Day 2274

Instead of calling a plumber today, I tried to fix the problem myself. This isn't always a good idea, but I didn't think I had much to lose. My plumbing skills are so limited that I seldom even attempt anything that could cause real damage. I've been thinking that the garbage disposal in the kitchen has been making a funny noise, so I ran the disposal for a long time while flushing it with water from the sink. Eventually, the noise went away and the sink seems to drain normally now. There must have been something clogged inside the disposal. The slow shower drain took a bit more work. I unscrewed the cover to the drain and discovered that soap residue had narrowed the diameter of the drain pipe to about half of its normal width. I got a piece of metal and scraped away as much of this gunk as I could, while trying to make sure it didn't fall down the pipe and make the clog worse. After visibly widening the drain hole, I put the drain cover back on and took a shower. The shower worked just fine. I've either saved several hundred dollars in plumbing bills, or just postponed dealing with the real problem a few weeks. Time will tell.

The weather forecast said it was going to rain all day, but failed to mention that the rain would be intermittent. The intermittent showers proved to be a stroke of good luck, since it gave us time to walk the dogs and make sure they both pooped before settling in for a long damp day. I had time to take a few bills to the post office without getting the car wet too, so when the rain did arrive, it was no big deal. The dehumidifier has to work a lot harder on rainy days. I emptied the bucket twice today and even though the unit extracted a lot of water, it never was able to get the humidity below 40%.

I've been seeing ads on TV saying that if you have both AT&T U-verse and an AT&T wireless account, that you would get free unlimited data. Since I have both of these services, I though I'd do a little investigating to see why I wasn't already getting the free 4G data on my phone. I was not terribly surprised to discover that nothing AT&T offers is actually free. Sure, it was possible to have a phone with unlimited voice, text, and data, but you had to pay twice as much per month as I'm currently paying. Also, your data download speed was severely limited after you reached a certain threshold. At least I didn't have to go to the AT&T store to learn this disappointing information. Whenever I go to the store, they aggressively try to sell me one of their overpriced home security systems or convince me to add a second phone to my wireless account. I'm not a big fan of the phone company. Probably neither are you. We all depend on our phones these days, but I've yet to meet anyone who actually liked dealing with their wireless provider.

I thought I'd get started on my taxes today, but that will have to wait until another day. It's amazing how little I get accomplished on grey, rainy days. The dogs don't like the rain and neither do I. We'd better get used to it though. It looks like the rest of the week is going to be even worse than it was today. For those of you who think I'm always too negative, there were no accidents in the house today. Dot pooped outside in the morning and after dinner. That's today's little ray of sunshine.

Connor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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