So, last night Diana and I pulled the trigger on getting cell phones. They're in the mail and should arrive soon.

It's been really weird to not have a cellphone in the past couple years. Many people assume that we have them. Very frequently, when I've told people I don't have a cell phone, (after they do a doubletake) they say something like "Oh, I wish I was able to get rid of mine" or "Oh, that's so great" (as if I have some sort of superhuman willpower that they could never achieve). Lots of people have a weird love-hate relationship with their phones, it seems

Apart from that, everyone hates Cellphone Guy, who talks too loudly in a restaurant with his little Borg earpiece, or the driver who cuts them off because they were chatting rather than paying attention, or the person who leaves their ringer on in a movie theater, but apparently no one realizes that THEY could be that person.

So while I'm certainly no stranger to technology and gadgets in general, it's with a little trepidation that I enter this world.

I'm definitely looking forward to some parts. I'm glad that if Diana's car breaks down, she won't have to walk along the freeway to get help. It will be easier to coordinate plans with my friends (who are a fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants kind of bunch). And various other times when it would be nice to make a call while out doing errands. We've definitely gotten along pretty well so far without them, but it seems to be the right time.

I'm pretty stoked at the whole contract-less, pre-paid package deal. We got a pair of T-Mobile "To Go" phones. Each phone comes with something like 10 minutes of airtime. Spending $100 will get you 1000 minutes, and those minutes don't expire for one calender year. Seems like a great way to test the waters a little and get a sense of what our usage is like, and then we can evaluate further as needed. My initial thoughts and predictions is that 1000 minutes a year sounds about perfect, and a ton cheaper than even the cheapest post-paid plans you can get.

So, we'll see how it goes.

So the score is:

Adam: 1
Mice: 1

I put my "live trap" in the kitchen for a few nights, but nothing happened. I actually set up the computer with our webcam set to "motion-triggered recording", but didn't capture anything. It DID actually turn on and record a few times during the night, but I never saw any movement.

So, I moved the trap to the garage. Diana's patience was running out a little, and her sympathy towards mice is, um, slightly less than mine, so alongside the live-trap, I put a normal death trap as well.

For the last two nights or so, the little suckers have licked the triggers clean of the nummy nummy peanut butter, but failed to spring the trip. This morning, however, BOTH traps were sprung. The live trap had a very cute little brown mouse, and the death trap had a mouse whose head and been smashed in. (It may or may not have been dead, actually... I though I felt it jerk around a little when I was carrying it to throw it away. I hate those death traps).

I then went to pick up the live-trap. It's a glass pan sitting on a thin piece of cardboard (or more like posterboard). Anyways, as I was lifting it up, I created a tiny crack and the little guy jumped out and scurried away in the garage. (Yes, Gabe, I see you over there).

So, I'm pretty happy that it worked, but there are still some flaws in the system. I reset both traps before I left this morning. Hopefully the mouse makes the right decision.

In other news, last night Diana and I read the first chapter of a parenting book. I'm reading PARENTING books. Crazy. This is the first book we've started, and it is saying "Our way is the best style... not like those OTHER crazy people you hear about." I can't wait to read the OTHER books and have them tell me the opposite stuff. That should be fun. :)

As we were falling asleep, Diana was pretty sure she could feel baby movement. She said if felt like what you'd picture an orange rolling around inside a tubesock might look like. In other words, not any sharp pokes, but a gentle sensation of something rolling inside something else. Or that's the impression I got, at least. In any case, it's the first time I've heard her make any definitive statements about feeling something move around. Very cool.

Update: Since I started writing this post, Diana has felt some more movements, and the escaped mouse has been recaptured.

My workboy told a funny story. He said that the other night, he was riding the elevator and heard voices. It turns out that an automated telemarketer had somehow connected to the elevators internal emergency phone, and was trying to sell a new low interest loan to it. Pretty funny.

The more I thought about it, the more it didn't make sense. If it was an incoming call, how was it answered? Or was the phone off the hook all the time? But if that was the case, wouldn't they get a busy signal? It didn't add up, so I decided to investigate. I went into one of our elevators, and (a little nervously) opened the door to the little cupboard that houses the emergency call box. Inside was a box with a speaker and a single Call button. On the reverse side of the door were some instructions that basically said "Push the call button to connect to Emergency Services, blah blah blah".

But below that, in handwriting, was a local phone number. So I made a note of it and returned to my desk.

I called the phone number, fully prepared to say "Whoops! Wrong number, sorry!". I dialed, and the phone rang. Then rang a few more times. Just as I was about to hang up, I got a rapid succession of alternating tones, and then a connected semi-silence, as if I was talking to a speakerphone with no one in the room. I could hear faint background noise, and realized that I was, indeed, connected to the elevator.

Pretty cool!

My nonlethal mousetrap

Diana found a mouse trapped in a box in our garage the other day. When she showed me, my head immediately snapped up and I started looking around the garage for my old rat/hamster cage. Diana knew what I was thinking, and pretty much killed my idea of a pet right there.

Last night I was up late, and heard some sounds from the kitchen and this morning, we found some evidence of another visitor. So as I was falling asleep, I devised a nice non-lethal mousetrap system. I don't like killing the little mousies.

We have traps that are pretty cool. You pinch them in the back, and the jaws open shut and lock open, and the trigger is set. When the trigger is pushed, the jaws snap closed (like a clothes pin) and the mouse dies. Then, you can pick it up by the handle and dump the guy out cleanly.

It's like a pair of scissors: when one end is open, the other is closed, and vice versa.

What I did was cut off the top jaw, the one that snaps closed. So now, when the trap fires, nothing comes slamming down (like scissors with one blade cut off). However, the back end still shoots up. So, I tied a string to that back end, and it pulls out a support from the box or bowl that is covering the whole thing. The bowl falls down, and the mouse is trapped, safe and sound.

I can't wait to try it out!

In other news, Diana and I took a nice trip to Palm Springs earlier this week. We spent our full day out there treking around Joshua Tree National Forest, which was really nice. Otherwise, we sat by the pools and read our books and had a nice relaxing time. Palm Springs kind of cracks me up. It feels about 50 past its prime. The streets are named "Bob Hope Drive" and "Dinah Shore Ave". Dinah Shore?!

In plumbing news, we're making really good progress. We called a plumber, and for a pretty penny, he was able to cut away a single tile and make the repairs. Diana and I then were able to take some wood, and glue that across the hole left vacant by the tile (glueing the wood to the backs of the neighboring tiles, inside the wall). Then, we glued the removed tile to that piece of wood (it's drying right now). Finally, we'll fill in the gaps with grout, and all should be well.

Oh, and we were able to buy some new faucet fixtures, which was the point of this whole excercise in the first place. Yay. :)

In baby news, there isn't much baby news. Diana is doing great and feeling great. Her belly is definitely growing, which is really fun to witness. I'm very excited. We're going to find out the gender in a few weeks, and that really, I think, will set some reality in. We can refine our thoughts for names, think more about all the stuff we'll need, and get psychologically ready for a new boy or new girl.

A lot of people have asked me which I'd prefer. I think I'm a little uncomfortable with that question. I feel that my answer would somehow be remembered and potentially held against me. Does that make sense? Like, if I said "Oh, I REALLY want a girl" what would people think if we found we were going to have a boy?

The honest (albeit vanilla) answer is that I imagine pros and cons (all based on stererotypes) for each. I grew up in a family with a brother, so I feel like I "know" boys, and part of me thinks having a daughter would be a really neat new experience. But, as I recently heard someone say, "With a boy, you only have ONE dick to worry about..."

I never really thought of it like that.

More news as it breaks.

So here's the situation. Diana and I wanted to replace the tub/shower fixtures in our guest bathroom. This should be an easy job (foreshadowing). The current setup is separate hot/cold handles, as well as a third handle to divert water to either the shower or tub spout. Then, obviously, the showerhead and tub spout.

Removing the faucet handles is cake. Pop off the "H" and "C" and arrow caps, unscrew the screws, and pull them off the valve stem. The base of the handles was stuck to the wall with some gooey putty stuff, but I was able to cut through that and pull them off the wall as well. So I'm left with the valves, and can see where they are plugged into the main pipes. Gravy.

Then I go to work on the tub spout. Tub spouts are either held in place with a little hex screw that holds it onto a pipe that exends from the wall, or they simply are screwed into that pipe. I couldn't find any hex screw, so I figured I could just unscrew the thing. There was a lot of that gooey-putty stuff, and it took a little effort to get it started, but soon I was unscewing it.

Or so I thought.

What I'd actually done was (and I have no idea how) start torquing the copper pipe about 2 inches inside the wall. It wasn't until too late that I realized I wasn't unscrewing, but twisting and tearing through metal. I SHOULD have been unscrewing, but the tub-spout has, over the years, apparently fused itself onto the pipe. I obviously didn't think I was applying enough force to do any damage, but, well, here we are.

So, what I have now is a 5-inch long tub-spout in my hand, still attached to a 7-inch piece of copper tubing, which ends in a ragged, nasty mess. 2 inches inside a hole in the tile is the other end of that ragged mess, which is in turn soldered into a little right angle elbow thing.

Fuck. Click for pictures

So, now what must happen is that the existing pipe must be unsoldered from the elbow and removed. Potentially a new pipe could be replaced into that elbow, or the whole elbow must be cut off and replaced. Either way, this requires a lot of heat.

Options:

1) Try to do everything through the small hole in the tile. The would surely create enough heat in the wall that a large portion of the house would burn down. This is unacceptable.

2) Remove a lot of tile and wall in the shower to access the pipes. Then patch the wall and replace tile (if we can find a close enough match).

3) The wall on the other side of the shower is a 6x8 foot floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mirror, which is glued to the wall. So we could remove the mirror (undoubtedly requiring breaking it), cut through drywall, and access pipes from there. Patch drywall, replace mirror.

I do not like any of these options.

It's pretty bad luck. I don't feel like this should have been any more complicated than changing a lightbulb. I'd feel really stupid and sheepish if I felt like I'd tried to bite off more than I could chew, but I don't think I did. If anything, I should have been a bit more careful when I realized the tub spout wasn't coming lose, but everything I've read, both before and after the fact, said that it's supposed to unscrew. And if it doesn't unscrew, they said use a wrench or screwdriver for leverage.

Muh.