I forgot my camera.

I'm completely annoyed by this fact, as Kate and I went off for a walk that turned into a hike around her house this afternoon.

I was up at Kate's place to talk about her garden plans. They have a lot of trees around their house, but a great spot out to the side of their property (back yard? front yard? I have no idea what they consider the front of the house and what they consider the back of the house) where the sun shines nicely and the area is nominally flat, and hey, there are already raised beds.

Kate wanted to talk about her garden plans. We walked around the house, through the various planting areas, talking about plants and bushes and trees. We talked about deers and rabbits and other small animals, about what could be planted where, what couldn't be planted where. We talked about soil and amendments and irrigation. Kate pretty much had the layout done, and I think needed some confirmation that they were good. Of course they were (it's Kate), but I have to admit very ambitious. I think it'll be fabulous.

After we talked about the upcoming gardens, Kate asked if I would be up for a walk. What? Exercise? Heavens yes.

Kate and Mike live on a thousand acre lot, where the 120 house in the division take up about 100 acres of that lot. The rest is some sort of land trust open space, managed by the community. Kate recently became one of the open space management committee members, and had a few stories to tell about managing the land as we walked.

We walked over to Whalemouth Cave, which is when I started completely kicking myself for not bringing my camera. The walk over was great, but the cave was totally fun and entertaining. Some parts of the rock around it could have been bouldered, making the spot even better.

The walk back was much quicker than the walk out, though the hike past the water tanks was just as hard as the first time I walked it, annoyingly so, I might add.

I wish I hadn't forgotten my camera. Maybe I can convince Kate to walk the hike again, next time with my camera.

I went to the Friday night Velocity session this evening, as I had spent most of the day sitting on my butt at a client's office. I needed to move, but debated going to the class or just going for a long walk with the dogs or maybe a short run by myself. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't spent the hour of travel time to get to class and return home, and went for a run instead.

When I arrived at Velocity, about a minute before class was scheduled to start, I dashed to the bathroom quickly, desperately needing to be there for a short bit. When I ran back out of class, I couldn't figure out which group of people was the adult fitness class. I recognized no one in what could have been the adult group, nor did I recognize the instructor as an instructor (I knew him as the program director, not a coach or instructor).

High on this morning's successful 5 minute light switch repair, I decided to change out the faucet in the bathroom. I had an hour to spare, I had light in the bathroom, I had a dog to keep me company, I didn't really see any reason not to switch out the faucet.

Ah, the ignorance of youth.

This "ignorance of youth" is also known as chucking one's common sense out the window by not asking oneself, "Do you recall how bad 2009 is going? Do you REALLY want to change out a faucet when your luck is so bad you've caught ONE green light in the last two weeks?" The answer to these questions is of course, "Oh shit! You're right! This is a bad idea, let me wait until February," and not "Bring it on!"

I pulled the faucet out of the box and looked at it. There was the faucet, but there was also the drain stop. Neither the sink nor the bathtub in this bathroom actually hold water, with both stoppers being removed by the cleaners who were "fixing" the sink and the time. I was pleased that I could replace the broken "fixed" drain stop with this new drain stop.

The first thing I did was unscrew the lever in the back of the drain stop. Oh, look at that, OF COURSE the lever didn't work, part of it was MISSING. I'm quite sure how the person who replaced the drain stop last time though it was going to work, given there WASN'T ANYTHING TO ATTACH.

Okay, fine, out came the drain pipe, which had been replaced a year or two ago by the cleaners. Simple enough, unscrew the bottom, unscrew the top, pull apart. I noticed a washer on the bottom of the top part of the drain pipe, the part that shows up in the sink, which was nice, as it meant that I might not need the plumbers putty (which Mark indicated should be avoided when possible). I started cleaning out the drain hole in the sink so that the replacement would install cleanly.

After cleaning for a bit, I noticed there was some putty in a groove in the sink between the top of the sink drain hold and the bottom of the sink drain hole. Thinking this was a little odd, I started cleaning it up a bit. I cleaned for a bit longer, until I realized that the putty was all the way around the sink, completely blocking the slot.

I looked up the sink, down the sink, around the sink, and through the hole, then realized that this groove was the bottom part of the drain that started at the overflow holes at the top of the inside of the sink. The person who had installed the last drain pipe replacement had completely blocked the drain holes, which meant that any overflow water would have stayed inside my sink. Worse, it would have stayed there, even after any drain had been unclogged.

Who the hell does this kind of crap?

As sure as I was about the idiocy I was witnessing, I wasn't 100% sure there wasn't some other rational thinking going on, so I called up my dad and described what I was seeing. Surely whoever had done this was retarded and I should clean out whatever putty was there, right? Dad agreed that, yes, the putty had to go. He, too, couldn't think of any reason for it being there other than stupidity.

So, I started digging. And digging. And digging.

Dad stayed on the phone chatting with me as I cleaned out the putty, and started disassembling the connections from the wall to the faucet. He laughed when I sputtered as water fell onto me when I didn't turn off the water QUITE ENOUGH (that last 1% is the difference between a drip and a drop), but encouraged me during the rest of the detachments. When I was stuck on removing one of the connectors near the faucet, he asked if I had the right tool: a wrench with a moon shape head and a T handle. The head rotated perpendicular to the handle, and either tightened or loosened the nut depending on which perpendicular you set the head.

I mentioned to Dad how I had a lot of tools, thanks to Mike, but didn't seem to have that one. Dad found his wrench, took a picture of it, then learned how to send multimedia pictures with his phone to send it to me. He was so adorable in his excitement. It's technology great? It's it great to be alive these days?

Off to the store I went to purchase a basin wrench for myself. It's times like these that I really wish, like most weeks, that Mike and Kate still lived four doors down from us. I suspect Mike would have a basin wrench (the term of which I learned at the store).

I returned home, took a picture of me and my new wrench, sent it to Dad in return, undid the faucet fittings with my spanking new wrench, cleaned everything up, including the now slightly dirty drain stop, quickly installed the faucet, wrapped the pipe fitting threads with teflon tape, reassembled the piping, and tightened everything up.

I brieftly marvelled at just how disgusting all of the parts I removed were: water damaged, eroded and dirty. I was more than a little surprised we hadn't had worse problems with this sink, and quite thankful we never tried the overflow drain holes.

The faucet isn't perfect, I've noticed. It has a dent on the side, and the handles are a little loose. I'm sure the faucet was a return at Home Depot, based on these problems, but I've decided to be pleased with my successful install, and the happy with the new faucet. The style matches the rest of the bathroom fixes fairly well, which makes me happy. I choose to focus on this, and not the wobbly handle.

Until it annoys me too much. Then I'll ask Andy to help me tighten them.

The dogs and I went for a walk today, longer than our normal walk. Since I've become so addicted to short Starbucks Signature Hot Chocolates, I decided that I could have one, and enjoy it guilt-free, if I walked to the Starbucks to purchase it. A walk to the nearest Starbucks would pretty much be a waste of time if I didn't take the dogs, too (that, or listen to a podcast), so off the three of us went.

Fortunately, "walking to Starbucks" doesn't mean "take the normal route" or "take the longest route." We started on our normal route, heading south, then turning west. Last time I took the girls this way, along the long walk route, they took to *sprinting* across the street, then *screeching* to a halt as their noses caught wind of an interesting smell, which, on a new path, meant every 15 feet.

Today, we walked along the sidewalks near the local middle school. Several classes of kids were out for gym class, which started by running around the perimeter of the school's athletic fields (about 10 acres or so), before stopping at the tennis courts. My heart went out to the stragglers in the bunch. I so wanted to tell them "learn how to play ultimate, here, I'll show you."

I didn't, though.

When we arrived at the Starbucks, I tied the girls up to a post and went in. Unfortunately, the line was annoyingly long, and, despite the loud din in the store, I could *still* hear Bella howling outside. Dogs.

I asked the woman in front of me if she could order me a short Signature hot chocolate and handed her $5. When I left to calm the dogs, then came back in to see where she was in line, she needed to leave the line for her son who REALLY needed to pee. I offered to buy her what she wanted, which was fortunately only a $1 milk. She handed me a $10, but I passed it back to her with the milk, which sorta weirded her out, I think.

Tragically, the hot chocolate was a regular, and not a Signature, so I was massively disappointed in the drink.

We started back home, taking a less trafficked route than our walk out. We walked along a fence that bordered a sports field next to a park. As we were passing the field, a squirrel sat out in the middle of the field, watching us.

I couldn't resist.

We wandered onto the field, with Annie crouching low, and Bella completely oblivious. I released Annie, and watched her slink sprint close to the squirrel, then shirt into full speed as the squirrel took off. She *almost* caught it when it zigged up a tree then leaped back to the fence. Annie was under the squirrel as it leaped, and only barely missed it. The speed of the chase was impressive.

The walk wasn't completely fun and games, though. At one point, we walked by a house where a good dozen people somberly walked out, all dressed in black, saying little. I wanted to offer my condolences on their loss, but thought that might be just a little too weird.

We also managed to visit a napping mail carrier, who was sleeping in his truck. I thought about taking a picture, but figured that it might get the guy in trouble. I somehow managed to refrain.

I'm glad we went for the walk, though I do wish the hot chocolate tasted better.

ADP called me today. ADP is the company that handles a lot of payrolls in the country. Mike had used them before, so we went with them again with CodingClan, mostly out of default.

So, they called me. The woman on the other end of the line identified herself as Julia, for which I was relieved, as she had called last month and I was unable to reach her to find out why she had called.

After identifying herself, Julia asked me who handles the unemployment insurance with the company. I was a bit confused at her question, as I couldn't immediately figure out why she needed to know that information. Maybe it was for taxes? I told her our carrier.

"How much do we pay a month?" was her next question.

"Why do you need to know this information?" I requested.

Turns out that she wanted to send me information about the other services ADP offers, and wanted to tailor the offers to fit the needs of our company.

Okay, this is the fuckup of a company that misfiled our taxes cusing the IRS to send numerous letters to the company, failed to correct the mistake for two years despite many letters and phone calls from us, and habitually withdrew too much money from our accounts to deposit overpayment of nonrefundable taxes in our name, costing the company thosands of dollars, and she wants to waste my time asking me to give her information on my company so that she can send me MORE information on crappy services her shitty company provides?

No.

Unfortunately, I had to tell her three times that I'm not interested. So not only does the company suck, its employees are either hard of hearing or intentionally dumb.

I can't say I'm surprised.