Adventures in home ownership

First: Hi, Grandma!

All right, here’s the short story: I unclogged a toilet.

The long story (um, this may get gross): Yes, I have successfully unclogged toilets before. But — guess how many times we’ve used the toilet in the master bathroom of our new (to us) house since we moved in over a week ago? Zero. It makes a convincing flushing noise, so we didn’t catch it during the final walkthrough with the lid down, but it’s unusably weak, with a pathetic little gurgle at the end.

OK, fine, I grabbed the cheapie plunger we bought one late night at CVS several months ago and plunged. On the first push, that flimsy piece of rubber promptly flipped inside out like an old umbrella. Bah!

So Monday afternoon I stopped at Lowe’s and bought a proper plunger. Side note: apparently plungers are now too unsightly to keep (gasp!) uncovered in one’s bathroom. Nearly all of the plungers at Lowe’s are sold with some sort of fancy twisting plastic cover to hide the rubber part and keep it off the bathroom floor. You know, since the floor beside the back of the toilet in everyone’s bathroom is so pristine.

Anyway. So last Saturday I got out the rubber gloves and plunged the toilet. No change. I googled my options and tried the following: dish soap and hot water, baking soda + vinegar with more hot water (and before you laugh, this actually worked on a clogged sink drain at our apartment last year, so I figured it was worth a shot), and a wire coat hanger. Plus hot water. And more plunging.

Nothing. I must have plunged that stupid toilet 50 times.

Argh! Off to Lowe’s again for a toilet snake. I finally gave it a go tonight, and praying that I wasn’t unknowingly shoving a fat rubber duckie into the main line, I wrangled that snake as far into the toilet as it would go, carefully yanked it back out, and flushed.

Hmm... improvement?

What the hell, I’ve already paid 8 bucks for this stupid thing, so I figured I’d get my money’s worth and snake it again. Flush. Progress! And again. Fluuuushhhhhh!

Ahhh.

Thankfully, the whole process could have been a lot, A LOT, worse. So for extra credit, last night I killed* three crickets in our basement. Yeah... these aren’t the cute tiny crickets that we caught in glass jars as kids. Including legs, these guys are golf ball sized. Eww.


*um, this actually means I just sucked them up with the vacuum cleaner and am hoping that they’ll keel over before I have to empty the bag. :/

Humanity’s Greatest Crimes Against the Earth

A photo gallery of past and ungoing environmental devastation.

Today (er, tonight) is my 6th day of working a GEO satellite launch, and it would have been my 11th straight day of work if I hadn’t taken last Friday off. It’s nice to be getting more comfortable with the procedures, and it’s been fun to get to chat with people in my group and get to know them better while we’re on console. But there are long (LOOOOOONG) stretches where it’s very boring. I have what Becca’s dubbed the rock star shift, 2:30 - 10:30 pm, and it’s usually busy in the afternoon with some sort of procedure, usually an Earth update. The afternoon then relaxes into evening, the emails slow down, we order greasy food for dinner, I try to resist the allure of peanut M&M’s in the back room, and the hours c r a w l . I mark time by the recording our spacecraft’s momentum error in a spreadsheet, once per hour, and examining how Excel has updated the best-fit line. Oh, the excitement!

Overall though, it’s been a neat experience. And I’m lucky to have gotten a relatively easy shift, time-wise. I’m naturally a night owl, but the 4th shift (9:30pm - 5:30am) would have been a serious stretch, and I would have felt like death warmed over if I had to come in for the first shift every day (2:30am - 10:30am). I still get nervous talking over the voice net, but that’s really pretty dumb because there are only a handful of us in the room at a time.


Josh and I finally bought tickets to go to Zion National Park over Labor Day weekend. Yay! True to form, I’m much more excited about the trip now that I’ve scrolled through pictures online. We still have a list of stuff to buy for the trip (namely, a tent and a sleeping bag for me), and I’m brainstorming ways to dehydrate myself during the days so that I don’t have to venture to the bathroom in the middle of the night with spiders, snakes, or anything that flies (hmm, maybe I’ll add a headlamp to my shopping list). But daytime activities? Definitely looking forward to those!

Solar Decathlon

This past Sunday as I stepped out of the Smithsonian metro station, I was greeted by dust, noise, and solar panels. This coming weekend and next, houses from the 2009 Solar Decathlon will be on display on the mall. It’s a DOE-sponsored college competition “to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house.” And from what I saw of construction yesterday, the houses look really cool!

I love that the contest goes beyond just producing more energy than the house consumes. There are objective contests, naturally, like delivering 15 gallons of hot water (110°F) at in 10 minutes or less, maintaining an indoor temperature between 72°F and 76°F, and washing and drying 10 loads of laundry throughout the week. But there are also subjective categories, like curb appeal, effectively communicating the design to the public, holding dinner parties for neighbors, and providing inspiration by incorporating unusual materials or design solutions. Contestants have to give equal consideration in their design to engineering, architecture, and marketability.

I know it helps that I love modern, functional design, but I would love to own my own solar house! Well, when I’m ready to be tied to a mortgage, of course...

We did it—Josh and I are married! We tied the knot last Saturday (April 25) and got back tonight from our mini-moon in Ireland. More details and photos to come...

And yeah, it's going to take a long time to get used to calling Josh my husband. And I just changed my “relationship status” on Facebook to Married.
Crazy! :)

The Registry

First of all, ugh. Josh and I have been avoiding creating any type of registry for our wedding, but now that people have received our invitations, they’re starting to call to RSVP and “oh by the way, are you guys registered anywhere?”

Josh claims he can keep telling people that we’re not registered and we’re not planning to register. My two engaged girlfriends at work gasped when I mentioned we hadn’t registered, and one warned me that because we’re not, we’re going to end up receiving crystal swans with no receipt.

The problem is that stuff, especially kitchen/home stuff, isn’t all that important to us. We aren’t stellar cooks, I have no interest in fancy china, and we already have some nice knives and good quality pots & pans. Plus, we recently consolidated two apartments into one, so we don’t really a lot of room for new stuff. I’ve heard people say that weddings are a nice time to upgrade the stuff you already have, but I don’t feel comfortable asking people to spend money on things that I’m not convinced I would buy myself.

And part of me hates the fact that registries are so friggin’ domestic. You’re “supposed” to register for the big KitchenAid mixer, fine china, tablecloths, placemats, and fancy sheets. Although I know it’s more common now to register for stuff like electronics or camping gear, so maybe my anger is misplaced. :) And hey, if nice china gets you fired up, awesome. Whatever works for you.

We considered a honeymoon registry since we both love to travel and our hopefully month-long trip to New Zealand for next fall/winter won’t be cheap. But that kind of went out the window when we realized that we don’t have any of that planned, and our plans for the mini-moon following the wedding aren’t very well defined yet either. Plus, while many people think honeymoon registries are great, the other camp thinks they’re tacky. And if that’s tacky, asking for cash is definitely out.

Also, the wedding registry is basically the ultimate birthday list, and my own family can attest to how terrible I am at coming up with birthday lists.


What I really would like to say to our guests is this:

“We’re thrilled that you’re able to share this important day with us, and we’re flattered that you’re willing to travel all the way to Florida to spend the weekend with us. That is gift enough. Your attendance is perfect. So come, have a great time, and enjoy the vacation.”

Really, we don’t need any gifts. r e a l l y. If people insist, we might suggest that they make a donation to their favorite charity and tell us a little about why that cause is important to them.


So. Any bets on whether we’ll avoid the crystal swans?

More eyeballs

I realized I haven’t talked about my eyeballs here lately. It’s a far cry from when they were the only thing I could think about, so as you might gather, they’re doing better. It helps that it’s winter, of course, but the allergy shots really seem to be helping, along with a handful of other things. I’ve been doing the allergy shots for almost a year, so starting in April, I’ll only have to go once every two weeks, instead of once a week. YAY! Going every week really hasn’t been that bad though. It gets me out of work early on Tuesdays and I get a guaranteed half hour to catch up on reading.

I’m still taking Claritin frequently—not quite daily, but it will probably become daily during the spring and summer. The Claritin doesn’t make my eyes any less red, but I’ve noticed that it makes them less itchy, so that keeps my wandering fingers from rubbing them. I’m still technically on a prescription allergy eye drop, but I ran out of my latest bottle a few days ago and have been trying to go without since then. My eyes are a teeny bit pinker, but it hasn’t been too bad so far.

A few other big steps are that I haven’t had to use dry eye drops in a long time, and I’m no longer eating flaxseed every day. In my experience, flaxseed really does help with dry eyes, and if it weren’t for the side effects, I would still be taking it. I’m still doing the eyelid scrub with baby shampoo to treat my blepharitis, but I’ll probably keep doing that for years.

My biggest concern right now is being able to wear contacts for the wedding, which will be several hours long. In the spring. In Florida. I have reasonable confidence that I’ll be back to wearing contacts eventually because I’ve been seeing such good progress on the allergy shots, but April 25^th is less than two months away, so it’s not a lot of time for my eyes to make more progress. I imagine I’ll be pulling out all the stops to make it through the weekend, especially since I probably won’t be getting a lot of sleep with all the stuff we need to do. And no matter what, my eyes will probably look a little red by the end of the night. Maybe our photographer can photoshop the whites of my eyes so that they actually look white. :)

In any case, the progress so far is real. I no longer look like a zombie after sleeping less than 8 hours, or after having a couple beers, or after a full day of work. My eyelashes no longer fall out in clumps, I no longer wake up with crusty eyelashes or eyelids swollen shut, and (best of all) people at work no longer ask me if I’ve been crying.