Water Heaters, Palmettos, Scandals, Shreks, Crisp, Birds in basement
The weather this weekend was awesome! We finally had our first real cool front come through. The past two nights it has dropped into the mid 50’s at night with highs during the day just around 80 with low humidity. It was just about perfect. When you have just gone through 6 months of 90 degrees with high humidity, the chill in the air feels great.
The perfect weather made the huge list of “to do’s” not seem bad at all. One of the first things I did was check out the source of leaking water in the garage. The water was coming out from behind the fridge so I assumed a drain was clogged with spider webs or something. However when I pulled the fridge out I saw the basing around the hot water heater was filled with water. Damn it. The heater is only 6 years old but I guess if it is a budget model, which I’m sure it was, I suppose it could be failing.
So I did some quick looking around online to educate myself about water heaters. It looked like I could get a decent replacement that is bigger, self cleaning and has a 9 year warranty for about 300 bucks at Lowe’s. Add a trip to Lowe’s to the list.
So I wanted to get some of my other list items knocked out. I replaced the air filter on the tractor, scrubbed down the pool and fixed the floodlight on the front of the house. Then I decided to trim the Palmetto. The Palmetto is a bushy palm bush that sort of has a whole bunch of mini-cabbage palms jammed together. As long as we have lived at the house we have talked about trimming this thing and never had. I went at the project myself, Ali’s back was still bothering her from the pruning project from last weekend.
I put on my shitty old leather gloves that I have had since I worked at Goodwill. These gloves had been through the wars and as a result were falling apart. Several of the fingers were ripped open and several seams were pulling apart. Hand protection is mandatory when working with a Palmetto. The shaft of the fronds is serrated like a bread knife. If I took one and drug it across your arm quickly you would be in the hospital getting stitches. I sat down on my ass, reached into the bush and started trimming away.
I bet I removed at least 100 fronds both dead and alive. As I scooted around to the far end I got an unpleasant surprise. I evidently disturbed an ant mound but not a fire ant mound, big ants. The ants flew out and started biting the hell out of my feet, yea I had flip flops on. I shot up and immediately swatted them away. As I was trimming there were multiple times where I got cut up via the holes in my gloves. When Ali came down to check on me I told her I had to get new gloves, this was crazy.
Finally I was done with the primary trimming but that wasn’t good enough. The center of the Palmetto was filled with dead fronds. I wanted them out. So I wedge myself between some fronds, ignoring the pain of the fronds digging into my hands, arms and sides and start reaching and ripping. I grab the base of dead fronds and pull. The dead wood snaps easily and I throw the remains out in a pile behind me. I’m sure I looked like a dog digging a hole in the dirt. Finally I was done. It looked much better. The various cuts I had on my body were worth it. Another 5 year old project finally gets done.
So I get cleaned up and head out to Lowe’s. I had entertained the idea of possibly buying the water heater, throwing it in my truck and performing the replacement myself. I’m pretty sure that I would have been able to get it done. I was basing my decision on what the labor charge would be to install the new heater. So I found the heater that I saw online and tracked down a guy in the department to talk to about it. I asked how much the install charge was. He said a normal install is $229 if no special work needs to be done. The cut off line I had in my head was 200 bucks so that was close enough for me to continue. The way Lowe’s handles it was less than ideal for me but I can understand it I suppose.
The install is 229 BUT the way they do it is charge you 35 bucks to have the installer come out first, survey the potential install to identify any possible issues and THEN he comes back another day with the heater. In my little ideal scenario, i would pay for the heater and the install on the spot, the guy comes out once and does it. However I can understand that two visits could potentially eliminate a lot of unforeseen problems. So anyway, I paid just the 35 bucks for now. The installer is supposed to call me today to set up appointment number one. I would hope that by the end of this week we will have a nice new Whirlpool water heater sitting in our garage.
After Lowe’s I also had to stop at Sam’s. During my errands I had both windows in the truck down and had my 90’s alternative channel on Sirius blaring. It was just very enjoyable to drive that day. Traffic didn’t bother me in the least. I felt uncharacteristically upbeat about that moment in time. It was such a beautiful day.
I bought a new pair of leather gloves at Lowe’s. I retrieved my old torn up ones and after a momentary pause to recollect and reminisce about the gloves that I have owned since the early 90’s, I unceremoniously threw them in the trash. I did feel bad about it.
On Saturday night we finally got around to watching Shrek 3 which I have had forever. The movie was average on the funny scale, Ali and I laughed a few times. It was definitely the weakest of the three. I think the Shrek franchise has run it’s course. No more need to be made. I’d give it a B.
On Sunday morning Nicki, Ali and I piled in the truck. I dropped Ali off at the gym for spinning class and then Nicki and I headed to my mom’s. I had my caulk gun in hand to finish up the ceiling out on mom’s lanai. The job didn’t take very long at all. I had some caulk left over that I used to fill a few gaps around the exterior windows that have been known to let critters in. Even with the extra caulking I still had 10 or 15 minutes of spare time to just relax and shoot the breeze with mom before I had to go pick Ali back up.
Once we got back we had one more big chore to knock out, mowing and weed whacking. I went around and weed whacked everything, then I switched attachments and put the hedge trimmer head on along with ear protection. This new trimmer seems louder than the older one, especially when I use the other attachments that require me to sometimes hold the motor closer to my head to hit certain angles. I was amazed how well protective headphones worked. After using the trimmer, I slapped the blower head onto the unit to clear the sidewalk and driveway. All in all I am pleased with the new weed whacker even with the increased noise output. It also uses more gas than the old unit.
Once I was done weed whacking, Ali was still mowing. She saw I finished and came over to me and asked if I could finish up the mowing. The constant jostling was not doing her painful back any favors. So I hopped on the mower and after another hour or so, the grass was all done. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon, the rest of the day was pretty much chore free. I chose to spend a good chunk of it vegging out playing WoW.
This past week I actually have played very little WoW. I think I went a stretch of 3 days or so where I didn’t even log into it. The iron-like grip it once commanded on my free time has definitely relaxed significantly. It is starting to get tired.
Before the Eagles disaster, I just happened to be watching 60 minutes as a result of watching the Colts/Patriots game. They had yet another astonishing story of incompetence and deceit tied into the 9/11 / Iraq war scenario. It was all about an Iraqi informant, code named fittingly enough, Curve Ball. Curve Ball was THE primary reason that the United States used as a basis for believing that Iraq was actively producing WMD’s. Curve Ball defected to Germany and sought asylum. He told German intelligence elaborate, detailed information about a chemical plant that he worked at. He said that this plant produced chemical weapon agents, he witnessed it first hand. When Colin Powell went in front of the UN, he used Curve Ball’s depiction of events as one of the backbones of “proof” that Iraq was indeed in the chemical warfare business.
Of course you know where this is leading. The United States used Curve Balls stories as the nail in the coffin, the indisputable proof that W wanted to legitimize his desire to attack Iraq. However the US never talked to Curve Ball. In fact the US only went on what German intelligence told them. German intelligence told the US that although they thought Curve Ball was credible, they were unable to confirm ANY of what he said. That was good enough for us, let’s invade!
As the story goes on it reveals that not only was Curve Ball not credible, pretty much every single bit of information he gave the Germans was a lie. Yea he was at this chemical plant, which was the only thing true, while it was being built, that was it. The time line he gave for witnessing the events was totally made up, he wasn’t even in Iraq at that time. The chemical plant turned out to be a seed purification plant. No chemical warfare, no hidden trucks going in and out. In fact this was all verified by UN inspectors 3 weeks before the Iraq war started. It didn’t matter, W and his war profiteering buddies needed a new source of revenue!
So basically the number one first hand source used by the USA as proof of Iraq WMD’s was a total scam artist. We went to war on unconfirmed allegations of someone that we didn’t even talk to ourselves. Unbelievable.
I went through the trouble of burning Loose Change to dvd to give to my one buddy at work to see. If for some reason you are unable to watch it online and would like a dvd version of it, let me know. I’d be happy to send you one.
Ok so let’s talk about that disastrous Eagles game. It doesn’t get any worse than that. During prime time in front of a national audience in your home stadium, you get creamed in every aspect of the game by the hated Dallas Cowboys. To make matters worse, TO had a huge game, happily taunting away the entire time. I had no expectations of them winning but it still was painful. Andy Reid looked like he was about to cry several times. The fiasco with his family combined with a team in disarray is surely enough to break a person. The 2007 Eagles are done, toast, finished.
