Over the past two years that we have owned this house we have done a lot to it. Even before we actually closed on the house we had to paint all the baseboards to comply with the type of loan we received. So far we have totally renovated the downstairs bathroom, and laundry room. Those were some tough but fun jobs. We have also upgraded several rooms with new lights, hardware, etc. in order to make the house look like we wanted it to. So this past week my wife commissioned her father George (aka the fixer) to come down and paint two rooms. My wife was very excited, as normally we have always picked paint from the $2 mismatch paint if it was close enough to the color we wanted but this time we bought top dollar high definition paint that was the exact colors she and I wanted.

The downstairs living room was to be painted about 3’ up the wall with a red merlot color and we will add chair-railing towards the end of this week in order make it look like wainscoting. I was at work while the painting was going on and I got a frantic call from Jess saying that while the paint looked fabulous the couch that we have had for more than three years looked horrendous together. She promptly told me that I will be needing a new couch and that she already had the perfect one picked out… Funny how that happened huh? I informed her that it would cost less to repaint the room than to replace the couch, she did not like that. But in the end once the paint dried she was satisfied to keep the couch in place for a while.

The second room to be painted was the upstairs. We picked up a card from the Eddie Bower collection at Lowes that had the exact bedroom we wanted so we got all of our colors from that. A dark blue wall color and khaki trim. The wall color is on and I must say it looks great. I can’t wait until next week when we paint the trim.

Next up is mounting our new 32″ LCD to the wall and sharing an exciting story about my new 40″ LED LCD computer monitor.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Or watch him die, your choice.

Story:

I came home the other day and my wife informed me that the downstairs toilet was stopped up. This was strange to me because I had just remodeled the downstairs bathroom and put a 3″ pipe from the toilet to the sewer so I had never anticipated it becoming stopped up. Curiously I went at the toilet with a plunger and after about 30minutes had no success. Now we have been potty training my son Daniel and he is fascinated by the toilet we have caught him trying to play in it and even trying to wash things in it but he has yet to master the art of the potty. So instinctively I started to assume that he had throne a rag down in the toilet and that must be what is causing the stop-up. I told my wife my thoughts and she agreed so the next day I went to my Mom’s to retrieve my arsenal of toilet tools including a 25′ snake and a plunger that looks more like a bicycle pump that is supposed to build up pressure and push objects through. The snake would only go a little ways down and would stop dead and the special plunger was no help either so I decided that the problem must lie further down the pipe and took the toilet up from the floor. I continued to try and snake the pipe itself and it went through it just fine… So now my curiosity was up and I turned the toilet on its side and was shocked when I saw a rubber ducky staring at me from the S-bend in the toilet. now mind you this is in the porcelain part of the toilet and was further back than my hand could reach. I tried everything snake, plunger, electric cable, close-hanger, knife, praying, water, and even dismantled the top of the toilet in the hopes it might give me better access. Nothing worked, nothing would even budge the ducky he was wedged in there. So after about three hours I gave up and tonight we have went and bought a new toilet to replace the one in our bathroom.

The Challenge to You:

Since I have no other possible ways to get the duck out and I am no longer concerned about the toilet itself I am starting to entertain very destructive ideas for the duck. They include items such as gas, M-80′s, Lead (propelled by a gun), and very large hammers as I said at the start of my post the ducks fate is in your hands you have 36 hours from the time I post this until I either dismantle the toilet gently saving the duck or he meets a of an unsavory flavor. I would like you to comment on this post or send tweets to @davidbates telling me if the duck should be saved or how he should die.

Update:
Ducky is now Dead See http://dlbates.com/DuckyDies for videos of his demise