A few thoughts while remarking just how fast this year is passing by. Hard to believe we’re almost half-way through.

We came close the past two days to hitting the century mark for the first time (while Phoenix did the past couple of days, here in Gilbert we hit 97 and 99), but now we’re heading for a slight “cool down” while parts of Colorado get another snowstorm. Spring is sure taking it’s time in some places of the country.

The swimming pool hit 84 today, just two degrees before it hits the “perfect zone”, but it’ll back off with the next few nights in the ’70s. The new filter is living up to its expectations, which is great. The pool vacuum stopped working on Monday and I couldn’t figure out why. Then, at 2:41 AM Tuesday morning I wake up and in a dreamy fog realize a stone that fell into the pool while I was doing yard work on Sunday had to have been picked up and stuck inside it. I get up, grab a screwdriver and a flashlight and performed the extraction right then and there. Fifteen minutes, I’m back in bed – another house problem solved.

My luck wouldn’t hold.

Sometimes the worst thing you can do as a homeowner is bring a plumber in to fix a small problem. In our case, I needed the reverse osmosis water system filters replaced and a leaky faucet fixed, so a call to my plumber went out. Within an hour everything was fixed. Then I brought up the toilet valves. You see, a couple of our neighbors in houses and with equipment as old as ours encountered flooding when one of their toilet valves let loose (evidently they’re plastic and defective, with a nationwide class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer pending) so I asked the plumber if he could upgrade all the valves to metal.

Everything is fine until he goes out to turn the water back on, and I hear a loud bang and the sound of water doing what it should never do – rush inside the house. I’m on a call with a client and unconsciously yell, “what the f**k was that?” Then I hear the plumber running back outside and I grab every towel and absorbent material I can find. There’s water pouring out of the master bath toilet wall – evidently, the delicate nature of the surgery taking place has disrupted the tranquility of our pipe system. The water finally stops, and the plumber comes in to tell me my shut-off valve beside the garage doesn’t necessarily shut the water off completely and thus had to turn the water off at the street level.

Now he’s removing wallboard to find the source of the leak. I return back to my client call and thankfully they’re not just sympathetic to my plight, they’re making light of it as well. That’s a blessing. The plumber tries to reach the leak from a closet wall on the other side of the bathroom wall, but after cutting out a nice square he says he can’t get to it. Now he cuts out another square near the back of the toilet and identifies and fixes the leak. I’ve got soaked towels, bath mats, and clothing all over the place, but in the end we’re back to being high and dry (relatively speaking), and the great thing about the new valves is that, if they detect any change in pressure resulting from a leak they immediately close off to prevent flooding. That’s at least good for peace of mind. But boy, by the time the plumber left with a $450 bill I was so stressed out that I downed a Sam Summer in five minutes before my next client call.

I’m sure frequent commenter Jana has seen all this before, but I’m telling you, a condo in Key West is sounding better and better every day. At least I know several of the things on my to-do list for this weekend.