40 years, water conditioner repairs, girls gone
I posted a picture of the old looking Pepsi bottle the girls found in our backyard on Facebook. A buddy of mine that I used to work with at Sovereign, Joe, has some experience with identifying old bottles due to his diving experience. He said it looked like a bottle from the 60’s and that there could be a two digit year stamp on the bottom of it. It was hard to see but after holding the bottle at the right angle I could make out a “70”. So the bottle is indeed nearly 40 years old, pretty damn cool. It will become part of our decor.
Over the weekend I was able to successfully repair the water cleaner that treats our well water. The unit that gets installed out here isn’t really ideally suited to be outdoors, especially in the brutal Florida conditions. The faceplate on our unit has been crumbling and as a result the small LCD display stopped working. I had no way of changing any settings on the unit since I could not see what was going on. Our old neighbors had the LCD/brains replaced on their unit several times by the well company to the tune of $500-$600 per repair.
Well of course I turned to the internet to solve my problems. It took some digging but I found a place that sold replacement parts for the unit. I was able to get everything I needed for the repair for $216. Replacing the parts required no tools and no more than 10 minutes of labor. I want to come up with some sort of method to protect the top of the unit to extend the life of my repair.
Last night was the final time we would see Ali’s brother and his family before they headed back to PA this morning. Mike is a big fan of Tommy Bahama’s so we decided to eat at the location in Naples. The restaurant was not busy at all. At dinner I heard stories from the girls of their exciting day at the hotel pool. Evidently this place has a small water slide that the girls rode almost non-stop for several hours.
Our waitress was a woman that was probably in her 40’s but had a voice like a little girl, it was weird. She seemed like a bit of an airhead. We all had good meals. When the bill came my brother-in-law grabbed it, he also paid for our dinner the first night they were down. I always hate this process when company is down when you go out to eat. Tommy Bahamas is expensive, very expensive by my scale. We don’t want him paying for us but at the same time if we pick up the tab for everyone we are eating a huge bill, no pun intended. There are two ways to handle it, either pay your part of the bill in cash or ask for separate checks up front.
I had not done a cash inventory before we went there and did not have enough to cover what we had. And of course we didn’t ask for separate checks, we never do and I always feel stupid for not doing so. It eliminates all of the drama of “who is going to grab the check” at the end of the meal. Otherwise you are constantly keeping tabs in your head about what you spent on meals versus what they spent to try to even it out.
To somewhat compensate we paid for some Florida souvenirs for the girls when we stopped at a beach apparel/souvenir store after dinner. We said goodbye to everyone outside the store. Ali and I really enjoyed having everyone down, especially the girls. At their age every moment seems special. On the way home Ali was upset. She feels very close to the girls and the idea that she only gets to see them so rarely made her sad. Ali values that closeness since it was something in short supply during her upbringing.
Back to normal….