Saturday, August 29, 2009

Siphons, Moves, and Dreams

My husband is a genius. Seriously. He just seems to know everything you need to know when you need to know it, particularly when it comes to things that one builds or buys or modifies.

Today's example? You know how he built a wood-fired water heater that flowed into a hot tub? Well, we're moving houses (again, more to come on that) and we decided said hot tub will not be coming with us, so we needed to drain the hot tub. All of the valves had been sealed (we used it literally as tub and not a jacuzzi). How would you have drained it?

Tip it over on end? Cut a hole in the bottom? Bucket by bucket? Rig up a pump? Hire a large friend in padded suit to do cannonball after cannonball?

Well, because Steve knows everything you need to know when you need to know it, he created a siphon. Oh you know, he created hydrostatic pressure through a hose which once started allows you to drain a "reservoir" of its liquid contents provided the walls of the reservoir are no higher than 20 feet and the exit point of the hose is lower than the other end of the hose that's in the water. No pump needed. No special tools, destruction, or large friends needed.

What, you didn't know you could do that? Oh right, me neither. Steve's brain is the exact opposite of a siphon; it never drains.

As for moving, yep, we're moving again. Our landlord needed to move back to Denver so he gave us 30 days notice. Being the supremely industrious and efficient people that we are, we had a new rental house lined up within 3 days of that notice. We take possession of it Sept. 1, and then we have 20 days to move into it. We met our current landlord today for the first time (we'd found this house through his agent originally) and he is a very nice guy in a bit of a crisis which we totally understand and thus we take no offense at his need to boot us out.

But.

WE HATE MOVING. WE ARE SO SICK OF IT. I'm sorry for the virtual yelling, but we wanted to stay in this house until we could figure out where to buy and how to pay for it, and then we wanted to buy and never, ever rent again, and probably not move for a long time. Years and years.

The longest I have spent in any one place in the last *SIXTEEN* years is ~1.75 years. Because I went to boarding school for high school (moving back and forth between school and home for 4 years), and then away to college (moving back and forth between college and home for 4 years), and then moved to an extremely expensive city in California, and then moved in with Steve a year later, and then Steve left for Toronto 1.75 years later, and then Steve came back 6 months later and we needed bigger space soon after that, and then I made a career change and we moved to Denver a little over a year after that, I have moved, on average, once a year, every year, for the last *SIXTEEN* YEARS.

Did I mention that I'm sick of it? I did? It bears repeating.

Steve and I were delighted to find each other, delighted to move in together, delighted to figure out careers and get jobs and get into schools and delighted to get married, but short of our first born child nothing, nothing, is going to make us more ecstatic than to finally buy a house, and settle down.

And not move for years and years.

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