A Calm following the Storm

Yes..it was quite a storm over the weekend. The rains moved in midweek last week, but the brunt of the storm hit on Friday and Saturday and brought us about three inches of rain and we are up to about 60% of our normal rainfall. We are supposed to get another weak storm system today and tomorrow and it will then clear up and I'll be back to golf on Saturday of next week.

Given the rain, my plans to work on the irrigation in the back yard were put on hold. Darla had returned my ski lodge lino tiles and bought "more appropriate" flooring for the bathroom. I had to disassemble the toilet and tank to place the flooring around the toilet. The job of installing the flooring went pretty fast (you can see that it is a small area (about 38 square feet) and I didn't have to do alot of prep work as the tiles installed right over the linoleum that was there. I only had to cut the lino off the wall where the installer curved the linoleum up and tacked it to the wall as a border. I cut that out and installed baseboards in its place. The hard part of the job turned out to be the toilet. My plan was to reinstall the existing toilet with a new wax ring and be done with it. Oh, the plans of mice and men.

There are four areas that can leak on a toilet. The water supply line on the wall, the inlet to the tank, the seal between the tank and the bowl and the bowl itself where it attached to the sewer line at the base of the floor. I managed in one afternoon to have all four areas leak and never at the same time. I reinstalled the toilet turned on the water supply and the tank was leaking. I again bailed out water from the tank and reinstalled the tank correctly. After refilling the tank, I flushed it and water began running out of the base of the bowl. I quickly realized, after bailing water from both the tank and the bowl, that I'd installed the wax seal upside down. (I have an office job for a reason, folks.) I got that righted and reinstalled the tank and bowl only to have the water inlet to the tank leaking. I bailed the tank for a fourth time and repaired the inlet. The tank seemed a little wobbly and I decided to tighten the bolts on the tank and turned the wrench one final turn and the tank cracked in about ten places. Now thank God for Prozac or the bathroom could have looked like a war zone. I called Darla who was coming home from a show and asked her to get a replacement tank. She was of course none too thrilled to have that errand thrust on her, but being a loving wife agreed to stop at Home Depot (we own their stock) and get a new tank.

Unbenownst to me, the tanks come in both three bolt and two bolt setups and the tank she got was a three bolt. We ate dinner and Darla and I drove back to the Depot to get a different tank. The tanks cost about $57 and the bowls the same. I talked to a Home Depot plumbing guy and he suggested that I replace both the tank and bowl as the holes in the toilet would likely not lineup with the tank. I bit the bullet, but stayed with a round toilet rather than an elongated as the wood toilet seat we have is round. Nice plan.

I decided to rest and watch a movie and tackle the toilet replacement after church on Sunday.

The sermon this week was an interview with Jerry Manuel, a Sacramento sports legend who played and starred in baseball, basketball and football. Jerry was the manager of the year with the Chicago White Sox in 2000 and is now a bench coach with the New York Mets. Our church is affiliated with a Christian College, William Jessup University (formerly San Jose Bible College). The Jessups bought land in Rocklin and moved the University to our area in 2004. Bryce Jessup is the Dean at William Jessup and is a member of our church's leadership council. Bryce knows Jerry as a strong local Christian and invited him to come out to William Jessup to assist him in getting a baseball program up and running. Jerry helped with the planning of the new baseball and sports complex at William Jessup and agreed to help with recruiting. When Bryce asked Jerry to give him some names for possible managers for the team, Jerry offered to run the program. It was announced on Sunday morning that Jerry is leaving professional baseball after 31 years and will be the manager of the William Jessup baseball team. This is the second high profile Christian athlete to leave professional sports to coach at William Jessup. Ruthie Bolton-Holyfield is the coach of the women's basketball team. Both of these Christian athletes said that the opportunity to continue to coach in the game they love while touching young lives for Christ was the reason they agreed to accept the job.

After church, Darla was off to another jewelry party and I tackled the job of installing a new toilet. After bailing the tank for a fifth time and the bowl for a fourth time, I removed the old fixture and began installing the new one, quickly realizing that the old toilet seat had bolts that were corroded and reusing that seat was not going to be an option. As I moved the water supply line for the umpteenth time, the flexible metal tubing broke caused a leak at the valve. I quickly shut off water to the house and headed downtown to the Ace Hardware for some replacement parts. I bought a new water valve and some flexible tubing as well as a new toilet seat for the toilet. I went to Ace because they have "hands down" the best informational help in the hardware business. The Ace employee (all of these guys are in their 50's-70's and are hardware geeks) asked me what length of flexible tubing I needed. I had no idea what size so bought the 12 inch.

The rest of the install went well, but the 12 inch tubing was too long and caused a kink in the line, so back I went to Ace to replace it with an eight inch pipe. The job is done as you can see by the picture, but the two hour job took a full day and left me with sore knees and really sore inner thighs. The squatting and kneeling left me feeling like a middle aged man after the job. I laid down on the couch and watched the Tivo recording of the final round of the Pebble Beach AT&T Pro Am and looked forward to basking in the sunshine on that course in April. By the way, you can double click on the bathroom picture above to see a closeup of my handiwork.

I talked to Jen this morning to share the news that her cousin, Jesse, is engaged and she told me that John is flying home on the 22nd from Afghanistan and will be there for the Vegas reunion. See the picture of Jesse and his fiancee Lorie above. Lorie, why are you covering your face? You're a pretty girl and Jesse won't always be broke.

Well, that's it for now. Today is payroll and I have to get the online time sheets approved to get these employees paid. I had to terminate my broker last week, which is never easy. I think I've had to fire too many people in my days as a manager. It is never easy. Ciao.