Plumbing can be kinda fun

What a great sports weekend! We did make one trip to Ikea and walked out an hour later with a shelf, but we spent most of the weekend at home in the gameroom playing pool, eating spinach dip, and watching games. I was sad that Nebraska lost on one of the last plays of the game, but we were excited of course that the Longhorns, Colts, and Cowboys won. And the Packers finally won! Our Packers grill cover on the back patio has a new glow.

Angela and I have been together for seven years and you would think we know everything about each other by this point, but she continues to amaze me with seemingly endless capabilites. Yesterday she was a plumber. We decided to change out some faucets in our bathroom sinks, and it turned out to be a lot more involved than we thought it would be. Mostly for Angela. I'm just the helper when it comes to that sort of thing. We don't want any home improvement projects to hinge primarliy upon my ability.

Angela went to Lowes 4 times yesterday for various plumbing supplies, and one time she came home with a blowtorch. Scary! The plumber on duty at Lowes asked her how handy she was, and after they talked for awhile he decided she was capable of some light soldering. Melting pipes? Oh dear. He told her to torch the seal on the copper tubing under the sink, remove those pipes, and put on new tubes with compression valves. My plumber vocabulary has expanded in the past couple of days. We were both nervous about torching part of the master bathroom, but Angela thought she could do it and wanted to forge ahead. We would rather risk burning the house down than pay a plumber anyway. So I stood behind her with a fire extinguisher while she sat on the floor and shot the flame into the cabinet. All plumbers should take such thorough safety measures and employ a backup fire-extinguisher-holder. At one point one of the boards that we put up as a buffer started to smolder, but not enough to require me to pull the pin on the fire extinguisher. Whew! Overall it was a success. Angela was giddy! We finished two out of three faucets yesterday, and we're going to finish the last one today because Angela only works a half day and will be home this afternoon. I'm excited that we'll have extended quality time, even if it does involve soldering pipes.

The coolest thing about owning a blowtorch now, is that we can make a mean creme brulee! I'll be all over that. And Angela can back me up with fire extinguisher.