Welcome Home?

As I mentioned, there's been a lot going on, and we are without our team leader, mom, so we're kind of winging it over here. Mom had to abruptly take off and return to see her parents after a short stint back home, so at least we got to have her for a few days. With her gone, we had a very busy weekend in store, with N having a hockey tournament in Lake Placid (LP), and A having a school dance and big music weekend with her band. We managed to connect all the dots, but not without some serious hoops to jump through.

On Friday of last week N and I headed up to New York to play in this tournament. I have to confess, I wasn't completely thrilled about leaving, what with all that's going on and the fact that I haven't been working at all these past several weeks. It's a double-whammy going away because not only am I not making the big bucks (to support our fabulous lifestyles), but it also requires spending loads of cash on food, hotels, and countless hours at the spa... just kidding. A arranged to stay at her friends house for the weekend, so we were good on that front, but the timing just wasn't that ideal. Then again, is it ever ideal? It's this kind of thinking that makes it hard to even get out the front door, so if you're a whiner like me (hopefully not), you just have to get over it.

Anyway, for the record, we had a great weekend, with N bonding with his teammates, and me bonding with the dads. Talk about a guy's weekend - hockey, fried foods, and beer. What more could you ask for? There's more to tell about the weekend later, but suffice it to say a good time was had by all. The drive up there was a little sketchy, but coming home was a breeze, except that we returned to a freezing cold house. I left the heater on but when we walked in the door, it felt really cold. The thermometer read 40 degrees, which is about 20 degrees too low. I went down into the basement to find that our boiler had taken a dive. Total bummer. I just had the thing cleaned and inspected (which it passed), how could this happen?

To throw salt on the wound, this also meant we had no hot water, so we couldn't shower, as well. AND, our upstairs toilet was leaking. Fortunately, I didn't sit and whine about it (well, maybe a little) and went into action. First thing is getting the fire going, and then trying to figure out what was wrong with the boiler, which means turning to the Amazing PR Man for advice. I got some tips but nothing really worked, so I was going to have to break out the big guns and call the gas company for a service call. We have a service plan, so it wasn't an outrageous idea, but who knows when they could have made it over, and we still had to pay for parts. Meanwhile, we're grungy and miserable, though at least we had the fire.

The toilet was easy enough to deal with - I just shut off the water intake valve, though that hardly solved the problem, it just temporarily ameliorated it. Clearly I was going to have to break out my tools and be a real man for a day... or at least a real man in training.

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Things actually worked out pretty well, but more on this later. Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to Rick Umali for the pic.