A Weird Pre-Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! For my beloved I got an elongated ADA 18" high Kohler toilet... how romantic! I got and installed it on Tuesday and it took way longer than all the videos I watched had led me to believe. One reason is because I tried using Fluidmaster's Better Than Wax toilet seal instead of a wax ring for the seal and spent well over an hour trying to get it to fit right, but no matter what I did I could not get the toilet to sit flush with the floor, it always had some wiggle to it. So I eventually gave up with that and tried Korky's Wax-Free gasket, another wax-free alternative. This thing worked great, fit just right the first time with no wiggle. Then another thing that slowed me down was that the 9" water line we had didn't reach the tank so I had to go to the store and pick up a 16", but when I got home and tried to hook it up I realized I had picked up a sink faucet water line. I had definitely been in the toilet repair area when I picked it up so someone must have just thrown it in the wrong box when they went to put it back, thus I had to go back to the store, return it, and buy the right one.

Yesterday turned out to be a weird day. At 4AM our power had gone out, and we knew the exact time because when it happened the alarm on our UPS battery backup started wailing like someone was trying to kill a bag full of angry cats. There's supposed to be a way to turn the alarm off but it doesn't seem to work so I just turned off the UPS. I had noticed it was snowing outside before heading to bed and in the morning everything was covered in like 10 inches of snow. Also, the giant oak tree, which was more like two oak trees attached at the base, had fallen over. So no more oak tree :(. It hit and crushed the metal dog run fence in several spots but I can't see if it did any damage to the wooden fence further back as there's too many branches in the way.

Due to all the snow, Treese couldn't get to work so she got to have a snow day. Unfortunately, the power outage lasted until 5pm so it wasn't the most enjoyable snow day. It was really cold so we tried to keep bundled up and used the gas fireplace for heat which we haven't used in a long, long time (after taking out the fake fire log of course). We also used that fire to cook some canned raviolis since our gas stove doesn't function without power, which is a terrible design flaw. Who designs a gas stove to not work without power? It was around 5PM when the power finally came back on which was nice because it was beginning to get too dark to do anything. Once the power came back our living room clock started making a loud buzzing sound from inside, not like an alarm but like there was something wrong, so I unplugged it. I plugged it into a different outlet but the buzzing persisted. I tried to set the time but it was unresponsive so I think it's toast. Also, the cooling fans in our NVR got really noisy so I think I'll have to replace those. I haven't noticed any other problems yet so hopefully that's it.