Our water is starting to smell like chlorine. It's well water. That's a little freaky. The water was tested by the county when the well was dug, and it passed all the tests. But that was then. Time to re-test, I think.
I re-caulked all the crown molding on the first floor last month, but it's starting to separate again. The heat is really wreaking havoc on all the fresh wood.
The toilets are these fancy dual-flush things. But only one of them works correctly. There is nothing to adjust. The plumber is stumped. The plumbing supply company won't deal with us.
The grout in the shower tile is cracking. The cold weather has exposed some poorly-insulated exterior doors.
I've planted juniper in the front of the house, trying to reduce the amount I need to mow. We'll be planting trees when the weather warms a little. There's a curly willow cutting, which we took from a tree at our old house (which we grew from a cutting from a friend's tree), growing in our kitchen. The thing is sprouting leaves! In January!
The real estate lawyer called us last week and said "there's a check waiting for you here, come get it!" It was a check for $$,$$$ and we don't know what it's from. But hey, free money!? I think it's because we took out too big of a mortgage - the builder overestimated his costs and when he figured out his final number it was under what we had borrowed. But I don't know for sure. Either way, it's buying a lot of area rugs, shrubs, caulk and wine for the steady stream of house guests we've been having. I make weekly trips to the recycling place downtown to carry away the endless cardboard boxes UPS brings us.
I put up a bird feeder with a mix of seeds to see what kind of flying critters we have out there. After a week of sitting idle, it started attracting attention: a lot of attention. Our feeder is now beset by white-breasted nuthatches. Pretty things. They only want the corn, and they fling everything else on the ground. I know there are bluebirds in the trees, but they haven't come to the feeder yet. The dozens of robins in the woods are only interested in eating the berries on the holly trees. The squirrels haven't dared to come close to the house yet. The seed mix is called "No Waste" because there's something in it for all likely birds. It's about 90% waste, right now.
Still no cable or internet access. So we're chugging through the Sopranos box set. Moving at a pretty good clip. Once that's done, we might have to buy the BSG box set.
We have dual-flush toilets and they’re a PITA. As well as the buttons sinking after you’ve used them a few times we’ve had two of them slowly leak a little water into the bowl so every 30 mins you hear the cistern topping up (wasting water in the process). I blame the hard water round here for the latter, with bits of lime-scale causing valves to stay open a crack. But taking a toilet cistern apart to replace the flush mechanism used to be easy. Now you need to go on a course to learn how a toilet works.
And take the humble plug hole in your path. The plug used to be on a chain – nice and simple, easy to fix. Now we have to turn a big chunky switch to pop up the fitted plug to let the water out. Which is rubbish as it’s something else to go wrong and anything that goes wrong with plumbing can mean water everywhere and £50 an hour plumbers scratching their heads saying “Beats me mate, best I take it apart and rebuild it. Put the kettle on, there’s a good boy”.
Modern life is rubbish.
The Sopranos though. That’s a good use of your time.
as far as i can tell, there are no user-serviceable parts inside the tank. there’s a big plastic tower in the middle with nothing to adjust, and it can only be replaced as a single unit. blech.
they sure do look cool, though!