So.

I like Christmas, and the whole holiday season. I really do. But there's one thing that just drives me nuts. I don't like to be a complainer, but part of the reason for this blog is for my readers to get a little insight into the mind of Adman, for better or for worse.

That said, I absolutely can't stand commercials that have taken Christmas carols and substituted they're own lyrics. It's not that I think that Christmas carols are sacred things that can't be touched. But the modification of lyrics just strikes me as so lame and non-fresh. Old f'ing Navy can kiss my ass.

There. That's all I have to say about that. :)

Diana cute last night. She was tired, grading papers, and ready for sleep. I said "Why don't you do the dishes and get in bed?" As the dishes are my job, my tricksiness didn't work. I asked what she had left to do. "I've got to grade these papers, and then do some sorting." "Sorting!" I exclaimed, with playful enthusiasm. "That's your favorite!" "I know!" she responded, I think somewhat seriously. "That's why I'm saving it for last!" I laughed and laughed.

And finally, we are the proud owners of a new water heater.

[warning: what follows is a really long, boring account of plumbing stuff. There's nothing exciting down there. Read at your own risk.]

A few days ago, Diana went into the garage and noticed that the drywall box that the water heater and big furnace thing sit on was totally waterlogged. The drywall was all mushy to the touch. A cursory check of the water heater showed that both the cold-water-in and hot-water-out pipe connections were leaking. Water was dribbling down the thing, and while there wasn't any flowing water on the ground, it was pretty dank and moldy. The heater was starting to lean, as well, since the drywall was getting all gooey beneath it.

So, since the heater was on unstable ground, I thought it might be a good idea to empty it. I figured out how to turn off the gas and water and stuff, and we hooked up a hose and emptied that puppy. No big deal. When I turned the water back on, the tank started filling up again from the hot water (house) side, rather than the cold water (city) side. This made absolutely NO sense to me. Where was it coming from?

I called my pop. He reminded me of the kitchen faucet, which is a mixing-type faucet. That was the crossover junction between hot and cold. So, shutting off a valve there stopped all flowing water to the water heater, yet left us with (cold) water in the rest of the house (for flushing and whatnot).

Since the tank was filled partially, it needed to be emptied again. In the course of doing this, I broke off the drain spout (with hose attached), and water just started flowing out the side of the thing. I had a small bucket, and yelled for help. Diana scrambled around collecting more water-catching devices, and soon we had the thing under control. A little panic, but no harm done. (Did I mention this was all going on during the Survivor Finale? :) We had cold water and a disconnected, empty water heater. Nice. At least if it fell through the platform it was on, there wouldn't be water everywhere or a gas explosion. And we still had cold water to boot. (Poor Diana decided to suffer through a cold shower that morning. I don't think I could do that).

Longtime readers will remember my mistrust of plumbers, and I wasn't relishing the fact of dealing with another one, but there wasn't much choice here. We called a company recommended by Diana's mom, and they set up an appointment to come out replace the water heater.

We're used to making choices. Reading about water heaters, finding a good one for the right price. The company took down the make and model of our broken heater, and showed up with one made by the same company (which actually wasn't bad, as the old company had gotten some favorable reviews, and our particular heater was manufactured in 1988!)

The plumber was nice, and when I told him I didn't really know what was going on, he laid out the prices of the parts he was going to use, and how much labor was going to be. Everything made logical sense (contrasted with the last plumber who wanted to rip up our wall to replace a simple shower valve!), and the prices seemed ballpark with my own findings.

He went to work, and we chatted a bit. He was a nice guy, clearly been a plumber all his professional life, and seemed to know his way around tools. I have no doubt that my dad and I could have installed the heater ourselves, but it would have been a pretty tough job with somewhat substantial risk of really screwing something up.

Anyhoo, the heater was installed and worked like a champ. Rather than sitting on three legs like our old one, it sat flat in a pan, which was good as it distributed the weight. The pan had a little pipe out of it, so if there was a leak, the pan would fill up, and then water would come out the pipe and not into the drywall. Pretty clever.

The guy said that between 1988 and now, water heaters have gone through multiple iterations of improvement in terms of efficiency and stuff. So, good on that front as well.

The next morning, I went out to the garage, and the pan was filled up to the point of the drain pipe. The pipe was dripping water onto the garage floor, where it had run over to a big stack of mostly empty cardboard boxes. It wasn't too much water... a cup or two, and was soaked up into the boxes nicely. However, there was clearly a leak somewhere that had been leaking all night.

The plumber came back that morning, and we investigated a little, and found the leak in the drain valve (the corresponding piece that I'd broken off our old water heater) at it's connection to the tank. Not the plumbers fault. He replaced it with a new one, and that leaked, so he replaced it with a little piece of pipe with a lot of Teflon tape. That did the trick. I siphoned out the sitting water in the pan, used a lot of paper towels to get everything bone dry, and headed to work.

When I came back at lunch, I checked again, and noticed the *tiniest* little ooze of water. It would form a drop every 30 seconds (I counted). I called the plumber to let them know, saying I'd keep an eye on it. Little drips like that fix themselves pretty frequently, so I've been told, and I think it's going to.

So, that's the story.