Faucets and Swollen Hands

Ann was gone this morning picking up Monica from church camp so I thought that I would get some work done around the house. More specifically, we have an outdoor faucet in the front of our house that has a bad habit of dripping if it is not closed very very tightly so I thought that I would try to fix this.

My idea was to try to take the faucet apart and see if I could find and fix the problem though I wasn't exactly sure if I knew what I was doing. The first thing that I did was shut off the water in our basement so that I could work on the outdoor faucet. Once this was done (even this was harder than it should have been due to a very tight faucet handle on the pipe coming into our house) I attempted to take apart the dripping outdoor faucet using a couple of large wrenches. This didn't go so well and I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing so my next approach was to go see if I could find the right way to do it. This of course meant getting out my laptop and doing a google search on fixing dripping outdoor faucets. This was very fruitful and I had a few videos from YouTube to choose from that showed how to do this. I randomly chose one of the videos and it showed the man doing exactly what I had been trying to do. On the video he made the comment that unscrewing the faucet internals from the housing was a bit difficult but once it was done then you could simply replace the rubber gaskets on the inside. Once I knew that I was doing the right thing I gave it another go and I was able to remove the internals of the faucet.

My first idea was to actually replace the entire internal assembly since it was old and the faucet handle wasn't in very good shape. So I took the assembly with me and headed to the hardware store. I ended up going to both Menard's and Lowe's. Neither place could sell me just the internal assembly but instead could sell me either the entire faucet assembly+housing (pipe) or just the internal rubber gaskets. I really didn't want to replace the pipes in the house so in the end I just replaced the rubber gaskets. The project which should have taken less than an hour including the trip to to the hardware store ended up being over twice that long.

This evening I noticed that my hands (especially the right one) was getting very swollen in both the palm and fingers. After thinking about it I realized that it was my hives acting up in response to all the twisting of the difficult faucet handles that I had done earlier today. My hives are pretty well controlled by my Allegra but sometimes it seems like it is just below the surface waiting for some little extra stimulus and then it reacts strongly like this evening. I ended up soaking my hands in the bath and they seem to be doing better tonight.

High School Reunion

I attended a very small high school in Oklahoma (Varnum High School) with a graduating class of 20 people. Our school does not have normal class reunions but instead there is an Alumni Banquet that is held every other year and alumni from all different classes come back to renew acquaintances. I graduated in 1982 and I went to the banquet a couple times in the first 10 years after my graduation but I didn't see many people that I knew each time and later after getting married and having children the banquet didn't fit well into my schedule.

I was in Oklahoma recently with my family and we had the opportunity to see two very good friends of mine from high school. One of these (Larry) is a friend that I have been close to for over 30 years and I try to see him about once a year when I am "home". The other is a classmate (Gina) that I hadn't seen since our graduation in 1982 but who had recently found me on Facebook. Seeing both of these friends was great and led to discussions of other classmates, most of whom we had not seen since high school. During these discussions the idea came up of attending the Varnum Alumni banquet next year to celebrate our 30th graduation anniversary. However a little later I realized that a banquet was held this year and the next one will be in 2013.

I made the comment to Gina that "I wish that someone would put together a reunion for our class" and later I decided that I needed to be that someone since this is something that I really wanted to see happen. So the plan now is for us to have a Varnum "Class of 1982" class reunion in June of 2012. We have about 11 months to track down all of our classmates and make sure that everyone is invited to the reunion. Two of the women in our class have passed away so there are 18 of us to include.

This past week I have started looking for people both online and through contacts back home. I have contacted 7 classmates so far and have another 10 to find. I think that most of these will be easy to find as either they or some of their family members still live in my hometown. The final 3 or 4 classmates could be a challenge. The classmates that I have reached so far are all excited about the idea and it has been fun exchanging email with them and learning about what they have been up to for the past 29 years.

My guess is that the process of finding people and exchanging mail with them before the reunion next year will be as much fun for me as the reunion itself. I will try to add another blog on this subject later in the year to let you know how things are progressing.

A Game of "Moon"

I wrote a blog entry in 2008 about my family playing the game "moon". Here is that entry:

For games, my family has a long history of playing a domino game called "moon". The game is similar to spades in cards though the "trump" in moon changes each hand and is called by the team that wins the bid. My grandfather and great-uncle Louie were great "moon" players as is my dad and a number of others from his generation in our family. My cousins and siblings and I all learned to play the game at an early age at family gatherings at my grandparents' home. Now my generation is playing and teaching the game to the generation below us. It was fun over Thanksgiving playing with my brother-in-law as my partner and taking on my nephew and my niece's husband. The game is in good hands with these young guys though we handed it to them on this occasion.

In January 2010 my brother-in-law who I had mentioned as my partner in this game of moon, Richard Basque, died in an oil field accident. I am currently visiting my family in Oklahoma and last night we played a game of moon for the first time since Thanksgiving 2008. My partner last night was the boyfriend (Robert Menchaca) of my niece Brittany Cagle. Robert had never played before last night so my daughter Gloria helped him out though she also has played only a couple of times. We played against my nephew (Ted Griffin) and another niece's husband (Kris Romines). Ted and Kris are the same two that Richard and I had "handed it to" a couple years ago.

Last night was bittersweet as we were playing a game that we are all very fond of and that has been in my family for a long time but also one which we all have lots of memories of playing with Richard. Last night's game was a marathon session that started around 10 pm. Kris and Ted won the first 2 games. I had mentioned to the guys about the earlier blog post (as they were trying to remember who won the last time we had played). After the first 2 games Kris and Ted wanted to know if last night's results were going into the blog. :)

We decided that we would play the best of 5 games. Robert (and Gloria) and I then went on a roll and won the next 3 games. At this point it was decided (by certain people in the game) that we were now playing the best of 7 games. Robert and I won the next game to go up 4-2 and it suddenly became a best of 9 games. I was thinking that it was around 12:15 or so at this time but when I asked for the time I found that it was actually 1:30 am. This was when the tables turned. Kris and Ted won the next 2 games to tie things up at 4-4. I was ready to call it quits at this point (as a number of us needed to wake up early to do some work this morning). However, no one wanted a tie so we kept going and Ted and Kris won the final game to win 5-4 and we finished the game at 2:30 in the morning.

Congrats and props to Ted and Kris (and to Robert and Gloria for doing great). As I have said before the game is in great hands in our family...