Frozen Pipes: How to Take the Chill Out!
Oh, yeah. Frozen pipes. At least the toilet thawed out without cracking in two (and yes, there are a couple of family horror stories associated with frozen pipes).
AUGH!!!!
Signs it’s going to be a long, cold winter: when you attempt to flush a toilet, nothing happens. Tank is dry. Inflowing pipe must be frozen out in wall shared with the garage. Oh joy. Rapture.
The inflow pipe into the toilet spontaneously thawed and the tank filled about an hour after The Discovery – probably due to the house warming up sufficiently to thaw that particular line. Fortunately, there don’t appear to be any cracks or leaks. But maybe we’ll check again later to be sure. And maybe I’d better take that shower tonight, not tomorrow morning.
Signs it’s going to be a long, cold, and expensive winter: you check the outdoor faucet in the garage, that you did not winterize because it’s “inside the house”, and it’s not only frozen solid, but snapped off clean at the joint and just loosely leaning out of the hole in the wall left from last year’s plumbing repair. Just where the plumber installed the new faucet to replace the crappy cracked plastic one, after assuring you you didn’t need a frost-free brass one “inside the house.”
Guess we should have re-done the insulation in the wall and repaired the drywall… ::assumes Posture of Sheepish 20-20 Hindsight::
We ran around like chickens with our heads cut off – chickens who know a little but not a lot about plumbing – so after we settled down DH called the plumber and I called Home Despot for some ideas about temporary repair-type countermeasures. Unfortunately DH went to Menard’s instead so he didn’t get the recommended plumbing arcana (something called a compression fitting and a cap) but he did come back with a length of reinforced vinyl tubing and some end-cap stuff and Teflon tape. This was partly my idea – if the pipe thaws without bursting farther down, the hose will direct the water out of the wall and out into the garage to drain. That is, if we remember to remove the end-cap stuff when the water gets flowing, if the works aren’t strong enough to hold back all the water pressure. (Move down to “chicken story”)
And if we do end up with water running out of the hose into the garage, the indoor skating rink will open on Friday. We can sell popcorn and hot chocolate, and we’ll make back the cost of the repair Real Soon. Tonya Harding need not apply.
Well, it seems sorta logical to me, but then again I’m a headless chicken in a boiler suit. And so’s my hubby.
The Old Boys’ Network Now Meets In The Women’s Room
Took a break from my job, which consists of re-arranging other people’s travel plans and making sense of the senseless when things go wrong with same. Went into the restroom, where I found 3 ladies in very nice business attire conducting a sales meeting. They were sales reps or outside vendors – no way were they any of our lot.
Our dress code is Office Casualty – several of my cow-orkers are wearing surgical stalls, full-arm post-surgical anti-inflammatory sleeves, or carpal-tunnel wrist supports these days, and also some people dress like they’re on their way to the emergency room. As in “Omigod! Timmy’s got a fever! Omigod, I gotta get ta work! Omigod! Call me if the sitter doesn’t show up! Omigod! I’ve got a flat tire! Omigod! I couldn’t find any clothes except some old sweats!”
Anyway…
These women are sitting on the sofa talking about market share and who has which district now and which clients are doing well, and then one chimes in with “My laptop does this weird thing, I swear it has a ghost.”
Intrigued by the possibilties of a haunted laptop I eavesdropped shamelessly. I wondered “is that how ghostwriting happens? would a notebook computer possessed by an evil spirit produce badly written fanfic about sexy dead TV characters by a process of automatic typing?”
Actually, I just eavesdropped, I had nothing better to do as I whiled away the minutes – especially as I had forgotten to bring anything to read.
They nattered on about ghostly emanences on their flatscreens and wrapped up the meeting just before I had to make an appearance to wash my hands.
So for any male readers, there you have it – some women talk about computers and sales districts in the bathroom. Just in case you were wondering.
Keeping Up With Obsessions: How To Find the Laugh Out Loud Funny
Every now and then, I have to stop by Television Without Pity and
stock up on some laughs and keep track of those TV shows that have or have had me in their evil snares.
The people who do the recapping for television shows there just leave me gobsmacked with admiration. How do they bring the funny every day? How do they find it in crap shows that they recap against their better judgement? For instance, I stopped watching Tru Calling, because it was boring. But then I started reading the recaps, and found myself howling with laughter at the craptastic stupidity of it as pointed out by Shack, grumpy recapper. Who describes the linked episode as “Dial M for Moron.”
I loved reading the “Firefly” recaps, and mourned when that damn fine show was cancelled far too soon. (UPDATE: Buy the Firefly DVD!)
I got sucked in to TWoP via “The Amazing Race” and although that highly addictive show is not set to come back for the 5th go-around until summer, I’ll happily hang out reading about other shows, because the good posters at TWoP are in great supply, and they have wit, sass and know how to use it.
Through TWoP I found out that the co-stars of yet another great yet cancelled SF show, “The Invisible Man” appeared in November on “Las Vegas.” Dammit, I missed an encore appearance of Fawkes and Hobbes!! But thank goodness, there’s always TiVo wishlists.
Currently, while awaiting the end of winter (not to mention the plumber) and the beginning of another Amazing Race, I’m reading the Jake 2.0 recaps to catch up with a great little show that conflicts with Angel (another show recapped at TWoP, where apparently he current season is not well liked).
Anyway, that Alex, she is one funny writergirl. I think she’s got nanites that make her zoom in on funny details, music, and unrequited lurve. She reels off music trivia and band names and sound-alike band names and obscure punk band posters and makes me want to go back and rewatch and re-listen to the episodes I saw, and wish I’d seen the ones I missed. But hey, at least I know what happened! Mee mee mee mee mee!
Speaking of Angel, DH and I have actually really enjoyed season 5, with Angel and Co. taking over the law offices if Wolfram & Hart. Heh heh heh… Mountain Dew… heh heh heh. From what I recall, it ended with a rather surprising return of a former playa, all tatooed up and scary. Can’t wait for that to start up again, though I”ll miss watching geeky-cute Jake.
Speaking of “The Amazing Race,” the website for the 5th season has been switched from the race application form to some generic boilerplate – I hope this is some type of placeholder for the interim between the application process (which must have closed a while ago now) and the ramp-up to introduce all the new racers, purty sexy logos, and pictures of the Philiminator. Oh, let it be soon!
Previous seasons’ websites still exist at CBS and have all the previous racers, stats for each leg, and so on. I list them below just to keep them handy, because one of these days I’m going to have to go through and look at the video for the first two seasons, which I missed. Admittedly, the debut season was just after 9/11, and I was a bit preoccupied then with feeling shattered and listening to U2. But now I wish I’d gotten into the show earlier as a distraction from world events and a celebration of travel to other countries to meet People Not Like Us.
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race/
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race2/
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race3/ (ugh!! It’s FLO!!!)
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race4/
But there again, if you REALLY want to know what happened, when, and exactly where on any given Amazing Race episode (including maps, train schedules and translations) check out the TWoP forum. And for the love of doG I beg you to read every single one of Miss Alli’s recaps. From the beginning.
I’m pretty damn sure that she coined the word “asshat.” And if you say she didn’t, well, you probably don’t mean to be an asshat. 😉
