You know, if the Starbucks' single-person restroom door was locked the first time you tried it, it'll probably be locked the second, third and fourth time, too. Pounding on the door is not going to make me crap any faster.

If you need something to do, go yell at the guy who used the restroom before me. He didn't bother to lift the seat, deciding that pissing all over the seat was a much better solution instead.

Seth Godin's mention of ultimate has me wondering if he's inspired to play, or has just heard of the Apple dominance of Google in ultimate.

I hope it's the former, because it means that ultimate will finally start coming into its own.

Of course, it's possible that he recognizes just how awesome ultimate is, and how wonderful life would be if the way ultimate is played could be applied to the real world. Take for example, foul-contest-do-over. You said I did something wrong. I contest your statement, believing I didn't do what you state I did. We have a do over, with the game reset back to before the offensive action happened. How much better would things be if we could really do that?

On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln visited Gettysburg to help dedicate a new national cemetery.

Lincoln spoke for just two minutes.

He said:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Apparently, I'm not the only one with bad time estimates.

After going to bed after 2 this morning, Kris and I dragged ourselves out of bed at 6:00 am this morning to head to Home Depot for the shower hardware. The frustrating thing about purchasing shower hardware is finding the right finish, style AND functionality with the limited selection at any store.

I wanted a brushed nickel (or equivalent) finish, with a large circle back plate for the handle, and a dial/handle that controlled BOTH water flow and temperature. Controlling water flow is important to me, because I prefer a low flow shower until I'm rinsing my hair.

And then I prefer a Niagara-like flow.

Not one of the boxes seemed labelled with this "dual feature" I was looking for. The HD help person was exactly no help, her answers to our requests being, "I don't know. Look at the boxes."

So, I decided, if I can't have the finish I want, I'll buy something cheap with the dual flow and temperature control, even if it looks like crap, and replace it with some horribly expensive Restoration Hardware shower hardware that DOES do what I want. Hopefully that replacement won't cost another $1200. And, hopefully, we can do it ourselves.

Yeah. Life doesn't work out that way.

We rushed home and arrived around 7:00 am. Kris went into the office to start playing WoW. He's never been able to stay awake long enough at night to play at 7:00 am, how has the playing changed? What nuances would he find, playing at 7:00 AM? Or all day, for that matter. Because he played that damn game ALL FREAKIN' DAY. He paused 5 times: once to go to the bathroom, once to go to the store when I requested it and get food for himself to eat, once just for foot, and twice to feed the dogs. That's it. 5 times. Five times.

He sat there for SEVENTEEN hours while three plumbers walked in and out of the office behind him to crawl in and out of the crawl space door in the closet floor. The plumbers could have been painting graffiti on the bathroom walls for all Kris noticed.

No, I'm not bitter about that game.

Not at all.

Full of loathing, maybe.

So, the first plumber arrived at 7:30. The next one at 8. The last one, who I didn't even know was coming, arrived at 8:30. Work began in earnest around 9, after the inspection of the linen closet (empty), the office closet crawl space trap door (accessible), the bathtub (clogged) and the task requirements.

The wall opened up. The hacksaws came out. The pipes were cut.

The wall had been opened up before, based on the repair marks on the wall. WHEN they had been opened up is unclear. Completely unclear.

At 9:58 AM, the first two Master Gardeners show up for the website sprint. At 10:00 AM, the next one shows up. At 10:05, I return from the store where I managed to remember milk for Kris, along with the fruits and vegetable snacks for the Master Gardeners, but forgot, oh, water? I mean, plumbers, replacing a trap... water to house turned off. Who would forget water?

Good thing no one flushed in the second bathroom.

The plumbers were supposed to be gone by 2. The Master Gardeners by 4. The latter managed it. The former didn't.

Turns out, replacing the trap was easy. When they replaced the trap, they found the tub drain pipe was seriously clogged. The only open spot in the 2" pipe was the 3/8" hole made by the snake we routinely sent down the first meter of tub pipe.

They replaced that pipe, and sent a snake down the trap.

With no success.

They climbed onto the roof and sent a snake down the roof access pipe.

With no success.

I mentioned the backyard trap, so they went around back to send the snake down the lower trap access pipe from the kitchen.

With no success.

The three plumbers disappeared back under the house. Ten minutes later, there was sawing sounds. They removed another stretch of pipe to find the problem. I asked for all the removed pipes to be left, so I saw the 140 cm long pipe they removed, with T joint.

Turns out, a stick had been sent down the pipes and had lodged in that T joint where the bathroom drained into the main outflow pipe to the sewer line. My biggest fear was that the sewer line repair had failed and all of those repairs would need to be redone. A stick in the bathroom drain, though. How?

Now, a stick in the drain pipe had to have gotten there somewhere. Down the toilet is a possibility, but mostly unlikely given the traps around it. Down the sink wasn't possible given the size of the stick. Did we have a tree that was removed recently? A stick could have fallen down the roof pipe access. Is there a cover on that pipe? I asked. No, there wasn't. Okay, add that to the house task list.

There weren't any trees recently removed from the house, since we've been here seven years this month (hc, seven years?), and there weren't any trees. Either the stick had been in the pipes that long (slightly possible, given our fountaining toilet as a welcoming gift from the house) and not decomposed (unlikely, but maybe possible if the stick was submerged underwater with no microbe activity coming from, oh, THE TOILET?), or it had been dropped down the roof access pipe, maybe by a bird making a nest or an evil squirrel.

I'm partial to the evil squirrel theory myself.

During all of this drama, the Master Gardeners group (John, Allen, Caryl, Bracey, Karyn and Bob) kept right on working on the website. I was completely embarrassed (especially at asking all of them to use the same toilet but DON'T FLUSH!), but they seemed to just go with it. An adventure!

In my own bathroom.

Exciting.

The plumbers left around 6:30 PM, their six hour estimate shot by a lot. To my surprise, the bill was still $1200. When the snake didn't go down the first times, and they were still around after nine hours, I was sure the price was going up. The plumber in charge, however, said it was a fixed bid, and the amount was $1200.

The three of them were clearly frustrated by the end. Can't say I blamed them. They totally experienced Murphy's law today.

And the stubborn will of my house.

Two days ago, two and a half at this point, I came home from work to find Annie huddling in the back of her crate, a big wad of foil next to her. On the other side of the kitchen sat the cleaned up contents of the doggie-proof trash can.

The NOT-SO-doggie proof trash can, that is.

Either I had left the kitchen cabinet somewhat open, or the dogs have learned how to open the kitchen cabinets. Now, this is not difficult, nor an unreasonable, supposition from a dog that can open peanut butter jars with ridged lids by holding the jar with her front paws and twisting off the lid with her teeth on the ridges for leverage. Suffice it to say, the kitchen cabinet was open, the trash can pulled out, it's contents licked and eaten clean.

Which was unfortunate, as I had cleaned out the fridge that morning, throwing away old bread, fermented black beans, expired cottage cheese, and (unfortunately) a number of other items.

Neither Annie nor Bella received Greenies that evening for dessert.

Fast forward to this morning, when Annie woke me up at 5 AM with her click, click, click from the bedroom to the kitchen to outside back to the kitchen, click click click back down the hall and back into the bedroom, only to repeat the same steps in a pacing that wrenched me from sleep and set me on a close-to-breaking-point annoyance with the dog.

An annoyance that turned to anger when she vomited in the living room on the rug.

I jumped up, dragged her into the kitchen, then poked Kris awake and told him to clean up the mess. Since I'm a cat person, when these dogs are bad, they're completely his dogs. He gets to clean up the mess.

Him.

Not me.

Which he has done for the last five years without complaint. This morning was no exception.

Annie continued to make near vomiting noises all day: dry heaves with no satisfactory resolution at the end.

Around ten tonight (last night?), I complained to Kris in frustration. I spent the whole day listening to Annie pace inside to outside, down the hall, around the kitchen, all while making vomiting noises. I really wasn't going to be able to spend the night listening to her. "Do you want me to take her to the vet?" Kris asked. I thought about it for a bit. Yes, the emergency vet would probably get her to puke already, but they were so expensive. The last bill was about $350, when she ate two pounds of chocolate and we had to induce vomiting on (unsurprising) Annie. This one would probably be similar.

Would I spend $350 for a good night's sleep?

If it meant getting a migraine if I didn't, hell yes.

So, Bella, Kris, Annie and I piled into the car and went off to the emergency vet. We arrived just as a pit bull mix was going into the back, so there was no waiting in the front room.

We met with the vet, told her what was up, and answered her questions: had she vomited today (yes), did she have diarrhea (don't know), when did the reverse sneezing start (this morning), how about the gulping (huh?)? She though that, yeah, okay, the reverse sneezing usually meant she was trying to suck something out of her nose (yeah, we knew that, Bella does it all the time, this was Annie's first time), but the gulping could mean pancreatitis.

Oh.

Because of her eating potentially rotten food two nights ago, the vet wanted to rule out pancreatitis with some blood work. She also wanted to sedate Annie and look down her throat, see if there was an obstruction causing the gulping.

Kris and I waited out in the lobby with Bella walking around EXCITED at the other dogs and the CATS which came through while we were waiting for Annie. After about thirty minutes, the vet came out with a paper towel in her hands. We looked over curiously.

The towel had little piles of green on it, and a few spots of blood. I wish I had had my camera, so that I could have taken a picture of the pile of foxtails on the napkin. You know. FOXTAILS. Demon dog Annie foxtails. The bloody ones were from her tonsils, where they were embedded, forcing the vet to yank them out. The other ones were stuck in various places in her mouth and throat. She hoped she got them all, but we really needed to watch where she went.

We thought about the situation, and concluded that Annie probably felt ill on Wednesday night or Thursday, and started eating grass in the back yard to induce vomiting. When she did so, she ate the fox tails, as we had tilled under all of the grass in the back yard last week. The only greens in the back were either foxtails or next to foxtails, and Annie, in her attempt to self-medicate, ate them.

We suck as dog owners some times.

Eventually, a half drunk, er, sedated Annie was brought out of the back room, staggering with her front legs as her back legs refused to cooperate and she walked leaning left, then right. She fell asleep on my lap after a little struggle, while Kris waited for th bill total.

$560.

"Crap," I said, "we're going to spend $2000 in the span of less than 12 hours."

AND, we're not even going to Australia.

Kris shrugged his shoulders. "Well, look at it this way," as we drove home at 1:30 in the morning, "if the plumbing was originally going to cost $2000, and we're getting it done for $1200 instead, we're still paying the $2000, but they're throwing the dog in for free."

There's always a bright side.