When to give up

I have decided to resume blogging and the best place to start again is to honor the honorable god of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, who is retiring from cricket at the age of 40. I am sure he must have faults but he really impresses me with his gentlemanly attitude in the age of self glorification in the sight of money and fame. There are very few famous people I have any interest in meeting but this 5' 5" legend would definitely be near the top of my list. When professional athletes world wide are turning into tattooed, self indulgent, ego maniacs, I am so happy to finally see a person worthy of the title of hero and role model. Maybe one day in my visits to India I will get to meet him.

This all reminds me when I was 40 and retired from playing basketball publicly. I still remember the Christmas I turned 7 when I received the wonderful gift of an orange basketball rim. I can picture my dad putting up a square piece of solid plywood above the garage, painting a black square on it and then mounting my shiny new goal on it. I played basketball on that driveway for hours daily for years. Sometimes I would long for people to stop by to play with me no matter how much older they were than me. Hours on end I would dribble around the edge of our long driveway and shoot endless numbers of free throws. My life and dream for many years was to be a professional basketball player. Then I hit high school and I failed to keep growing so was just too short for the basketball team. I switched to cross country running but still loved to play basketball every chance I got. My first year of college I suddenly grew 6" and suddenly I was a reasonable height again for the hardwoods. What made it interesting is that I was always a guard when I was young as I had great ball handling skills from the hours and days of practice and was very fast. Now that I was taller, I was automatically playing forward which I had never done before. All of that self inflicted training paid off.

Well into my late 30's, I typically played basketball a couple of hours every other day. Since I never had any serious injuries related to my knees I made a huge decision to quit at age 40. I had some bad basketball related accidents. While playing in Saudi Arabia, I got hit in the mouth and lost 1/4 of one of my back teeth. In Houston, I was playing with old worn out shoes and the whole side of the shoe blew out when I tried to stop quickly,  which resulted in a horrible 6 months of pain and surgery for plantar fasciitis, followed by 5 years of wearing hard orthotics. The best thing to come out of that time was that I now have real arches as up to that time my foot was totally flat. The scariest injury was when a clumsy fellow who played nasty ran up to me from the side and bumped into my knee at full speed. That resulted in 6 months of daily swimming to rehabilitate my knee so I could play basketball again. I always seem to get injured and my wife would comment on how injury prone I was since I had to go all-out, full steam when playing. Still for me I did not have any ACL or major injury so I played basketball for the last time publicly for my 40th birthday. The only times I have played since it to teach my youngest son that someone twice his age can beat him any time I want!

Jess' pencil drawing

My daughter Jessica has been working a long time on this pencil drawing. The photo does not really do the drawing justice but it will have to do as it is too large to scan.

old softener & filter

always a battle to change the filter

new improved setup

Time to start blogging again and no better time than to document a whole day spent installing a brand new water softener and filter in the garage. My initial plan was to get up early and to finish everything in a couple of hours way before lunch time. That was a little bit too optimistic to say the least.

I never intended to be a plumber on Saturday, but all week long our water has been tasting worse with each passing day. When I shaved each morning, the hot water in the bathroom sink was very yellow and taking a shower was a smelly affair. I ever received complaints that white clothes were turning yellow, so yesterday I decided to take action.

Friday night I removed all of the salt from the old water softener and turned on the bypass valve so it was not being used at all. I then took photos to show the plumbers at the local Home Depot what I needed to replace and to get an idea of the total cost involved.

Saturday morning I returned to Home Depot at 7am ready for action and my list of what I needed. On arriving I got my first indication that my day would not be smooth. There was no plumber at the store and no expected arrival time of one. I found great help so tried to remember what the plumber told me the night before. Five trips and 28 driving miles later I had everything I needed - thankfully Home Depot is close by!

One of my goals was to make changing the water filter easier while replacement the broken water softener. Also pipes coming out of the moulding seemed like a poor idea so that needed some redesign. I did not want to get too radical so I bought the newest models of the same equipment so the installation would good smoothly. I would probably be still working on it if I didn't make that wise choice.

Today in looking at my handy work, it just does not look like a job that would take 10 hours, but clearly I am not a plumber and just an amateur. I really don't want it to be a hobby either but if I have to do it I will.

Jess' Painting of her best friend

Jess' Ocean Painting

Jess' Ocean Painting that she just finished today:

more drawings by Jess

These are the latest set of drawings by my daughter from her 9th grade Art class.

Salt Lake City

I had a business trip to Salt Lake City and since I will probably never return there I explored around the city in my extra time. It was surprised at the snow capped mountains visible around the city in the month of May. I took my life in my hands and ventured around Mormon Temple square. Kind of odd to see tons of 20 year old girls proselytizing every one who signed up for a personal "free" tour. Also odd to see tons of people getting married. I stopped to ask a camera man, who also tried to convert me, about why so many women were dressed in wedding gowns. He said one wedding every 15 minutes starting in the month of May. I must say that the Mormons do build impressive buildings. You must be a Mormon to go into the Salt Lake Temple but all other buildings were open to the public. The last few photos I took from the airplane as I had a great view of the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City from the air as it was the only day without any clouds.