Busy Days and Broken Toilets

It always seems that as the temperature climbs my calendar gets fuller, especially the weekends. I am coming off my first solo close at work. Which has kept me very busy during the day. Life in general has kept me very busy in the evenings.

This coming weekend I am going on a retreat up at Loon Lake (I never heard of it either). It should be fun though. I am going with a bunch of people from my Bible study group, we call ourselves ‘FaithWorks’ (http://faithworksstjohnrochester.blogspot.com/).
In a couple of weeks a few of us are going to a music festival thing down in Ohio. It’s a Christian music thing. There is going to be a couple dozen bands, speakers, seminars, in addition to other things like a water park and various other activities. I am taking Michael with me. I figure this will be a good opportunity to spend time with him, expose him to different kinds of music than what he normally listens too, and let him meet some of the kids that he’ll be in the youth group with next year.

I have spent the last several days getting things together and figuring out what I need to accomplish prior to each of these trips. On Monday night I got home from running errands, just in time to watch the Pistons win game 7 of the conference finals. I sit down on the couch and I notice this odd noise, like water running, but not a noise I normally hear. Going to investigate I realize the noise is coming from the tank on my toilet. It was making this odd hissing noise. I pulled up the plunger thing and made the noise stop. This stopped it but only for a short time. But the game was on so I put it out of my mind.

Getting ready for bed that I used it and it flushed just fine. I decided to look into fixing it the next day after work. Tuesday morning after using it I flushed and…nothing happened. Opening the tank I realized the plunger thing was all the way down and the water was rushing in non-stop, but the tank was not filling. Inspite of not having any caffiene yet I knew I needed to turn off the water. I also knew I was in for a lesson on how toilets work. At work I found a website called toiletology 101. It was full of very helpful information. I learned things I had no idea about. Like the valve thing at the bottom of the tank that seals it allowing the water to fill up has a name. That valve thing is called a ‘flapper’. And every other part inside your toilet tank has an actual name as well. This all makes perfect sense but have you ever opened your toilet and asked yourself ‘what is this piece called?’ I never had.

Anyway, I figured out what I needed to do to get it fixed. I went to Home Depot and bought the replacement parts. With a little bit of help from my Dad (he had the tool that I discovered I didn’t have and didn’t realize I would ever need) I got the job done in less than an hour. Now the toilet is fixed and is much quieter than before. So things are good again at the Ragryph house.

I’ll fill you in on the happenings of the retreat when I get back.