Hypothetically speaking...

... what could happen if you are watching a sermon online and decide to take the laptop upstairs to finish watching because everyone else is already in bed. Suppose you hypothetically put your ear buds on the keyboard and close the laptop. What do you think might could happen?

If you guessed that your laptop screen might look like this when you open up the computer, you're a winner!

No, it's not a modern art print. It's a cracked LCD screen. *sigh*

Pool Chemistry 101...

At my high school there were two chemistry teachers --the one everyone loved, who taught for 6,000 years and was legend for making his students want to become doctors and pharmacists, and the crazy one who was working on her PhD but couldn't explain the chemical structure of carbon dioxide vs. carbon monoxide to students, yet she was allegedly brilliant in a research environment. Allegedly.

I had the crazy one.

So when pool chemistry goes awry, as it is wont to do the latter part of June every single year, I am clueless. And impatient.

In the middle of June, our pool looked like this:

And today it looks like this:

Wait... it's hard to see just how bad it is from a distance. Let's try that again. Here it is two-ish weeks ago:

And here it is today:

Hmmm... notice a change? Yes, it is a different color. Copper-colored, to be exact.

As I understand it, what had happened was this: the chlorine and pH levels dropped. A lot. We added a ton of chlorine (and repaired the automatic chlorinator, leaving it set on MAX-10).

Then we filled the pool with about 8" of water because between the lack of rain and the prevalence of diving championships, the water level had fallen significantly. The unbalanced chlorine and pH helped leach copper out of the pipes in the pool heater. Mind you, if the heater were a little newer, it would have been plumbed so that when it's off the water flows around the copper pipes and not through the copper pipes. But no, it's old, so water flows through the copper pipes of the pool heater whether it's on or not. Over the course of a week, the pool went from pristine blue to pond-muck green-brown. Lovely.

Only here's the thing... now the water chemistry is near-perfect. It's the pool liner that's stained. I feel like I need to call Bill Murray and invite him for a swim.

Other pool-or-pond, pond-would-be-good-for-you visitors we have include insects...

(OK, you have to be a little impressed at the sparkles under the cricket's feet. Downright Disney, don't ya think?)

...and amphibians...

We are waiting on someone who majored in science and understands chemistry (i.e. won't kill every living thing in the neighborhood) to get off work one evening while it is still light and finish the de-staining treatment.

In the meantime, I'm headed poolside to chat with the enchanted creatures who have taken residence in our backyard pond pool. 

Nobody's perfik...

I have Hannah Montana in my head now.

My momma says I struggle because I'm a perfectionist. I'm not a perfectionist -- 99.4% is OK too.  See how it did that? If I'd said 99.5%, it would round up to 100%. I'm good with .6% less than absolute perfection. So, there. I'm not a perfectionist.

;-)