Chewed up and spat out, more color, digging in the dishwasher, 2750 applications, two in a row
My Saturday left me feeling like an extra on Walking Dead. It started out with my normal race day morning 4AM alarm. Cindy and I got on site around 5:15 and immediately started on start line mat construction. Unlike the last couple events where we just ran the mats across the road from the get go we set the mats off to the side with the intent of pulling them across the roadway just before the start. This event has tour buses that are used to bring in participants and I did not feel comfortable with them driving across the mats.
This is one of the best events we do because the entire registration area is set up ahead of time by the Shootout team that runs the host golf event. I think we had to set up a couple tables and a few chairs, that was it. We don’t even have to set up the big finish line arch, the Shootout has their own small customized finish structure.
As you would expect having all this done for me makes my life easier. The event timing went very smoothly with only a couple minor hiccups. After I finished up I actually dropped off Cindy at a nearby parking lot. We had brought two vehicles because I had to go straight from the race to the office. Cindy took the truck home with all of the equipment.
Our main office was having some additional state services installed on Saturday. My initial hope was to have it all wrapped up by around noon. Well that plan definitely did not work out. I wound up being stuck in there until after 5PM due to one of the state installers having several problems that he was not very efficient in solving. There was no official lunch break in there, instead we got by on half stale pita chips and some water. By the time I got out of there I was totally running on fumes. Even though I was drop tired Saturday night I had a hard time falling asleep.
Sunday I had no desire or time to get any endurance training in. We had a “party” to attend at 11AM where a bunch of people were helping us attach timing chips to the 2750 race bibs for the upcoming half marathon. Before we left I wanted to get my bills paid and then I turned my attention to the dishwasher. Cindy opened it up and saw there was a bunch of dirty water still in the bottom of it. I did some preliminary investigation/ground work on it before we left for the party by sucking out the dirty water with my ShopVac and looking around for an obvious blockage. I didn’t have time to go very far into the trouble shooting process before we had to get going.
The party was held at Mary’s house, she has hosted/helped us out before. She managed to get double digit volunteers to help out which made the work go very fast. We knocked out almost 3000 bibs in 90 minutes or less. If Cindy or I tried to tackle this job ourselves it would have taken all day. We were both very appreciative of the willingness of the volunteers to help us out.
When we got home I immediately flipped on the Eagles/Bills game which was into the 2nd quarter by that time. I found myself multitasking during it, working on the dishwasher and hanging new Christmas lights on the chicken coop.
The original set of white coop lights we hung developed a dead spot that I could not rectify easily. I had found some large format, color bulbs at Sam’s Club during the week that I wanted to replace them with. The new bulbs are higher quality and will continue to work even if you physically remove a bulb, something that was very attractive to me. Cindy and I both really liked the color upgrade.
The dishwasher work was frustrating. Thanks to some internet research I was able to remove pretty much everything on the bottom of the unit including the washer arm, filter screen and the sump. My hope was to find some debris that was blocking the drain. I did not. During my testing I verified that the pump does expel some water as I could feel it in the drain line that is connected to the sink, it just does not pump it all out at the end. To verify I was not dealing with a blockage I stretched my air compressor hose into the kitchen and attached it to the drain hose at the sink end. When I applied air pressure I was able to push air back into the dishwasher without issue.
From what my tests did and did not reveal it appears the next logical step would be to replace the drain pump. It’s a $50 part that I should be able to do myself. I just will be annoyed if I would do so and still not fix the problem since replacing the dishwasher has been on the longer term to do list for awhile anyway. The DIYer in me almost mandates that I give the pump a try first.
So the Eagles actually managed to beat the Bills which I thought was highly unlikely. With a 6-7 record the team is still tied for first place in the pathetic NFC East division. For the second week in a row the team played just well enough to win. Once again Sam Bradford almost single handedly fcked the team when he stupidly took a 15 yard sack towards the end of the game instead of throwing the ball away. Lucky for him the Eagles D came up big when it had to, snagging an interception to kill Buffalo’s last drive.
We have Sadie until tomorrow. She is always fun to have around although it wasn’t fun when we came home from the bib party to discover Sadie sitting outside the door to the pool cage. She decided she saw something in the back yard that required her to immediately address, doing so by ripping a hole in the pool screen and jumping through it. Her access to the pool area when we aren’t home is going to be restricted from now on.
Oh this week is busy, so very busy.