First things first, the following e-mail was in my inbox this morning, dated at 5:15 am:

Ladies and gentlemen, Lauren Elizabeth was born at 3:15am, May 28. Mom is doing fine. Thanks for all the prayers.

So congratulations to Mike and Sarah Nowak on the birth of their first daughter, and congratulations to Henry Nowak on becoming a big brother!  Being so close in age, I expect Milly and Lauren will play together quite a bit.

Amanda and I were planning on going by the hospital to see them, but Amanda was very exhausted after she got home from work.  I got her to help me with the air conditioning, which didn’t help her much.  First we tried using the wet vac to suck gunk out of the pipe that’s giving us trouble, but it wasn’t working.  I’d pour a little water into the tray and Amanda would use the vac, but hardly anything would happen, whereas when she put it up the the secondary tray, the one outside the unit that isn’t blocked, I could see the water sucking down and hear the air.  On the primary tray I could make out a very slight swirl, but the water wouldn’t even go down appreciably.

At Don’s suggestion, we tried instead to shoot water up the pipe.  Amanda, being pregnant, sore and tired, had a hard time with holding the water hose nozzle at a good angle (the end of the pipe being only a couple feet from the ground).  A couple times when we sprayed water up the pipe a bit of muddy water came out and when I tried it I saw some… glops of stuff come out.  Unfortunately, water would still stand in the primary tray.

Amanda eventually got to the point where she had to go sit down, and I was apprehensive about doing the whole thing myself.  I figured I’d have to spray a little bit, go back up to the attic to check on it (no small feat if you recall, but I did figure out an easier way to hoise myself up today), then repeat, repeatedly.  At Amanda’s suggestion, I decided to go ahead and try shooting water up the hose.  I’d done it as long as ten seconds before, so I decided to try a few shots at thirty seconds.  After doing that a couple times not only did I get a bunch of muddy water and a couple chunks of mud and/or rust, but I also smelled bleach.  That was a really promising sign because I had tried pouring bleach down the pipe last night, which meant that the stuff from further back up there was getting out.  Huzzah!

I sprayed water in thirty second intervals until all thwa ter came back clean then went back in the attic with a few bottles of water to pour down to check if it was clogged.  I am extremely happy to note that all the water I poured in the tray went directly down the pipe without backing up at all!

Hot damn, I am so glad to finally be rid of that air conditioning problem (I hope!).

After all that I put gas in the Jetta for Amanda, got myself a sub at Subway (I was going to spoil myself with a meatball sub tbut they were out of meatballs so I had a chicken breast and marinara sandwich) and stopped by Lowe’s Food to pick up some milk, bread and apple juice.  When I got home Amanda was taking a bath.  She’s generally not too big on baths, but I think it helps her swollen feet.  I watched the last two episodes of Reaper for the season (hopefully it’s not cancelled) and Amanda went to bed around 9:00.

Zach Dotsey