Fantasy Football Finale

Another year of Fantasy football has come to a conclusion. I was in 3 leagues this season, I finished in FIRST place in two of them and 5th place in the other. I won the 2007 Security League Champion, for the second year in a row! That is the league with the people that I used to work with in New York. The Utah Utopia were 13-3 and won a close championship game over the Rochester Warriors 55-33. I also won The Best Damn League Ever, the league that I started with some friends and family. I had a much more nerve wracking experience on the way to the finals in that league. I didn't clinch a playoff spot until the final week of regulation and then I had to beat the #1 team in the league, the Blue Meanies, in the first round and in the finals I had to beat the Cackalacky Opossums...a team I had lost to twice in the regular season. I won the championship game 152 - 91, and finished that season with 9 wins and 7 losses. I was 8-7 in the third league, I made the playoffs but lost in the first round. I did win the 5th place game, but was a little disappointed how that season turned out.

Back to Reality

We are home in SLC now, was a VERY nice trip to Colorado....although it always seems to go by so fast, I can't believe it was nearly a week. Seemed more like 3 days to me. So the Hot water didn't blow up while we were away! The Furnace and most importantly the new thermostat worked perfectly at keeping our house at 50 degrees while we were gone and had it at a nice 65 when we got home last night. So today has been filled with cleaning and putting things away, we just dumped everything in the living room when we got home. The kids have been playing with new toys and I've been trying to sort things. I'm going to go to the rec center today when Bridget gets home from work, the daycare is closed until the 2nd. I think today feels like an elliptical day, although I could swim....Hmmmm what is a guy to do! Well I guess that is about it for now. Thanks to everyone for making our trip so great!

Colorado

Well we are basking in the Colorado happiness! We love it here and am having a great time. Yesterday we went to Dinner and a movie with my college roommate and his wife. We went and saw I am Legend, a movie about a disease that takes over the world and Will Smith fights to find a cure. It was s good movie, just be prepared for zombies, we didn't know about the zombies. It is a good movies as far a s zombie movies go, but when you aren't expecting them and then all of the sudden there they are.....really made for a stressful viewing experience. After the movie we went to Elway's Restaurant. It is a high end steak place owned by John Elway, it was really good...but really pricey!

This morning I went for a 40 minute run around Broomfield, and then when I got back we had Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Melissa. It was great! Kids got a lot of cool toys and we made out like bandits as well! So that was 1 Christmas down, 3 more to go I think! This is going to be a good trip!!!

She's gonna blow!

We had a scare with the hot water heater last night, and it may not be over yet. But let's start at the beginning of the story. About 2 weeks ago I turned up the temperature on the hot water heater because I kept running out of hot water during my showers (I told you I had a problem!). Then we installed the new shower head, and since it uses less water the hot water lasts longer, part of the beauty of it! Anyway, yesterday I went in to turn the temperature back down and noticed a puddle on the floor. I figured it was because I had mucked with the temp and if I turned it back down things would be OK. So I did that and went back a few hours to check on it and all was dry. I figured I would try the pressure release valve to see if it worked and to make sure that there wasn't excess pressure from the raising of the temperature over the past couple of weeks. Well that was my mistake! I flipped the little lever and water started coming out, I flipped it back and it was stuck open! It wasn't gushing, but it was dribbling. Our water heater is at least 12 years old, and every where you look it is rusty and looks like it was the worlds original water heater.

So Bridget and I consulted the water heater experts, Tom and Melissa, and decided that we should maybe go price out a new one just in case this one was about dead (always better to do ahead of time rather than after the basement is flooded!). The experts at Home Depot said a new water heater started at about $300, and install began at $250 but you needed to do 5 things in addition to that $250 including pulling a city permit, installing earthquake straps, installing an expansion chamber, paying for all of the new fittings and flexible connections, and something else. Anyway after all that was said and done it would be closer to $400 to install a $300 water heater.

Faced with that looming expense we decided to at least try the $5 fix and replace the pressure relief valve. This was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. First off I do not own a great pipe wrench that could bite into the pipe that goes from the valve to the ground. I tried and I tried, and I cussed and I cussed. So I went on to plan B, I thought If I could just get the valve off with the pipe attached I would just buy a new pipe and be done with it. Well the pipe was about 4 feet long, and spinning it all the way around wasn't going to happen. So I got my pipe cutter and managed to cut the pipe down to about 2 or 2 and a half feet long. That seemed to be prefect until I started to spin it around, when it got to the top it hit an air duct! So I thought "no big deal I'll just cut the pipe again" well my pipe cutter broke about half way through the new cut! So I went to plan C, I removed the air duct! From there I was able to spin the pipe which was attached to the relief valve and removed it easily and put on the new one lickity split! Reassembling the air duct was painless and it was fixed. The floor was pretty much dry when we went to bed, and was still dry this morning. We are keeping our fingers crossed that all is well in water heater land, but I still think that the whole thing needs to be replaced at some point.

The Eco-Geek strikes again

Well I told you a few blogs ago that I was headed to The Home Depot to buy a new shower head. Well I finally got around to it today and we are all hooked up now and saving water! So we went with a Delta H2Okenitic shower head. I also bought a cool little in line toggle switch that shuts the water off at the shower head, making soaping up (body first, then hair!) guilt free. Anyway, the shower is pretty nice, and at 1.6 gallons per minute there is a noticeable difference in the amount of water being used. The industry standard is 2.5 gallons per minute, and the current lowest flow head is .5 gallons per minute! However we were interested in finding a shower head that didn't force the water out into a "stinging mist" and our new one is pretty good.....for your upper body. I noticed that when I stood at the far end of the tub it was a little misty and a little hard to wash a specific area like your knees or feet, unless you could somehow get them above your head and near the shower head!

So I am encouraging each of you to try a new low flow shower head. I want to see some other low flow shower heads out there and I want each of you to buy one and try it out and write me a review. Earth kudos to the person that gets the low flow head that performs the best! Here are a couple that we should try: the Bricor B100 Max 1 GPM, and the Real Good Shower Head 1.4 GPM.