if it's not one thing, it's another

I came home Friday evening to the sound of a constant drip-drip-dripping noise coming from my bathroom. Grimacing, I turned on the light and peeked in, which is how I saw a leak from out of the side of my toilet tank, right where the flush handle was. I lifted off the tank's lid to see the water level was way too high. I flushed the toilet experimentally; the water in the tank descended; the lid at the bottom of the tank closed up; the water began filling again until the floater valve's "balloon" rose to a certain point, and the water flowing into the tank shut off... until it didn't. The water flow started up again, despite the balloon's position, and the tank kept filling until it overflowed again.

Sighing, I closed the water valve connected to the wall, washed my hands, then went to consult the YouTube gurus. Most of the basic videos about this problem said the cause could be one of two things: a bad floater valve or a bad lid. The lid in my toilet tank seemed fine, and the most common recommendation for the floater valve was to manually adjust the balloon downward to make the water flow shut off earlier. Another suggestion was to open up the floater valve's top and de-gunk it in case there were any buildups of calcium, etc. inside it. There was nothing to de-gunk when I checked, and I adjusted the floater valve's balloon downward. I opened the wall valve and let the water fill again. The lower balloon did indeed cause the water flow to shut off earlier, but as before, the shutoff was only temporary, and the water started flowing again. The other recommendation I saw was that, if these two fixes aren't working (lid and floater valve), replace the floater valve with a new one. So I have one on order.

In the meantime, I'm manually shutting off the water every time I use the bathroom. I flush; I let the tank refill; I shut off the wall valve. In a few days, the new part will arrive, and I'll try to replace the floater valve myself. I could, in theory, call the toilet repairman back; I still have that other leaking problem, so he could fix both in a single visit. I email my HR department when I have a plumbing problem, and thus far, I haven't been charged anything (unlike when my A/C needs work), so I could do the lazy thing and let a pro handle both of my problems. But part of me wants to get in there and do the valve repair myself. It doesn't look that hard, and I need to get handier, anyway. Just in case some hot woman with an overinflated chest and nipples pulsing in seductive Morse Code asks me to work on her pipes.