I did glorious battle with the plumbing in the downstairs kitchen last night. Yes, I installed the dishwasher.

First, I had to arm myself at Home Depot. I needed a power cord and a water supply line. I forgot that I also needed a clamp for the drain hose.

I attached the power cord first. That's electrical. Electrical is easier for me than is plumbing. Then I attached the 90-degree elbow that pretty much every single dishwasher in the world needs, but no dishwasher manufacturer supplies. Then I attached the drain hose to the dishwasher. The dishwasher side of things was done.

The battle really began when trying to feed both the drain hose and the water supply line through the hole that was drilled in the cabinet. After a good deal of pushing and pulling and tugging, I made them fit.

I attached the water supply line to the provided place and turned on the water. I could immediately hear the bubbling... I hadn't tightened the 90-degree elbow thingy enough. I was afraid of overtightening it, I guess. I shouldn't have been. Two full turns of the elbow later, I re-hooked it up. I turned on the water again and saw the slow dripping. Either the supply line was leaky or I had damaged it when pulling it through the slightly-too-small hole.

Ugh.

I left it alone and went to rehearsal. The dishwasher was gaining the upper hand, but the battle was not yet over.

On the way home from rehearsal, I stopped by Home Depot again to re-arm myself. I bought another supply line, and this time, I remembered the clamp for the drain hose.

When I returned to the battle, I used my reciprocating saw to make the hole a little bigger. Now the new supply line and the drain hose fit through perfectly! Hooray! I hooked up both the supply line and the drain hose, turned on the water, and began to taste victory! No leaking! It was time to make the final push and turn on the dish washer.

I put some detergent in (because it had been sitting for a while and needed to be washed out) and turned it on. I could hear the dishwasher filling with water! Another victory! I was almost done! The battle was almost over...

...or WAS it?

When it came time for the dishwasher to drain, I heard noises like it was TRYING to drain, but no water was leaving the dishwasher. None. WHAT?? My first thought was that there was something wrong with the dishwasher. Without a big bucket, I wasn't going to test that theory. My second thought was more correct: There was something wrong with the installer of the dishwasher.

I turned the dishwasher off and unhooked the drain hose from the garbage disposal. I put my finger in the drain hole and found a blockage. Garbage disposals have a plug that has to be removed BEFORE the dishwasher drain is hooked up. Oops! At least I knew that there were no leaks in the drain hose!

I tried to break the plug out with no luck. I was going to have to remove the garbage disposal. The drain pipe came off easily. Since I had installed a disposal before, I knew how to remove it from the bottom of the sink. Then I could put the disposal in my lap, put a screwdriver in the dishwasher drain hole, and hit the plug with a hammer. A couple of hits and the plug came loose. I had to fish it out of the disposal, but I did that while the disposal was still in my lap and WASN'T plugged in. *shudder*

I re-installed the disposal, hooked up the disposal drain hose yet again, and turned the dishwasher back on. It started draining! Victory was mine!

Well... almost.

Drip... drip... drip...

The drain pipe from the disposal was dripping. I re-fitted and re-tightened a few pipes and the dripping stopped.

I located and installed a couple of screws to hold the dishwasher in place, installed the kick plate, and I was done!

At 1:00 in the morning.

It was a glorious battle! I was victorious!

Apparently, the city of Pleasant Grove won't issue an occupancy permit for my basement until at least the dishwasher and the range are installed.  Why?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Hmmm.

So today during my lunch break, my brother and I are going to go to my house and move the range from the kitchen upstairs to the kitchen downstairs.  I also happen to have a spare dishwasher, so I'll install that today as well.  Then we'll get the occupancy permit that we need.

Who knew?  We certainly didn't.  We weren't ready to buy a new range yet.  We haven't done our usual over-researching of ranges.  We still don't know whether we want gas or electric upstairs.  Too many things to decide!  Who knows?  Maybe we'll end up buying a new range for upstairs, and maybe we'll end up dragging the old one back upstairs again after inspection passes.

...the basement will be done!

The final inspection has happened. I don't know if it passed or not, but I have to reason to think it wouldn't.

Today, the drywall guy was there repairing holes and dings. He put a lot of quality time into the stairway, just like we thought he would. The trim people will be back to fix dings in the trim. The painters will be back to touch up everything that needs paint work. The electricians will be back to install a switch for the garbage disposal (oops) and put in the dimmer that I paid for...

According to the project manager, everything will be done within the next couple of weeks. That means that we'll be watching movies on the big screen... er... big WALL by mid april! Woohoo!!

Wow.

I'm getting SO excited!

Mostly, it will be nice to have the basement back again. We'll probably ding the walls a bit when moving stuff back down to storage. But then I don't have to wait for someone else to come fix it. I'll be doing it myself!

You'd think by now I'd know
What a mess you'd make of me.
You'd think by now that I would see.
But I'm a slow learner.

And we always seem to start
At the beginning of the end
Some things are hard for me to understand.
'Cause I'm a slow learner.

Everybody knows, everybody sees.
I guess everybody's just smarter than me.
Some things you just can't teach
A slow learner.

You'd think by now I'd try
To learn from my mistakes.
But my heart bends, it never seems to break.
I'm a slow learner.

Everybody knows, everybody sees.
I guess everybody's just smarter than me.
Some things you just can't teach
A slow learner.

-- Boo Hewerdine

The Odd Couple is over. Closing night is done, the costumes have been turned back in, and the props (and garbage) have been put away.  The theater will again be dark.  It's the time that I spend looking back at the whole experience and see what I can learn.

First the bad: the director. I'm not going to mention her by name. The point of this isn't to humiliate her. It's simply to vent and get it over with.

I haven't ever worked with a less professional director. She very rarely showed up on time for rehearsals. It's a serious pet peeve of mine. When rehearsal is scheduled for a certain time, it shows a fundamental lack of respect when you show up late, especially when you're the person in charge. When she finally DID show up for rehearsal, we would spend the first 20 minutes to half hour "checking in," which basically meant that we would all answer some question that she would come up with, like "How did you get started in theatre," or "Tell us something good that's happening in your life right now. I'm all for getting to know fellow cast members, but that might be more bearable if it started when rehearsal was supposed to start. After a while, cast members started showing up later and later, because they knew that the director wasn't going to show up on time anyway.

The director spent lots and lots of time rehearsing with the Pigeon sisters and the poker players, but seemed to neglect Oscar and Felix. You know... the two people that made up the odd couple, the FOCUS OF THE FREAKING SHOW. Felix and Oscar got very little direction... little more than blocking. I'm used to getting MUCH more than that. I'm used to getting the kind of direction that the pigeon sisters were getting.

But worst of all, she seemed to take a disinterest in what was going on during rehearsals at time. When I looked out at her during the rehearsal and saw her talking on her cellular phone, playing with her computer, or doing sudoku puzzles (no, I am NOT making this up), it made me more than a little angry.

So when dress rehearsal came, we were definately NOT ready. We would have had the equivalent of another week of rehearsal if we would have actually started rehearsals on time. We would have been able to work much more on things other than where we belonged on stage if we would have actually started rehearsals on time. It would have been nice to get something more from a director.

Maybe I've been spoiled. Maybe the directors I've worked with have been the best of the best. But I KNOW my time could have been put to much MUCH better use. The audiences early-on that PAID to see the performances would have had a lot more fun. They would have had better shows to see.

The only other thing that was severely annoying was an actor that took thing more and more and more over the top every performance. I feared for Felix' safety on closing night. But that's why I hate closing nights. It seems that some people are predisposed to doing something out of the ordinary, just because it's closing night. But that was pretty minor compared to the level of unprofessionalism showed us by the director.

Of course, all through the run of the play, the director came to our cast meeting before each show and gave us notes on the previous performance. That's all well and good, but I'm used to a director letting the cast "own" the show after the rehearsal process is done. And to be fair, lots of the notes were really good, but I believe that these notes would have been given much MUCH earlier in the process IF WE WOULD HAVE STARTED OUR FREAKING REHEARSALS ON TIME! Did I mention that this is one of my pet peeves?

Now for the good.

Dennis Purdie, who played Felix in this production is a very fine character actor. It was a pleasure to spend so much time on stage with him every night. It was great to work extra time with him, trying to polish the scenes we had together. It was fun to feel his enthusiasm for his role, to feel his love for theatre and for the person whose memory we were honoring with this production. I consider Dennis to be a friend and I'm glad to know him.

The production team other than the director was WONDERFUL to work with. Two of them were in the play and the other was the production assistant who spent a lot of her time and energy making sure that the props (especially the food) was ready for each performance. One of them was able to calm me down on a couple of occaisions when I was more-than-normally angry at the unprofessionalism of the director.

The others in the cast were, for the most part, wonderful to work with. I had worked with some of them before, and it's always fun to strengthen old friendships. It's always fun to have more common experience that builds on the friendships that we have. A couple of people in the cast I met for the first time at auditions or at the first readthrough. I love getting to know new people. I'm SUCH a people person.

The performances were a blast! I love hearing people laugh. I love hearing people that have been able to forget their worries and cares and laugh at the story unfolding in front of them. I especially love it when people I know are in the audience. When I recognize the laugh of someone I care about, it means even more to me. It brings joy to me to now that I'm entertaining others.

I'm glad I did this show. it was a fun experience. It was a learning experience. It was difficult at times, even frustrating and maddening. But in the end, I think it was a good show and people were thoroughly entertained.

Now, on to bigger and better things. No Time For Sergeants at the Hale Center Theater in Orem has had a much better start. The directors are EXTREMELY prepared and are incredible at using time wisely, scheduling rehearsal time efficiently, and giving notes that help us develop the characters (yes, most of us are playing multiple characters) that will make the show a success. It's COMPLETELY different from the things that frustrated me with The Odd Couple. It's exactly the experience I NEEDED at this point.

A couple of months ago, my younger son took a test.  It was a BIG, MEAN test, especially for a fourth grader.  It was a three-hour-long test.  He was testing to see if he could be accepted into the school district's Accelerated Learning Lab program.

He knew then that if he was accepted and decided to do it, he would have to change schools for fifth and sixth grades.  He didn't know if he really wanted to do that.  So we told him that he should do the best he could on the test.  If they offered him placement in the program, he didn't necessarily have to accept the placement.  There were HUNDREDS of kids there testing.  Literally.

Yesterday, he received a letter in the mail informing him that he's being offered placement!

As his dad, it's nothing but exciting for me.  I'm extremely poud of him.  I'm excited that he, among hundreds of applicants, did well enough to be placed in the program.  I'm excited about the idea that he'll be more challenged and less bored in school.

But this is a big deal to a fourth grader.  It's a HUGE big deal.  The poor guy could hardly sleep last night.

Today, we drove over to what would become his new school and walked around it.   We've been talking with him about all of the ramifications of going into this program.  But we've told him that in the end, it's HIS decision.  We're going to encourage him to take the placement, and he's even told us that he's pretty sure he's going to do it.  But even if he decides not to do it, I'll be proud of him.

They've started on the carpet! The carpet pad is in everywhere except for the stairs. The carpet has been rough-cut in the large rooms. It's (fortunately) not as brown as we remembered it. It's actually very nice.

This MUST mean that they're getting close to done. What else could there be left to do?

We also found out that the radiant heating system warms the floor in different places upstairs. That's going to be nice in the winter!

Hopefully, they'll be done ahead of schedule. I'm getting antsy. I'm REALLY looking forward to hooking up the sound system and watching movies.

I'm a little later than normal this year.  I don't know why.  I usually file as soon as possible, especially when I'm receiving a refund.

Last summer, I got audited.  It sucked.  But I had all of the documentation, so it turned out okay.  It could have been MUCH worse.  So in order to prevent another audit, I really wanted to go over the numbers a couple more times, just to make sure.

Tonight, I finally had the time to go over everything one more time.  All of the numbers matched up.  Everything looks right.  And in going over the numbers one more time, I found a few hundred dollars' worth of refund that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten.  I had forgotten to check the "points" box on our primary home mortgage, and since we paid points instead of closing costs, it's all tax deductible.

It'll be nice to get more than $6,000 back from the government.  I usually try to not get such a large refund, but since I cashed out stock options, received a large-ish severance package, AND overpaid Social Security Tax last year, we ended up giving Uncle Sam an interest-free loan for a while.

It's going to be helpful, especially since we put so much money in the basement.  It'll be nice to start building savings up again, just in case.

My speakers!

They were installed, installed, installed, installed, installed, installed, installed, and installed!

MY SPEAKERS WERE INSTALLED!

Yes, I'm all excited about that. I am SUCH a geek!

The center speaker, the main speakers, and all the surround speakers are made by Proficient Audio Systems. The subwoofer is made by OEM systems. They're all imbedded in the walls and ceiling.

The one problem: The subwoofer isn't powered. Oops! My receiver only has a pre-amplified output. So if I hooked it up as-is, it wouldn't work very well.

Today, I ordered an amplifier to drive it with.

Now I REALLY can't wait for the basement to be done so I can hook the whole system up. I'm SUCH a geek! But I already said that, didn't I.

The finish electrical is done. We have outlets, we have switches, and we have lights. It's nice to be able to just turn on a light when we want to see downstairs.

The cabinets are also installed. We weren't expecting the insides of the cabinets to be white and to have moveable shelves in them. That's the one thing so far about upscale downstairs that has seemed cheap, but it's not our primary kitchen, so we're not too upset about it.

Today, they're installing the counter tops and the tub surround. By the end of the week, finish plumbing should be completed, including finishing the radiant heating system so it actually works. Hardware (doorknobs, etc) should be done by the end of the week as well.

That means that only the carpet and speaker system remains. After that, there will be a nice long punchlist. But it's coming together very quickly!