Of Plungers

As a footnote to my earlier post, this evening (post-posting that previous post) we began playing a new game on the Wii that our good friend Sone gave us. The game is Rayman Raving Rabbids, and it involves an elaborate story line wherein some very strange looking rabbit-type creatures take you (Rayman) hostage and force you into gladiator-like combat. The Rabbid Rabbits are obsessed with plungers, so there is one game where you shoot them with plungers. I suppose this is a good way for me to direct my plumbing angst. Oh, and it's quite fun.

Getting to the root of our plumbing problems

Today, the plumber came to replace our water heater. This was a replacement for the water heater that we just had put in last September; the previous unit was defective. Now we have a brand new hot water heater, and hopefully it will be many years before we have to complain of a cold shower.

In order to install the new hot water heater, the old one had to be removed. In order to remove the old hot water heater, it had to be drained of its contents. While this was a simple task during the previous installation, not so this time. Why, you ask?

Dear reader, do you remember the previous post wherein I confessed to my deep and abiding fear of our plumbing? Well, it turns out, my worrying was (somewhat) justified by the actual facts of the case. Our whole house drain was clogged. That terrible glug glug glug that we heard was not in any way related to the venting of air through our pipes. It was all about the draining -- or rather, lack thereof -- of water (and all the other stuff that goes along with the water down the drain). By the time the plumber came, the situation was grim: water had backed up into the basement drains. While it seemed from upstairs that things were draining, in fact, they were just going down as far as our basement, where they were unable to pass to the city sewer line.

Thankfully, we had a professional here, and that professional had access to a heavy-duty piece of machinery capable of snaking a 4-inch pipe through the basement cleanout all the way under the street and to the hook-up, something like 75 feet. The good news is, the drain is now running clear. The bad news is that what was clogging the pipe was roots. Big, ugly, living, growing roots, which had gone so far as to become a home to actual living things (at least one earthworm). This is bad news. It means the sewer pipe has cracks in it that allow things to grow into it. Clearly: bad.

The formal solution to this problem is to replace the sewer pipe with a new one. However, this would involve an amount of work that we simply could not possibly do (and no one would actually really recommend that we do). We're talking serious excavation, all the way out to the street, to the point of needing to hire a police detail while we dig up and then re-pave the street. Seriously. Not going to happen.

So tonight we're going to pour some crazy concoction down the drain. This product (given to us by the plumber) is some sort of herbicide this is going to foam up through the pipes and (it is hoped) kill the roots that are choking our pipes. This is the best we can do.

Update: Apparently, we are not pouring Root-X down the drain tonight. After reading Root-X's website, we discovered that we should have done it within the hour after the roots were cut out of the drain; now we have to wait 6 to 8 weeks to do it. Here is the explanation from Root-X:

It’s important to apply RootX within the first hour after cutting or wait six to eight weeks. That’s because roots release a traumatic acid to cover the cut ends and protect them against further injury. If you apply RootX immediately after cutting, the herbicide can penetrate the root ends before the traumatic acid coating is complete. After six to eight weeks, the traumatic acid will have dissipated, leaving the most vulnerable part of the root—the white tender meristem growth where cells are actively dividing—exposed to the herbicide. The more root tissue you can treat with RootX, the better.

Traumatic acid? Yikes. So I guess you all know what we're doing in 6 to 8 weeks. And if you said "looking to buy a different house, perhaps one without plumbing," you're right.

OK, not really.

Need I tell you again, people: Respect the Drain. Seriously.

Further Plumbing Worries

Last night's glug, which I believed to be localized to the upstairs bathroom, is apparently some sort of system-wide failure. When the downstairs toilet or any drains (sinks or showers) in the house are used, the upstairs bathroom drain makes a tremendous glug glug glug. This, in my understanding of plumbing, is not good. Jake says this means that the studor vent is off the hook, since the other bathroom fixtures have a different vent. This leads us to wonder if there's something wrong with the city drainage system (we did get a ton of rain yesterday and last night) or if there's something in 83 Durant's pipes. Like a poltergeist.

I am afraid of our plumbing

OK, you've read the previous post about respecting drains. I have the utmost respect for drains. I get very anxious about drainage problems.

And we have another one. This evening, upon flushing the upstairs toilet, there was a terrible gurgling. But it didn't come from the toilet. It came from the drain that is inside the wall that was once used to drain a washing machine that is no longer there. It's actually a fair distance away, across the bathroom, and behind a cabinet door. Several more flushes yielded the exact same result -- a successful flush, but a bellowing burbling glug glug glug from the un-used drain.

My unprofessional google-based opinion is that it's a problem with an air vent. Long-time readers will remember that when we moved in, the plumbing vent situation in the attic was of concern:
http://83durant.blogspot.com/2007/01/attic-mysteries.html

We solved the open-vent-in-the-attic problem by installing an air admittance valve:
http://83durant.blogspot.com/2007/03/preventing-attic-moisture.html

It's possible that the air admittance valve is now malfunctioning. Or maybe it's something else entirely. That's why I blog, in an attempt to more productively direct my obsessive fears about our house. To the plumbers among you in our readership: any suggestions?

Respect the Drain

Drains take a lot of abuse. I never really think too much about sink drains or shower drains, until that day when that drain doesn't drain. Then, you realize all too clearly how very valuable a working drain is.

We've been battling the kitchen sink drain for quite a while now. We began with some simple baking soda and vinegar, followed by boiling water. After several repeats on this tried and true method, we moved on to Drano, to no visible benefit. Next, we found ourselves opening the cleanouts immediately under the sink and getting in there with an auger. There's one immediately under the sink, then one a little ways away in a kitchen cabinet. We thought we had solved the problem.

It came back. Jake went to the hardware store for help, where they recommended "the stuff the professionals use," which was apparently some kind of professional-strength Drano. After getting it home and carefully reading the very scary label, we noticed that it was "concentrated, virgin sulfuric acid." A bit of googling on that term will bring you some horrifying tales of the many things that can go wrong when you use such a product. Obviously, as a heavy-duty acid, it could really mess you up if you spilled it, but more than that, using it properly seems to also be fairly hazardous, since if you add sulfuric acid to water, the reaction creates a lot of heat -- so much heat that in fact, the water could boil. Since we're working in a water-based situation (the drain) it seemed like adding acid to the scenario was more danger than we wanted to take on, even if it might make for a fabulously horrifying blog post. We've decided to take the high-test drain cleaner back to the hardware store unopened. Even if we DID choose to use it, we'd be afraid to have a half-full bottle of the stuff just sitting around here anyway.

So we were back to mechanical means. Jake found another cleanout in the basement laundry room that appeared to connect to the sink. This one was a good bit messier, as it was on a vertical run of the pipe rather than a horizontal. He got in there with the auger (and a lot of paper towels) and got a lot of gunk out. After closing things up, and re-doing the upstairs cleanouts, we did a few rounds of bleach and boiling water. It's been about 24 hours now, and I think we can safely say that these pipes are CLEAN. Or at least, temporarily free from obstruction.

School starts tomorrow, so you can expect fewer posts. Or possibly more posts, as I try to avoid grading.

Oh, and we still haven't had the plumber here to replace the water heater. Oddly, it's been working a bit better for a few days now, but there's still a weird leak of rusty water, and in any case, it's going to be replaced.

Warm Water Heater

Thanks to the blog, we know that it was only in September that we replaced our hot water heater. But something is amiss, and we're back to lukewarm showers. Lame. Mr. Plumber is on his way.

In other plumbing news, we continue to have trouble with the slow drain in the kitchen sink, which we thought we had fixed. We thought briefly that perhaps the extreme cold was to blame -- perhaps there was a frozen drainpipe. While that is certainly possible, it seems there is also something else blocking the drain, as it has warmed up a bit and still the drain is slow as molasses. In fact, there may be molasses in the drain.

Other than that, we're still buried under quite a bit of snow that we hope will have melted by July. And we all have varying degrees of a cold. Achoo! Carter got a clean bill of health from the vet, and his anniversary of joining our family is coming up. We should have a party!

PROFESSIONAL PLUMBING UPDATE: Mr. Plumber was here, and it looks like we got a defective water heater. We'll be getting a new one, but unfortunately not until sometime next week. Brrrrr....

DO-IT-OURSELVES PLUMBING UPDATE: Jake busted out the auger and worked it through the cleanouts of the kitchen sink drain. We're hopeful that he has busted up whatever blockage was holding things up. Hooray!

Transitions and Retirements

The Transition Team here at 83 Durant has been very busy. We've done a major re-arranging that we hope will be an improvement. We've moved Bridget's Office out of the Office/Guest Room and combined it with Jake's Office in the front room. So now the front room is full of bookshelves and a desk with our two computers on it. It's now the Office Office. The room gets a lot of light and is a nice workspace. We're thinking that one day we might try to get one big hulking library-like kinda table for the center of the room, but for now, while we try out this arrangement, we're using Jake's desk. So far, so good.

The room formerly known as Bridget's Office/Guest Room is now just a Guest Room. But Bridget's old desk is still in there, so now it's sort of becoming a craft room or project room. As well as a guest room. So crafty guests will feel particularly welcome. I'll try to get some Office Office and Guest Room pictures up at some point.

Update: Here's the Guest Room, specifically the new "Project Area":


In retirement news, we've retired a few of the large plastic objects that were cluttering our dining room. Lucy's ExerSaucer and her Leapster thingy have officially been put into basement storage. This frees up a lot of room in the dining room, providing more space for playing with the kid and dog, or for the kid to play with the dog.

Also retiring, after a long and much-loved service, is the Duck Tub. We all loved the duck tub. We brought it with us on vacation, we used it as a baby pool, we used it as a baby sled. But Lucy has outgrown the Duck Tub, and it has developed a bit of a leak. So we've upgraded to the Tub Bumpers that Ma and Pa got Lucy for Christmas. They provide a bit of cushioning for Lucy's sometimes wild antics in the full-sized tub. She really loves the bathtub, and gets very angry when she is taken out of it.

Warning: Explicit Content: You may not want to read any farther if you are squeamish about bodily functions or are uncomfortable reading about human poop. But we feel this is a service we are providing to other uninformed new- or future-parents. This can happen to you. End Warning.

Recently, we've had to take her out of the tub rather abruptly, as she has developed a very unfortunate habit of pooping in the tub. During her first year or so of life, I'd say Lucy pooped in the tub maybe three times. You should be so lucky all the time. In the past month, we've had "Code Brown" incidents with shocking regularity. When we were in Washington, we were charmed by Lucy's Ma singing a little song, "poop in the tub!" in a sweet voice when this happened. This truly tells you the difference between parents and grandparents. While grandparents are placid and even cheerful and laughing about tub-pooping incidents, parents (or at least these parents) find it to be cause for yelling and using words we shouldn't use around a kid who's learning about new words.

Bottle-Free!

The Big News of the weekend here at 83 Durant is that we staged an intervention, and Lucy is officially off the bottle. She had her last bottle before bed on Thursday night. Since then, we've re-engineered the pre-nap and pre-bed routine. We offer her a sippy cup of milk, read her a book in her room, then put her into her crib. Surprisingly, this has not caused a disaster. We were both pretty worried about making the transition, and we were expecting some serious resistance. But apparently, we were more attached to the bottle than Lucy was. This doesn't seem to have disturbed her sleep schedule at all.

Hooray! True to form, we've worried about the wrong thing entirely. So now I need to worry about trying to figure out what the thing is that I should worry about.

Live Sports coverage: the Colonial Classic

I just came home from the Colonial Classic. It was great. I watched "Beginner" (that's a link to a beginner group performing last year) and "Pre-Juvenile" groups, both of which featured impossibly tiny little girls (and a few boys) skating better than I could ever hope to skate. I didn't bring my camera, but some quick work on flickr yields tons of photos -- look at this or this (pictures from last year's event) to get a sense of the insane cuteness of little kids in costumes dancing together on the ice. Granted, there was a lot of creepy stage makeup, and I heard at least one mother shrieking at her child, but it really seemed like the kids were having a great time.

For those of you who wish you could have been here with me (you know and I know who you are) I will share my favorite moments below. The rest of you can skip this.

The Skating Club of Boston's Beginner's team took the ice in skating outfits that looked like baseball uniforms (if baseball uniforms had skirts and glitter). Predictably, their music was "Centerfield," a song that you no doubt have heard (it starts with clapping, then "put me in coach, I'm ready to play...."). Immediately, a very young girl sitting near me yelled out "NO FAIR!" and a mother with the group sighed and said "this is the THIRD time!" As the girls gesticulated and expressed their sentiments -- "NO FAIR! NO FAIR!" -- it became clear to me that this group, scheduled to perform later in the program, had prepared a routine to the same song. I watched as a young girl with a painted face scowled and listened carefully while watching the competition. Her comment (my favorite of the day): "It even has the EXACT same words!" I imagine she was hoping that the other team had chosen an alternate version of the song, like maybe "Leftfield" or "Rightfield" instead of "Centerfield."

Most of the performances were choreographed to fairly predictable movie-musical songs. Things like songs from The Sound of Music, (that link was to a performance at last year's Colonial Classic), or medleys of songs from Disney movies were quite popular, as were songs from musicals that were inexplicably re-engineered to include pounding dance beats, as if the musicals ("The Phantom of the Opera" and "Wizard of Oz") were happening at a disco. A lot of the music was lame, which makes me sad. But I see that a lot in figure skating. I wish it wasn't that way. I have a fond memory of watching Kristi Yamiguchi skate to Bjork's version of "It's Oh So Quiet." It is my favorite skating routine ever, in part because the music is so very much fun.

But getting back to the Colonial Classic, my favorite performance of all was the one done to "Walk Like an Egyptian." Awesome. I'm hoping someone else will post a video of it, so I can show you how great it was.

Oh, I also remembered one more Sporting Event we've attended since moving to Lowell:
HUMAN DOGSLED RACING. It happens in Lowell every year; last year we took Lucy. If the weather isn't too awful (February in Massachusetts? Doubtful) we'll try again this year.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

Down on Digital

I just read a NYT Opinion piece by William Kennard and Michael Powell, two former chairmen of the FCC. They think we need to delay the switch to digital TV. I agree.

I am so completely down on this digital switch, and here's why: we don't want to get cable. In part, we don't want to pay for cable, but even if we did have the extra money to throw at Comcast, from a pure time-management perspective, I can't handle the responsibility of cable.

So here we are with our rabbit ears (seriously). We get the main networks, and even a couple of PBS channels -- we get both Boston and New Hampshire channels. Sometimes some of them are a bit fuzzy; sometimes we have to twist the rabbit ears about for a little while to get just the right spot. But we can watch what we want to watch (30 Rock, the occassional episode of House), which was just fine with us.

But last fall, we dutifully set up our digital box to be prepared for February 17th. And now our reception is crap. With the regular TV, we could watch shows through abit of fuzz, or with slight shadows. But with digital, either the signal is fine, or there is NOTHING. When the signal gets weak (due perhaps to the trees blowing around outside???) the screen goes blank and there's no sound. When it's just a little bit weak, the image goes all boxy and the sound cuts in and out.

We are so not going to get cable, so I guess we just have to give up our 30-Rock-watching, wait for all TV to come out on DVD, and make our TV into a Wii-station and DVD-player. On the upside, no commercials. Downside: hopelessly behind the rest of Americans on current pop culture references. But let's face it, that's been the situation for quite some time now.

Totally. Gross.

It was bound to happen at someday. I'm almost surprised that it took her this long. To our knowledge, up until today -- for the first 13.75 months of her life -- Lucy ate food intended for humans. Today, all that changed.

Lucy ate dog food today.

She was playing contentedly in the dining room, eating Cheerios out of her snack-trap. When I saw her chewing, I assumed she was eating Cheerios. Then I looked at the "Cheerio" in her hand, and realized

THAT'S NOT A CHEERIO!

It was a piece of kibble. As was the "cheerio" in her mouth.

Totally. Gross.

Turns out, the snack trap was empty (perhaps Carter ate the rest of them?) and Lucy moved on to the nearest source of snackage, which happened to be the remaining kibble in Carter's bowl.

She has not shown any ill effects so far. No barking, no lifting her leg.

[FYI, for those not in the know, the "snack trap" is this supposedly handy cup with a lid that kids can put their hands through to take out a snack. It's supposed to prevent the snacks from spilling out everywhere. Lucy, however, seems to have perfected a snack-trap technique that evades the product's supposed spill-prevention mechanism, and she regularly dumps the snack trap contents everywhere.]

Here, you can see her demonstrating her technique, triumphantly.

Sporting Events, Wii and otherwise

Before the Wii entered our lives, we were very pleased with our live sporting event attendance record since our lives moved to Lowell.  Here is a list of some of the more notable sporting events we have attended in Lowell since our move here [note, all of these events pre-date Lucy's arrival here]:

1.  Spinners games.  The Spinners are Lowell's Class A baseball team.  They're a Red Sox affiliate.  They're awesome.  Their mascot, the Canaligator, recently married Allie-Gator, and they are the proud parents of Millie-Gator.  The mascot family runs through the park during the game, and they also host "Spinnertainment" during the inning breaks.  You should follow that link to see some examples of Spinnertainment, as it is not to be missed.  They bring border collies onto the field to do tricks, have kids wrestle in sumo suits, and otherwise amuse the audience.  In fact, I like the Spinnertainment better than the game.  But that tells you a bit about my level of baseball enthusiasm.  If you're visiting Lowell, go to a Spinners game if you can.  If you don't want to go to a Spinners game, you should offer to babysit Lucy and we will go to a Spinners game.  Deal.

2.  Hockey games. We've been to quite a few UML hockey games, and they're great fun.  Also, the players are my students.  For the most part, I don't want to see them get slammed into the boards, but it is fun to see them on the ice, sometimes starting trouble with the other team.  Especially if that other team is UMass Amherst.

3. World Men's Curling Championships:  Curling is a crazy awesome game that involves a sort of shuffleboard on ice.  With brooms.  And special shoes.  Oh, and like 900-pound curling stones*.  It's awesome.  And they had their championships in Lowell a couple years ago.  It was so much fun to watch.

 

4.  New England Golden Gloves.  We went to one night in the series, which happens every year right around now at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium.  If you click on that link, you can see that they're fighting RIGHT NOW.  They're also presenting Sesame Street Live, but fortunately not on the same night as the boxing.  The Golden Gloves is also the backdrop for one of Lowell's famous fellows, Mickey Ward, a boxer who's story will be on the big screen sometime this year in The Fighter, featuring Mark Wahlberg (as Mickey) and Brad Pitt (as his brother).  This is the site of one of my most favorite stories of the Lowell accent.  I'm afraid I can't do it justice on the blog, since you really have to HEAR what the guys around us were saying and because I'm afraid the content of what they were saying isn't family-friendly.  And we're a family blog here.  Anyway, you should go see a fight.  It's really, really weird.

But all those very exciting sporting events pale in comparison to what I'm planning to attend this weekend.  I will be going to some portion of the Colonial Classic.  No, this is not a group of re-enactors.  This is a SYNCHRONIZED ICE SKATING COMPETITION.  If you are wondering what this sort of thing looks like, you can look at the websites of some of the competing teams.   Go ahead.  Click those two links.  And realize how much you want to join me at the Tsongas Arena this weekend.

*as you might expect, that was an exaggeration.  According to this source, the stones weigh between "44 and 38 pounds".  

Three days in a row!

I am way better at Wii Sports than I am at any sport.

My Wii age is 36. I was OK with that, until Jake tried, and his Wii age is 28. No fair.

In house news, we fixed a clogged (super-slow draining) kitchen sink drain last night. Several rounds of baking soda & vinegar, plus boiling water, plus a fair amount of plunger-ing finally worked. They should make a Wii Plumber game. We would totally win.

Updates

I know that when you read that we got a Wii, you, faithful reader, feared that posting to 83 Durant would become even more rare. We will try not to let that happen. And by the way, in the ongoing house Wii bowling tournament, Jake and I stand at 1 - 1. Lucy isn't playing yet, but we look forward to her debut. Carter seems distinctly disinterested in Wii action.

During our time away, Lucy was learning a lot. Here is a short list of new things she has discovered:

1) Her finger fits perfectly into her nostril.
2) She can say "Doggie," "Puppy," and "Carter." Still no "Mom" or "Dad." I guess this is meant to keep us humble.
3) She may have inherited her mother's secret super-power: impervious to jet-lag.
4) She likes to stack cups. Endlessly. Perhaps she has a future in Speed Stacking (google that to get crazy videos of kids stacking cups at insane speeds.
5) Cousins are fun!
6) Her feet are size 4. This was discovered while getting her first shoes. Parents also made the discovery that little kid shoes are expensive.
7) She can go down the stairs the "right" way, which is feet first rather than head first. For a while there, she could only go up the stairs, which was not a sustainable plan.

That's all I can remember at the moment; time to do post-trip laundry. We'll try to keep the blog updated in 2009.

Happy New Year!

We've just returned from two weeks away from 83 Durant. We had a great time! Many thanks to all who hosted and fed us!

We're glad to be home. We were THRILLED to discover a Christmas miracle upon arrival -- someone shoveled our driveway and sidewalks! They were amazingly clear!! Thanks, Secret Santa, whoever you are!

I'll post some more details on our holiday travels soon, but right now, I have to go play the Wii. Yes, Santa brought 83 Durant a Wii. I can hardly believe I could have been that good last year. Hooray!