Hug A Plumber!!

Good Morning sun!!!  All of a sudden, it's summer in California, meaning my lawn is turning a beautiful shade of brown.   That's one of the reasons I got solar.  The electricity to run my pump costs more than my food bill for entire month.  I have yet to figure that out.  Maybe some nice green DYE would help.

In case your life isn't exciting enough, I have a new pastime for you.  I have a friend who scans the internet every day to discover what National Day it is.  It's really quite interesting, and sometimes pretty funny.  She picks out one from the list, and partakes, since many times it involves food.  That means her husband has to take her out to dinner.  She's a smart cookie.

It was rather coincidental that National Plumbers Day happened to be the day the plumbers were coming to install my new kitchen faucet.

As I mentioned, I was slouching on the couch when I got the call.  I raced to change clothes, smeared some quick makeup on my face, tamed the crazy hair and picked up all Cooper's toys.  I was in the midst of moving all the junk off the kitchen counter when the doorbell rang.  

There stood a good looking 20-something kid with a VERY nice looking older hunk.  I gave them the box-o-faucet and pointed to the old one.  They went right to work.

The main problem was the reverse osmosis setup under the sink.  It's been there ever since I moved in.  About that thing ... I knew it had filters, but had to idea how to replace them.  I previously called in a plumber who dinged me a chunk by saying the tank needed to be replaced.  What do I know.  Of course he replaced it with a much bigger one (not necessary), and never once said to change the filters.  

At this point, it had been dumping water down the drain continuously, so I had completely shut it off.  THESE plumbers said it couldn't be fixed, or at least they did not work on them.  I told them to just take it out since I hadn't been using it for 6 months anyway.  That took 30 minutes before they could even start on the faucet.

That's when I checked my phone to find it was National Hug A Plumber Day ... which I stated loudly.  They laughed.  Okay, so that didn't go over very well.  Maybe I should opt for National Pretzel Day instead.

It took a little longer because the older guy was actually teaching the owner's son the ins and outs of plumber-hood.  That is so awesome to see kids going into the trades instead of wasting money on college (my opinion only).  And so TA-DA ..... there is my beautiful new faucet.  I love the pull down sprayer.  They even plugged the hole on the left from the osmosis water thingy.

Figuring it was useless to mention National Plumber Day again, I explained my problem with the other faucet in the laundry room, but they said it could not be fixed ... I needed a new faucet.  BUT the Knight at Bingo said all I needed was a new cartridge.  I'm heading off to Lowes today to see if I can find one.  It's worth a shot, and will save me the $119 an hour plumber fee.  No kidding ... that's the price to have a plumber work on your water supply. 

I was pretty much in shock when I heard that ... it would have been worth it if I got that HUG!!  Instead, I just went though all the bottles of cleaning stuff under the sink.  In my defense, half of it is for cleaning leather saddles and bridles.

I spent the rest of the day going through more garage junk.  That's when I found this picture.  I don't think I've shown it to you before.  Yessiree, that's me when I was MUCH skinnier and actually had a huge head of hair.  That's Jonathan I'm feeding.  When my grandmother passed away, she had a big collection of those little silver spoons from all her travels.  That's what I used to feed the baby birds.

I had a dry formula that I added water too, then heated it on the stove.  The temperature had to be just right for them to eat.  I still have the table I'm sitting at ... it's a 145 year old drop leaf.  I fed many a baby cockatiel, parakeet, parrot and cockatoo at this table.  

With no hug from a plumber, I decided to wander off into the Sierras for the day.  It was probably not my best move since it was the night after Bingo.  I pretty much crashed when I got home.  I'll post those pictures over the next couple of days.  Of course the best part of the trip involved FOOD!!