I worked last Saturday, which essentially turned the weekend into a mini vacation since I got most of that day plus Sunday and Monday off. And it was eventful. This is the first in a three-part series.

Stephanie and I are doing laundry in the basement on Saturday afternoon. Hazel jumps up onto the washing machine and stretches up onto the concrete wall, reaching for something near the ceiling. I look up.

“Stephanie, how about you go upstairs? I’ll just finish this load and come up in a minute.”
“No, we’re almost done. I’ll stay and help.”
“Really, I think you should probably just go up there.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Well, there’s a bat right here on the wall. I don’t want it to fly around and hit you in the face.”

I think she almost hit her head on the ceiling when she jumped.

After a few brave moments, I had resolved to catch the sleeping thing with a plastic cup and a magazine. (How hard could it be, right? The internet makes it look so easy — trap it under the cup and slide the flat object over the top so the bat can’t escape.) Then I’d just run outside and let the beast go. Simple.

She argued that it was sharing a basement with the cats, and thus needed to be tested for rabies. “What if it bit one of them!?”

(I should mention at some point that Stephanie isn’t typically so terrified of small creatures. (Except for spiders on the ceiling.) Her bat-radar had been put on high alert just a week earlier when we were told a dramatic story of a family which had to choose between brain damage and rabies shots for their baby after a similar encounter — bat spotted in house, no one can prove it DIDN’T bite the baby, so the kid needed the shots, which may or may not cause swelling of the brain for small children.)

So, we called the Humane Society.

“We have a bat.”
“OK, those are high-priority calls. We’ll send someone right over. Just make sure to keep an eye on it so you can point it out when we get there.”

(What am I supposed to do, sit on a chair in the laundry room and stare at this thing? Plus, it’s sleeping. I don’t want to be there when it wakes up!)

The animal control woman shows up at the door after a pretty tense half-hour — I herded the cats into the attic to wait it out while Stephanie googled “rabies side effects”. The lady’s carrying a Folgers can and wearing mud-caked work boots and black leather gloves. Nice gloves too, the form-fitting Isotoner kind, not the industrial-strength protective ones you’d imagine would be helpful in a situation like this.

“You got a bat?”

She may have then spit some tobacco out onto the porch, I can’t remember …

We escorted her down to the basement and showed her the little guy hanging on the wall. The coffee can was too big to get into that small space, so she surmised that it might be easier to just grab him. After prying loose his nails from the wall, the bat hit the can with a satisfying smack. I don’t even know if he woke up for more than the half-second it took to BITE THE WOMAN’S HAND THROUGH HER OBVIOUSLY INFERIOR GLOVE.

She whips off her glove and cusses. “I think that little —- bit me.” She called Central Command on the walkie-talkie and got some instructions, then gave us an overly graphic rundown of how bats are tested for rabies. (For the record, they chop off their heads and mail them to Missouri.)

We were assured that the cats would be OK, since they had been properly vaccinated, and that some fine wire mesh over the dryer vent hole would likely prevent any more bats from interrupting laundry time. (A dubious claim since that’s one of probably 20 or so “dime-sized holes” in the house were a bat could sneak through.)

Four days later, Stephanie is finally over the initial terror. She’s back to doing laundry this week. As long as I first make a sweep through the basement with the flashlight.

First thing you learn when you buy a house: There’s always something that could be fixed. Not necessarily fixing something that’s BROKEN, mind you, but there’s always little stuff that could be better. Leaks, cracks, smells and misalignments. Never-ending list.

Second thing you realize when you buy a house: Crap, I don’t know how to do ANY of this.

So, you learn.

One day, you get help from your father in law fixing the leaky faucet. (New cartridge, $15. Easy fix. “Oh wait. You don’t have any pliers? We’ll need some of those, too.”)

One night, you call Dad and ask if it’s possible to make the deadbolt work, and if you can make it so one key opens all the locks, rather than having a separate key for the front, side, and back. (Again, answer is yes. Take all the locks to Carl Jarl, they’ll hook you up. $15, and it’s done while you wait.)

Tonight’s task list: (1) Bathroom sink isn’t draining properly, and (2) kitchen sink pressure is dismal. Both problems were frustrating because they were new in the past week or two, which made me think they were self-inflicted.

Just the other day, I thought I had fixed a different problem with the bathroom sink by reattaching the plunger. “Look Stephanie! Now you can pull this little doodad and the sink will fill up with water! Just like in the movies!” She shrugs, “Cool.”

Two minutes later, I’m called back into the bathroom. “Well, now it’s not really draining right, look.” Sure enough, now when you OPEN the plunger, the puddle just seeps away. D’oh.

So, that was my goal tonight. Make it drain, dammit.

I opened up the cabinet under the sink. “Hmm. Now what?” Called Dad.

“When I made the sink plunger work the other day, I did something else that caused the sink to not drain.”

“You probably knocked loose a hairball that’s clogging the pipe now. Unscrew the C-shaped pipe under the drain and see if there’s anything blocking the path.”

OK, easy enough. Unscrew two nuts, pipe comes off. And it smells. AWFUL. Puke brown mixed with green mold mixed with Draino. Poke a wire hanger around in there to see what I can find. A couple of gunk-covered hairs plop out, but no massive chunk that I was expecting.

“Hey wait, it looks like THAT pipe comes off, too. Let’s try it.” So, off comes the pipe BETWEEN the C-shaped one and the wall.

And with it, out pops a small dog. Or maybe a gerbil. Holy crap that’s a giant hairball! (I’ll spare you guys the picture. Being in the same room with that thing about made me gag. It really was amazing that any water draining at all.)

With that problem solved I moved on to the kitchen sink, which seemed to lose pressure in the weeks after we fixed the leak. The internet told me the process of fixing the cartridge and turning the water on and off could have knocked some junk loose in the pipes which was clogging up the faucet. “Unlikely that some little pieces of dirt is making water come out slower, but let’s try it.” Popped off the end of the sink where the water comes out (surely there’s a technical term for this stuff, but hey, I’m new at this). Sure enough, the little filter is almost completely plugged. The internet says soaking it vinegar for an hour will loosen it up. Bingo.

With that, I FIXED SOMETHING. TWO THINGS. ME. BY MYSELF. (Sure, Dad TOLD me how, but he wasnt’ there looking over my shoulder.) There’s something exciting about doing work around the house. All of the sudden, I’m excited for projects.

An adrenaline rush from fixing the sink? Sure, I would have laughed before. Now, though, I know the reason why all of our dads are so handy — fixing stuff is pretty damn uplifting.

They picked up the POD on Monday afternoon. And I got a video of it levitating.

There’s a growing set of moving in pictures at Flickr. [LINK]

Today, I spent some time cleaning up the yard and managed to punch myself in the face while I was starting the trimmer. Now there’s a bump. One note about yard work: When we went out to buy a bunch of stuff for outside (trash can, clippers, hose, etc.) we left Lowe’s empty handed. (I think I could have punched a hole in the side of their cheap trash cans.) Then I stopped at the Ace Hardware down the street and left with a huge car load of stuff. Score one for the little (local!) guys.

Got tired of dealing with a balky router (it worked with the ethernet cord but wouldn’t send out a wireless signal), so I stopped at the Apple Store and picked up an Airport Express. It didn’t work either. I’m taking suggestions for what to do next. (Somehow, I’m sure it’s still Cox’s fault.)

After a big check and 59 signatures, we were officially homeowners on March 31. And even that was more than a month after it was a “done deal.” Seems like a lifetime ago. It’s been a pretty long and pretty ridiculous couple months, but we’re happy to let the record show that July, 8, 2009 was the day we officially got our own set of keys to the new place.

4535 Shirley Street.

People ask if we’re tired/scared of moving now, and after doing it four times in three years, I don’t want to ever do it again, but there’s something about unpacking boxes in your own living room that makes all the upheaval seem trivial.

The move coincides with another, almost-equally-exciting announcement: A new job at the World-Herald. One with daytime hours. Weekdays, too. I’m going to be officially known as the Public Square Editor, a title everyone but me seems to hate, and work on special projects for Omaha.com. This takes me out of the sports department, which I’m sorta, no REALLY bummed about, and this is sure to put a pretty good dent in the amount of time I can spend on the golf course, but Stephanie and I like the idea that we might get to hang out now for more than an hour a day. Friday night out to dinner? What’s that?

It also reopens the door to “social activities with friends during waking hours,” a ritual I’ve missed out on for the past five years. That, in combination with a house that we’re dying to show off to people, makes one thing pretty clear:

It’s time to reconnect. Let’s drink a beer on our porch some night. Keep your phones on, people. I might be calling.

Just as soon as I finish mowing the yard.