Warm spring, gymnastics and toilets

Sunday was the warmest April day on record in Salt Lake City - 89 degrees at the airport.

In anticipation, I turned the sprinklers on Saturday night, since some of the yard was getting crunchy. But the damn cover to access the water shutoff valve was frozen. After an hour of working on it, and discovering that when I was able to rotate the cover it was because the entire 3-foot long shaft was also rotating (I guess I was generating a decent amount of torque, judging by how sore my wrist was the next morning), I finally drilled some holes in the thing and popped it off with the claw of a hammer.

Unfortunately, The hour it took was from 11:15 to 12:15 at night, because we were at the NCAA Women's Gymnastic championship that evening at the University of Utah for the event finals and didn't get home until 11 pm.

Anyway, I still need to weed and feed. I was going to do it Sunday, but then something came up - a toilet was leaking. The tank had a crack and the gaskets were failing, and water was dripping down the outside of the waste pipe to the laundry room below. I thought I could just get a new tank and install it, but the bolt holes in the bowl didn't quite line up with the bolts in the new tank. So I bought a new toilet bowl and, $119 and 90 minutes later, we were back in business.

It's a low-flush model - looks like about half the volume of water fills the tank. It makes up for less water by having a wider opening for the water to flush through - three inches, verses about two and a half on the old tank.