I think I forgot to mention this over the past few days, but our back door has been giving us a lot of trouble lately. It’s always been a bit difficult- it’s hard to shut unless you turn the doorknob and close it pretty hard to boot. Over the last week it’s been a bit tricky to open too though. When you turn the doorknob, it isn’t pulling the part that goes into the doorjamb all the way in, so you’ve had to turn the knob a bunch and pull pretty hard.
On Wednesday it stopped working altogether and Amanda and I messed around with it a bunch, finally leaving the the doorknobs attached but with no mechanism inside and just using the deadbolt to keep the door shut. Unfortunately though, the key to the deadbolt is finicky itself, and you have to get it at just the right spot to lock or unlock the bolt.
Well, today I stopped by Lowe’s to see if I could get a new mechanism for it. I didn’t want to buy a whole new doorknob since the lock is the same as all the other house locks and I don’t want a separate key just for the backdoor. I was happy to see that the mechanism is sold by itself, picked it up, brought it home and started to install it. Then I saw I got the wrong kind, even though it looked comparable to the old one I took along with me.
The trip wasn’t a complete waste though- I finally returned the three extraneous boxes of tiles we’d picked up for the nursery.
After work Michael and I went surfing. It was big and choppy out, and the waves mostly broke pretty far out, petered out by the time they got to us, the crashed hard in the shallow water. We were both able to catch a few good ones though.
I headed home around 7:30 then Amanda and I went to Nick and Amy Warkentien’s for dinner. Eli was a bit fussy, although I was able to make him laugh a little bit. I think that’s the first time I heard him laugh.
We ate then hung out for quite a while, talking about everything from kids to Rhett and Link and Brett Domino Trio videos to strange happenings on beaches and our very first memories. We had brownies and ice cream for dessert pretty late and ended up leaving at about a quarter after midnight, which is way past Amanda’s bedtime. On the way out to the car I got caught in a massive spiderweb that covered pretty much my entire face, then Amanda saw a nasty-looking spider that looked like it was inside the car, but it was actually outside of it.
When we got home Amanda saw two new wet spots on the ceiling upstairs. It turned out that the tray I rigged up to catch excess water had fallen off track. Some of the tape stopped holding up, so I used a hyperbolic half a roll of duct tape to re-secure it. Not only did I use a bunch of tape to keep the back part angled up, but I also wrapped the tape around the back of the thing several times over to try to secure it. Hopefully it will hold up this time. I mean, I really did use a lot of tape, and if you can’t fix something with duct tape, what can you do? (Call a professional, I suppose.)
Adam called me back today, so we got to catch up for a few. He’s got a friend who is on a roller derby team and he’s gone to several games lately, which he’s really enjoyed. Sounds like he has a lot of fun, so I should really check it out sometime.
Zach Dotsey