing it was putting in a new flap and turning on the valve. Maybe with the valve open it wouldn’t leak and the new flap would of course fix the automatic flushing.

No dice. The valve was done. It leaked worse open than closed. In addition, the handle broke and I now needed a new one of those. Turn the valve back off, put the towels back and leave it for later. I think that was Friday?

Fixing the valve meant cutting the copper pipe and soldering in a new pipe with valve assembly. Saturday we had a wedding to go to, so that wasn’t happening then. Instead I put dry towels around the valve and went for a walk with Abigail and Jen in the park.

It was windy and chilly, so she was bundled up tight. After the walk in the park, I unloaded our new server.

Server? Yeah it’s the big flat thing laying on the bed in front of Abigail. It’s an HP Proliant DL 360 G4 blade server. It’s the real deal. A little old, but still good enough to mount in one of our closets and host some web stuff or something. Jen’s company was culling their old servers and we got one. When we’ll configure it, I have no idea. At least for now it’ll hold the bed down in case a tornado tries to blow everything away.

Then it was off to the wedding.

Nice wedding. Good people and good friends. Jen even managed a few dances out of me. I was able to pull off a couple of Foxtrots and some Rhumbas. Who knew Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance was a Rhumba? The bar tenders had a problem understanding the differences between tonic and soda water, but we got them straightened out. This was the first time Jen and I had been out together without the baby. We left her at home with a baby sitter (i.e. Grandma) and lots of milk. It all went well, though I have to remember not to stay out so late until Abigail’s sleeping the night.

Sunday was the day to fix the toilet. It was also the day to finish closing the pool (gotta blow out the lines). I started bright early by heading to the hardware store to get what I needed for the plumbing job. As I’m perusing the isles I came across this. No joke. The Sharkbite coupling system doesn’t require any solder and very little prep on the pipes. Basically cut the pipes square, deburr, press on and you’re done. Looking to buy more time to the actual fix, I decided to just get a Sharkbite ball valve and basically cap the pipe going to the toilet.

I got home, cut the pipe, pushed on the valve, turned it off and voila no more leak.

Took five minutes at most.

So now it’s onto other things, but not the pool.

Abigail’s been playing more and more on the floor, so we decided to get a nice pad for the carpet (we bought for the kitchen a while back) and move it into the living room. First the pad needed prepared.

Basically the default size wasn’t big enough and needed splicing. Pain in the butt really, but worth the effort when Abigail falls over. Unfortunately I didn’t get a shot of the finished project, but I did take the movie you’ve all seen where Abigail promptly crawls from the safety of the carpet to other hard wooded places.

Next up, carpet and padding for those places too.

That was it. No the toilet didn’t get fixed and no I didn’t finish the pool.

I swear nothing gets done anymore.

– b