Cyberspatialniche

So Patrick got a little moula from my dad for his graduation. This was a pleasant surprise, the first of the next several surprises, none of which were entirely pleasant. Patrick woke me up on Sunday by relaying that he was shopping for a pool. You can imagine my reaction, of course. After I cleared my head and found out more information, I was still a bit hesitant. We had an ubove-ground pool growing up which was pretty lame and difficult to keep up. But still, this was his present so I tried to step back and let him decide.

I did find a good deal on one, though, at Sam’s Club – 15′ in diameter, 3.5′ deep for less than $200. After a few bumps along the way towards purchasing this, we finally got it home and started to attack the design problem of where to put it in the yard. I wasn’t happy about losing a large square of my now healthy green grass, so we decided upon putting it mostly on the patio with only about a 5′x15′ extension into the grass. I thought this solution would work out wonderfully, but it would seem that my zest for setting up a new toy got the better of my brain. I’m sure any of you out there that have ever had one of these pools knows what I’m talking about – the bane of unlevel ground!

We thought it would work out, though, and started to fill up the pool. After a few hours, though, we started to see a potential problem. The intake and outtake for the filter pump was on the higher side of the pool, meaning that if the difference in height was too great, the water wouldn’t be high enough to successfully use the filter. Well, I was determined to finish the project to know if that would be the case. After Patrick and I battled back and forth, he finally allowed me to see things through. My reasoning at the time was just to make sure it wouldn’t work before we invested any additional time and money into making it work. Better to know for sure, I thought.

So now, not quite a week later, our pool is deflated and awaits revival. We plan on putting in a patio extension to support the part of the pool that is current on the grass. Since that grass was going to die anyway, I’m at peace with the solution. And it will be nice having a pool for the post-Gay Days BBQ, as we have had since we started doing it 5 years ago. Now if only I could find a cheap way to heat the water, we’d have that hot tub we’ve been wanting! Oh well, maybe another time.