Saturday - November 30, 2019

Free is the best price

OK, we made it through Thanksgiving. We had a great time at her dad’s, had tons of good food and good company, and didn’t get caught in a hurricane or a blizzard on the drive home this time. So, winning!!  Had my mother and brother down here for an extended visit, and fed them 4 or 5 times while cooking up a storm. As always, the bread I took got eaten immediately; didn’t get a chance to have fun with the “panda pee” jokes I had ready. The two kinds of stuffing went quickly too, although one got scorched a bit when the hostess reheated them a bit much. Her oven was running real hot; the turkey was done 2 hours sooner than it should have been. The white wine I brought, a 2015 Poilly-Fume, was quite nice and I managed to get several glasses of it. And her cheesecake was excellent, with or without the fresh raspberry reduction topping. So that was a plus, all around. And we’ve nibbled up most of the leftovers already.

Our breaking toilet didn’t break, and it survived our guests. A small miracle. We spent a couple hours this morning shopping online for a new one, perhaps a better one, but couldn’t quite agree on which one to get. The ADA rules have taken over the toilet industry, and it’s difficult to even find a “standard” height (15” tall) toilet; nearly everything is a “comfort height” “right height” et al ADA-compliant height 17” bowl, which is fine if you’re really old, in a wheelchair, or well over 6 feet tall. For the rest of us, it’s a bit of a balancing act. The one we have is like that, and it’s really too tall for her, seeing as she’s barely 5 feet. So after not zeroing in on one particular model, I looked up a replacement 4215A tank, and when I finally found one it was 80% of the price of an entire regular toilet, or a third the price of a fancy one. So ... what the heck, let me see if it’s under warranty from American Standard. A few web page menus later, a whole lot of “clicking in circles”, and I gave up on trying to get a chat mode session going, and found the actual telephone contact number off in one dusty corner of their site. Called them, went through a whole bunch of “press 1 for ...” steps, and then got in the wait queue. Somebody answered finally, and was really nice, and helpful, and within a minute or two I had a new tank being shipped to me for no cost. Free. It’s going to take about 10 days to get here, so it’ll be super glue and duct tape and prayers until then. But spending nothing but some of my weekend time is a lot cheaper than dropping $450 on a new fancy throne. So I’m happy. Meanwhile, I gave ours a really close inspection, and I think the very slow leak is probably coming from where the float valve thingy screws through the bottom of the tank. So when the new one gets here I’ll make sure to have some fresh washers and a little tube of silicon caulk, so that I can put all the old internals in the new tank and not have the drips.

And we’ve got snow in the forecast for Monday.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/30/2019 at 03:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner