The Burninators

So yesterday, Kimberly noticed that the sink wasn’t putting out any hot water. “That’s odd,” we thought, and didn’t do anything about it for a few hours, until I tried it myself and confirmed. Then I went to another sink and found the same problem. So I rightly concluded that our water heater wasn’t working. This didn’t make me feel too good, since of course my brain goes to the absolute extreme and thinks, “I really don’t want to have to buy a new water heater.”
Thankfully rational thought won out and I did a little research (Thank you Internet for making research so easy). Yesterday I knew next to nothing about water heaters other than that they make water hot. Today I feel like an expert. First learning step was to notice that the most likely problem is that the pilot light is out. A quick glance and, yup, no pilot light. How the heck do I relight it? It’s a fine thing to say “light a match and stick it in there” but I tend to get nervous around combining gas pipelines and matches. I quickly found the following video which helped immensely and I was able to get it done:

So, I followed these instructions, and got the pilot light lit. Sadly, as soon as I let go of the reset switch, the pilot light went out. I tried this three times and it did the same thing. So, now what? To the Internet! A few more minutes and I discovered that if the pilot light won’t stay on, then it’s likely because the thermocouple isn’t working properly. The what-you-say? Ya, I said the same thing. But as I said earlier, now I feel like an expert. This page explains all the science/technical meaning of that, but for the lay person, it’s the thing that tells the gas valve that the pilot light is actually lit. A very cool safety feature that prevents your house from filling up with gas if your pilot light goes out. And yes, I’m grateful that my house didn’t blow up So, how the heck do I replace a thermocouple? See the following video:

This was quite helpful. I first tried pulling it out and cleaning it, since apparently the carbon build up from being under a constant flame for the last 10 years can sometimes prevent it from working. This didn’t work, so I popped over to The Home Depot, paid $11.28 + tax for a replacement, and plugged it in. Worked perfectly on the first try.

Yay! So glad I a) didn’t have to buy a new water heater (yet) b) didn’t have to pay a plumber $100+ to show up and replace a simple $11 part.

And with that, my first blog post in over a year is done. Maybe I’ll do some more…

Here are some pictures of my Halloween costume this year. It’s mainly because of us (mostly Kimberly) working on this costume that Kimberly didn’t ever dress up herself. Basically the story goes that I’m way into the Kingdom Hearts series of video games. The story is very cool and I enjoy them a lot. So, in late September I was discussing with my coworker, who is also a big fan, and decided that I wanted to dress up as one of the characters for Halloween. I waffled between trying to dress up as Roxas and Axel, but ended up settling on Sora because a) It would probably end up cheaper than making an Organization 13 outfit and b) he looks really cool.

So, I went to DI to find the necessary clothing items, Kimberly slaved away for hours sewing on the finishing touches, and borrowed said coworkers totally awesome Oblivion keyblade which he carved and painted himself. Without further ado (Aside from continuing to express lavish thanks on my beautiful and talented wife) I present Sora (a middle aged, balding Sora that hasn’t changed his wardrobe since he was 14, but Sora nonetheless):

This is in the morning, and I had forgotten to shave at this point, sooo Sora looked even more middle aged

View from the back

Heartless beware

At the end of the day. You'll notice I also added the forgotten necklace for this picture.

I wore the costume to work all day on Friday and it was kind of fun.

So, there I am, sitting next to Alisa’a bed, and according to ritual I ask, “What song do you want me to sing?”

“Books of Book of Mormon” Great, this should be easy. Kimberly had just finished singing it to her, so the tune was in my head. (I certainly don’t remember it from primary).

I begin, “First and Second Books of Nephi, Enos…uhhhhh, Jacob, Enos…uhhhhh” Yes, I totally blanked andwhile on the spot singing to my daughter couldn’t remember the order of the books in the Book of Mormon (Yes I know them. It was stage fright…or something…) when in pipes Alisa,

“Zormniwormon!”

“What?”

“Joram, Omni, Word of Mormon!”

Oh, right.” [I continue and finish the song correctly]

Yes, my two year old just corrected me on the order of the books in the Book of Mormon.

Not blogging, clearly. The reason in part is because I’ve been quite busy purchasing and taking care of our new house! You can see in Kimberly’s post a number of pictures of our new house. Hopefully in telling my side of the story, I can post some more here.

The pictures there pretty well cover the main parts of the house. Here’s the timeline of how it all went down:

Jun 2009: We decide, “It might be nice if we owned our own house.” We get a real estate agent to help us out and we go look at a lot of dives. Great fun had by all.

Jul 2009: After reevaluating our finances for the 13th time we conclude that any house we can afford is one we don’t really want. (See previous, esp ‘dives’) About the same time Kimberly saw an ad in the paper for an apt which was great size and very cheap rent. (For $5 more per month, we added one bedroom, 250 sq ft., and a yard. not bad, except for all the parts that were bad).

Feb 2010: After living in our new apt for 6 months, we decide that we’d rather be our own landlords for real. Finances have changed a bit, and the market still hasn’t gone back up, so let’s start looking again.

Mar 2010: We found “our house” and decided that we wanted it. Is it perfect? No. Is it a good price? Yes. Does it have hundreds of beer bottles/cans strewn about the basement, and obvious water damage in most parts of the ceiling? (I’m lookin’ at you ‘dive’) No! The carpet was hideous, the light fixtures seriously needed updating (more later) but the major parts of a house were intact and worthy, and it had a nice big yard and garden for us to enjoy. So, we enter a real estate contract to purchase the house.

Early April 2010: Inspector tells us all the things that are wrong with the house, and all the things that are right. Namely, the two most important parts of any house, the foundation and roof, are solid. But, the shower leaks, and the floor sags in a number of places. So we ask them to fix both and they agree. Oh, and they also agreed to pay for $3000 worth of new carpet since in the 5 major rooms in the house there were 5 different colors of carpet. Hideous. 1970s, you did me right by music, but your interior decorating was seriously lacking. BTW, this house was built in 1978.

Apr 26 2010: After much worrying, waiting, and packing, we officially become homeowners! Hooray! Lots of drama involved in getting the money for the new carpet, but it gets installed by the friday following and we move in on…

May 1 2010: Now we get to live in our new house! Thanks for everyone that helped me move. On the one side this involved the generous members of our ward, and on the other my buddies from D&D night. (You may have noticed, I’m a multi-faceted nerd, and yes we still play pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons once a week. Loads of fun.)

One of my favorite things about owning my own house is that if I don’t like something, I can just change it. No more calling the landlord to tell them that when it rains/snows I get a giant puddle of water underneath my stove. No more “just living with it” until we get another contract.

Exhibit A: The carpet pictures you can see on Kimberly’s blog post. Seriously, getting new carpet/vinyl made such a huge difference in the feeling in our house. I’m impressed that Kimberly and I had the foresight to able to see the vision of the house with new flooring. I recommend it to any of you that have old crappy carpet. If it’s named “shag” this is not an option for you. You must get new carpet.

Exhibit B:

Yes, that is a vintage light fixture. Looks closely. The sockets themselves are shaped like candles. And each of the 5 bulbs has it’s own tiny 4 inch lamp shade. We replaced it with the much more innocuous:

Now isn’t that nicer? I feel like I have so much more freedom. Chandeliers and me have never been on good terms. Like the one Kimberly and I sat “under” for our anniversary dinner at Outback last year. The chandelier was so low over the table that I had to bend down to look at her across the table. Who thinks these are good ideas? That being said, one mans trash is another’s treasure. Anyone want an antique chandelier?

Exhibit C: Our shower didn’t drain. This wasn’t much of a problem in the bath tub, cuz you could just let the water fill up the tub, and drain eventually, but in our master bathroom, we have just a shower. And in the few minutes getting clean, the water filled up 2 inches or so, and we sort of had to hurry to make sure we didn’t have a flood. So we tried the good old fashioned dump a bunch of caustic chemicals down there and hope it works. It didn’t work. We opened up the drain to look in and see if we could tell what was blocking it. We did find a giant rock (2″ x 1″ x 3/4″) inside one, and pulling it out helped for a few days, but then the problem came back. Finally, Kimberly’s family came to visit, and her dad brought a drain snake that they had. He shoved that thing down there a while and pulled out a giant wad of hair. Gross. And problem solved. Thanks dad. I’m really glad we didn’t have to call a plumber. (We do need to call one still to fix our spigot issues outside; it leaks. a lot. no thanks to the home warranty guy.)

Well that about covers me for now (especially since I’ve been writing this post for a few months now). Hopefully you can learn more later.

I got this in the mail the other day:

I feel extra nerdy and awesome.