Long Friday, Perfect timing, Pb with a side of bagel, longer Saturday, car to kitchen, in the attic

This was an arduous weekend as expected.  It started immediately on Friday evening with me working at one of our branches to almost 9PM.  It was frustrating because the majority of the time was spent standing around while state installers tried to figure out issues beyond our scope of work.  When I got home Cindy and I did a late pizza dinner.

Saturday morning I had to head out relatively early for the track meet.  I threw a few items in the back of the Tacoma and headed out.  There was a slight chill in the air so I turned the heat on low.  Usually the truck warms up pretty quickly so when I was a couple miles from the house and still felt no heat I glanced at the temperature gauge.  My panic level went from 0 to 100 when I see the needle pegged into the red area, wtf??

I pulled off at the next intersection and turned the truck off.  I popped the hood and looked for anything obvious.  No hoses or belts were broken but I did see what looked like coolant on the bottom of the motor, great.  I immediately wondered if it was somehow related to my thorough degreasing of the engine compartment although further mental analysis deemed that unlikely. So I turned the truck back on and babied it back home with the gauge buried the entire time.  Luckily despite the high temps the engine seemed to be running ok. I had the heat on full blast.  For brief intervals hot air would come out of the vents but it would then go back to cold.

When I got home I quickly took another look under the hood.  There was a pretty steady stream of watery brown liquid dripping from the engine.  At that point I was pretty sure my water pump had failed.  Of course I had no time to do anything further.  Cindy helped me throw my stuff into the Prius and I was back on the road.  When I got on site I asked Cindy to see if she could use her USAA membership to get the truck towed to the Tuffy where I have had work done before.  Luckily she was able to make the arrangements for a tow.

I called to Tuffy ahead of time to let them know the truck was on it’s way.  I was familiar with what is required to change the water pump on this motor,  it isn’t pretty and very labor intensive, way beyond what I am comfortable doing.  I knew this was going to be a big repair bill which of course is terrible timing since I planned to sell the truck within the next 30 days if things go as planned.  When the garage called me later in the day the estimate was even higher than I expected, $1500.  He said when you tear it down to replace the water pump you should replace the rubber timing belt as well, which I already knew.  I had it done once already at about the 100k mark.  Since the Tacoma was now at almost 190k miles it should be done anyway.  I told them to go ahead with the work.  I couldn’t believe the bad timing of the pump failure as I hung up the phone. Although in a weird way, if I sold the truck and the pump failed shortly thereafter I would feel badly for the buyer so at least it will be addressed now and perhaps I can use the repair as a basis for a couple hundred bucks more in the sale price.

So even with having to switch vehicles I got on site at the track meet on time, right around 8:30.  It turns out I probably could have showed up an hour or so later since the first action wasn’t until close to 11.  Before the main preliminary heats started I went to the snack stand to grab some food.  I went with something simple, a toasted plain bagel with peanut butter.  Instead fo applying the pb yourself they do it for you.  I thought that was nice, until I got it.

The bagel was wrapped in tin foil.  When I opened it up it was a brown runny mess.  It looks like the woman was overly generous with the creamy Jif and encasing the warm bagel inside the tin foil encouraged further melting.  My hands and face were disgusting after eating the bagel.  I went into the bathroom and tried to wash up the best I could.

This was a district track meet which is a big deal.  It also means it takes up big blocks of time.  I knew the meet was going to be long, I didn’t realize it was going to that long.  By the time we got off site it was 7PM.  By the time I got home it was almost exactly a 12 hour day.  My free time is way more valuable than the relatively small amount of pay track timers receive.  As a result I don’t expect to be doing it in the future.  Backing up the long day at the track with the late night at the office the night before made my weekend feel very consumed.

On Sunday morning we went out to Home Depot and brought Sadie along as she was visiting for the weekend.  We didn’t have anything specific to buy, I wanted to go to take a closer look at appliances, comparing models and getting ballpark pricing.  With the rows and rows of appliances it was somewhat difficult to keep straight all of the options.  One thing that was clear that it was a decent time to buy as it was Home Depot’s spring Black Friday sale where they take 10% off all appliances over 400 bucks, even if they are on sale already.  We walked out of the store not buying a single thing.  I am not sure if that has ever happened.

So while we were there we did identify what we liked and disliked.  When we got home I did further looking on the Home Depot web site.  I found the fridge we liked, a Samsung model with tons of bells and whistles.  I added it to my online cart just for fun.  When I did I saw the site popped up a window showing the matching Samsung appliances for the other kitchen pieces, like the dishwasher, stove and microwave.  Being able to easily browse them was great and a convenience we couldn’t do nearly as easily inside the brick and mortar store.

With Cindy’s help we went through each one and again added them to the cart, wanting to see the numbers.  Of course the same discounts applied online.  The grand total with tax and delivery (free) was a number well within the ballpark of what I was expecting to spend so I made the decision to convert from browsing to buying.  If things go as indicated online the new appliances should be in the house on Thursday.

We decided to go with all black appliances, the polar opposite of the all white appliances that have adorned the kitchen since the house was built some 16 years ago.  We think they will contrast nicely with the white cabinets and pick up very nicely on the black in the granite counter tops.  When I told Jeremy about the purchase he immediately said I should go with stainless steel instead as it is viewed by many as the gold standard.  I tried explaining to him I wasn’t looking to flip the house and if I prefer black, I am going to go with black.  I am confident it will look very slick.  I have never been one that is much interested in whole heartedly embracing the mainstream anyway.

So despite a large deficit in relaxation time in the weekend I filled my Sunday with more work.  I weed whacked the property to match the mowing Cindy had done on Saturday.  Mid-afternoon I decided to take a shot at getting the security dvr cables up the wall and into the attic.  My only access to the attic on the office side of the house is via a small door in the hobby room closet.  To get access to it required getting a shelf and everything on it out of the way.

Once I gained access and dropped the hatch my first visual was rolled up insulation that was covering the opening.  I was able to push it out of the way enough to get a look around.  Most of the area I needed to work in was covered with a foot or two of the blow in insulation.  Before venturing up in the attic I made sure I had on long pants and a long sleeve t-shirt to protect from the incessant irritation home insulation can cause.  In addition I had a paper air mask to keep me from inhaling tons of dirt and whatever else resides up there.  Of course it was quite warm in the attic since the afternoon temps hit the mid-80’s.

So I was very paranoid about inadvertently putting my foot through the ceiling.  I drug my body across some of the angled roof trusses to keep myself suspended the entire time.  Of course this resulted in my chest having almost brush burn like redness after I was done.  So I located the wood stud on top of the wall.  I started tapping on it so Cindy could verify I was in the right spot.  I then used a 1 1/2″ wood boring bit to punch a hole in the wood that seemed to be at least 4 inches thick.  I used my wire snake to fish down behind the drywall.  Cindy again verified she could hear the wire come down in the right spot.

I emerged from the hot attic covered in insulation.  I used the same drill bit to pop a hole in the drywall at about the same height as the other outlets.  I returned to the attic and moved the snake wire around until Cindy could grab it.  Once she did I came back down, taped the DVR wires to the snake and then returned one final time to the hot crawl space and pulled the wires successfully into the attic.  Due to time and patience restraints that was all the further the project progressed for now.  The next step will be more miserable crawling in the attic to the corners of the roof line to punch a hole where the wiring can connect up with the externally mounted cameras.  I can hardly wait.

Last night we had our second Tarpons game to attend in as many weeks.  The attendance was even less than the first week.  The game at least was more competitive, the Tarpons only won by around 20 points.

Today Cindy dropped me off at work since we only have one vehicle in the household currently.  If it was a year or so ago I would have had two spare vehicles to chose from in this situation.