I decided that when the Lemon Law case was finished, I would take any money from it and get a pickup.  So when the lawyer called me yesterday to talk about a settlement, I did very little negotiating…I stood firm for the first call, but they came back with a counter-offer and since i really didnt want to have to go to court for this and it was more than the first offer, I took it!

I kinda knew what I wanted…I liked the Nissan Frontier because it’s a 6 cylinder and I think that’s all the power I will ever really need, got rave reviews from Kevin and Bradford (how can I go wrong?).  So I called my cousin, John (he knows more about cars than anyone I know). He told me that the Frontier had had a transmission issue from 2005 to 2008, but nothing since then…so I was sold!  He also told me to go to carmax and get a written appraisal, either carmax would buy my car or I could use the appraisal to negotiate…which is exactly what I did.

This is now my newest toy…I hope to be driving this truck way past 300k miles!

Now I have to go buy something that you can only move in a truck!

You ain’t gonna believe this shit!

We went to Lowe’s to buy something that we could put in the back of the truck…you know, something that wouldn’t easily be moved in a car, so we bought a toilet.

For years the old toilet was faithful, but sometimes didn’t want to finish it’s job…so it was time to retire it!

I pulled the old toilet up when I gutted the bathroom, but since it was an old reliable toilet, I just rebuilt it…all new gaskets, brass screws, wax ring, new seat…all of it!

I have done this job before which means I know I will probably need a second pair of hands, so I figured I would do it on the day Scott was supposed to come over and if I needed help, he would be close by.

Removing the old toilet was quick and clean…it really helped that the brass screws weren’t so completely rusted.  The cast iron closet flange wasn’t as pretty as it could be so I ran down to home depot and got one of these

I took my time putting the new toilet in, and even though Jen was a little skeeved by the job, she was ok with helping me lining it up so that the wax ring didn’t go askew, got it bolted down, added the tank, connected the plumbing and flushed it. Haven’t seen a leak yet (and I have been checking), it doesn’t rock, feels pretty solid….now we just need 30 golf balls to test it.  OK, so no golf balls, but that’s how they advertised this particular toilet!