Adventures In Retail or How I Bought a Toilet Seat

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For those of you expecting another episode in von Lüttwitz's post-war exploits, sorry, not today. Might be a few days before I come back to that. Might be longer. For you see, Herr von Lüttwitz has an established history (fictional though it is) from the (still not published) book Almost a Lifetime and the still-in-work untitled prequel to that, which for now goes by the undistinguished Prequel - Part One.

Because of that, anything I write about von Lüttwitz really should match what I've written about him before. So I need to go back and reread certain things to make sure I don't write something which doesn't jive with "that which has gone before." Which amounts to some 1,300 pages of text in the two works. So, that might take a while ...

As the lead in photo might suggest, today's post is partially about toilet seats. Not the whole post mind you, just this part.

But first, I must digress.

I grew up with round toilet seats, which aren't really round but for convenience sake are referred to as round. I don't know when I first met the elongated variety of toilet seat, but I remember being somewhat disconcerted with them, at first.

But over time I learned to enjoy the extra room it gave one for certain things. Which I shall not go in to. As all of my readers are human, and from this planet, the last being an assumption, we all know what toilet seats are for.

Hhmm, my cultural bias is showing. Toilet facilities are very different in some countries (Japan and Korea immediately spring to mind), so perhaps I should say that most of my readers are from the United States (I know some of you are not) and therefore are somewhat familiar with the basic "round" versus "elongated" toilet seat types.

Anyhoo, I grew to appreciate the elongated seats, much as I grew to love driving an SUV versus driving a compact car. So when we renovated the upstairs bathroom at Chez Sarge, we decided that the elongated seat was the way to go.

As an aside I will mention that when we did the downstairs bathroom, which is significantly smaller than the upstairs, I presumed that the same type of toilet would be installed. I was wrong.

I came home to discover that the contractor had decided, quite on his own, that he would have the round style toilet installed, as "that will give you more space in the bathroom."

"Damn!" says I, "More space! Hey honey, we can hold ballroom dances in the downstairs bathroom now, look at all this extra room."

Yeah, two whole inches. I told the contractor, "Nope, elongated, get this abhorrent round monstrosity out of here."

The Missus Herself thought that perhaps a bit less sarcasm was called for, and she's probably right. But that had not been the first time the contractor decided that perhaps we should listen to him and not the other way around.

"Dude, I'm paying for this, so yeah, let's do it my way."

So all that just to establish my preference in toilet seats. Which, by the way, I had to purchase over the weekend.

Now back in the day I naturally assumed that, this being America, there would be 27 different varieties of toilet seat configuration and multiple seat color choices and materials. Therefore, I set out to measure the dimensions of the toilet seat that needed to be replaced.

The distance from one attach point to the other, the width of the seat, and, of course, the length. I even took photos of everything to make sure I would choose the right one as to dimensions and color as well.

When I arrived at my semi-local¹ big box store and headed back to the wall o' toilet seats, I noticed two things right away: 1) There are only two shapes of toilet seat and there is only one size of each,² and 2) there is only one color.

Upon closer examination I noticed a third thing, the seats had either a wood core or were all plastic. At first I thought that "white wood" was a color, until I checked the heft of the thing and realized, "Ah, wood core."

So all the measuring and photo taking had been for naught.

OTOH, there were different manufacturers, and as my toilet was made by Kohler, I went with that. (To the tune of thirty-five dollars! FJB! I know, I know, I was in the Air Force I should be happy the seat didn't cost me ten thousand dollars ...)

New seat purchased, new seat installed. My one big accomplishment over the weekend.

Since late November I have not been visiting Steam all that much, I was rather afraid that cutting off their access to my funds might drive them under. Not to worry, they stayed alive. So my other accomplishment over the weekend was to plunk down money for two new games: The Troop and Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy. I even had the chance to check them out on the new laptop.

The Troop covers the British experience around Caen from D-Day onwards. I like the way the game plays and I thought the user interface intuitive and easy to use.

OTOH, Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy (for which I bought all the add-ons and extra vehicles) covers the Americans, Germans, Brits and Poles as well. Both games have nice graphics but ...

Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy's user interface is non-intuitive and makes you read the manual to figure out how to do things. So I have that learning curve to climb.

But hey, I've got the time, the inclination, and the equipment to do so.

Just not sure I have the patience!

As The Missus Herself has returned from her sojourn in Maryland, I may not have the time, but we shall see.

Anyhoo, that's all for now.

Be back tomorrow with something else, probably non-fictional. Sorry.

¹ It's twelve miles away. The town where I live has a wee hardware store which is good for nuts and bolts and little things but doesn't carry toilet seats. My town also has zero fast food outlets, unless you count Dunkin' Donuts, which I don't. We used to have a Wendy's, which I loved but also noticed that it was so poorly managed and the employees so ill-trained that I doubted that it would last. I was correct. But I digress.

² At least at my semi-local big box store.