Plumbing Woes

In the week since the last post, I have been up to my eyes in plumbing problems. Who would ever be a home-owner, eh? Drainage problems that we thought were resolved back in September last year resurfaced (quite literally), resulting in our nice newly-laid floor in the dining room being pulled up so the plumbers could investigate. Turns out it’s our neighbour’s blockage, so now we have a whole new chapter in the saga ahead of us and I don’t see this going away any time soon.

In other plumbing news (!) we finally attempted to connect up our water filter tap. We had one in our old flat and I was loathe to live without it but didn’t want to leave a hole in the sink unit, so we left it behind. I was chuffed to find the same NSA filter on Ebay and bought it shortly after we moved into the house in February. I located a nice looking tap to go with it (again, an internet purchase) and then it sat in the kitchen waiting for fitting. A friend came by this weekend and made the first attempt, but fell foul of the conversion between US (Imperial) and UK (metric) plumbing fitment sizes. We thought we had anticipated this and arranged for a US connector to be sent from family in the US a month ago, but we didn’t foresee the problems at the tap end of the arrangement. So, now we have a tap in place and a filter in place but they’re not connected, so our water is still a murky white colour from the main tap.

Plumbing aside, we had a very productive weekend – 25 of our 85 boxes were finally unpacked, which is the biggest progress we’ve made so far. Mostly book collections and Art/Crafts materials; things we’ve had to live without for the last year and a half. We have way too much stuff so a lot will go to Ebay or Bookcrossing (which I may already have mentioned). No idea where the contents of the other 60 boxes are going, but with guests expected in March, we’ll find out soon enough!

Dot Dot Dot Dash Dash Dash

No, it’s not morse code (well, it could be – I wouldn’t know). I was thinking more along the lines of punctuation. I get a real bee in my bonnet about such things and have even had friends begin letters to me in the past with “Don’t you dare correct my grammar in this!”

Lynn Truss and I aren’t quite soul-mates (she’s a little too radical even for me) but I did enjoy ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves‘ when it came out a few years ago. The BBC have an article today based around the premise of writing thank you letters and how the wrong punctuation can have profound effects. I thought it was pretty funny and wanted to share it here.

Christmas is over

Well, it’s been nice, but today’s the day we take down the Christmas tree. We had a new tree this year for our new house but once it was built up, we realised it was probably a little bit big for our new lounge. We decided to go with it anyway, which just means that we’ll feel like we have so much more room in the lounge when it comes down.

We managed to get out to the shops briefly before New Year and found ourselves in a bookshop (yep, a real honest-to-goodness bricks-and-mortar shop) where we spent far too much money on books that we don’t really have room to store! We’re still unpacking boxes following our move earlier in 2005 (and nearly a whole year of renovations) and the books are all surfacing now. We do have a shortage of shelf space and will probably have to dispose of some of our older books, so I guess I’ll kick-start my bookcrossing habit again.