The O Bar

I sped off at lunchtime Tuesday in search of an oxygen bar.

I found one up on the NE corner of Durango and Charleston. It's actually a tanning salon that has an oxygen bar. I asked the girl (who was like 18) if inhaling their oxygen would be good for a guy with sleep apnea. She said, "Oh, yes. Definitely."

I wonder where she got her medical degree?

I quipped to her, "Here's another thing that we used to get for free and now have to pay for. When I was a kid we drank water out of the hose."

"Huh, what was that?" She didn't look up.

And so for $13 bucks, I was tethered to this oxygen contraption (probably some vacuum cleaner in the back flipped to blow instead of suck) for 1/2 an hour. I actually felt stupid when people walked in the door for their tanning appointments. Everyone who came in was a female and all had that embarrassed look that ALL people have when going to the tanning salon. Equally shamed, no one made any eye contact.

Keith's take on the O Bar? Worthless.

My day got more infinitely more exciting when I met Chris from Leak Detectors in my backyard. Chris was trying to help me find out why I was losing 3 inches a day out of one of the pools in the backyard (the chiquita [or baby] pool). Since Chris was by himself, and all the pumps and stuff are way on the other side of the yard, I was enlisted to help turn dials on the CO2 tank, and be on the lookout for bubbles.

I believe when I told Chris I had been to an oxygen bar earlier in the day, he knew I could handle any sort of compressed gas task with alacrity. This guy gets $325 bucks just to show up with his gear since HE KNOWS if you are the unlucky soul calling him you are seriously SOL. This ain't rocket science. I've seen Alec's math and physics books and THAT stuff really is rocket science (props to Alec for getting one of the 4 Dean's Scholarships next year that the U's science department hands out). After listening to me recite all the stuff I did and didn't do over the past few weeks in my feeble effort to locate the leak (Memo to all: Sticking your head in the sand and praying that it will fix itself is not an option), he said he was sure the leak wasn't in ANY of the lines and that it was a structural problem. Silently I scoffed at him....as if he knew my pool. Structural?!?!? Dollar signs. Yikes.

Chris slithered around the pool as I turned knobs and closed my eyes hopeful that nothing would explode. He/We located the suspected leak.....STRUCTURAL. Big crack in the spillway easily patched up. Damn. I hate being wrong. I was SURE it was a pipe. It was a $10 fix versus digging up my yard. Lady Luck smiling upon me.

Or so one would think.

1/2 hour later and I look outside: My pool is down 12 inches, water is pouring over the spillway flooding the chiquita pool and overflowing into my yard. It was like Katrina. Water everywhere. The one thing that can't happen with this pump system HAPPENED. Suction from the pool and return to the spa. This is a recipe for disaster. Seriously, this event needed to be on film.

The only thing that was missing was me accidentally electrocuting myself.