It's been a busy week of surfing & taekwondo with our daughter. When she gets back to college, and her friends ask her if she got enough surfing to last her until Christmas, she wants to be able to show them the tan line on her ankle from the board leash.
She also has a list. We've been working through six months worth of questions & projects like her tax returns, her absentee primary ballot, reviewing how to change the oil on her college car, learning how to add R-134, making her 2012 Roth IRA contribution, updating her budget... it's been a busy week of honey-do too.
It's also been a busy handyman week. We've been replacing all the receptacles & light switches in our house over the last few months, and we're about 90% there. All the putty fixtures (and their "country" cover plates) have been replaced with white. We also finally have an accurate list of what outlets & switches are on which breakers. That got a little exciting during our familyroom renovation last year, and now we've been through the whole house to minimize future excitement.
In the middle of that a friend's 23-year-old range finally burned (literally) through the socket connection of a coil burner. The electrical fire ran out of fuel after it scorched a few holes in the (plastic) socket, fused the (metal) connectors, and charred the insulation/wirenuts. Oddly enough the burner still worked (sort of) and the tenant only noticed the problem when she lifted the range top to clean underneath and saw the melted wirenuts. Yikes.
So now they have a new stove with a new 50-amp receptacle to match the 50-amp breaker. Much better.
Today a neighbor's hot-water shower faucet broke. The threads on the valve stem wore out and she couldn't torque it shut. Luckily it was the hot water so she was able to shut it off at the water heater. (I wonder why houses don't have isolation valves on the bathtubs/showers. They have them on the sinks, so why not the rest of the bathroom?) Unluckily it was at 5 PM on a Sunday, a day when the hardware stores close early. Luckily our local City Mill was open until 6 PM, and they know exactly which faucet valve models are used in our neighborhood. But I can tell that in a few months I'm going to have to go back and replace the seats in both faucets, so we're going to schedule that for a Tuesday morning when everyone's out of the house and I have plenty of time to recover from surprises.
Our daughter goes back to college on Friday to get ready for junior year. I predict a final week full of taekwondo, surfing, and a frantic flurry of last-minute packing.
......and Hello to my new CRV! This is one cool vehicle. Thanks Moemg, your input was very helpful.
Our daughter bought a '99 model a couple months ago, and now I see old CR-Vs everywhere. I hope this indicates that she's going to get another 20K-30K out of hers.