There has been a leak with the master bath toilet. Last week, it was leaking a little less than a 1/4 cup of water between the tank and seat when you flushed the toilet. This weekend, I disassembled and reassembled the toilet and tank to ensure everything looked good and was snug.

Yesterday, JD tells me there was water around the base of the toilet. I came home and wasn't able to find any wet spots other than the floor around the edge of the toilet. I didn't see any water dripping from the toilet. The only thing I saw was a single drop that clung to one of the two bolts that connect the tank to the seat.

Just a little while ago, after a flush, I saw a drop fall from that same bolt. I felt all around the bolt to see if the water was leaking out elsewhere and merely flowing down to drip from that bolt. The toilet surface felt dry everyplace I put my hand. I grabbed some pliers and found the wingnut to have some slack, so I tightened it up. I gave it just a little bit of a twist more than necessary, because I heard a tiny snapping sound (like a toothpick being broken) and suddenly a line of water drops emerged on the surface of the tank. The line went from the bolt to the outside edge and part of the way up the side of the tank.

(insert a whole variety of curse words here)

What may have been fixed by replacing the gasket that was on that bolt is now going to require so much more than that. While it may be possible to seal the crack, chances are that I'm going to have to bite the bullet and replace the whole toilet if I can't get a replacement tank for my toilet. Stamped into the side of the toilet is the production date of June 1982. I just don't know if my 1982 Gerber toilet can easily have its tank replaced by my choices at Home Depot, Lowe's, or where ever.

I am far from happy right now about the required repair and the potential cost.

This weekend we tore down all of the wood on the front porch. First, we set up some temporary supports. There was rotten wood between the roof and the railing/"decoration" around the porch on the south side that fell apart easily. We were able to cut off the ends of the railing and move all of it in large chunks to the street (which were snagged within 48 hours). The hollow columns came off very easily. By lunchtime on Saturday, none of the old wood remained. The rest of the day focused on replacing the wood structure below the roof-line on the south side and the two sistered 2x12s that support the front of the porch roof. We wrapped up at dinner time after getting 3 of the 5 4x4's in place for the new columns. The porch structure wasn't done and yet it was vastly more structurally sound than the porch was previously.

On Monday, we finished installing the 4x4s and removed the temporary supports. We then put up soffits and vents along the front of the porch and replaced the fascia board along the roofline. These two tasks were fairly basic, but the slight sagging of the roof complicated our thoughts on how to measure and level the new construction. I was quite surprised that we worked as late into the afternoon as we did.

Had my day ended after cleaning up, it would have been a fantastic day. Alas, as I stood in the doorway between the garage and the kitchen, something stressful happened. Apparently, a board had fallen over enough to get in the way of the garage door. As I watched, the door hit the board and twisted the door. I stopped and opened the door as fast as I could react, but it was two late. The south side of the door was disconnected from the counterbalance cable and the north side of the door lost two of its wheels. I tried to fix the door myself, but tired and having no more patience, I gave up after a half hour to come inside and take a shower. Afterward, I tried a couple of fresh ideas. None of them worked. I resigned myself to trying again in the morning, but got a surprise from my dad. He came right over, swiftly helped me get the wheels back on the track on the north side and the two of us were able to work together to get the counterweight cable reconnected. The stress was over, but it took me several hours into the night to finally relax.

My next steps are as follows:
1. Find a contractor to do the siding. Dad has his hands full renovating the kitchen of his house. Neither of us have been eager about climbing up and down ladders and the roof trying to measure and cut siding so that the horizontal lines of the siding stay straight and to get the angles cut to closely match the pitch of the roof.
2. Gotta prime the soffit and fascia we installed on Monday.
3. Need to replace the "dental" pieces on the fascia in front of the master bedroom.
4. Do the decorative coverings for the 4x4 columns and the railings. We plan on basically doing the railing design shown HERE. I do want to replicate the squares that used to be along the roofline, so we'll do a smaller version of the rail design along the top.

I'm taking a week off from doing work on the eaves for the house. JD's child-birthing class will be from 10am-2pm this week. Since we gotta be quiet during that time and what needs to be accomplished is a ton of nailing, leaving all that work for the hottest part of the day didn't seem like a good idea (not to mention the predicted probability of rain).

I decided to actually finish a project I started a month or so ago with the knocking of the pipes. The knocking is gone, but now I need to do a replacement panel on the wall for easier access to the pipes. Hopefully my dad and I can quickly cut a board Saturday morning, I'll paint it during class, and attach the board to the wall after class.

I'm itching to do some socializing. I realized earlier that I haven't really spent any time in the past month with people that aren't either family or folks at church (not that seeing "folks at church" outside of church wouldn't also satisfy my social-interaction deficit). It would be great if I could take care of the board prep by lunch, catch a long lunch with a friend, and attach the board to the wall between the end of class and dinner at JD's parents' house.

I finally managed to get the panel off the wall. The panel looked like it was nailed in the wall by a monkey. There were a few groupings of nails in clusters at the corners; only a couple of nails on the left side, but five nails along the right side. The dry wall is tore up where the panel was covering it. There are only a few marks and dents outside of that coverage area.

Shortly after uncovering the wall cavity, I dove in to implement the suggested solutions. There was a section of loose pipe which I braced with a scrap of wood. That had no affect on the sound. I tried tightening connections but everything there seemed fine. So, while I've finally gained access to the pipes behind the faucet, I am still no closer to having the thumping problem solved.

The next two solutions will require me to shut off the water supply to the house. That's where things snowball. One of those household things that every homeowner should know about and be able to do is locate and shut off the water supply. It wasn't until this past fall that I actually found the shut off. I had a strong feeling (and others assumed it was there) that the shut off was located at the bottom of this vertical piece of pvc pipe in the garden bed in front of our house. The whole thing had become buried and I had to dig several inches of dirt and debris out before reaching the top of the handle.

Well, I should say "handle" because what you can see sticking out of the ground is a hex nut with a 2 or 3 inch stem poking out the top. The stem is so long that it took me trying a sparkplug socket to finally find a socket that would fit over the nut. However, after further inspection of what other shut off valves look like...

I realized that what I was actually seeing in my front yard was the stem of the wheel handle that you typically associate with an outdoor faucet. Somehow, it seems, the handle was broken or otherwise removed from the stem of the shut off!

Now, I have to fix this handle...so I can shut off the water...so I can try two solutions (draining all the water out of the air gaps, replacing the bath faucet valve)...and then create a new panel to cover the hole in the wall and attach it in a way that it can be easily removed in the future.

Oh, and I have yet to mention that I have an electrical problem with the oven from when a circuit blew out over the weekend. I'm fairly certain the bottom heating element needs to be replaced, but I'm paranoid that some other electrical part may need to be replaced (either in addition or instead of the element). JD didn't want me working on it earlier when she got back home with the kids this afternoon. I have Scouts tonight, so further investigation of the oven will wait until tomorrow morning.

Last evening around 5pm, I noticed the temps in the house were sneaking up. After looking around and not finding doors open or other obvious reasons for the rise in warmth, I decided to jump into action and examine the A/C. I called up All Seasons around 5:45pm and a guy was at our house around 8:45pm. We soon discovered that the capacitor for the outdoor unit/compressor was bulging and dead.

During my discussion with this repairman, it became obvious that our unit is probably going to die in the next year or two. He said the industry advice was to start evaluating the repair vs. replace costs after 10 years. He then told me that A/Cs in Huntsville tend to last 12 years. The repairman inspected both units and let me know there was an oily film at the bottom of the...can't remember now...that he said was typically an indication that the bearings were leaking and likely to cause a problem at some point in the near future. After a quick look at the info I had on the A/C unit, I found out it is just over 12 years old. Add to this information: 1) the tax credits for installing new energy efficient appliances (including central A/C) will expire at the end of the year and 2) TVA/Huntsville Utilities has a rebate for installing a new A/C unit that will also expire at the end of the year. The rationale for getting a new A/C unit by the end of the year becomes very compelling now.

I started reading up on pointers for A/C shopping this morning (great article in Popular Mechanics and yet another time I got annoyed with Consumer Reports for not having a thing available on equipment most people would LOVE to have info on). Then when I came out of Home Depot today, there was a guy with Trane info and an offer to come out for a free estimate. So, I'm getting this ball rolling now in hopes of actually doing the swap during this fall.

One thing I will certainly be debating with this is whether or not to do anything about the air ducts and circulation in the house. When the house was built, the original outside unit was on the south side of the house and the interior unit in the attic above the south end of the hallway that goes from the living room to the bedrooms/bathroom (where there is an intake in the ceiling). Well, when they put this new unit in, they put the outdoor unit on the north side of the house and the indoor unit in the attic on the north end of the house above the kitchen and right at the top of the attic ladder that is in the garage.

BUT they kept the intake where it was on the south end of the house. So, there is one huge duct that runs from the intake vent to the indoor unit on the opposite end of the house and then another large duct tube that comes out the north end of the indoor unit, does a U-turn and travels parallel to the intake duct down the middle of the house. What makes all of this even more odd is that the ducts running the treated air are all twisted and curvy around the indoor unit. There is a definite temperature difference between the rooms on the south end of the house (the bedrooms) and the kitchen area. There is a very noticeable difference in the force/speed that the air comes out of the vents in the bedrooms compared to the vents in the kitchen. So...will I be buying new indoor/outdoor units AND having guys set out new ducts? I've never been through this experience before and am very concerned and curious.

Ah, the joys of home-ownership!!!

* Today is my big work day of this week. Nothing else to focus on but work.

* Tomorrow morning, I will be getting two old fillings replaced. A little bit of my military dentistry history will be removed from my mouth. I probably won't get back to working until after lunch.

* I think Wednesday will easily slip into "Friday" mode with doing prep for T-giving. I'll be working, but the probability for distractions will be very high.

* Thanksgiving will be at my parents' house. Shortlegs will be coming down from Nashville and is going to be staying a few days.

* JD and her mom will be doing the "5am Until Physical Collapse" shopping spree on Friday. I have decreed Friday to be "Manly Black Friday" at the Berry home. It is way past time for the hole in the garage ceiling from where I fell through earlier this year to get patched up. Before/during/after the replacement of the drywall for the ceiling, we're going to add extra bracing and put down more plywood flooring in the attic. While that work is getting done, Calvin and Mac will be working on drilling out and hanging the new bedroom door for the boys' room (Calvin kicked a hole in the door earlier this year while having a tantrum). Mom will keep Harper and/or Nigel preoccupied while the guys are working.

We'll be doing the home improvement stuff in the morning and will have the Iron Bowl serving as our deadline early that afternoon (although I will have the DVR set to record it and we'll likely start watching it 30 minutes later anyway). I'm still debating what sort of food stuffs we could throw in a crockpot overnight or first thing in the morning to feed us during the game so we aren't sending someone out on a fast food run.

The in-laws stormed the house around 9:30am. Soon, we were all out in the yard doing various weeding tasks in the different mulched areas and beds. By 1pm, we had: pulled weeds, sprayed Roundup, spread mulch, sprinkled pre-emergent weed stuff on new mulch, altered one gutter downspout to turn south farther up so the pipe maintained a good angle from the corner of the house to the edge of the mulched area, trimmed two large limbs off the maple tree, and cut those limbs into smaller chunks to carry to the curb. I sawed my right arm off today - FIGURATIVELY - by having to cut the metal downspout and struggling with the back portion where the metal overlaps and then doing all the tree trimming by myself sans chainsaw. My right shoulder and arm have moments of weakness and trembling this afternoon.

I'm really hoping that the kids will permit a lazy afternoon for me to recover. A nap would be bliss, but I must fight the urge to think about such things. The two minutes of rolling my feet over my foot massager was filled with husky sighs of gratitude (yeah, it sounded as dirty in real life as the description).

The boys are definitely getting melatonin at bedtime if there are any indications of resistance to slumber.

With the assistance of my dad, I now have about 9" of insulation coating the attic. It's the paper-fiber stuff. Thank God it wasn't going to cause itching because the two of us were covered with it when we were done.

I had the pleasure of wearing a head lamp, respirator, and sprayed the fluff in the attic while my dad loaded the hopper on the other end of the hose. It took about 2 hours to add 7 or so inches to the 1500ish sq ft of area up there. I was very pleased with how well the process went. The cool, cloudy day really helped, too.

OH! OH! OH! And while I was doing some prep (hanging string at the desired height), I noticed that one of the ducts leading to the master bath was half-disconnected from the central duct. I've got to believe this HUGE gap has been costing us a great deal of money. As my dad was screwing it back into the central duct, he noted that one of the screws hadn't seemed to ever have been connected to the metal under the insulation.

Between the new insulation and the duct repair, I'm really hoping to see a difference in my power bill. And, hopefully, the increase in water consumption from the increase in water pressure will not increase enough to be noticeable, let alone negate the power savings.

Head is SOOO FULL of snot. I can't think well at all.

***

Have yet to finish watching the race in California. I think I'm about 50 laps from the finish. After the boys went down, it was time for JD and I to watch The Amazing Race, I watched some of the race, JD asked to watch something else, and I fell asleep before I could get back to the race.

***

I'm liking several of the contestants on TAR. I think I'm going to stick with the little stunt guys as my favorite despite the sympathy factor for the deaf kid/mom and my familiarity with Mike White (School of Rock, Chuck & Buck) who's participating with his dad. As long as the NFL cheerleaders don't win, there is a God.

***

The hair has faded to green w/ a blueish tint on top. The side and back are more green-blonde.

***

The rest of the house may be pretty darn clean, but the master bedroom is an ABSOLUTE WRECK! Until JD finishes getting stuff set to sell at Kids Market, it will remain a mess.

***

I really need a non-windy day soon...but on a day that I can actually do yard work. I must napalm the mulched areas of weeds. Also, the henbit and other spring weeds have started earlier this year in the lawn and will need some Weed-B-Gone, too. The south side of the house is in particularly bad shape.

***

Harper isn't consistent, but she's getting much better about only waking up once or twice a night. Last night she needed attention at 11:30pm and then didn't wake up until close to 6:30am.

Since JD's VERY sick with Monkey each morning, she did an extremely thorough job of cleaning the master bath two weekends ago. As a courtesy to her and the spic-n-span bathroom, I declared that I would sit to pee when in the master bath.

I've discussed this technique before.

During a particularly ponytail-sensitive guy phase in college, I tried to make it a habit of sitting down unless in a public bathroom. The experiment MAY have lasted a couple of months at the most.

When I bought my house, my dad had 3 words of advice. One of them I've completely forgotten (I think because it wasn't particularly insightful), another was to always sweep debris from the doors to the house more than 6 feet away to keep the carpet clean, and the third was that he does and suggested that I always pee sitting down when at home. I tried it again at the time...for maybe a few days.

Now I've gone a week and a half and have consistently sat down when peeing in the master bath. I found myself shifting to the "public" bathroom in our house only a few times for the privilege of standing up while urinating.

Despite the feminization of my pissing, the only real problem that I have had is getting that last drop out safely. I don't know if it's the sitting position or what, but I can't seem to shake my willy, wiggle it around, or dab w/ TP to get that last drop. More times than not, right as I go past the squat position and my penis crosses the seat threshold on the way to the ascending pants...*drip*

I guess cleaning up the dot of pee is better than the roll of the dice of post-coital or overnight peeing, but the rest of the time I'm mighty tempted to break my new policy. I think I'll focus on praying that JD gets over this morning sickness ASAP.