It is 5:03 AM. With the end of daylight savings time and recent cloud the mornings are dark and I feel I should try to continue sleeping. I’ve noticed that if I try to make myself sleep more than my dreams get progressively more bizarre; I guess this is one more motivator to just get up.
No gym today because for the first time since I was in Columbus I’m going golfing. My JAL buddies are really into the sport and one found a deal at the exclusive Half Moon Bay Golf Links. I’m pretty excited about this one because it is as beautiful as Pebble Beach and should offer some great pictures which I’ll post later. I’m less excited about being beat because two of them are serious golfers, this course is difficult and I hope I’m not too much of a hack. I’ve played golf since I was ten but I haven’t played much for the past 16 years. Golf truly is a game of inches, or in my case yards since I’ll really have to keep the ball straight or my score is going to be atrocious. The fairways are narrow, the sand traps plentiful, the rough unforgiving and the wind off the ocean is going to cause me to want to drink heavily as it carries my ball three fairways off course. But, there is always the scenery!
I also hear there is a bagpipe player who beings at sundown which I’d love to see sometime. Today our t-off is at 8:30 AM and we’ll have a cookout at my place afterwards. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends again as it has been a year or two since we last met.
In other news I’ve noticed my individual posts are getting much more hits than they used to. There is a little voice inside me that asks me to take this blog private since it is an actual journal and putting this out for the world would make many uncomfortable. When these thoughts arise I simply think back to my walk through a forgotten Irish graveyard and remind myself that life is short, beautiful and I shouldn’t let fear of having this stuff read take over. The main purpose of this blog is so that I can read back on my own life, remember how I thought and felt in the past as well as to leave a mark, no matter how small in this world. This blog is my statement to the future that I once existed and these words will go on, past my own death into the infinite future.
It seems to me that many want to forget their past, that somehow the current version of themselves is better, due to life experience, then who they were previously. Relationships we’ve made fade away, and we forget who and how we used to be. When meeting old acquaintances, I’m always able to pick up right where we had left off as though nothing had changed but have come to learn this is a rare thing. Perhaps I’m able to easily remember how things used to be thanks to this very blog!
I can simply go back to a certain date to remember how I used to think and what was going on at the time. I like re-reading about my time in high school, most of which are private posts that only appear to me and I think that when I’m in my seventies I may open them up so that they are archived on the internet and offer the complete picture of my life.
Well, that is enough about that, let’s go to a house maintenance triumph I recently accomplished. The toilet valve upstairs broke and although replacing one isn’t much of an accomplishment, the difficulty in replacing this past one is something I’m happy about. It was a hydroclean EZ valve that I’ve learned are not reliable as it is the second one to stop working. the nut had cemented itself to the plastic and I made a mistake in not detaching the Toto washlet attachment before trying to dislodge the nut and a plastic piece broke. This was bad because the washlet is about $300 and I would have to take the entire unit in to have it replaced which probably would have been about $80. So, I had broken the washlet connector and the nut had not budged. I ended up having to cut off the plastic pipe under the tank to remove the valve. I then had to cut the remaining plastic inside the nut to get it out which was dangerous. I’m holding the nut with pliers while using a saw to cut at the plastic. It took about half an hour but I succeeded.
Then I ended up using super glue to reconnect the washlet piece I had broken but forgot to add the connector piece in such a way that I could screw it to the attachment. So then I figured out I could super glue that as well which now gave me two possible points of failure and you really don’t want anything to fail when it comes to water and could cause a leak.
Luckily, the gorilla glue I used held very well. I waited a day for it to set then added an extra layer of epoxy and waited another few hours. So far there are no leaks and the toilet and washlet are working perfectly. I put a bowl under the connected pieces and will leave it there for a few days and watch for water. For now, I’m calling this a huge success!
Ok, enough about toilets. As I wrote that previous sentence my work phone buzzed with receipt of an e-mail and I told myself whoever sent me an e-mail at 5:30 AM on a Saturday is going off the Christmas card list. Sure enough it was just a marketing e-mail which I promptly deleted and that phone better not buzz for the rest of the weekend.
