Hot Weekend of Events...

It has been a mostly bad weekend all the way around… Friday, the maids came and did the house. When Pam got home she noticed that the water in the corner tub was running and wouldn’t shut off. This is the second time that the maids have done this. Its one of those thermostatic controlled valves where you turn on the water source, and set the temp and the valve controls how much of which water comes out to be at the right temperature. So, when you turn on the water, there is this gear complex that turns on both the hot and cold valves. Anyway, due to the plumbing and the length of pipe from the valve to the waterfall tub drain, it takes a while for the water to stop after being shut off. So, the maids keep twisting the valve off tighter to make it stop. The first time, she totally ruined one of the two water valves and we called in a plumber and he had to put in two shutoff valves under the house and order a new valve and it ended up taking about 3 weeks and cost almost $300 to get resolved. But, being resourceful and observant, I decided I could resolve this problem and did something I had never done and swore I would never do, crawl under the house. The one in Moss Beach was awful under there and you can only have sooooo much fun… Anyway, I went under the house and had to crawl to the other end of the house to turn off the valves. This is a big house and I had to crawl through/around/over all sorts of pipes and vents and such. The good news is that is was all plastic lined under there and there were very few varmints or insects, I regress… So, I found the valves and turned them off. I then came back up and took the tub valve assembly all apart and found that the two water valves seemed to work ok and was figuring that the plastic gears must have slipped causing the problem. With my Cell phone and Pam’s help, I set it all up and crawled back down under the house and had her check my theory and it was good. So, I turned the valves back on and came up from down under, after finding my screwdriver I lost the fist time. To make a long story shorter, I reassembled the whole mess and it all works great – saving at least a couple of hundred dollars and weeks of hassle in the process.

Then on Saturday, I took Pam on her first Ho ride on the BMW motorcycle. We went around the area and had breakfast and did some light shopping. When we got home, the air conditioner had froze up again. This happened last year also and again I watched and learned from the HVAC guys. I had to power off and disassemble the main blower/cooler assembly and sure enough the whole AC coil thing was frozen solid. So, I had to setup heaters and fans to melt all the ice and reassemble it all. It had been a real heat spell, well over 100 deg and I guess had a old filter or something that made it freeze up, but nothing was coming out of the vents in the house and it was about 90 inside the house and frying. The last time that happened, it took two guys and about $ 200 to fix.

Then, yesterday morning we were awakened by a Storm’s phone call that is Jenny was in labor in the hospital, so we jumped up and ran down there from a dead sleep, stopping for flowers and dognuts along the way. The baby girl is good sized and all is good. Jenny did it all without any drugs - way to go girl...

We then came home to our annual flying ant invasion of the front/family room fireplace and, and, and… This time I think they have won. In the past two annual invasions, we would just start up the gas fireplace and fry them every few hours, but this time they seem to have taken it a step further and have blocked the air flow so when we start up the gas it only burns about 1 min and goes out – from lack of oxygen or stacks of fried ants, I assume… They are on the roof all around the chimney to the fireplace, and at both ends of the roof ridge vent is mass… Big fricken masses… So, I got out the latter and tried various bug sprays and water sprayers to get them down. It was too far up to do much except give them a nice mist bath from the big power washer. I destroyed the little power washer - that can distribute soap, or in this case, bug spray, by dropping it off the latter onto the concrete when trying to talk to Pam who was yelling about something. I had to use the hand I was holding the power washer with, to talk to her – a neckbreathers dilemma…

So, all and all, I figure I saved about $400 in service fees this weekend. That should probably be just about enough to get rid of these *(^^%&*@#*)%&%* flying ants…