Doug's Sounding Board

Short version: The on-demand water heater is working again. Long version: For most of the winter the on-demand water heater wasn’t paying attention to our demands. Sometimes it would take several tries to get hot water, sometimes it would come right away, sometimes it would never come. It seemed to work better with the cover […]

We’ve been fighting with our decomposed granite paths almost since they were installed. They were installed with a glue sealant on them to help keep them in place so the dogs wouldn’t track the small particles in. The granite particles make a great abrasive on the wood floors, making them look old after a couple […]

A month and a half ago I had an occasion that ideally I would wear a tie to. No problem, get all dressed up and go for a tie. I couldn’t find one. Not in suit jackets. Not in drawers. Not in closets. All my ties had vanished and there was no time left to […]

We finally had part of our fence replaced in the front. It was leaning at abou a 30 degree angle ever since the winds hit last year and we think it was mostly being help up by the passion flower vines on top. Our neighbor decided it was time before we did and called the […]

I didn’t think about the connection before, but Monday morning when I came in to work the power strip in my cube was dead and one of the bricks plugged into it didn’t survive either. I’m thinking whatever was the fix took out my power strip in the process. Unrelated to that but still odd […]

My main goal this past weekend was to finally re-claim the tv room. That didn’t quite happen, but I got a lot of stuff put away so the majority of floor space is available again and I’ll be able to vacuum it tonight to start on the last of the cleaning. I was also able […]

In preparation for Nicole’s brother and his wife visit two weekends ago, we put a new faucet in the other bathroom, put in a new towel rack, and fixed the bathroom vanity door (that I broke when it broke my fall). Unfortunately they didn’t end up coming but those are in place for others, like […]

This past three day weekend was a lot of work. Friday night, Nicole and I drove to Sacramento so we could paint the inside of her mother’s house to ready it for sale. We managed to paint the ceilings in 4 rooms, fully prep three of those rooms, and paint half the dining room and […]

We got a Christmas tree on Friday nght and got it set up. It didn’t even take long to assemble the cheap stand that the guy running the tree lot called “marriage enders.” Saturday all the decorations came out including the Christmas village and a tree that lights up. The batteries were corroded in so […]

When you bring in some fill-dirt to modify the shape of your yard, one thing you’re never told is that there are dormant plants and seeds just waiting to pop out. Since our yard has been done I have seen a number of plants (and weeds) in our yard that weren’t already there and weren’t […]