The Day After (The Sequel)

Today was interesting. See, today is my cousin Will's birthday. And just about every year I manage to get down to see him for his birthday. Today wasn't looking good. Today was the day I was suppose to install the new faucets in the bathroom. We would have installed them on Saturday, but Ginger didn't buy them yet. So Ginger, her Mom and Dad, her Grandmother, my Mom and the kids all took off around twelve thirty or one to go to Lowe's to get the faucets. Well, apparently they decided to go to lunch also. So I was thinking, they get back around three or four, I replace the faucets, then maybe I take a road trip to Waynesboro to see Will and the rest of the fam there, and then I head back late and I call it day. I figure while I'm waiting on them, I'll watch some TV. I watch four episodes of Boondocks (great show btw, but not for the easily offended though). I proceed to have some lunch, then I watch 2 and a half episodes of the Colbert Report, and then I watch an old episode of "Without a Trace" we have on the Tivo that I never watched. Then I figure, I really should shower, so I go do that. They're still not back yet. So I dismantle the existing faucets and finish doing that, and just about that time they get back. So that was the first crimp in the plan, they didn't get back till five thirty. Ok, no problem, a little behind schedule, I can still make it. After all, I had already removed the old faucets while they were gone, so really, how long could this take. Well, apparently this plumbing thing is harder than I thought. See, in addition to replacing the faucet, the new faucets have new drains also. I hadn't counted on replacing the drains, so I hadn't done anything towards removing those yet. Well, in trying to take apart the pvc pipes, I find out that whoever put them together coated all the connectors with plumber's putty. They coated the parts you're suppose to be able to unscrew, so when I went to unscrew them SNAP, the connector breaks. Great, just great. So now I'm off to Home Depot which is just like 3 minutes up the street (don't ask me why it took 5 hours to get the faucets from Lowe's which is like 20 minutes away when we could have gotten something at Home Depot). I get some new pipe pieces, some glue and a hacksaw and I'm back in business. I saw through the pipe, apply the glue, stick in the new pieces, and we're golden. Then it's on to the second faucet, and low and behold, now that I know what I'm doing with the pipe pieces, I see that I'm not going to be able to disconnect these either. So now it's back to Home Depot to pick up the pieces for the second one (this trip is much faster though, since I know exactly where to go and what I need). I get back, saw through that pipe, did a terrible job on sawing, initially got 3/4 through before I realized in the back the whole cut was slanted and I had to start over. Finally finish that, attach the new stuff, let it all dry for 30 minutes then screw together the connectors and BOOYAH, it works and doesn't leak. I'm now a plumber. The bad news is it's now 9:45 PM, so there's no way I'm getting to Waynesboro to see Will and the rest of the fam. But they've agreed to come up here tomorrow, so I guess I'll get to see them for the holiday. So Will, sorry I missed seeing you on your Birthday, and Happy Birthday dude!

So it was really warm here the past couple of days, but we still have some snow in our front yard. It's that whole the front yard never gets any sunlight thing. Even after the all day rain we got on Christmas. Although the snowman appears to have seen better days (here's the before picture). And here's some great news (in a sarcastic kind of way), we've had some really big winds here, and one time it was so windy it blew over the door in the gazebo I had resting against a post. This was the door I had already rescreened. It fell over on a board with nails in it, so the screen is punctured, so now I'll get to rescreen that.