Olympic Wrap-up, Water Softener & Divorce

The Olympics came and went. Lots of great moments for sport. I had never seen the biathlon televised before (I have my own opinion on why that is... rifle marksmanship on television had forever seemed a faux pas) on the mother network, at least. We're strictly OTA, so these events may well have seen obscure airtime on CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, and other NBC holdings. But, in this go-round, they had excellent, varied day-time content that showed the whole events rather than highlights. There was some American-only/centric creep-in during some skiing events with Lindsey Vonn, but otherwise, this practice was really dialed down from NBC's historic offerings of all Bode Miller / Apolo Ohno / Picabo Street / Bonnie Blair / Michael Phelps / etc. all the time.

The rest of the world gets to watch the Olympics without tape delay, without cutting out lesser competitors' runs, without so many commercials, without so many fluff pieces telling us what a wonderful person Heinrich H. Hingledorff is. Once every four years we get to watch these sports events that get virtually no attention between Games. We want to see the best compete, even if it's not America. The all-HDTV coverage was simply spectacular. This new philosophy coincided with very high Neilsen ratings for NBC. I hope they got the message and hope they keep this up for future Olympics coverage.

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A service call for our water softener system confirmed my worst suspicions. This system was installed about 20 years ago, which is a long life as these resin tanks typically go --- they build up deposits of the dissolved solids (in our case, iron) and the resin bed, which consists of plastic bead material and small gravel bits, needs to be emptied and re-filled. In the case of our system, the electronics on it are out of date. The salt container was filling up with water after each re-charge, which the instruction manual said was a malfunction. That, combined with 300 p.s.i. in the tank made me decide that it wasn't something we should be screwing around with. I'm pretty handy, but I know my limitations. The technician said that he could try to get the system going, but it would cost about $1,200-$1,600 in labor and parts and wouldn't have any guarantee. A new system with their company would cost upwards of $3,000. This had been the suspicion before the service call, in which case, we'd go to Lowe's and get a $400 30,000-grain Whirlpool model and install it ourselves (we installed the same at my brother's house a short time ago). The technician said that's exactly what he would do if it were his house. It was $100 for the service call that resulted in nothing, but we got a definitive answer and decided that it's best not to throw good money after bad. Went to Lowe's on Friday and we'll hook it up the next free day we get (probably Thursday).

This unit is purported to have higher efficiency, lower salt usage because it recharges based on water usage rather than every X days, if needed or not, and has a much smaller footprint of about a foot-and-a-half square. The latter feature of which, in our utility room/washroom/ chest freezer & pantry, is welcome news. We can use all the space we can get.

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Oh, almost forgot.... My brother's wife filed for divorce last Friday. That's been fairly expected for a while now, but it's still a deal to digest. We've done nothing but try to help them out wherever we can. Watching the kids during drill weekends, bringing over meals, help with household chores, etc. And still, she's "not happy." Well, we'll see how happy she'll be when she has to log off of Facebook or the cell phone and actually do things herself wherever she goes next. She derides her mother as being "stupid" and bouncing from marriage to marriage... and I guess she can't see that, like sailboats in a regatta, she's tacking on the very similar pattern. I hope for the settlement to be equitable according to what each has put into the finances (she has never paid for the house, the Jeep, and rarely pays for gas and food. Her entire check goes into her savings. I can't say that I would be following a similar course of financials were I ever to be married). It was pretty poor taste, though, that she filed on my father's birthday, and that she's leaving my brother at a time when he is so ill. I guess it's just the way of the world these days that vows mean next to nothing.

But besides that, I'm going to remain civil, and wish her the very best and very happy. And I actually mean it, because what's best for her is best for my niece and nephew (her son from her a previous marriage). Cue the Brandi Carlile lyric, "You might not miss this, but I will. I will. I will."