Piss trough, 2008 vball debut, litterbox, buh bye Priscilla, idiots

At work the other week they installed low water usage fixtures including toilets that use like a gallon per flush along with a WATERLESS urinal.  It uses no water whatsoever.  You basically take a leak into the thing and then under the drain is some sort of substance that is supposed to neutralize odor.  It’s sort of weird using the urinal, it sort of feels like going back in time and using the old piss troughs.  The chemical urinal does require maintenance.  Every month or so they have to come in and replenish whatever the chemical is.  You can tell when it is time to swap it out as the bathroom starts smelling like a truck stop.  Many employees don’t use the urinal anymore and instead use the conventional toilet for everything.

So tomorrow I am travelling up to Siesta Key to play in my first 2008 volleyball tournament with Randall.  Since Randall lives on the east coast he is going to drive over to my place tonight and stay there so we can simply drive up together tomorrow morning.  We should have fun playing in the tournament as well as playing some drunken Wii at my place. I have no expectations for the tournament.  Physically I am as ready as I have been in the past 3 years to play.  It will be interesting to see how that plays out with the end result.  Any skill I possess surely is diminished from the lack of any sort of practice or play in the months in between tournament appearances.  Oh well, it doesn’t bother me any more.  I’m just happy to be out there playing.

Knock on wood the automatic litter box has been working better since I cleaned out that switch.  I think I found the key to making the unit workable.  You HAVE to make sure that the lip of waste container is UNDERNEATH the edge of the main unit so excess litter goes into the receptacle instead of dropping on to the floor under the unit.  If excessive litter collects under the unit it eventually causes that switch to malfunction which will prevent the unit from cycling correctly when a cat uses it.

  I had placed an order for one of the old style Littermaid boxes on Amazon but cancelled it after seeing it would take a month until it shipped out.  Then I bought one on ebay and again was told it would take a month for it to ship so I cancelled that as well.  I will see if my better luck with the Elite model continues.  It seems like the cats, now that they have a choice between the automatic box and an old fashioned litter box,  prefer to use the automatic box almost exclusively.  They do however always use the old box at least once a day so it requires me to scoop it.  They couldn’t possibly make their care any easier for me by just using one box.

I have been continuing on the quest to spend our tax return on home improvement items.  I bought a replacement for our 7 year old pool cleaner that was on it’s last legs.  In conjunction I bought two drain covers that should allow the cleaner to smoothly pass over the floor drains instead of constantly getting hung up on them, requiring our intervention to free it.  I also bought a replacement fountain for our little pond.  The only other thing I am looking to get done with the tax return dough is get a new front door.  The builder did an A-1 shitty job with our front door.  It doesn’t fit right.  There are gaps all around it that are large enough to allow rain and insects through.  I’m not looking for something fancy, just one that fits right.  I plan on having someone install it for me to make sure it gets done right although I certainly have come to realize that paying someone to do a job doesn’t necessarily mean they will take pride in their work.  

I was surprised to read that Priscilla Presley got the boot on DWTS.  I figured all the Elvis maniacs would have propped her up for quite awhile yet.  I saw a few seconds of her dance this week.  It was pretty dreadful.  Well now she can go back to injecting things into various parts of her body full time.  It will be a relief to not see her on the show so we don’t have to bear witness to Lisa Marie in the audience.  Ugh, what a train wreck.

In the local paper there was a headline story about a bunch of old farts from some baptist church that attended a meeting to push for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.  What a bunch of f’ing idiots.  With all the things that are wrong with the world, these people prefer to focus on sticking their noses into the middle of people’s personal relationships.  If two gay people get married exactly what harm does it do to anyone else?  All you need to know about the article is this quote from one of the attendees – ““This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery,” Wicker said.”  What in the F??  Read all of the idiocy here