Pool

The pool is looking fabulous! Still lots 'o' crap on the bottom, but we bought a robot to help fix that and I can now see to the bottom of the entire pool! The water has been quite clear! It's not so clear right now because I ran the robot for a day and it stirred some stuff up, but it still looks great! I had to use our new skimmer net to pick up some rocks that were on the bottom of the shallow end for some reason. The net was free though because it was slightly bent. That's all that was wrong with it. It's perfectly normal except a small bend. I like free though, so I'm happy! :)

Geez...

I had forgotten how to sign into my own blog LOL That's a little embarassing! Anywhoo.... the pool is looking a lot clearer now. It's still cloudy, but not nearly as bad as it was. I can actually see the bottom of the shallow end! I can see pretty clearly to about 5 feet down! There's still a decent amount of crap on the bottom, but not that bad. The leaves are all gone, the stuff that's down there is just dirt and silt and dead algae now. Paul is going to buy a little pool robot to clean it up (it's like a Roomba for the pool). I think the pool will actually be ready to swim in by this summer :)
I still haven't found a job, despite all the applications I've been putting in all over the place. That is getting very frustrating. :(
My friend Megan had her baby recently, she named her Winry. She was about 6 weeks early, but doing fine. She's such a beautiful baby! I'm going to visit them at the hospital tomorrow :)
I went and visited John-John on Monday and got to meet his girlfriend, Nancy. It was great to see John again and Nancy is very nice. She even gave me a haircut! For free! It's one of the best haircuts I've ever gotten too! :D My hair is so nice and fluffy and I do so much more with it than I could when it was super long. It's still long, but she took about 3-4 inches off it :)  I've been so happy since I got it cut, it's amazing how a good haircut can make you feel so much better.
Other than all that, I guess there's not much new stuff going on over here...

It's been a while...

     It's been a while since I last posted...
     OK, so all the algae is dead, yay! :D Hank and I pressure washed the concrete around the pool and it looks a lot better but that got a lot of dirt in the pool, which I wasn't happy about, but thats mostly been filtered out now. The water is still pretty cloudy, but you can see to the bottom of the shallow end, finally. This Thursday I'll put the PH increaser and the Powerfloc in and we'll vacuume it again this weekend. After that we'll put in the filter aids so the tiny particles can be filtered out and hopefully that will make the water nice and clear. :)
     In non pool related news.... my sister had abdominal surgery for an intestinal blockage. The surgery went great and she's doing very well. She's home now, and feeling good. :) Apparantly she had some scar tissue from her last surgery that got wrapped around part of her intestine. That is what was causing the blockage. They fixed that and took out her appendix as well. I'm so glad that she's doing well! :)
     I burned my hand on Monday. I unplugged the cord from our electric skillet and the super hot metal prong touched the palm of my right hand and my hand, for whatever reason, closed tight around it. It was burning my hand for 3 full seconds before I could let go. Ouch! :( That finally healed enough for me to use my hand yesterday. Of course I would burn the palm of my right hand.... I realized that I'm not good at doing anything with my left hand... :( At least it's all better now :) However, now I'm sick. My sinuses are so stuffed up it's rediculous and I'm just miserable. I was going to go letterboxing with Tia on Tuesday, but it looks like that's not gonna happen now. I had a fever yesterday, but at least it's gone today :) With any luck I'll feel ok by tomorrow. I'm thinking about visiting some friends in Shoreline this week, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to... I guess that's pretty much what's been going on since my last post, I'm going to try to keep up on my blog a bit better from now on, thanks to everyone who's been reading it! :)

Die, algae, die!

So the other day we put in 2 bottles of granulated chlorine (it's some of the strongest chlorine they make) and 2 bottles of algaecide. A few hours after we put them in the pool water turned cloudy blue! That's the color we were hoping for! Woo-hoo!!!!!! Finally! :) Today me and Paul took another water sample to Aqua Quip who confirmed that the algae is gone! On Thursday We take the cartriges out of the filter and put more PowerFloc in to help sink all the teeny tiny particles of dead algae to the bottom so we can vacuum again next Saturday. We also have to put some chemicals in to raise the Ph levels to make the PowerFloc more effective. Now, when I mentioned that the algae particles were teeny tiny, I meant it. The guy at Aqua Quip said they are about 3 microns in diameter. Microns! As in Micro! The filter cartriges will collect anything that is over 20-25 microns in size and the algae is only about 3 microns, so we'll also need to add a "filter aid" to make our filter able to collect such small particles. Then we can start balancing out the water chemistry. All-in-all though, everything is progressing very well. Hopefully by next weekend we'll have clear water! I'm super stoked about that possibility! We're finally really getting close to having a clean pool! I'm not going to post any pics of the water color transformation until the pool is clean, so everyone can get the full effect :)
     In other household news, Hank's parents are here today, visiting from Costa Rica. They are really nice, and they love the house :) Jeremy came over too and is staying the night tonite. I was really hoping Melody would be able to come with Jeremy, but sadly, she is very sick right now. I hope she gets better soon! Until later everyone :)

Letterboxing and relaxing at Riverscene Park

So I wanted to take a drive out to Granite Falls on this gorgeous sunny day, so I did :) I planted a new letterbox (clues will be posted to Atlasquest today or tomorrow) at a tiny, but beautiful little park called Riverscene Park. I stayed there for over an hour just looking at the river and enjoying nature. I also plan to make a little slideshow of the pics I took there :) I finally was able to gather some nice little pieces of driftwood from there too. I've been needing driftwood for my art projects for some time now and I finally found a place where it is apparantly legal to take some! :D Woo-hoo! I felt kinda weird taking driftwood from the little beach, but finally while I was there, some other people also started collecting cool rocks, so I felt a little less out of place :) It's been a really nice day so far! :)

Pool news

Well, today we got up and looked at the pool. It looks a bit better. Not quite the miracle I was praying for, but it does look better. There's tons of clusters of little bubbles on the pool so I asked Aqua Quip what that meant and the guy said that it's "bio foam" which the algae produces as it dies! Yay! :D I like the idea of the algae finally dying! Anywhoo, he said that it should go from whitish green (that's where it is now) to whitish grey, to whitish blue by tomorrow morning. If it doesn't look right by the morning then I'll need to go get some more chemicals. Oh, I hope it looks whitish blue by tomorrow!
At some point I'll post pics of the color transition the pools has made :)

Pool Progress

So Paul called Aqua Quip this morning to find out what we need to do next because the water is still really cloudy. They told us to bring in another water sample and that we'll probably need to get some algaecide, so that what I'm about to do here in a few minutes. I just hope that whatever we put in today will help kill all this darn algae and allow us to finally see the bottom of the pool! I had a dream the other night that I went outside and the pool was totally clean. It was such a nice dream...then I woke up :( Well, hopefully my dream will be coming true soon! I just have to keep reminding myself that it will all be worth it by the time Summer comes around. Also, it looks like we'll be spending another 5-6 hours vacuuming the pool again this Saturday. I just hope it gets all the algae out. Last weekend when we were vacuuming, Hank set the pole that the vacuum is attatched to against the side of the pool for a second (the vacuume head was still on the bottom of the pool) so he could go inside to pee, and the pole started sliding down into the water. I realized what was about to happen and I ran as fast as I could to it, jumped down, and reached down and grabbed it just as the handle slid into the murky water and I pulled it up just before we lost it! It was all "action movie style" as Hank put it. The neighbors were out on their deck and they started clapping when they saw what I did LOL Finally someone was there to witness it when I did something cool! Usually that stuff only happens when I'm by myself LOL I really want to go letterboxing today, but I can't find any new boxes in the area that I'll be going to today. Maybe tomorrow? Well friends, I'll keep you posted on the progress :)