So we were at an awesome garage sale last weekend. We were over off of Timber Ranch and Tezel and found this house with loads of good stuff.
My wife paid $.25 to feed some Coy in the pond in the front yard. How cool is that?
Oh, and she found a guy in a tub to sit on top of my computer. Hell, I don't know if I should be honored or embarrassed!
There is always something strange to do in 78250.
This weekend, some guy named Hugh is having a yard sale.
Hope to see you there!
(Just to be safe, come after 9 but before 12).
So if it isn't one thing, it's another. This weekend, we had to replace the dishwasher, and I get home from work last night, and my wife says that the tiny little wet spot on the ceiling in our kitchen is getting worse. Worse to the point of starting to fall down.
I waited until the sun went down so as to lesson the heat up in our attic. You see, I had surmised that somehow, some old plumbing work done by a seeming reputable company had perhaps become messed up, and I would be able to climb into the attic and shine a flashlight on the exposed pipes, thus revealing their slowly revealed incompetence.
So, careful to hand me my cell phone on the off chance that I might have a heart attack while wandering through the hot upper part of my garage, my wife bid me farewell and best of luck in finding the leak.
I swear, it's hotter than two fat people porking in a steaming tub of lentils on a sunny day in Albuquerque up in my attic, and it didn't take me long to decide that wherever the leak was coming from, it wasn't visible from my vantage point, hunched over trying to keep from banging my head on the sloping roof. So I retreated to the kitchen and tore down the ceiling.
I am always fascinated by looking at the inner parts of the house, the pipes and wiring you aren't supposed to see. For instance, if you live in a KB Home, there is a good chance you will find $30 to $40 worth of empty aluminum beer cans stuffed behind the sheet rock. In my case, I could see that our builder did a fairly respectable job, and further, that my little leak had not yet attracted any termites. Either way, I was perplexed that I could not find any obvious leak which would have resulted in the really moist ceiling.
Not one to give up so easily, I asked my wife to run up stairs and turn on the tub. Water running, no obvious leaks, I then turned my attention to the toilet and the sinks in the bathroom. Perhaps some weird flow would make the water find its way across the pipes and only leak once they had gotten to a point directly under the tub. Again, no luck.
Now I thought that maybe the issue was that someone had to be in the tub putting weight upon the drain. I had hoped to have my wife stand there, turn on the water and perhaps do jumping-jacks, thereby emulating the behavior of my son as he showers. Though she wasn't up for that, she did start to experiment with some of her own theories.
She took a bottle of water and started splashing it around outside of the tub in the same way water might escape the shower curtain. I could hear the water above me, but again, no flood of wetness around the pipes above me. At this point, I was starting to think I would have to pull out more of the ceiling to track down the problem. I was considering all sorts of possibilities, like drunken rats pissing in my ceiling or perhaps some elaborate Candid Camera moment where Allen Funt would magically appear, pointing to a hidden camera and a little micro-sized tube of water that had created the damage, though I quickly ruled that out when I realized he was dead.
Finally, my wife had recalled a conversation several months earlier with my son reporting that his shower head was "sort of messed-up". But she had also recalled telling him to fix it. So that couldn't be the problem. But, on a whim, as I stood like an idiot staring into the dry pipes above my kitchen, my wife went and turned on the shower upstairs.
Suddenly, it was like a rush of water raining on my face, not from any breaks in the pipes, but from water shooting back behind the shower head and streaming down the length of the pipe behind the tile upstairs, directly into my waiting eyes and face. I banged several times on the floor above and I think she got the clue to turn the water off.
So, important note: No matter how cheap it is, never purchase a used shower head from a garage sale. If they are selling the special deluxe water massage thing for 75 cents, there must be a good reason to pass it up.
Oh, another thing: When you tear down wet sheet rock, you may want to rinse off a bit before going into HEB at 9:45PM looking for a new shower head. It ain't a good luck.
We always try to make the most of our weekends whether it be a trip to HEB Plus for my week supply of veggies, fruits and yogurt, hitting a garage sale or two or doing some yard work. Today, we got an early start and just got home with only a slight rain to wet our groceries in the back of the truck.
Several weekends ago, we got together with some of our neighbors and did a garage sale of our own. Basically, the neighbors brought over their junk, combined it with our junk, then we all sat around and drank coffee and ate donuts and such while strangers came and dug through our collective junk. The goal of these events is to have all of our junk gone by the time the strangers leave.
Silver Creek makes a good neighborhood for Saturday garage sales because as long as the weather cooperates, you can count on any number of other people with the same idea. 
And once garage-sailer's get the spirit, they drive around and hit them all. Of course, there are the early birds who seem to be coming just to buy up anything that will sale on E-Bay or at a flea market some place, but I don't mind.
This morning, we noticed that some folks down the street from us were having a real doozy of a garage sale so we made our way down. I bought a bunch of picture frames and then the "incident" occurred. A lady was looking at a 36" TV for a hundred bucks, and she was using the phone to call someone to ask about buying it. I saw this and thought that perhaps if the lady didn't buy it, I'd get it just to have - I mean, how can you pass up on a 36" color TV for a hundred bucks, right?
When I showed my wife, she told the garage sale proprietor that we would take the TV. Just then, the lady on the phone came up and said she would take it. The proprietor said (and rightfully so) that she would sell it to us since we had basically pulled the trigger first, but I instead said that if the lady on the phone wanted it, she could go ahead and take it. I didn't want to cause a problem and really, I had no idea where I was going to put the TV in the first place. To me, it just wasn't a big deal.
My wife saw it a different way. What I didn't see at the time was that the lady on the phone was gathering up other stuff and setting it aside, yet when a man wanted to actually purchase something the lady had stacked, she told him that the item was already taken. I guess the analogy would be like going into HEB just before Thanksgiving and setting aside all the turkeys, affectively taking them all off the market of other buyers. If you intend to buy it, put it in your cart and get to the register.
In the end, I felt like it wasn't worth a scene but after we left, I started thinking I should have just said "You snooze, you lose" to the lady and taken the TV.
What do you think? Am I just too nice for my own good?
One of the projects that my wife wants to work on is tiling our back patio. Her mother had hers done a few weeks ago and it sure does look nice. So, we have been thinking about it and decided to go to this place over off of Bandera and 410 called Floor & Decor. Wow! Talk about a huge selection and a place you could really get lost in looking at all the different styles and ideas.
We ended up deciding on a checkerboard pattern using a beige and a brown so it will sort of match the house trim and the deck. I'll take a picture when we do it. But I wanted to point out how really helpful the staff was at Floor & Decor. I'm a frequent visitor to Home Depot and
occasionally Lowes, but I find the service at these places to be less than exciting, so I was pleased with the folks at this place.
Anyway, we had a nice young lady named Yen help us out and she was all too happy to pose with the huge load of stuff we bought. Imagine the workout these people get during a regular shift of work.
Believe me, I had to unload it all when we got home.
After dropping it all off, we made a quick run out to the HEB Plus. Walking in from the parking lot, my wife pointed out this little hot rod that warranted a picture.
So what 16 year old (and please, let's hope it is a 16 year old) thought this would be a good look for his "sports car"? These are the things that make me giggle. I especially like his awesome rims.
I got to see our friend Carol, one of the cooking ladies (pictured at the top of the page) who works the main "featured" cooking demo area. She made some serious vittles today including some sort of stuffed chicken, some awesome ravioli and this pasta that she had perhaps been a tad bit generous with the horseradish. Geeze, my innards are still yelping.
Anyway, we got all our stuff and hit the parking lot just in time for a little shower action. Yep, taking the truck to go grocery shopping isn't necessarily the smartest thing I did today.
How was your visit to HEB or around the neighborhood garage sales? Tell me about it.
If you happen to be in the Silver Creek area Saturday and feel like stopping by to see what sort of crap we have accumulated that no longer seems to fit the decor, we'd love to see ya. 
Look for the signs and you'll find us with no problem, after all, there are only so many streets that start with Timber in the area.
My wife paid $.25 to feed some Coy in the pond in the front yard. How cool is that?
Oh, and she found a guy in a tub to sit on top of my computer. Hell, I don't know if I should be honored or embarrassed!
There is always something strange to do in 78250.
So if it isn't one thing, it's another. This weekend, we had to replace the dishwasher, and I get home from work last night, and my wife says that the tiny little wet spot on the ceiling in our kitchen is getting worse. Worse to the point of starting to fall down.
So, careful to hand me my cell phone on the off chance that I might have a heart attack while wandering through the hot upper part of my garage, my wife bid me farewell and best of luck in finding the leak.
I am always fascinated by looking at the inner parts of the house, the pipes and wiring you aren't supposed to see. For instance, if you live in a KB Home, there is a good chance you will find $30 to $40 worth of empty aluminum beer cans stuffed behind the sheet rock. In my case, I could see that our builder did a fairly respectable job, and further, that my little leak had not yet attracted any termites. Either way, I was perplexed that I could not find any obvious leak which would have resulted in the really moist ceiling.
Not one to give up so easily, I asked my wife to run up stairs and turn on the tub. Water running, no obvious leaks, I then turned my attention to the toilet and the sinks in the bathroom. Perhaps some weird flow would make the water find its way across the pipes and only leak once they had gotten to a point directly under the tub. Again, no luck.
Finally, my wife had recalled a conversation several months earlier with my son reporting that his shower head was "sort of messed-up". But she had also recalled telling him to fix it. So that couldn't be the problem. But, on a whim, as I stood like an idiot staring into the dry pipes above my kitchen, my wife went and turned on the shower upstairs.
So, important note: No matter how cheap it is, never purchase a used shower head from a garage sale. If they are selling the special deluxe water massage thing for 75 cents, there must be a good reason to pass it up.
We always try to make the most of our weekends whether it be a trip to HEB Plus for my week supply of veggies, fruits and yogurt, hitting a garage sale or two or doing some yard work. Today, we got an early start and just got home with only a slight rain to wet our groceries in the back of the truck.
Several weekends ago, we got together with some of our neighbors and did a garage sale of our own. Basically, the neighbors brought over their junk, combined it with our junk, then we all sat around and drank coffee and ate donuts and such while strangers came and dug through our collective junk. The goal of these events is to have all of our junk gone by the time the strangers leave.
And once garage-sailer's get the spirit, they drive around and hit them all. Of course, there are the early birds who seem to be coming just to buy up anything that will sale on E-Bay or at a flea market some place, but I don't mind.
One of the projects that my wife wants to work on is tiling our back patio. Her mother had hers done a few weeks ago and it sure does look nice. So, we have been thinking about it and decided to go to this place over off of Bandera and 410 called Floor & Decor. Wow! Talk about a huge selection and a place you could really get lost in looking at all the different styles and ideas.
occasionally Lowes, but I find the service at these places to be less than exciting, so I was pleased with the folks at this place.
So what 16 year old (and please, let's hope it is a 16 year old) thought this would be a good look for his "sports car"? These are the things that make me giggle. I especially like his awesome rims.
