Otherwise, my recap is as follows:
The Yard
We bought a cool patio furniture set from Crate & Barrel! I've been eyeing it for over a year now, and finally caught it on sale plus the 10% off from registering there. :) Yay! My backyard is pretty much complete now, as far as furnishings go. We still may want to get a shed of some sort but that's a nice-to-have and not really a necessity. We do still have some landscaping to do though since my back wall is ridden with weeds & grass. It's impossible to keep up with it, but Duke has been helping me rip everything up and lay down some Amend (a special soil to help break down clay). The dirt that is in my backyard is beyond bad - most is hard clay and is full of large rocks and/or concrete. Whoever laid it down was so lazy and just filled up the land with no regard to what it was filling it up with!
Oh, and I also bought a lime tree but it's a sweet lime so it actually looks like a lemon. I haven't tried any of the fruit yet since it's just growing now, but hopefully I can make some nice summertime limeade. Yum yum.
We had also planted some tomato plants and a squash plant, and all of those have been growing like crazy. My dad put down some fertilizer and I had the largest squash I had ever seen. It tasted pretty good too. The tomatoes are growing faster than I can eat them as well. They taste fine but the insides look kind of strange (more reminiscent of a brain than the nice half-moon shapes you find when you slice grocery store tomatoes). Not sure if that's b/c mine aren't ripe enough or if it's b/c I don't pesticide treat them or something.
BBQ
We had some friends over for the 4th of July, and it sort of was a party for the kids. My sister came with Dylan & Brandon; John & Susan brought Avery & Wyatt; Dan brought Quyen. We put out the kiddie pool, slip 'n' slide, and this turtle spritzer thing, and the kids had fun. The adults wished they were kids, and fried in the hot sun. The rest of the time was playing some video games inside and hanging out. It was fun though spending a lazy Saturday with friends.
Family Stuff
My sister had her Fellowship Graduation, so I got to finally meet the people she had been telling me about for these past few years. A bunch of speeches, etc., and it ended up being a sour evening since my sister's mentor wasn't able to make it due to travel plans, so she didn't have anyone really sing her praises like everyone else did. After working so hard, it's hard not to get recognized alongside your colleagues like that. What a bummer.
In other family news, the kids have been over quite a bit lately. Dylan has taken on Super Mario Bros. and is officially an addict. He loves coming over and just wants to play the game all day. He is getting a lot better though than when he first started, so his hand-eye coordination is pretty darn impressive for a 3 year old. When we were at my sister's graduation, he was laying on my lap and was getting restless b/c of all the speeches. Then he whispers to me: "Auntie, Auntie!" "Yes, Dylan?" "You know that one hot lava level..." Hahah. It made me laugh. That's what he's daydreaming about.
Aside from Super Mario, we did head to Legoland after the BBQ. Dylan and Brandon had some more time with Avery and Wyatt. As a higher-priced theme park, it was pretty disappointing. The rides were really basic, and the lines moved sooo slow. Brandon was pretty upset the entire time, and Dylan didn't want to go on half the rides since he was too scared to. All in all, I don't think I'd be going back. It's a whopping $61 ticket price, but luckily I had free passes from my friend who had gone with her nephew previously (2nd day for the ticket was free within 90 days).
The Worst Race in the World
Duke and I signed up for the Great Urban Race. I was so excited to do this race since it seemed like the Amazing Race. Challenges, both mental and physical, were promised. An intricate clue sheet was promised. And a darn good time was promised. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The clues were dumb. The most mental thing about it was a word search which took a whole 2mins to complete. Then we realized what the race was all about. Sponsorship.
The OCTA was a sponsor so lo and behold, these secret locations that we were supposed to go were clustered 5-10 miles away from each other so you were forced to take the bus. The OCTA is not like the BART - it doesn't run very frequently. It runs every 30-45 minutes if you're lucky. So, for a race that was going to be finished in 5 hours but required you to take the bus which is that slow...just doesn't seem like a great set-up.
The YWCA was a charity associated with the race. One of the "clues"? To go buy an item on their list (dryer sheets or other random items), and drop it off at the YWCA. Ummm...I'm all about donating but shouldn't that be of my own accord? Why am I forced to do that as part of a race? What kind of "clue" just tells you what to do? That's not really a clue.
The final straw: We went to JT Schmid's which was another clue location - you had to go there and pick up a fake mustache and take a picture with someone who actually had a mustache. Ok, fine. But what happened? We go to JT Schmid's to get the mustache, and find out that we *have* to sign up for the JT Schmid's mailing list in order to get the mustache. Umm...ok, so I paid a registration fee for this race and am forced to sign up for mailing lists? Completely absurd.
We left after JT Schmid's. We had already wasted an hour, grumbling the whole way, and it wasn't going to be worth wasting the rest of our day and potentially riding a bus 10 miles away from our own car, only to find out that we can't make it back in time for the race finish b/c the buses are too slow.
Don't ever sign up for this race. I'm so surprised that this race has been going on for 5+ years and has expanded to cities across the US. I e-mailed a complaint and they apologized for how I felt about it, but in no way did they seem surprised by what I described.
This race would be much more suitable in true public transit cities like NY, Chicago, or SF. Don't put one in Orange County. But aside from that, no race should ever force you to sign up for advertising or buy mandatory items. That's completely bogus. I'm going to stick to more traditional running races from now on!
Plumbing Success
One of our guest bathroom showers stopped having hot water. We didn’t know why or when the issue started since we rarely use that bathroom, but nevertheless, it required some fixing. My house has a Manabloc plumbing system so there are these valves for hot and cold water to each room, so it’s easy to turn off water in just one room instead of the whole house. We were really worried that this valve broke somehow, and wasn’t letting hot water go through into the shower. We had read similar issues online with Manabloc so this was a valid concern. I tried calling Viega (the parent company who makes this system) to understand my warranty, but they said that they don’t deal with consumers directly, and I’d have to go through a wholesaler to see if my warranty could be claimed. I have no idea who installed the system so I figure my warranty is bunk.
I then call a bunch of local plumbers to figure out who has had experience with Manabloc, and 100% of them said they are familiar with it and are trained on it. I find that hard to believe since this system is only in a couple hundred thousand houses in the nation. Anyhow, I ended up having Rescue Rooter come to the house b/c they were the only ones who would provide a free estimate with no strings attached. Some of the other “free estimates” were gimmicky and actually would charge you if they had to turn a handle b/c that would then be considered “physical” for them and I’d owe them money.
Anyhow, Rescue Rooter didn’t seem promising at first. The guy never showed up during his time allotted window, and a 2nd guy was called in to take a look since the first was a no-show. The 2nd guy comes in and he’s never seen the Manabloc. He played it off like he was familiar with it but through the course of the inspection, he kept asking me what it was called and how it worked, so he clearly had no experience with it. I was preparing myself for disappointment.
And then he says that the problem is the cartridge which resides behind the shower handle. It seemed weird he would conclude this since he was asking so many questions about Manabloc, only to conclude that it had nothing to do with Manabloc. All he did was let the water run as he turned the handle back and forth to verify no hot water was coming through, but whatever, he said he was sure that it was the cartridge and quoted me a few hundred dollar estimate. Yikes but he was really friendly about it and said I could go investigate at Home Depot to see if it’s something I could do myself.
We looked at some online videos and then followed his advice to go to Home Depot. The employee was awesome! Yay for highly trained employees! He knew exactly the right tool for us to use to pull the cartridge out and knew exactly which cartridge we needed after we showed him a couple pictures of the shower. Everything cost a bit over $50 so we went back home to try it out. At this point, we were still skeptical that this was the problem but we figured we’d give it a go.
The cartridge is a beast to take out. That tool made it a lot easier but it was still tough since you really feel like you’re going to rip your wall apart since you have to yank and twist pretty severely. Anyhow, we finally fiddle around with it a ton to get it installed, and it worked! Hot water flowing through again. Hooray!!
We were really proud of ourselves and know how to fix these things now, and we were really grateful for the help we got from Rescue Rooters and Home Depot (plug plug)!! J
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