Toilet #3

Today I installed the third and final toilet. Finally, experience paid off. It took under 1 1/2 hours and I made no mistakes that I had to backtrack. 

Then came the worst. We had to make a dump run to rid ourselves of the three old toilets and the packaging for the new ones. Everything packed up in the trusty CR-V and the ten minute drive to the Roseville Road transfer station. Then a view of the long line to get in. I figured on a hot day like today (95+ at 1:00 pm) no one would be a fool to go to the dump. I was wrong. We waited in line close to an hour before getting to the pay station, and then another while to get to the dump site. The SUV engine was heating up with the AC on, so I had to keep turning it off and opening the windows. Fortunately, there was a slight breeze, so it was tolerable. 

When finally at the dump station it was satisfying to toss the old toilets into the heap and watch them splinter into pieces. 

The Lesson

There are few things I hate more than painting inside or outside my house. One of them is installing toilets. Yes, I know they have people that can do that. For example, Lowe’s offers installation service for my $200 toilet: $500.  I opted to do it myself. The problem: we’re replacing three toilets. The first took about three hours. With lessons learned, I expected the next to take about an hour. The lessons learned? Apparently forgotten for #2 (not a bathroom pun.) I made the same mistakes and had to remove the bowl four times. But still improved my time to two hours. Only one more to go? Will I have learned my lesson? Or is the lesson “never again?” I fear the answer will be “no.”

A rearranged life

A couple of weeks ago, I surprised my wife and rearranged our bedroom furniture to a new configuration. Despite having replaced furniture a few times in the last 32 years, it's always had the same basic location,

This time, everything was moved 90 degrees.

It's already caused friction. The TV is mounted on the wall which is now to the side and not conducent (that's apparently not a word, but fits with what I want to say) for viewing from the bed. So if we want to watch TV in bed, we have to rotate the bed to better see the TV.

I have suggested an automatic turntable to ease the process, but that has not gone over well.

I'm back!

 I established this pattern of fewer and fewer blog posts over the years, and I'm now breaking the drought with my first post in over six years. The last one was five years later, but my longest run was from 1953-2007 when I didn't post at all, so be thankful it's not 54 years.

I've been reading from my hundreds of previous posts and found that although these are "Random Thoughts of No Consequence," in hindsight, they actually carry a lot of consequence and trigger a lot of long-forgotten memories. And the audience is still primarily me. I have, as of the writing, four followers. I sincerely think that none of them are even reading me any more. But if you are, "Hi!" and thank you for your patience.

My decline here has primarily come for being active on Facebook, but this medium is often more suited to my style of self-reporting. I hope it will continue, as I have found the bug again.

It's been just over five years since I posted to this blog. So many changes in life have occurred, so many significant events. Without dwelling too much on any of them, here's a quick summary, by year. I'll probably update this from time to time.

• 2016 - 
• Cece and I finally visited the last of our 50 states, with a road trip to Kansas and continuing to New Mexico.
• I retired from the Department of Water Resources after 38 1/2 years.
• 2017 - 
• Cece retired from Center Unified School District after 20 years.
• My mother was treated for breast cancer, but died in August
• My son Matt and his wife Sara had twins, Kendrick and Lauryn.
• 2018 -
• My father fell in his home, broke his hip, and had to move to an assisted living facility. He died five months later.
• 2019 -
• My siblings and I liquidated my parents estate.
• 2020 -
• The COVID-19 pandemic shut much of the world down. As a retired couple, our income is fine and we have had to find new ways to entertain ourselves during the stay-at-home order. We've done lots of puzzles, and Cece has been finding a number of exercise routines online.
• I began reading my first novel online.

A Little Golden Book

I am happy to announce that my Golden Fingers trilogy will soon be published as A Little Golden Book for children. While it will be condensed and the story line slightly changed to accommodate children's sensibilities, it is still an exciting moment for me to see it finally in print. I'm especially pleased with the artwork. More details at http://onlygoldenfingers.com

Test from iPhone

Just testing what I can do. Doesn't seem like formatting is an option.

I can enter HTML. That's a plus.