Homeowner Lessons

As a newer homeowner, here's some lessons I've learned:

1. Home inspectors don't catch everything.

2. Turn off the water before disassembling a faucet.

3. Measure your PVC pipe before tackling that new garbage disposal install.

4. If you fail to measure that pipe, you won't want to brave a blizzard because its 1/2" short.

5. I hate plumbing.

6. Snowblowing in the wind: An exercise in futility.

7. If your wife won't let you buy a toilet plunger because "we can get one when we need one", try to convince her that's not good reasoning. Its embarassing for the house guest who creates the "need".

8. If swearing is not your vice, and you wish to keep it that way, avoid plumbing, dryer vents, and all other projects requiring tools.

9. Replacing outlets is easy, anyone can do that.

10. Replacing ceiling fans seems to be more difficult for me.

11. A Dremel is quite useful.

14. Don't cheap out on an electric drill.

15. Forget flowers, dinner, and cards. Actually finishing a long promised project around the house scores just as many points with the wife.

16. Its easier- and maybe even cheaper- to replace an entire doorframe and door rather than one piece, should a dog choose to eat half of said frame.

17. Pop in the garage in the winter = a mess on your clean new door and frame.

18. Store unused potatoes in your small basement laundry room with high humidity. Then watch em' grow and take over a small, forgotten corner.

19. Measure twice, cut once.....I'll still screw up.

20. Measure three times, cut once, tweak the cut a little.....still wrong.

21. Measure four times, cut once, return to hardware store for more wood, call father and father-in-law for advice, measure 6 times, walk away, eat some toast, return, measure twice more, cut once ever so delicately......ahhhh there we have it!

22. Your wife has the best opinion on decorating.

23. I hate plumbing.

That's all for now!

The Logic of Instruction

Stuff like this kills me. I bought a Shopvac for my little dryer vent problem at my new house.

I get the shopvac out, pop the wheels on, and I notice that the box says I need to install the wheels per the included instructions.



But there are no instructions......



Oh, the manual must be in the actual vacuum tank. I take off the top lid of the Shopvac to find instructions and 4 screws. Here's the instruction manual:

Okay, so step one is instructions on how to open the vacuum tank. Problem being: the instructions that contain step one are inside the tank that they are assuming you don't know how to open!

I love this stuff!

Congrads! You're a Homeowner! PS- your dryer is broken.

Not sure what I paid my home inspector for right now. A couple days into being excited about my first home (which is fairly move-in ready), I noticed that the exhaust vent had become disconnected from where it fed out of the house. No big deal. This looks like a job for H.I.T.

While looking it over, I noticed it looked wet next to my dryer. I couldn't really see, as it was dark, so I grabbed a flashlight. That's when I found that the tubing leading from the dryer exhaust had been torn, and the dyer had been spewing hot, wet dyer lint all over behind the washer, dyer, and into the storage area below our steps.

How long it has been doing this, I do not know. I pull out the dyer, begin to look at things, and realize that though the vent is torn, all the tubing is still completely clogged with lint as well. Not to mention the dang this is set up with several sharp turns = fire hazard.

Just found a great excuse to buy a Shopvac.

What slays me is that just before closing, we asked the sellers to install a radon mitigation system. The system was put in just adjacent to the dryer. So either the home inspector missed the problem, or whoever installed the mitigation system didn't bother to bring it up, or both. Nice.

As I went about rectifying the situation, I vacuumed out the tubing and piping that vents the dryer. A couple pipes were hard to get at to see, so I took pictures to check the progress. In that process, I found my inner endoscopy nurse. These look a little bit like images from the Tin Man's last colonoscopy.

Everything looks fine Mr. Tin Man. Just a few small polyps. That's normal for your age. Some new aluminum foil flexible tubing, some aluminum tape, a few clamps, and good vacuuming, and you're on your way.......

Now That's Handy......

Hmmmmm......wonder if I can get one of those installed.........

Milk Jug? Milk Mug.

Don't know why, but milk just tastes better from a coffee mug.

Kindered Idiots

It was 6pm when I finally strolled into Target today, Valentine's day, to get a card for my fiance. A gentlemen in his 50's approached the cards the same time as I did. We slowly gave each other a sideways glance, made eye contact, and smiled.

"We were supposed to be doing this a lot earlier, weren't we?" I remarked.

"Well, at least we're here, right?", he asked.

Right.

Helping Shop

A friend of mine has never owned a gun nor has shown any interest in shooting. After the election, he calls me and tells me he'd really like to buy a 9mm pistol. I was fairly surprised buy more than happily agreed to help him shop and then teach him what I know about safety and shooting if he buys one.

But helping someone "find" a gun is tough, especially when they aren't sure what they want. Having recently bought a house and with a baby on the way, he is understandably budget conscious. Yet, he hasn't really set a firm price range.

So what we have is: 9mm, semi-auto, reasonably price. Purpose: home defense, possibly some plinking (no intention to carry concealed).

Search results: a dizzying array of possibilities. Seems like price is the driving factor, though he's not willing to buy complete junk. At least we've ruled out Hi-points for starters. He's also not buying a new Sig Sauer, or a 1911 style 9mm.

But really, what a prospect. Since he knows nothing about guns, I feel obligated to come up with options. Its always a matter of "find something that fits your hand and shoot it and see if you like it."

Not always so easy in SD. Not a terribly large amount of people own handguns. There is only one store which allows you to rent and fire guns, but they only have a fraction of the selection to try.

Originally, he seemed bent on a new S&W Sigma, which I steered him away from. I'm not sure they are built to last. I encouraged him to consider used- a quality gently used gun is better than a cheap new one. He has been very interested in the used Sigs I wrote about in my last post, but they are in 40 S&W (which he is not opposed to). For that price, he's near the price of some decent new 9mm guns though.

n consideration is myriad of new and used guns: Sprinfield XD, Smith & Wesson M&P, S&W 99, Glock, Taurus, Sig, Browning Hi-point, Beretta, FNH, Tangfolio, EAA, Stoeger, the bigger Kahrs, and on and on and on......

At the end of the day there are many decent guns in the running, all seemingly in a price range he's willing to pay for. He's really in a win-win- they would all be fine. He indicates that he knows he wants one, he knows he is going to get one, and his wife has okay'd it, he just can't quite bring himself to write a check.

Oh well, guess I have a great excuse to window shop.

Gun Show

pent about an hour this morning buzzing through a gun show here in town. First hour of the first day of a gun show.....beyond crowded.

It took me under 5 minutes to end up childishly grabbing at a couple guns like a kid at a candy store before being shooed away by 3 mustached men yelling "display only!" Leave it to beaver.

I hate it when I look like an ignorant kid, since I'm regarded that way often enough. Sometimes I think I'd like some grey hair. Maybe it would buy be me some credibility. Careful what you wish for....

In my defense, there was no "display only sign" up.

Gun shows in South Dakota tend to be...less than impressive. There was plenty of junk, as always. Lots of racks with fairly priced guns, but not a lot of deals that would drive you to buy.

I was hoping to find some Glock mags for my G23 a little cheaper, but they were all the same price as any store, and since I paid $5 to get it, it wasn't worth it. Maybe you're supposed to haggle those things. I'm bad at haggling.

I did find one booth- a company that buys police carry guns and refinishes with duracoat. They had some Sig Sauer P226's that looked very fine, internals looked very good. 1 mag and night sites for $525. Brand new that's a $900-1000 run.

Since police guns get a lot of finish wear, but aren't actually shot a lot, they can be a nice find if you don't mind the cosmetics. After a refinish they looked brand new. Was I in the market for a DA/SA handgun, I probably would have walked away with one......

Sugar Buzz

Let's see here.....

Late night, no patients in the unit. Check.

2 cans of diet Mountain Dew. Check.

1 large heart-shaped monster cookie delievered by fiance. Check.

2 generous pieces of apple crisp. Check.

.......Yup. I've got a bit of a Sugar Buzz goin'.

There is some insulin about 20 feet away from me..........Nah.

Cleanin' Time

After some time at the range, and with an upcoming USPSA competition, I needed to get the fleet cleaned up. There's something so enticing about the smell of gunpowder and solvent......I love it. Its quite wonderful to get in there, scrub up the guns, rack the slide of a freshly oiled pistol....I wonder if they make any candles in that scent........

Stupid Cupid

I'm sitting here in the PACU at about 1:45 am. I'm going to a gun show at 9am and it dons on me......its Febuary 14th. Who's idea was it to have a gun show on Valentine's Day? Is someone purposely trying to tick a bunch of wives off, or what?

H.I.T.

I have entered myself into an old and presitgious institution; H.I.T. or, Husband In Training. A self imposed course, I'm trying to develop into someone that could actually be useful around the house. Its a well known fact that when I pick up a tool, my IQ drops by 50-60 points. Tim Taylor, the accident prone host of Tool Time in the show "Home Improvement" is dear to my heart.

I'm fairly proud of recent achievements however, including hanging Christmas lights (successful and injury free use of a staple gun) and the unclogging of a sink.

A side note on the sink. After 4 bottles of Drano didnt' work, my dad suggested I take apart the elbow under the sink and clean it out. So I did.

It was the most disgusting thing I've ever done.

And I'm a nurse.

I was close to vomiting as I cleared out the foul, putrid clog in the sink, feeling like quite the man with my floral printed kitchen gloves. Nothing oozes manhood like kitchen gloves and flowers.

But hey, sink works like a charm now.

No Comment

Found at a local museum in a silverware display. Made me giggle. Typical man I guess.

Gym. Rats.

I decided I better have one of my semi-annual trips to the gym today so I can justify my $40 a month membership. Also, I'm just getting fatter so its not a bad idea.

As my sebaceous glands pour forth a fountain of sweat, I take stock of the situation around me. Old lady on my left. Pregnant women doing aerobics on the basketball court. A decrepit older man crawling off a weight machine with help from his cane. A host of buff, muscular men hefting very large amounts of metal.

Still I feel good about myself until I lock eyes with the man I'm calling Herman. Herman is easily mid-60's with thick brown plastic frames surrounding his very large glasses. Those glasses are older than I am. He wears a large orange sweatshirt and brown pants. He holds himself up by his forearms on an apparatus which suspends his legs and supports his weight in such a way that his neck has disappeared. He looks like a 65 year old Simon Birch.

He locks eyes with me and holds the stare for a moment as he effortlessly raises his legs forward and up in a sort of backwards mid-air sit up, demonstrating far more abdominal strength than I.

And I feel ashamed.........

Changing My View

Recently I was going to be receiving a patient. 58 year old with Down's Syndrome, Alzheimer's, Personality Disorder, OCD, and a history of being combative.

Very quickly we decided not to recover this patient in the usual open PACU bays, but in one of our private rooms.

The patient is brought in, he is intubated, and while be for awhile. He is still completely out of it after receiving ketamine, midazolam, and anesthesia. He is 100% unresponsive. I settle in close by his side where I can monitor him and his airway. I chart away, thankful for a chance to do paperwork right away, but also with an ominous feeling that when this guy wakes up it will be with bravado. I have gloves, a syringe for the ETT, and suction on standby. His caregiver arrives, sits in a recliner and turns on the TV.

She is watching ABC's "The View".

Have mercy! Could there be any worse show on earth? It is torture. The slow, rhythmic, misty breaths coming from my patient's T-piece puff off as a time keeper. Each breath is chalk mark on my cell wall reminding me that this is going to be a long recovery. Anything has to be better than The View. I can't believe women watch this.

I feel like I'm sitting in the hen house listening to five old birds cluck. No words, just angry clucking....

Creepy Massage

I was just musing about my first massage. It was a birthday gift in college. But I'm pretty excited for it. Who doesn't want a massage? I check into the Salon ready to go, but already feeling a bit....odd. I mean, for me, its a bit invasive.

I'm ushered into a small massage room. Its what you expect. Dim lights, cheap fountain in the corner, reeks of incense. There's a shower in the corner full of stuff....I hope its not for me.

"Go ahead and take off as many clothes as you want. A lot of people go naked, but some people just strip to their underwear."

...

As much as I want? What I want to wear is a goose down parka while some stranger caresses my jiggling body. I want to not feel like a beached whale and have someone I don't know start feeling me up. But, I suppose the massage will be less effective that way. And lets just come out and say it. At this point, I'm in college, doing the saving-yourself-for-marriage thing, and I'm the v word. That's right virgin. So virgin Chris is stripping to his skivvies, crawling into a bed in the middle of the room, and waiting for a burnt-out hippie named Marge to come rub him down.

And in walks Marge.

You think the burnt-out hippie part was a joke? No. 50-something white woman. Frizzie hair adorned with dreads and beads. A dress that could only be made of hemp, or possibly the beard hairs of a goat. You know, the kind of lady that only drinks from a Mason jar, doesn't own a car, makes her own soap, and works by the light of a natural beeswax candle.

In a sultry, dusky, Mary Jane influenced voice she coos, "Is this your first massage?"

"Yeah".

"Oh, that's wonderful. Would you like some music on?"

"Sure."

"What do you like?" At this point, I had just joined the college jazz band.

"Well, I like jazz"

"Okay, I'll put some on".

Apparently, we have miscommunicated at this point. To my horror, Kenny G begins floating ominously from the $25 boombox on the counter. I shiver slightly and decide its okay.

"How's that?" She asks. "Uh....great. Great. He's good" I sputter.

"Okay, I'm going to begin." Oooookay.

I begin to be rubbed and massaged and kneaded by Marge. Kenny G wafts seductivly through the air as Marge engages in oil-laden strokes of my legs. Kenny sings to us......Ba da da ba da ba da, ba da da doo....... It does feel nice. However, full body means....well a lot of the body. 90%. But you know, even if you don't drive to Houston, you can still feel a little country at the Texas border.

Suddenly, my body is confused by mixed messages and she rubs my thighs.

Mmmmmm....

Mmmmmm....

MmmmmmMARGE! SICK! No! Retreat!!

Ba da da ba do be da, ba doo bee dwoo da.......

You are not helping me here Ken!

And yet, it feels good. Thighs being rubbed....good......Marge touching me....bad.....Baseball, cold showers......

Fortunately, its time to flip on to my stomach. She's now massaging my back and its feels good. My face is in the little open donut thing facing down, but my eyes are closed. I'm oblivious for a moment to the word. Hence, I don't notice as she sits on a stool facing me, her legs under my face. I don't notice that her hemp-dress-concoction has a slit in it. I don't notice that the slit in her dress is really quite high, that perhaps her woven wonder has fallen to each side of her legs. I don't notice I'm the in the lap of.....luxury.

Until I open my eyes...

To a suprise....

Margie's thighs.

The Burning!! The pain! Why doth thy dress part in such high flight? My nose is in the holy of holies here, and I want out! Suddenly, "Danger Zone", the theme song from Top Gun is flying through my head and I'm wondering if its possible to get "the clap" in my nose.

But suddenly, praise my maker, the massage is over. Like an embarassed youngling I wait with the covers pulled tightly until she leaves the room. I get dressed. I'm given a water bottle. Apparently they notice the sweat on my brow. Should I be smoking or something now?

I'm ready to leave and before I can get through the door Marge fires out, "Hey, what are you doing right now?"

No way. This lady did not just ask me that......

"Uh, not much."

"Could I get a ride somewhere?"

You've got to be kidding me. I am finally free of a rather awkward hour, and its instigator needs a ride. But I'm a nice guy. "Sure."

I give Marge a ride to the mechanic about 10 blocks away, she thanks me, and reminds me to drink plenty of water or I'll be sore. Yeah but what about the psychological damage lady? As she gets out of the car, I feel like I should be asking,

"So....do I call you sometime?"


...I choose instead to say thank you, and pull away a bit faster than the speed limit.

Beauty

Sometimes, if you stop for a second, and look past the busyness, you remember we live in a beautiful world.

You know You're a Male Nurse If....

You know you're a male nurse if......


...the "Personal Care Kit" (aka first aid/med cupboard) for the employees of your unit has more space dedicated to feminine hygiene products than anything else.

....there are pumping rooms for your co workers. And its not for pumping iron.

Ammo Shifts

I love to shoot. I'd probably shoot every day if I could.....with a host of different guns.

But alas, the price of ammo. Its crazy. I used to only shoot every few months....3-4 times a year.....200 rounds each time. So less than 1000 rounds per year.

I'm trying to shoot a lot more without breaking the bank amidst my other hobbies (expensive guitars, backpacking). I'm probably shooting 300-500 rounds a month, and I'm just starting to dip my toes in this compeition thing.

So, I've been picking up hours at work just to pay for shooting/competing. I find myself measuring pay not in dollars/hour but rounds/shift.

I can sign up for "critical call" on Saturdays. I get $70 just to stay in town and be on call, time and a half if I get called in. Just being on call is probably 350 rounds.

Thus, the "Ammo Shift".

Life Skills

Recently, a new Nursing Assistant joined our department. She is in the Air Force reserve. She is a jet mechanic.

You know, sometimes you hear people trying to sell the military: "Join the military, and you'll learn all kinds of useful skills for life."

So I asked her, "how's that jet mechanic thing helping you out?" It of course is not. I asked if any skills transfered like fixing a lawn mower or someting. Nope.

I can just see it now....

"Honey, I asked you to fix the vacuum"

"I did"

"It sucked the carpet off the floor..."

"....So?"

"It shot it out the back and fired off a missle!"

"Yeah, we've been having trouble with that....."