What did you do today?

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All those years of watching This Old House are finally paying off. Week before last the bathroom sink and tub were plugged. Then the kitchen sink got plugged so I used one of those plastic dollar snakes, the dang thing got stuck so we left to do what we had to do, came back water ever where. Apparently the drain snake punched a hole in the steel P trap so I had to replace that. All that water pooled up in the bottom of the counter next to the sink which has a sliding garbage can. The MDF board on the bottom gave and all the screws pulled out.
Finally I got around to painting the siding the roofers replaced come to find out due to bad design, and years of neglect I had a wall of rotted studs so now I have a giant hole on the side of my house.
 
All those years of watching This Old House are finally paying off. Week before last the bathroom sink and tub were plugged. Then the kitchen sink got plugged so I used one of those plastic dollar snakes, the dang thing got stuck so we left to do what we had to do, came back water ever where. Apparently the drain snake punched a hole in the steel P trap so I had to replace that. All that water pooled up in the bottom of the counter next to the sink which has a sliding garbage can. The MDF board on the bottom gave and all the screws pulled out.
Finally I got around to painting the siding the roofers replaced come to find out due to bad design, and years of neglect I had a wall of rotted studs so now I have a giant hole on the side of my house.
Ahhh...the trickle down effect of home ownership.
 
Kind of makes me wonder if the previous home owners figured out what was going on found a way out and ran.
 
So i spent a good portion of today vacuuming my sister's lawn........with her upright vacuum.

Allow me to explain. My sister is moving. She's been in this house about 40 years and over that time there is a lot of stuff that has accumulated. A few years ago (actually more like 15-20 years) she had the bathtub removed for a walk-in shower, so the old shower doors ended up downstairs in the basement. They were in good shape so I thought it might benefit someone if I moved them up to the curb for the suburban version of dumpster-diving. They were kind of heavy but I found it was easier if I used the towel bar as a handle as I brought them up the basement stairs. I got the first one out to the curb and stood it against some chairs that I had brought up earlier and went back for the second one. Got that one up the stairs fine too, and down the steps by the front door. No bumps, no dings, just fine.
I don't even know what happened, I took one step onto the lawn and the whole piece of glass just disintegrated. I was left holding the towel bar as the whole thing just showered down in a thousand little pieces. Thankfully it was safety glass, so it all just bounced off me, nothing but one drop of blood on each forearm and a small chunk that found it's way into my sock. But all that safety glass was now a thousand little pieces laying on a nice thick suburban lawn. Okay, a rake and a shovel should be a good way to get this up, and I knew where the plastic snow shovel was. But the rake had already gone wherever it is that rakes go when you are moving out of a house. I tried using just the shovel to see if I could scoop it up, but got very little. So my wife and i teamed up with the shovel and an old broom and picked up quite a bit. But there was still plenty left, and now it was settling into the grass. No Shop-vac... that was gone too. So i grabbed the upright vacuum and attached the utility hose and just started sucking up every piece i could see. It took a long time, but it worked pretty well. I got all the glass and few pebbles and acorns.

Now here's the weird part: as we were just about finished vacuuming the lawn, we heard a strange noise, and turned around to see that the other glass panel had also shattered. No wind, no passing car to knock it over - nothing that we could see. Fortunately for us, most of this glass was on the sidewalk, so it was easier to sweep and the vacuuming was easier on concrete than it was on grass.
 
So i spent a good portion of today vacuuming my sister's lawn........with her upright vacuum.


My grandmother and mom called them stay in bed days. I can still here them saying “I should have stayed in bed today”.


I’m the opposite guy I’m the guy that would have been driving by and see those doors and said man I could use those and then they would have waited to pop in my car or garage where I would have stored them for the next 30 years if they didn’t pop.


Now you can apply another of my grandmothers sayings, “tomorrow will be a better day”.
 
My guesstimate is no. Glass goes through changes in temp all the time from when it's mfg to lifecycle. I'd guess stress cracks.... That's just a guess.
 
When I was a kid a bunch of vandals were taking black tape and running a line across windows in the downtown shopping stores. When the sun would come up and hit that side of the building the windows would explode glass will take a lot of temp change as long as it is fairly even. It was likely a combination of a lot of things.


I saw a guy break a side window in a junk car one time with a tiny piece of a broken spark plug. It was the white porcelain chip. He flicked it at that window and it went in a million pieces.
 
I have a feeling that the towel bars might have something to do with it. I was holding the one that broke first by the towel bar and it may have caused stress at the point where it was attached. But that doesn't explain the second one which broke while it was standing on edge.
 
Found out I'm gonna lose my job soon. It's not my first rodeo so it doesn't sting so bad this time around. Still a little scary though. Wish one of my other irons in the fire would hurry up.
 
...when one door closes, another door opens. Be adventurous.
Yeah, I've got what I hope will be the last of 3 interviews coming up next week for a new job, and I'm waiting on a second interview at the place where I really want to work. I know another door will open. Like I said, it's just a little scary in the meantime.

On the home DIY front, I set a shelf-building personal speed record by putting up two more garage shelves in the time my wife took our daughter out to pick up a new pair of shoes.
 
Been cleaning up the yard and flowers beds, Also been cleaning off the back porch, getting it ready to make it into a craft room for the wife.
 
The glass doors shattering sounds like the kind of luck I would have. We just had a tropical storm blow through so haven't been able to work in the yard. I need to replace an outdoor spigot that got broken by a falling tree but I can't be out in the heat & it's been in the 90s. With the humidity it's like a sauna & I nearly pass out after a couple of minutes in that kind of weather.

Other than trying to keep the kitchen & living room clean, I haven't gotten too much done. It rained for over 12 hours straight during the storm so there was a lot of flooding. I did make it in after it subsided a bit & grabbed some groceries. They mis-labeled a rotisserie chicken as "traditional" but it was really lemon pepper-- and I'm allergic to pepper. Gives me a massive headache & makes my nose drip.

My best friend's roof was leaking so we got him a huge tarp & I loaned him my collapsible ladder. He got the tarp up just before the big storm & it held. His former kitchen no longer floods. Once it dries out & he sprays all of the mold with bleach, cleans it up, & gets all of the rotted wood stuff out we're going to cover the whole room in Killz. He plans to turn it into a pantry once it's fixed up enough. We gave him a couple of metal adjustable shelf racks that we had sitting around outside the workshop. He has them in his kitchen now but he plans to put some counters in their place when he moves them in to the pantry. When he gets the new cabinets I'll stain them for him.

My landline is still out-- I replaced the jack but there's no power to it so either the line is fried coming out of the box or the technician lied in his note when he said it was on our end. He was pissed off that we didn't answer the phone when he called (because we had no working phone & that was noted in the repair request).
 
Yesterday I had a SnS day. I woke up on the floor of the bedroom after dreaming a bear was chasing me thru town and I was trying to duck into a little bar but I fell in a pothole just outside the door. Holly’s brother is moving to a new house and I spent 2 days filling a 36’ U-Haul truck with boxes and furnature 2 trips. So when we went to bed I told her my chest was sore meaning too much lifting. She took it the other way and she said I woke her up yelling gibberish and my legs were going like when the dog dreams its running. She said I thought you were having a seizure until you ran right out of the bed sideways. Talk about getting up on the wrong side of the bed.


Anyway I recovered from the bear attack and she went to work and I remembered her brother had a big pile of railroad ties in his woods at the old house he said I could have for landscaping. I wasn’t going to get them but thought I could drive over and see what shape they were in. I pulled in his second driveway really a dirt path into the woods with my little KIA and saw it was a little soft. Right then all hell breaks loose ant the remainder of tropical storm Barry hits NW PA. I couldn’t move and it rained buckets for 30 minutes. I call the expedition off and try and back out and can’t move and I try forward and it looks like I can go. I eye some high ground thinking it might be dryer so I stomp on it and spin my way along to the top of where their yard is. After eyeballing a pathway across the yard of their old house about 100 yards and thinking if I stay close to the garage it should be more solid. Because there is no going back when life is throwing you a stupid situation. So off I go and each yard the situation gets a little worse as far as traction goes. But forward progress keeps me on the gas peddle. Nearly clipped a couple big maples but made it to the driveway and the rain comes again. So sitting there and looking across the yard I see two black lines just what someone wants when they are closing in 4 days on a house they are selling and the rain is washing away any evidence on the KIA I was ever there. I sat there with the two little guys on my shoulder one saying get the heck out of here some dang kids must have rode thru the yard, the other saying Bud live up to your mess you made. So I got the heck out of there. LOL. and then texted her brother I was the jackass that drove thru his yard and I’m no longer interested in the free railroad ties. He’s a nice guy he just laughed and said **** happens.


Some days you should just stay in bed.
 
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