So far this week we’ve had something to do just about every night.  Tuesday we had small group, Wednesday we had baby class and tonight we had a small group leaders’ meeting at Port City Community Church.  There weren’t as many people in our “pod” there tonight, but I think it made the discussion a little more focused than usual and I enjoyed it.

One question really got me to thinking.  What label do you give yourself?  If you put a huge emphasis on work you might call yourself a workaholic.  One guy said he labels himself a hothead.  I thought and thought about it, and there wasn’t any one particular thing or way that I saw myself.  At first I thought that maybe I’m just not self-reflective enough to know something like that about myself, but then I figured maybe I just don’t have any one particular thing that defines me.

I like to surf, I enjoy my work, I’m a husband, soon to be a father, a Christian, I like to draw, I like to take photographs, I like to play video games and mess around on Photoshop, I’m a Duke fan….  I’m all these things, but, if I’m being honest with myself, for good or for bad, no single one of those things singly defines me.

I just thought it was interesting.

After Amanda and I got home we watched last week’s 30 Rock.  Billy Supplee and Cyra Sherburn came over to watch The Office and this week’s 30 Rock.  This was the one with Rhett Miller in it, but Amanda and I were upset to see that he was very minor and hardly even had any screen time, much less any lines.  At least someone thought enough of him to say, “Hey, we’re going to have all these musicians on the show, let’s include Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller!”

After Billy and Cyra left I went to look at the AC unit in the attic.  Amanda had passed along some knowledge earlier today and told me that as well as having one outside and under the unit, there’s also a tray for collecting water and condensation inside the unit as well and that it was possible that something had stopped up the pipe for that.  I was told to try using the wet dray vac (that Michael left here when he moved out) on the pipes outside the house.

This is what I was doing when Amanda got home, and sure enough one of the pipes started flowing pretty good after giving it a nice bit of suction, so we would assume that’s taken care of the problem.

Now, flash forward back to the story in progress.  Amanda suggested, and wisely so, that I go up into the attic to check and see if I can tell if the leaking has stopped.  There are no stairs or ladder or anything useful to get up there and the stepladder we have helps but it isn’t high enough for me to easily get up there.  Generally what we’ll do is I’ll go to the top rung of the stepladder then reach up through the hole in the ceiling to the attic floor, get a slight boost from Amanda (making a step with her hands) and hoist myself up.

So that’s what we did this time, except apparently as I was gearing up to go she said she wasn’t ready and when I hoisted myself up it knocked her off balance.  Being pregnant, she already doesn’t have the best balance and she fell over.  Falling over sucks, but this was particularly bad because she hit a vacuum cleaner that is in the closet.  And to make that even worse, she hit her neck and jaw on an attachment or a part where attachments go, so it was an edge.  She has an abrasion on her neck and the side of her face was swelling up a little.

Amanda’s got a baby doctor appointment tomorrow, and the first thing she voiced concern about was them thinking I had hit or beat her.  I waved that off since there’s nothing at all to worry about at all in that regard.  Her next concern was that her face would be bruised in any pictures taken once Milly gets here.  That I can’t do anything about, but I did get a an icepack and had her keep it on her face longer than she wanted to, so hopefully it won’t be nearly as bad as she fears it will be.

I felt horrible about the whole thing of course.

I did eventually get up into the attic, and without help.  I had to pull myself up and pull out a bit of the old acrobatics to swing myself up there, but in the process I knocked one of the closet lights loose.  Not a huge deal- I fixed it after I got back down.

I couldn’t see any dripping from the AC unit this time, but the part that hangs out past the tray was damp.  I think tomorrow I’m going to use Phil Mercer’s suggestion and fashion something to collect any water that drips off of that part and route it to the main tray.  Hopefully the main problem was just that the tray inside the unit was clogged.

Zach Dotsey