Disaster Averted

Colleen woke me up yesterday and told me she thought there might be something wrong with the water heater.

"Cool," I thought. "I can put some of my newly learned electrical skills to work and troubleshoot the problem." Thinking it probably wasn't an emergency, I took my time getting up, took time to eat a bowl of cereal and eventually made my way outside. I grabbed my tools and went to the backyard where the access to the crawl space is located. I opened the door to the crawl space and immediately noticed that the backside of the door was wet... not a good sign. Next, I crouched down to go through the doorway and heard the sound of water flowing and thought, "Crap... probably not electrical." I crawled up to the water heater and saw that water was spewing from the drain at the bottom of the tank. I tried to tighten the valve, and was successful in slowing the flow, but water continued to come out.

"Am I going to have to buy a new water heater?" "How much is a new water heater?" There's more about water heaters that I don't know than I know. But I know an electrician who knows a lot about water heaters. His name is Steve and he's not only my electrical instructor but he's also my friend and mentor. I called him up and he came right over and figured out what it would take to fix the leak. So we went to the plumbing supply store bought a new drain valve and replaced the broken one. Easy peasy and for about 5% of the cost of a new water heater.

Disaster averted. And a big THANK YOU to Steve for his help. I'm so glad he was available.

CTRL + ALT + DEL

It's time to restart this blog. I just spent the last hour or so rereading all my old posts and reliving the past couple of years. Lots happened. Had many giggles.

I think one of the funniest things I came across was from a meme my sister sent me almost two years ago:

11] How old do you think you will be when you finally have kids? That's a toughy. 37?

I turned 37 nearly a month ago and no hint of having a kid in sight, but to be fair I did answer the question with a question. I also came across another meme that said I would name my kids Spot, Rusty, Fluffy and Nana, which should go to show how seriously I desire to procreate. ;)

I don't really feel any pressure to have children. Sometimes I would like to have a little curly headed boy or girl, but sometimes I feel very selfish and don't want to be bothered. I'm not sure how much pressure Colleen feels about having kids. Some days she says she wants one and some days she says she doesn't. Her sister doesn't have any children either and I know her mum wants grandkids, but I don't see any on the horizon.

I've heard that as a woman gets older it gets more risky for her to have a child, but I don't know. I've also heard of women having children in their 40s. Who knows? Maybe one of these days we'll have one. Maybe not.

I also read in the past hour about all the layoffs at my former employer including mine less than a year ago. I've since enrolled in the Electrical Technology program at Haywood Community College and I'm loving it. I've learned a lot and on Friday was able to solve an electrical problem for a friend's mother whose electric range was not working. The problem turned out to be furry and four-legged and not much of a challenge to solve, but it was a learning experience anyway and it felt good having been able to help them out.

I've been a little ambivalent about being on the computer lately hence my absence from the blogosphere, but I'm hoping to start posting thoughts and happenings again.