"The Weekend of: Jan. 12-13th."

This has been a pretty busy weekend for me. It began Saturday morning when a friend of mine, who is a plumber, came by to help me fix some drainage problems I had in the bathroom.

Here within the past couple of weeks, water had been backing up and leaking out under the sink in there everytime I let the water out of the tub. Obviously we had a blockage somewhere within the sewer pipes, and my attempts of using a "snake" down the drain, or pouring Liquid Plumber down such had failed. It was time to call in some professional help.

He called around 11AM and asked me to meet him at his house as the routing machine was too heavy for him to lift alone into the back of his truck (around 200 lbs.), which I did and we came back here and moved items out of the bathroom to make room to bring in the machine. Then we removed the commode and noticed that it had no flange at all, plus the old wax seal was in rotten shape. He started running water and after a while we saw that it was also backing up in the commode line. Obviously the line wasn't totally blocked, but enough that when a fair amount of water entered it the pressure would push the extra liquid back which couldn't drain fast enough.

We plugged up the routing machine and started feeding line through the pipes, at least 60 foot of it, until it finally hit the blockage. After we were successful in unblocking the pipes we started removing the routing line. And, what was blocking it? What I feared the most: roots from the trees in the front yard. He suggested I start pouring "Rootkill" down the commode everyweek for this problem, and also we found, outside of the hourse, the old clean-out valve which he suggested that I dig up so next time we could put a new plug and it, and if the sewer started to block up again, we could rout it out from that location rather than going through all of the hassle of removing the commode again.

He also noticed that there was no seal under my sink in the bathroom, and will be putting the proper fixtures in that. He put in a new flange and two wax seals and reinstalled the commode and with this job completed we reloaded the machine and went back to his place and unloaded it. Then I came back and worked a good half an hour cleaning up the mess it made as well as putting all of the items back into the bathroom.

Now, the night before this (Friday), I had put together a large television table for my mom, all save for its glass top. I probably mentioned this before, but her old t.v. had been going out and a friend had just bought himself a new plasma one for the wall, so he just gave mom a practically brand new 32" set. The table she had it sitting on was really too small for this t.v., and since she figured she saved herself at least $200. on a new set, she spent around $150. on a proper table for the large new t.v. over at Wallyworld. Naturally, it was sold unassembled, but since I've had years of assembling furniture samples at my place of employment, I knew it'd be no trouble putting this together. In fact, it took me less than an hour to assemble said table, which was light-weight enough for me to carry, all except the heavy and thick glass top. So I put it altogether save for that, and Saturday afternoon I carried it down the street to her house, then came back home and loaded the glass into the van and took that down as well, and had the rest of it together in 15 or 20 minutes.

Then came the "hard' part, which was to remove the t.v. set from the smaller table, get the new table against the wall and put the set on it. I finally had to call a neighbor to help me to do this and within 10 minutes or so the task was finally completed. She had her little table back as a coffee table as was her original intention, and I had all of the cables reattached to the set and operable.

While I was there I started the pick up truck and let it run a while and put the riding lawn mower into the shed and locked that up for the Winter (rather than covering it up with a tarp as my dad used to do every year). I still need to Winterize the mower soon with some additive to its gas tank.

My wife had walked down to mom's house as well and we started to leave when mom asked us if we'd like to go out to eat as "payment" for all the work I'd done. Since neither of us had eaten dinner we agreed, but just as we started to leave the neighbor who had helped me with the t.v. set came back and motioned us back into the house. One of the other neighbor's large pittbulls had gotten loose from its pen and was running around terrorizing the neighborhood! In fact, it had almost gotten that neioghbor that helped me as he had to climb up on top of his car to escape the dog. When the dog ran off, he quickly ran over to our place and warned us, called his wife and told her to stay in doors as well as another neighbor close by.

From our back door we could see the dog running across our back yard and hear frantic screams over on the other block, so I finally called 911 and got the police to come. Finally, the owner of the dog got it captured and under controll, but I can see a local ordanance in the making to eliminate such dogs from a residential area. And really, they have no place in this neighborhood at all for them which is filled mainly with the elderly and retired. It'd be difficult enough for a younger and stronger person to defend themselves from such an animal, let alone an elderly one.

With all of this finally over (and my wife calmed down), we went to eat and got back home and I made sure mom got in okay in her house and my wife and I came home and called it a day around 6:30 PM.

One thing I was able to do yesterday before all the work was watch both The Legion of Super-Heroes as well as The Batman animated shows. Both were probably re-runs, as I know I'd seen the LOSHs one where they go to Superman's "Fortress of Solitude" and he ends up in the bottled city of Kandor and at the end finally restores same, but I hadn't seen The Batman one, which was pretty decent. It was part two of a 2-Parter where he and Superman teamup against Lex Luthor. At the end of this, Bats takes Supes to the JLA satellite HQ and asks to to join the team. It's interesting how they've progressed with this series, as first they intro Bats, then later on, the JLA (and he joins The League), and now Superman joining, which ties in the whole thing finally to the defunct "JLA Unlimited" animated series, making this version of the animated The Batman series a prequel to JLAUL. I must admit that I'm very impressed with this whole idea!

And today around 9AM I went back to mom's to make sure eveything was still alright and quiet and after she left I went back through all of those comics I have stored there which I had recently weeded from my collections. This time it was to obtain bags and backing boards, of which I was able to get around 200 of each (a good $20. worth of saving me from buying them again). I figured if I'm letting thse all go as a "lot", and cheaply, I might as well save as many comic supplies as I could. This helped compact the boxes with their adsence (in fact, I got them all into one less box) and used the exra box to store the bag/boards. I also pulled about 35 misc. comics from it again just to keep that I had forgotten I had originally bought for their good artwork and the like. This was the last time to go through those and they're ready to sell now, and there's still around 2,500 (over 2,200 of which are comic books) items counting the hardcovers, paperbacks and magazines.

And what did I pull from the boxes this time? Things like Comico's Justice Machine written by Len ("Swamp Thing") Wein, a set of the 4 issues limited series Marvel Comics' The Punisher P.O.V. written by Jim ("Warlock", "Dreadstar") Starlin and illustrated by Berni ("Swamp Thing", "The Weird", "Frankenstein") Wrightson, Plaston Cafe (published by Mirage Publications) 1-3 with Rick Veitch work, three or 4 comics with Jae Lee artwork, plus just some misc. stuff I wanted to keep for a while to maybe auction off seperately later on eBay.

Speaking of which, I sold one item on my eBay listings this time but the others (at the moment) haven't gotten a bid with less than a day till the auction's end. I'm hoping I'll have some last minute buyers (as is usually the case).