Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Toilet 1, Shawn 0

... but that one was a knockout blow (although a Pyrrhic victory for the toilet).

After all of Tami's wonderful work trying to fix the toilet while I was gone, it was still leaking a little around the bolts that attach the tank to the bowl, so when I got home she asked me to tighten them. I missed the part about "Do not overtighten," and was cranking away when I heard a cracking noise ...

... and suddenly my legs were all wet from the water pouring out of the side of the tank.

Yes, I overtightened the bolts and broke the tank. Given that we don't know how old the toilet is, and the only part number I can find on the tank seems to be incomplete, replacing just the tank is proving difficult. So Tami, Nessa and I are going toilet shopping this evening (just the sort of fun family activity everyone should do sometime) so that our plumber friend from church can come over and install the new toilet tomorrow. He's already fixed the clog, so once we have the new toilet installed our main bathroom should once again be completely usable.

This is (I hope) the final bit of unpleasantness connected to my cursed San Jose trip. I hope I've used up all my bad travel karma, because I have to go back to San Jose for three days after Father's Day.

P.S. I want to go on record as saying how proud I am of Tami for tackling the toilet problem by herself. Everything she did, she did correctly, using unfamiliar tools--it's not her fault that her work didn't fix the problem. If I hadn't come along and really messed things up, our toilet would have completely new innards, all installed by my sweetie. You go, girl!

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