Cake, cookies, quilting, Diane & Mark

It was an exciting morning on Saturday (5/27)…I headed to the store early to pick up a quart of yoghurt I needed for my dessert, and Michael was ready to leave for golf at 8 AM when I got home. Our water pressure on Friday had suddenly changed, becoming much stronger, so I texted my neighbor to ask if the same thing had happened to them. Next thing I know, Pete came down to look at our water line, and sure enough, our water pressure reducing valve was leaking like crazy in our mechanical room. I put the following info out on the SCCL FB page for those of your that don't read that:

This is for everyone who is as unknowledgeable as I am about some parts of the plumbing in your house. Yesterday (Friday) the water pressure in our house suddenly got much, much stronger. The toilets sounded weird when we flushed them, and water came gushing out of our fridge filter. I texted my neighbor this morning to ask if they had noticed anything. My neighbor's hubby immediately came down to look at our water intake line (which for him, without a basement, is in the garage, and for us with a basement, is in the mechanical room downstairs). He told us that our water pressure reduction valve was failing, and at that point I too could see it leaking. We called a wonderful plumber, Mark Lail, 803-285-8349, who was here within an hour and charged us a VERY resonable price (according to several people I talked to) to fix it. I had no idea such a thing existed, but I have been smelling a musty smell lately, so it much have been slowly dripping for awhile. So, keep an eye on your water intake pipe. Also, there was a bend in ours and he said there was too much pressure on that bend, so he also put in a new joint.

I called around until I found a plumber who said he could be there shortly, and I hung up just as my honey came home from golf. It had started raining and he and his partner decided to give it a miss. That was a good thing since Michael and I needed to spend time in the mechanical room, clearing a path to the valve that needed to be replaced (why do we keep all of those empty cardboard boxes???) Mark the plumber was done by 11 AM, and we send him on his way with a check…..our phone number so that he could return to change out our hot water circulating valve (a different, non-emergency problem that Charlie helped us with when he and Susan were down visiting) and several slices of banana bread as an extra thank you for coming so quickly on a Saturday. Michael and I finally got started with everything else we had planned for the day :~).

I baked a chocolate cake for dinner tonight:

(Paula & Anne, I definitely want both of you to try this cake).

And I had some leftover filling and leftover phyllo cookie cups, so got those baked off as well:

I headed to the studio after that to get my blog out and to start quilting:

I quilted until 4 PM and got about half way through with that quilt, then had an unexpected and fun SKYPE session with Arizona Mary & Jan, while I made the frosting for my cake.

Michael and I left after 6 PM to head over to Diane & Mark’s house:

for dinner and a game night. Dinner was margaritas and a make-your-own-nachos bar, and it was FABULOUS!!! I enjoyed every single bite! Then we played LINKEE and I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT and GOLF and SEVENS…..we laughed and laughed our way through the games, and we didn’t get home until after 11 PM!!! Michael stayed up to spend a bit of time with Cookie, but I went to bed and collapsed.

*** My face in the mirror isn’t wrinkled or drawn,

My house isn’t dirty and the cobwebs are gone.

My garden looks lovely and so does my lawn,

I think I might never put my glasses back on. ***