Who's the best plumber now?

Tuesday I banged out 4 miles at the gym. 2 on the treadmill, 2 on the track. Pretty uneventful.

Wednesday was an off day, as I was installing this:



It's a condensation pump for a furnace. Very exciting. The old one was acting up, and I ordered a new one. I was a bit worried, as the exact model I had wasn't made any more. I made an educated guess, ordered a pump, and waited.

It arrived yesterday, and I wasted no time in installing it.

Attached it, hooked it up, fired up some tests with a full tank of water and.....

nothing.

Well, it ran, but the tank didn't empty.


Arghsighgruntbitchgroan.

After some more examination, I guessed that this was the problem:



It's part of the drainage hose, and it looked a bit crumpled.

Of course, the damn thing used to work.

So, I made the trip to Home Depot (thankfully, I only live just over a mile away), and got some new hose, put it in, and..



Who's the best cop now?!

All up and running.


Noticed a little bit of leakage around the hose this morning, but nothing substantial. I'll investigate that at some point.

OK. Keep on rockin'.

The ol' pump faucet

Pretty quiet weekend, really.

We've had this faucet sitting in a box for a couple of months that I've been meaning to install. Of course, I just haven't gotten to it.

Saturday, I had the brilliant idea of putting it in.

So, I shut the shutoff valves off, proceeded to unplumb the old one, and then ran into a snag. I couldn't get the old one off. The stupid plastic nuts on the bottom didn't have anything to hold on to, and I couldn't get one of them unscrewed.

Yeah, ok. Big deal.

Of course, one of the shutoff valves then started to really not be shut off. And it just got worse from there. I shut the water off completely to all sinks, toilets, and everything plumbing related, and proceeded to fight with the old faucet for an hour. Eventually, I got it off, after resorting to drills, chisels, and other tools not normally found in a plumber's toolbox.

Joe the plumber I am not.

So, I put the new one in (it does look like the one in the picture). Started installing a new trap.. yep. Forgot to get an extension tube. This sink is stupid and wasn't really put together right. Super. One trip down to Home Depot later (where Christmas is apparently in full season, thank you very much)...

Got the trap/drain all done, turn the water supplies back on.. and......

No hot water. Super.

I figure that shutting off the valve got it stuck in the 'almost off' position. Not quite "off", as it can still leak water at a decent rate all over.

Totally fricken awesome. So, we have cold water. It's going old school, back to the pump, ala this faucet style.

I wasn't about to fart around with putting in a new shutoff valve after this fiasco. Plumber is coming Friday.


So, Saturday was wrecked after all of that, and I didn't get out to swim, run, bike, do jumping jacks, or anything like that. I did make about 800 trips up and down stairs, though, so that's got to count for something.

Sunday I did get out and do 21 laps in the pool, so that was nice. I am humbled by the other swimmers though.. I'm struggling to do a whole lap with freestyle crawl, and they go back and forth and back and forth. Sigh. I mix it up with different strokes so I can work different muscles. Yeah, that's it.

Monday and Tuesday Madness

Well, I didn't get to posting yesterday due to some family issues. All is more or less OK now, so on we go....

I'm into the blog catalog now, so that's exciting. I'm sure people will just be pouring on in now. :) Chuckle

I completed Week 3 of the 100 pushup challenge. It was a doozy getting that last day done on the 'Perfect Pushup' stuff. I was debating redoing week 3, but I saw Week 4 started out a little easier than week 3.. some sort of ladder approach to the training. So, I'm going to persevere for now.

I went for a run on Monday night.. Silly me forgot my Garmin. Alas. Looks like it charted to 3.33 miles, though. Seems about right. It was pretty humid, but not too hot. Still, I was soaked. Yuck.

I put another coat of paint on the edges of our bathroom. I think it just needs a couple of minor touch ups, and we'll be good to go. I'll be glad when I finally finish this project. It just never ends. (That's what happens when you never work on it).

More posts coming in a bit. :)

Green Hump Day

Well, another Hump Day has come and gone.. on the back side of the week.. hooray. Only 3 conference calls today, that's not too bad (unfortunately). Sadly, I have to run a couple of them.


Last night, I put the first coat of green paint on our bathroom. Once it's done, I'll throw a pic up here.. It's a pretty awesome color.

I did Week 3, Day 1 of the 100 pushup challenge.


Barely.

Hehe. The recipe called for 25, 17, 17, 15, and then for you to max (putting in at least 25). I made it through the 25 & 17 with no issues. The next 17 made me think "uh oh". I chugged through it and the 15. Alas, the final 25 was a struggle. I kept shifting my arm position.. narrow, wide, narrow, wide. Just to get it done. It wasn't a fluid set of 25, but they did get done. 99 pushups on the day.

I did a few sit ups later in the day, after a very humid run. Not terribly hot, but humid. As one sports writer once wrote "It's as humid as a Patrick Ewing head band!" ewwwww. My running buddy and I put in just over 3 miles, at just over a 10 min/mile pace.

My abs feel like they were worked out today. Abs of steel, here I come!


Tried again with the Merkur blade. No dice, again. I used a shaving soap, rather than my Proraso cream, just for a new flavor. I wound up doing two passes and calling it a day.

Thursday

Almost to the weekend! Woot!

I mowed what little of the lawn needed to be mowed last night. No rain will do that to a lawn, I suppose. I did a little other yard work as well.. nothing too much, though. I found a remainder of some fireworks the neighbors shot off in the lawn.. hrms.


I painted the ceiling of the previously primed bathroom. This bathroom is small. Let me tell you a couple of things about a small bathroom..

- It's wonderful to paint because:

It's small.


- It's awful to paint because:

It's small.

Every time I turn around, I'm running into the step ladder. I put the paint can lid down on the edge of the shower and said "OK, don't step in this. You can step anywhere else in the bathroom, but don't step here."
How hard could that be?

Yeah, well. 10 minutes into the process... step. Nice.

Paint on the foot. That leads to paint everywhere you step. Then you step into the paint footprint. And the cycle continues.


I did day 2 of week 2 of the 100 pushup challenge. I added 3 to the final set, so I wound up at 69 for the day.. whoo hoo. Pipes, here I come!


Last but not least, I went out for a run. My body evidently didn't care for that. Pain, pretty much the whole way. I wound up doing 3.5 miles at about a 9:45 pace.. I made a deal with my body about a tenth of a mile into it, saying that I'd take Friday off. It asked about Saturday, and I said that we'd see.

What's going on Friday, you may ask? (OK, you probably didn't).. I'm going to the Empire State Brewing & Music Festival! Whoo hoo! It's a beer 'tasting' event.. Lots of music and people, and it's a lot of fun. I'll post a pic of it when I get there...

On a sad note, today is the last day for one of my buddies here at work.. He's moving on to bigger and better things. I'll miss him and his spontaneity..

Tuesday

Well, Tuesday was an alright day.. I had to leave work early, so that wasn't all bad.

I went home, and did my pushups.. Week 2, Day 1 was a success.. I eeked out the minimum. Leaves me a bit worried for what the rest of the week will hold.

I also went for a bike ride.. It was 6.28 miles, if I remember right. Some good hills and such were tackled.


At work, I put Firefox 3 on.. I'm going to play with having different browser profiles. That way, I can keep a browser all set up for blog-type things, a browser for personal things, a browser for work things..

One of my favorite extensions Foxylicious hasn't yet been updated for Firefox 3. That's sad. It's the main reason I haven't fully switched to FF3 yet.


Last night, I also put some primer on the walls & ceiling of our extra bathroom. It's the last time that bathroom is the putrid pinky-peachy color it was. I tolerated it for 7 years, but it is no more. whoo hoo. We have a nice shade of green we're going to throw on the walls (that's the ubiquitous 'we' that will be putting paint on the walls)