A Bit Too Close

(I'm late with this because the Internet at home went down Thursday morning and didn't come back until Friday afternoon.)

So the plumber showed up Thursday afternoon to replace the water heater. He'd actually been by on Wednesday to look at it and measure it. Out of necessity, I have a short model that's about half the height of your standard water heater, and it sits in the closet in the bathroom which I use as the linen closet.

After he drained the remaining water out of the old one (through a hose that ran out of the apartment and into the flower bed outside) and carted it out of the bathroom, he brought in the new one and unpacked it from its box. I looked at it and thought that it looked a little bigger than the old one, but I didn't say anything. But as he was putting the fixtures on it to connect it to the pipes in the bathroom closet, he started thinking the same thing.

After another measurement, he realized that the new heater was an inch too wide to fit in the closet.

Creating a Problem.

Some phone calls were made and the hope was that a heater that fit could be located, otherwise my choices would be either go with a lower-capacity tank (which I wouldn't have had a problem with) or knock out the walls (which I WOULD have had a problem with). Fortunately, a 40-gallon heater that fit was found ("They don't even make these anymore") and installed, though he had to remove the folding door on the closet to do so. This was quite the process by itself, as the bathroom door was closed and his torch (which I guess he was using to seal the pipes to the fixtures) still set off the smoke detector three times. This all took about five hours, or three hours more than it normally does.

Total cost: $700, which is at the low end of the estimates I got from five different places. (I learned my lesson from the toilet debacle.)

This-n-That

- Butch's friend taking one side of Butch's old dresser off with one swing of a bat is the greatest thing I've seen all year, just edging out the row of Jets fans at the draft who reacted to the Mike Nugent pick like they'd been told they were being served the trout ice cream Sakai made in IC-A: Battle Of The Masters.

(The Mike Nugent pick was Very Necessary, btw. You want to make a playoff run with Doug Brien? Yeah, that's what I thought.)

- Brad Wilkerson's career average against the Phillies: 1.000.

- Fuck with me and I will SIGN YOUR ASS UP.

The Bathroom From Hell

Plumbing's expensive.

Back in January, my toilet damn near exploded and I had to get it replaced, well, immediately. And because I had to get it replaced immediately, I ended up getting screwed on the deal.

Now the water heater's dead. That's what it means when it's leaking from the bottom. Three calls to three different plumbers confirmed that it is, in fact, dead. The also confirmed that it'll cost at least $700 to replace it.

Which I can't possibly afford.

I gotta get out of this place.

Live Or Memorex? (full)

Read this first
Read this second

Did that "East Coast-West Coast" angle make sense to anyone? Biggie-Tupac this ain't. And the whole "East Coast fans appreciating the nuances of the game" thing is funny now that you know about the partially coordinated audience. (Though in Lon and Norman's defense, I'm not sure they knew that was going on beforehand. They might have been told in post-production. "Yeah, that side of the room's gonna clap for no real reason. Just go with it.") Lederer actually looked annoyed/confused by the cheering. He had this look on his face at one point like "What the hell is going on over there?"

There wasn't a bad beat in the tournament worse than the one that took Lederer out.

On the "Huck Seed bluffs himself out of the tournament" hand: I first got there in the middle of this hand, so I'm not sure if Huck was in one of the blinds or not, but D'Agostino led with bets twice after he paired his queen on the flop... sitting there with 9-6 and no pair or draw, at some point you have to think you're beaten, right?

The cut to the final 18 was weird and possibly inaccurately edited -- I could have sworn White's elimination (in the main room) came before Greenberg's. Ah, well.

This last group of nine makes me wonder if there's anything like home court advantage in poker -- I found out that several of those guys play in A.C. and at the Taj semi-regularly.

All right... Hoyt's 7-8 offsuit all-in bluff. 'Cause that's what it was, a plan to steal the blinds for some free cash since everyone else had folded to him (the blinds were, I think, 12k and 24k at this point). D"Agostino calls and turns over his 10s and we're all thinking, "Well, that's pretty much it."

Then that flop hit. The TV didn't do the crowd reaction justice -- there was a "Whoaaaaa!" with a definite undercurrent of "Oh, shit" accompanying it.

Another thing you don't hear when you're sitting there live is the chatter at the table. We couldn't hear Cassidy talking himself into folding on the next-to-last hand. They also mercifully edited that down -- he was standing there thinking for a good three to four minutes before he gave it up. It was odd to watch and try to figure out... I sensed Cassidy was beaten, but I couldn't put Aglialoro on a hand that was all that great. And ESPN's graphics people screwed up -- they put the 4 of hearts on the display on the river when you could plainly see it was the 4 of spades.

Viewer Alert

(This is mostly for myself.)

Coverage begins Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN

About damn time.

The Champ... Is... GONE?!

I've figured out how it is that 10 seeds beat 2 seeds in the second round (it's becoming the second round's version of the 12-5 rule), and I came upon it by accident: Your 10 seed is usually a big-conference team that stumbled badly at some point during the season, but is still good enough to get in, and can be dangerous if given a moment to collect itself. That's how N.C. State beat UConn.

So who's the new Arizona: Florida or Gonzaga?

(Can you tell I'm gonna have to re-do my rules for next year?)

A pox on Gerry McNamara's cows.

Those who would doubt the power of Louisville will pay for their transgressions. Possibly in cash. Unfortunately, not to me.

The biggest shocker of the tournament so far? That I'm leading the Stratusfaction pool.

Of course, I'll be stunned if we see anything top the kid making the shot from his back in that Minnesota state title game.

*taps side of head*

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