Whine & Cheese

A Flood... From The Ceiling

It was just another manic Monday here at the house...

This story kind of starts on Sunday night.  I paused during a pre-bedtime trip to the hall bathroom.  I heard some dripping.  Considering our not so great luck with toilets (2 of the 3 have randomly cracked), I figured it was a drippy toilet.  After some investigating, I determined the drip sound was coming from within the walls or ceiling.  I called Todd over and we confirmed, but really didn't give it much thought... though, in retrospect, both of us did worry about it during the night.  We guessed it was just some condensation from the air unit that was on that side of the house.

Fast-forward to yesterday morning/day... and I go in the bathroom and don't think I really hear the drip... or maybe I do... you see, I am genetically inclined to worry about something... anything... if nothing is available, my gene pool is prone to just imagine something up.

Fast-forward to around 6pm last night, I noticed Rocky very concentrated on something going on in the doorway of that bathroom.  I check it out... and there is dripping coming thru the door fame!  Not a lot, but certainly enough.  So I go to grab the ladder to go up to the attic and see what could possibly be dripping from up above... as I am bringing in the ladder, the garage door opens announcing Todd's arrival home.

Needless to say Todd's not so thrilled with what he sees... me + ladder = something terribly wrong.  Fast-forward thru a change of clothes and Todd goes up to the attic and investigates... long story short(er), below our air unit.. or whatever it is... is fairly sizable metal tray/pan and it is filled with water... and what we have been hearing/seeing was the overflow!  Yikes.

Fast-forward... by the end of the night, Todd scooped out I would guess close to 10 gallons of water from the tray ... while I acted as bucket brigade.   We have a call into a service company this morning, but hopefully we bought ourselves some time.  I would hope it took days for that water to collect... but considering it was 114 degrees yesterday who knows... no surprise, the dripping into the pan only occurs when the unit is on.

To make matters worse, during the process Todd's glasses broke... the screw on one side popped out with a lens.  He tried to fix it, but then we decided to go back to his work where he would be able to work with it under a microscope... fast-forward, he was able to get them fixed enough.   

With a dinner break in between (I had chicken breast roll-ups with green chile and cheese w/ a side of smashed red potatoes ready to go before the discovery), we finally sat down and "relaxed" at 9:30p... just in time for bed!

On the "look for a silver lining" note, we are very thankful that this happened well between our trips... this could have been a real disaster if it was left undetected for over a week!

P.S. This is the same unit we had problems with when it was 25 degrees out... it doesn't like the extreme temps, that's for sure!

How Cool Is This?

Well, thank you for asking!

... or should I have said how cold is this?  Brrrr...

Yes, it's time for the much clamored for entry about the new refrigerator... actually, there was some mild interest so I shouldn't joke!   Here's the temperature panel ... I really don't know what purpose it serves other than looking cool... ok, so the temperature ticked down after it was plugged in... and it hasn't budged since... okay, it the refrigerator side dropped a degree as I was loading it back up with food, but that's been about all the action we've seen.  But again, no doubt... it looks cool.

Here is a full look at the inside and outside:

Apologies for the so-so "inside" picture... my digital camera was confused about the low light in the room and the bright lights emanating from the appliance... and since I was taking a picture of a refrigerator I didn't feel like it was necessary to devote much time to make it a photographic masterpiece.

We just now getting used to the size of it.  Our old fridge had several inches leeway on each side of the counter as well as at the top... and didn't stick out beyond the counter... and this one does by a good six inches or so.

But it's just wonderful... so much space and nice to have things at eye level.  Also, it has been nice to join the modern world and have the ice and water on the door.  We would smile every time we would here some new ice dropping down into the reserve bucket... though after awhile I just starting thinking of glaciers falling into the ocean (thanks Al Gore, for being a Debbie Downer!).

Oh, for you true home appliance geeks... it's a Samsung and I am pretty sure it's this model, if not it's close enough! 

We're Getting a RefrigeraTOR

On Saturday, we bought a refrigerator.  This is the last of our major appliances to be replaced since the move.  I guess I should stop speaking of it like it just happened, since it's been 5 years now... so on Friday, we bid adieu to Todd's 17-year old fridge that made the journey into this house... we thank you for your service.

We have been thinking about it for awhile, but seriously started looking around over Memorial Day weekend... and decided just to get it over with this past weekend. 

Initially, we were thinking of getting one of those new french-door style ones with the freezer on the bottom.  It seemed to make perfect sense... having the refrigerator at eye-level and having to stoop down for the lesser used freezer (we have the "old school" freezer on top type).

But after opening and closing what seemed like hundred of refrigerators over that weekend, I slowly realized that the side-by-side would be a better option.  While some of those bottom freezers do have pull-out shelving, they are basically big boxes and it seemed like you would have to stack things on top of each other... which would lead to "if I don't see it, it's not there" syndrome.  Also, still being a bit frugal at heart, I had a hard time justifying the (generally) higher cost of the french door models (especially if you wanted ice and water on the door, something that will be "new" for us)... after all, it's just a refrigerator.

And I also managed to survive all this refrigeraTOR shopping and buying without being becoming a homicide statistic.  Much to Todd's pleasure, I felt the need to pronounce that particular word just like Gwen Stefani does in The Sweet Escape... often preceded by the musical mumble jumble...

badink ka ba, chinka boo da, badink a ba arrr... refrigeraTOR!

So we eagerly await for Friday's delivery... with Monday morning being garbage pickup, we did a major refrigeraTOR archaeological dig and purge on Sunday night... and this week we try to use up as much stuff in the freezer as we can... how we're going to get thru all that ice cream (sidenote: Ben & Jerry's Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream is quite good!), I just don't know!

Pictures of the new fridge may follow... but then again, I may come to my senses and realize that writing about and posting pictures of household appliances is dipping a bit deep into the blogging bucket.

A Tree (Kinda) Grows In Phoenix

We've had a short-lived spring heat wave or two here in Phoenix, but otherwise it has been a pretty mild spring... even a bit chilly, it doesn't seem like it should be in the mid 40s in the mornings here this time of year... or maybe I am just getting wimpy after 16+ years in the Valley.

This week, we finally dealt with a remnant of the winter.  You may recall we had a few very unusual sub-freezing mornings here in January... that bit of cold snap had some serious repercussions our plants and trees.  Seemingly overnight the whole neighborhood turned from green to brown... with frost killing a good deal of the foliage.

This is what our backyard tree looked like earlier this week.

Todd feared the tree was dead.  I just couldn't possibly imagine a tree of that size would be killed by just a couple of cold days.  Alas the answer was somewhere in between.

Our tree was just one of dozens (and dozens!) of trees that looked like this around the 'hood -- one house has about 6 of these same trees, yikes! -- so we took a "watch and wait" approach... see what everyone else was doing about it.  For quite a long time, it was nothing.  But just like the house painting frenzy a couple years ago, it only takes one or two houses to get the ball rolling... a couple of weeks ago, a seemingly daily parade of landscaping and tree companies were clogging our streets.

Good news ... our tree was not dead. 

Bad news ... it had to be cut back, waaaay back. 

Here's what it looked like yesterday afternoon.

As you can see there is some new growth on it (so we knew it wasn't "dead" dead)... but I have a feeling it is going to take some time to get back to its former glory (I know a picture probably exists of what it used to look like, but I'm too lazy to find it).

It only took the tree company only about 45 minutes to cut down and clear the tree... as well as some work and fertilization on our palm trees.  A pleasant surprise was that it cost us less than $500... we feared it was going to be at least a $1k (a tree "trim" in the past, with another company, had been hundreds).  But thanks to the volume of tree work that needs to be done around town, perhaps this company priced things reasonably to get more business... either that or cheap illegal immigrant workers!

The next step is to try to get grass to grow around the tree... since we moved into this house (over 5 years ago), some areas of the yard haven't seen any sun... as you can see, that has definitely changed.

I'll Tumble 4 Ya

Tuesday was a very windy day here in Arizona.  I don't know what ended up being the maximum m.p.h, but it was enough for us to take notice with the windows rattling and a pretty good howl going through the trees.  As I mentioned the other day, it looks more like autumn than spring thanks to all the dead leaves (trees and bushes?) from that January freeze.

Yesterday morning, I went out to survey the damage... a few chairs moved around, but fortunately nothing bad to report.  On the contrary, just the opposite as the winds had nicely conveniently swirled a whole bunch of dead leaves into a tidy pile into a corner (which I should sweep up!), but I had to laugh when I looked out in the backyard and saw this in another corner...

A tumbleweed!

A former East Coaster, to this day seeing a tumbleweed still cracks me up.  Of course, I have seen  them in Roadrunner/Coyote cartoons and Western movies or television shows...but I just thought they were a little too hokey to actually exist.  But they do... and even in the heart of suburbia they do live up to their name and tumble across streets and the increasing rare empty lot/field.

I almost hate to 'fess up to this... but our town's official holiday (not Christmas) display is a tree made up entirely of tumbleweeds... and yes, they do have a "tree" lighting ceremony every year... and no, we have never attended.

Now, how this tumbleweed got over our 6-foot wall block fence... plus, given its resting spot, a pool fence... I really do not know!

5 Years

Yet another March milestone! 

Last week, I posted about the puppy (who continues to grow at warp-speed, stop it!) breaking into double-digit "weeks old" and then there was the one-year anniversary of the Cooper... and now on this Ides of March... we mark our 5th anniversary of the big move-in together.

Every year, I note that we can't quite figure out the start date of this relationship, so March 15th is the closest to a "day" that we have...well, except for Valentine's Day of course (and if you didn't read sarcasm into that last statement, you need to read this blog a bit more closely)... but still this anniversary of sorts is only a fraction of (given last year's guess-timate) our 12-13 year range of together-ness. 

So, yea for us.. but no big plans (it's a Thursday night... and 5 years in the house... and 12-13 years together... you've got to be kidding me?!  haha!)

In other "news," I am trying to figure out what the heck is going on here at W&C... take a look at my moving 7-day average:

From Under 250 visits a day... to Over 550 (581 to be exact!) just a month later?!

No person/subject is notching more than 1% of my traffic...   

In the past, American Idol has always provided a nice bump... contestant names or the lucidity of certain judges have cropped up on my list of search hits... but this year, pretty much nothing (probably since so many more folks are blogging about Idol)... so I can't quite figure out the upward trend.   No complaints, and we all know the saying "what goes up... "  and there certainly will not be a good explanation when it starts heading south!

The Heat is (Back) On

Good news... the heat is back on in the house!

Now, I have to admit I felt pretty stupid about yesterday's post after watching the national news last night.  They had reports all about the big Midwestern winter storms... with tons of people losing power, deaths, injuries, people going to shelters, etc... and here I was merely sitting in somewhat chilly house drinking a vanilla-caramel Keurig coffee and watching the Golden Globe Awards.  Whoops!

Just keep in mind this blog is Whine & Cheese, so I do have a free pass for a "woe is me" post every so often!

So, one half of the house did not have any problem at all!   Silly me!  Apparently when it gets really cold outside, your heat doesn't work as well.  I know, common sense... right?!?

On the side of the house, where we really did not have anything happening... the culprit was a busted capacitator that was preventing the blower/fan from starting inside the house.

Total cost... $174.   Unbelievable. I figured the labor alone would be more than that!

However, the technician said that we should probably think about replacing our two heating/AC units.  I asked them what their typical life span was and he said 10-12 years.  The age of our units: apparently 12 years.  And how much do those run?   Umm.... around $4,000 each!    Yikes, but we'll just think about that another day (and hope that this one doesn't bit us on the butt).

Anyhow, speaking of heat (translation: any excuse to post the picture below).... it is mighty hot down in Australia.  The first Grand Slam of the tennis season, the Australian Open, started on Monday and temperatures in Melbourne are over 100 degrees... as you can see, my own personal space heater, Rafa Nadal, got a bit schweaty:

And speaking of Aussies and weather, another segue to one of my new blog finds (something that has been sorely lacking of late!)... Craig at Outside the Box.  Craig recently stumbled on this blog and quite nicely left a few comments.  I have since been checking out his blog (the have yet to break my commenter shyness).  An Aussie transplant now living in the Pacific Northwest, Craig is discovering all fun things about life in the U.S. and the joys of a Northern hemisphere winter and new stuff like snow!   

Swimming Pool: Before & After

Pool pix finally!

As you may remember (and much to our surpise), the new surface was put in while we were on vacation... and we got home just in time to keep an eye on it as it re-filled.  Last week, all those fun chemicals were put in... so, this weekend it was finally time to get in our "new" pool... and with temperatures approaching 110 degrees it was definitely perfect weather to stay submerged!

Despite some communication and some other "issues"... we are really pleased with the outcome.  I had my doubts about how much of a difference it would make as well as some initial concerns about our tile choice... but all those are a distant memory now.

Before

After

This picture really does not do it justice.... but the water sparkles like a tropical lagoon.  Based on the surface, the new water color is "Caribbean Blue" and you don't go sun blind looking into the water like the old surface.

Before: Diving Board Area

After: Diving Board Area

Again, the fears about the tile were totally for naught... it nicely complements the water color (almost glows blue) and there are even specks that nicely match the brick around the pool... definitely more "natural" looking than the old navy blue tile.

Looks much nicer in person... so come on over!

Tiled

Late yesterday afternoon, we had some pool guys show up ... and what do you know, when we got home from the game last night we had tile around our empty and chipped-out pool.

My initial reaction was not terribly enthusiastic. 

I should have faked it a bit more for Todd who is footing the bill for the pool renovation ... after the actual plaster, the tile is the second most costly part of the job... and, after all, I did "approve" of the tile selection.

I am going to blame poor lighting ... but in the light of a new day (and if you can see that bit of sky in the background, you see it is a beautiful day)... I am liking it... I think my gut reaction was that it really didn't "pop" as much as our old blue tile, but we wanted to go with something more "natural" looking...

The picture doesn't really do it justice... it has a nice shine to it and some of the color of the brick above is incorporated in the tile (one reason we selected it).  I am sure it will only look even better once the new pool surface is in and it all gets filled back up with water!

Chipping In Away

Had a surprise fairly early on Saturday morning, the pool folks came on over and chipped out the plaster in our pool. 

As previously mentioned, there is no real schedule for getting our pool re-done other than ... "we'll show up when we show up and it'll get done when it gets done"... though I should give them credit for actually admitting to that upfront... so really we have no complaints.

But anyhow, here is the current state of our swimming pool:

Attractive, eh? 

Looking at this kind of makes it hard to believe that it'll get back to being an attractive pool again... or something better than we started with!   

I am kind of glad that it was done on a Saturday... since it was about 4-5 hours of jackhammering about 5 feet from my "office" window... though I am sure our neighbors were thrilled with the 8 a.m. wake-up call (though no complaints)...

(Begin segue... to actual purpose of this post)

Granted it would have not been that much of a problem to stay out of the office since work has been pretty slow of late... for all purposes, I pretty much had last week off. 

Oddly enough today is my 6 year anniversary of self-employment... but so far in 2006, things have been pretty on/off... not a really steady flow of work. Now this is something that is normally not complain-able, but it is driving me a bit nuts.   

The problem is that extended "time off" causes that lack of motivation and/or momentum to spill over pretty much everywhere else.  I have a hard time mustering up the energy to be productive in (any) other areas... the only thing I have truly been committed to, enjoyed, or felt a sense of accomplshment in the last couple of work weeks is walking Toby...

With no urgency or a need to fit/schedule things around work, procrastination sets in... there is plenty I could do... but it can be done this afternoon, then tomorrow, then later in the week... so it's a whole mental viscious cycle... why aren't you doing anything, I don't feel like doing anything, you really should do something, I can do it later...  lather. rinse. repeat.

So I am looking forward to our Hawaii trip (only 18 days to go!)... most people head off on vacation to relax and get away from work... oddly enough, I am looking forward to doing something, getting away from non-working... or at least being someplace where "doing nothing" is a goal or achievement.

Vacations rejuvenate, but I am hoping this one will provide me with a jump-start...  something to shake me out of this "phase"... I know there is some work lurking on the horizon... and my guess is that it will hit right before we go away (as it always seems to do!)...  so we'll see, I probably just jinxed myself.

Still Going...

The Great Pool Drain of 2006 continues....

I wondered whether we should leave the pump going overnight... but that would have been a really bad idea...

Here is what it looks like this morning at 7:45 a.m. (so over 15 hours later!)

While certain getting close to the end... you would still be surprised how much water there is still left in this deepest portion of the pool.

Think we're in the final throes at 10:20 a.m. ... and, as you can guess, we are definitely looking forward to getting those automatic cleaning heads fixed!

High Noon... and just about there!

I know I should have a big final ta-da picture... but turned off the pump at around 12:30 pm (so about 22 hours total!) and it didn't look all that much different from this one... still some water there since it was too shallow to get sucked in. 

Drain, Drain, Drain

Well, whattya know... the pool folks came over this afternoon to begin the draining of the pool... and with 10s of thousands of gallons to go, I have a suspicion it will take awhile...

One hour in (3:15p local time), it looks like this:

I know kind of hard to see anything... but I would say it is down about 6 inches, which is more progress then I thought it would make.

More updates to follow... at least while I still have light!
(I know this just narrowly beats out "watch paint drying" on the excitement scale)

Ok, 2.5 hours in (4:45p) ... we are below the tiles!  Folks, this part of the pool I think is about 12 feet deep... so still a ways to go... but the first step is already clear on the other end of the pool.

3+ hours (6pm) ...  and back in the "shallow" end... still making progress, but not quite the noticeable difference from last time...

4+ hours (7:10pm) ... probably our last shot with natural light for the evening... decent progress, but I am thinking it likely will not be done before bedtime (not that I thought it would be!)

Pool Re-do

We're getting our swimming pool re-done... we've been meaning to do it for a little while, but the contract was signed this weekend and work will begin ... well, whenever they want to show up and get started (sound familiar JD?)

When we started thinking about getting this done, I honestly I had no idea what it would all entail... when I heard "re-surfacing" I figured some spray-on stuff would be applied or something like that... but nope, the entire pool is going to be chipped out and we'll have a big hole in the ground for a bit of time.  There is going to be one day of jack-hammering... and I am guessing I should probably find something and somewhere else to be that day.

We're keeping our fingers crossed that all goes well.  We are only the second family in this house... and we know the first ones were big "do-it-yourselfers"... and while that is admirable quality... on more than one occasion we've been informed that something was "not done right" when we've had work on the house. So while it is seriously doubtful they installed the pool themselves, we're just hoping there were not any "cut corners" along the way.

I will take pictures for the big "before and after" as well as the progress ... check back later today for the "before" ... waiting until it gets less shady out back.  (UPDATE: Pix added below and 'after the jump')

It will either be done by May 10th or after we get back from Hawaii (my gut tells me it's going to be the latter)... the pool needs to be brushed at least 2x/day for 7-10 days after the final surface is put in (something about stuff oozing up) ... so we need to be here for that... or I need to rent a pool-boy and definitely need to be here to supervise!

Speaking of pictures and Hawaii... purchased a 1.0gb SD memory card for the digital camera yesterday.  That just totally cracked me up... it hasn't seemed all that long ago that I could never dream of using the "best" quality setting since the card could only hold maybe 6 pictures (no kidding, I still have my original 8mb card)... but, now I am wondering if this one along with my 512mb card will be enough?!  Ah, technology!

"Before" Pix
View of pool from the house, the new pool surface will not cause "white out/blindness" conditions (belive me I was seeing spots when I came back inside after snapping these pictures)... we ordered a color called "Caribbean Blue":

Four Years

I couldn't let today go by without mentioning that it is our anniversary of sorts...

Tempus Fugit!  It was 4 years ago today that we moved into our house.

As noted last year, we really don't remember when we had our "first date" or when this all solidified into a "relationship".... that's somewhere in the 11-12 year range... so March 15th is the best we can come up with as a noteworthy day.

Either way, pretty darn good... huh?!

Back in the Swim of Things

Okay... maybe I should have said ... back to floating... as what I did yesterday had minimal physical exertion!

Yesterday was the first day I "snuck" out of the office and got in our pool... a pool that is in my peripheral vision all day long.  I wasn't really playing hooky all that much... since most of my clients are East Coast-based, my work day is pretty time-shifted, especially during the summer when there is a 3-hour time difference.  So I usually start work before 7 am and, for the most part, can pretty much call it a day (without too much guilt) by 2 pm.  So why not head out to the pool!?!

The pool is finally warm enough to get in.  We missed the first major warm-up here in Phoenix while we were on vacation... so this was only the 3rd time I have been in the pool this year.  This week, the heat is on... high temps around 106-108 and lows in the upper 70s-low 80s (vs. the upper 60s of last week).

Despite the summertime temps that make non-Phoenicians think we are absolutely crazy for living here, our experience has been that we do not really have a terribly long pool season (mid-June thru early Sept?).  I would guess Floridians/Southerners have a more extended season.

While we do have the oft-quoted "dry heat" that keeps us in the triple-digits for 4-5 months each year... that dryness also does not let our pool retain a comfy water temperature.  At minimum, the water temp has to be at least 80 degrees for us to get in... so if the overnight temps fall below that... well, we pretty much lose the daytime heating.  It could be that we just have a big pool... we wanted a pool, but it wasn't by choice that we got one this big.  Our pool service company says it is one of the bigger pools on their route.  So that is a lot of water to heat!

But this week, the overnight temps have jumped... so yesterday afternoon the pool was a nice 82 degrees... though that is only about a few inches under the surface, thanks to our floating duckie thermometer... I can tell you the temps a bit... ahem... farther below the surface was cooler!  But it was definitely nice to get out there again.

On the subject of swimming pools... while on vacation, we found it odd that there always more people at the pool than on the beach.  Heck, if I am on a tropical island it is a no-brainer that I am going to be on the beach!  But maybe it is just because I am a land-locked pool owner.  Do folks just not want to deal with the sand and salty water?!  Discuss.  Pool or beach?!