Hmmm... why does the carpet go squish???

Well, there is a really funny story there. Okay, I think I forgot what funny means, but anyways. Friday rolls in and I get up to take a shower. When I step into the closet, the carpet squishes. Great, wonderful... Well, low and behold it is the water heater leaking. At least that is what we think it is. So, I take the day off work and have a friend of a co-worker who is in the business come over and take a look. Sure enough, when we unscrew the front panel, water comes pouring out. Off to Lowes with my just cashed paycheck to get a new water heater and tools for the guy to fix it. Well, we get my check cashed and I pay him $150, which is a great deal. The only problem is, that he takes 6 hours to fix it and in the end, when my co-worker comes to pick him up from my place, she says, "Why don't you just use compression fittings?" To which he responds with... "I didn't even think of that." We are off to Lowes again. I see these things called gator bite fitting and ask about the and the guy explains they snap onto the old pipe and the new one with no soldering, no fuss and no mess. We pick them up and head back to put them in place in about 20 minutes after he had spend 6 hours trying to solder copper fitting in place. So, all in all I get a $150 lesson on how easy it is to change one of these water heaters out. I am glad I was watching the whole time as the next morning... no hot water. So, I call the number on the side and I end up having to unhook it and take it back as the sensors are bad. Thank goodness for those gator bite fittings. Removes, returned, replaced and rewired in about an hour tops. Then we spent the next couple of days vacuuming up water out of the closet. What fun it was. Now it's all in top form. Weeeee....



Jeff is getting bigger and the bigger the herd dog gets, the more annoying he gets as he wants to constantly be under foot and on the move and trying to push you this way or that and smell all your bits and slide around on the wood floor at mach five and so on and so on with hyper dog... In other words, he can be a lot of fun, but a lot of work as well. Here is a picture of them both.



In other news, we "finally" got around to doing our bathroom. It only took how long? Anyways, we stripped the walls and begged borrowed and stole supplies and such, dug up the fixtures we had bought I don't know how long ago and finally put it all together. We bought an accent clock and wind chime to go in there though for the whole spring bathroom, retro 70's look. Watch the video, you will see. You may want to save it to the desktop, then play it so it appears at the right size and not all grainy.

Bathroom Video and Commentary

Now for the B-day thank you to everyone since I just never seem to be able to get a stupid card in the mail. I am a bad person, I know, but I really appriciate everyone remembering me, so I have to do at least this much. Why? Because you all know I will NEVER get thank you cards in the mail. With that in mind, as a way of thanks...

Dan is married. Even if I hadn't been to the wedding, I would know he was married. Even if no one in the family told me he was married. How do I know this??? Because, for the first time I got a birthday card from him. It was a totally unexpected and cool shock. Thanks Kristina and Dan. ~LMAO~ Now I have to remember (and find out) two more birthdays. :)

Mom, really went with the modern age this year. No, money, no checks, just a wonderful online gift card with no wasted paper, no trying to figure out how to ship from Egypt, very green and very awesome. Where were we before internet and Amazon?

Pam and Tim, great people as always, sent me this really cool fantasy card. Thank you so much. It was right up my alley.

Gramps, the holiday check/card. Gotta love traditions. =^.^= (Kitty smile)

And dad... okay, so I get the mail and see a letter from dad. I know what it is, so I wait to open it until after we get settled in and I start dinner. I laughed so hard. It was sooooo cool I just had to post his letter here. The first thing out of Dawn's mouth was... "That is soooo cute. I totally approve." So, dad gets props for being dad.

Isaiah, unbeknown to me, has a card for me on my birthday as well. His mother, after giving me Robot Chicken Star Wars, (which totally rocks) tells me that when they were shopping for christmas "last year", he found this card and begged her to get it. She told him he was responsible for it and so for 8+ months he has been holding on to this thing and I had no clue. It was awesome. It plays the star wars theme when you open it.

I scanned all the cards, (Except Gramps because Isaiah accidentally threw it away with a pile of junk mail on the table. Sorry.) so you can see them here.


Pam & Tim | Dad


Kristina & Dan | Isaiah


Other than that, life goes on as usual. Calliope will be here in two days for a month and it's perfect timing as my vacation is in a couple of weeks. Planning on a camping trip. I will update again after the trip. No mom, you don't look 60'ish in that picture, you look fuzzy. ;) Must be all the wine at dinner. No, I still haven't seen Keith on WOW, though I know he will get hooked. The path to fitness is hard and expensive, but I am having fun... I think Dawn and Isaiah are as well and I will get phase one testing in December. Hope I can memorize everything by then. Isaiah even got to do some volunteer summer camp assistant work for our TKD school this year. It was a good learning experience I think. Keep in touch all and I look forward to hearing from you all.

Love to all my family, I couldn't have wished for a cooler set of people in my life.

Brian