BerthaBlog

Sunday night, when I went to the bathroom, I heard water running in the toilet.

I took the lid off the tank to investigate. The float valve mechanism was leaking from the top. Water wasn’t just dripping out—it was cascading.

It’s not the first leak we’ve had lately. A couple of months ago the city utility department came out and did something with the water mains in the street. They turned our water off for about an hour. When they turned the water on again, half the fixtures in the house started dripping. The hose sprayer in the sink started spitting water from the connector hose, and I called my dad to help me replace it immediately.

The faucet on the side of the house, which had already been dripping, began running. I went to Lowe’s and got a shut-off fixture I could mount on the faucet to stop the constant drip.

Most of the other drips were minor, so I planned to deal with them over time.

Seems the one in the toilet wanted to move up on the list of priorities. So I went back up to Lowe’s and got a new float valve mechanism.

I had planned to manage the installation on my own, without bothering the Alpha Geek—he’d been out all day doing consulting jobs. But it was not to be. The lock nut on the old valve was stuck tight, and one person couldn’t get the angle to turn the lock nut and also hold the valve still. So instead of relaxing on the couch after a hard day of work, the poor guy was on the floor of the master bathroom, wedged between the toilet and the shower, unscrewing the lock nut while I held the valve assembly steady.

Fortunately that was the only difficult part of the replacement. Once we got the old valve loose I was able to install the new one easily.

One more drip down.

It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law!

Today President Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law.

From Obama’s speech:

“Equal pay is by no means just a women’s issue — it’s a family issue. It’s about parents who find themselves with less money for tuition and child care; couples who wind up with less to retire on; households where one breadwinner is paid less than she deserves; that’s the difference between affording the mortgage — or not; between keeping the heat on, or paying the doctor bills — or not. And in this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month’s paycheck to simple and plain discrimination.

So signing this bill today is to send a clear message: that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody; that there are no second-class citizens in our workplaces; and that it’s not just unfair and illegal, it’s bad for business to pay somebody less because of their gender or their age or their race or their ethnicity, religion or disability; and that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory, or footnote in a casebook. It’s about how our laws affect the daily lives and the daily realities of people: their ability to make a living and care for their families and achieve their goals.”

I this man.