A little bit o' progress

If you were hoping that by now I'd have my house down to one level, I'm sorry to disappoint you. No, I haven't fixed the problem, but I did stop the shower faucet from leaking, and that makes me a home improvement professional. Besides, progress is progress, and I'll share with you what I learned. Why learn from your own mistakes when you can learn from mine?
As I mentioned before, I assumed my problem was a leaky tub drain that normally wouldn't be a problem had it not been for my perpetual leaky shower faucet. Not a fast drip, a slow pour. It's amazing what you can put up with for so long for the sole reason of not knowing how to fix it.
So I had a plumber come over. More of a friend of a friend who used to plumb or simply likes plums. (Actually a laid-off plumber.) I knew I was in trouble when he borrowed my screw driver to remove the shower handle. His leatherman multi-tool was stripping the screw. Apparently on the other side of the shower handle is a long cartridge that forms the inside guts of a shower faucet. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to remove it. About 15 minutes into pulling and prying on the faucet, he finally said he'd have to get back with me. Still fine with me. I'm as calm as a Hindu cow. Until he left and turned the water back on. Now my slow pour is a fast pour. I've had less water pressure at a cheap hotel. I turned the water back off for the night, brushed my teeth with bottled water and used every toilet in the house for its precious final flush.
8:00 a.m. Lowes opened. I spent about a half hour on the plumbing aisle looking for some sort of cartridge pulling tool before asking a guy there if he'd heard of one. He hadn't. But he did feel my pain for the game the day before. (Mental note: don't wear Titans hat after playoff elimination.) So I got the cartridge I needed anyway and brought it home. They come with directions. $19 bucks for a piece that would fix a drip I'd had for probably 2 years. Nice.
The new cartridge came with an adapter to help turn the piece and dislodge it from the faucet. In the photo of them side by side, you can see the problem in the one on the right. Just a worn out rubber gasket. After I pulled it out, all I had to do was fish out the pieces of rubber with a bent coat hanger (my own invention, patent pending), and put the new one in. It slid right in. No drip. And to top it off, there is no drip down the drain unless the water is on. One step closer. Now I can start planning to destroy the wall.