My Toilet, My life
Those are two separate topics, just to clarify.
So as some of you may know last week some time a chunk of the 1st floor bathroom ceiling fell out. We had known for a while that there was an issue with water leakage in the upstairs bathroom, the floor has been squishy and there have been signs of it on the ceiling below. I wasn't sure where the water was coming from, I first though it was the shower but after inspecting the hole in the ceiling saw that it had formed right under the sewage pipe from the toilet. Lovely, I know.
So on Sunday Teresa came over for Lost and I had her take a look at the damage. She has had much experience with toilets after Tim helped her redo her bathroom and then she gave two toilets to her parents, and installed them herself, for christmas gifts. Shse looked up at the hole and where the water seemed to be coming from and immediately deduced that the wax ring which seals the toilet to the sewage pipe was leaking. We checked upstairs and she noticed that neither of the two bolts that hold the toilet to the floor were there any more. Basically there was nothing holding the toilet in place except gravity, which isn't much when you consider all the rocking and rolling that goes on on the thing.
On Monday she was off work and took me to the hardware store to get a new wax ring a bolts and helped me fix the problem. Sure enough when we moved the toilet and checked the ring a large portion of it was completely missing. The realization that all this time it had been used toilet water seeping into the floor and dripping into the bathroom below really kinda made the whole situation seem a lot grosser. We replaced the wax ring with only a small miss-hap when I dropped one of the bolts down the sewage pipe. Hopefully it's not big enough to get lodged and block up the drain.
No more leaking toilet! However, after T consulted with her Toilet Trainers (Tim and Jeff) they both agreed that due to the extent of the damage to the ceiling it was very probable that the floor was so soaked that it could give way. They recommended not using the toilet until the floor has completely dried out. I think I'm going to use this as the perfect excuse to just tare up the floor completely, replace it and put down heated tile. I'm going to get Tim over here this weekend hopefully to guide me on that process.
On to the second topic. Lately I've noticed that my productivity in the lab goes way down the longer I'm sitting there. I think my brain gets board with seeing the same scenery for more than 4 or 5 hours. I've been forcing myself to sit there, trying to do work, after my brain has already decided it was done because I felt I hadn't been there long enough. Today I decided to try something different and came home for lunch. I'm hoping that breaking up the day into two roughly 4 hour chunks will help give my brain a brake and a chance to recharge. It also lets me have a relaxing, more elaborate, lunch than just bringing one in a bag. It also goes without saying that it gives me a change to write LiveJournal entries since usually after I get home I'm too busy making dinner and doing whatever evening activities I have planned to make an entry.
I'm going to see how it goes this week and may adopt it for good if it works out well.
So as some of you may know last week some time a chunk of the 1st floor bathroom ceiling fell out. We had known for a while that there was an issue with water leakage in the upstairs bathroom, the floor has been squishy and there have been signs of it on the ceiling below. I wasn't sure where the water was coming from, I first though it was the shower but after inspecting the hole in the ceiling saw that it had formed right under the sewage pipe from the toilet. Lovely, I know.
So on Sunday Teresa came over for Lost and I had her take a look at the damage. She has had much experience with toilets after Tim helped her redo her bathroom and then she gave two toilets to her parents, and installed them herself, for christmas gifts. Shse looked up at the hole and where the water seemed to be coming from and immediately deduced that the wax ring which seals the toilet to the sewage pipe was leaking. We checked upstairs and she noticed that neither of the two bolts that hold the toilet to the floor were there any more. Basically there was nothing holding the toilet in place except gravity, which isn't much when you consider all the rocking and rolling that goes on on the thing.
On Monday she was off work and took me to the hardware store to get a new wax ring a bolts and helped me fix the problem. Sure enough when we moved the toilet and checked the ring a large portion of it was completely missing. The realization that all this time it had been used toilet water seeping into the floor and dripping into the bathroom below really kinda made the whole situation seem a lot grosser. We replaced the wax ring with only a small miss-hap when I dropped one of the bolts down the sewage pipe. Hopefully it's not big enough to get lodged and block up the drain.
No more leaking toilet! However, after T consulted with her Toilet Trainers (Tim and Jeff) they both agreed that due to the extent of the damage to the ceiling it was very probable that the floor was so soaked that it could give way. They recommended not using the toilet until the floor has completely dried out. I think I'm going to use this as the perfect excuse to just tare up the floor completely, replace it and put down heated tile. I'm going to get Tim over here this weekend hopefully to guide me on that process.
On to the second topic. Lately I've noticed that my productivity in the lab goes way down the longer I'm sitting there. I think my brain gets board with seeing the same scenery for more than 4 or 5 hours. I've been forcing myself to sit there, trying to do work, after my brain has already decided it was done because I felt I hadn't been there long enough. Today I decided to try something different and came home for lunch. I'm hoping that breaking up the day into two roughly 4 hour chunks will help give my brain a brake and a chance to recharge. It also lets me have a relaxing, more elaborate, lunch than just bringing one in a bag. It also goes without saying that it gives me a change to write LiveJournal entries since usually after I get home I'm too busy making dinner and doing whatever evening activities I have planned to make an entry.
I'm going to see how it goes this week and may adopt it for good if it works out well.