One year ago today: October 20, 2018, hotdog towing configuration.
Five years ago today: October 20, 2014, but say in school.
Nine years ago today: October 20, 2010, propane fridge, $2000.
Random years ago today: October 20, 2012, it’s directly proportional, ladies.
Today we get that plumbing roughed. I happily found enough piping under the house, it was that extra but unused water pipe I ran in the trench. With the water supply from the tree already in the back yard, I won’t need those pipes. They are 3/4” and I’ll have a surplus. Good, I’ve always wondered why everybody sticks to copper when using a solar heater. I know metal gets hot, but is that the end of it? From the blog that dares, here's a view of working under the crapper--lots of fun on a Saturday.
What took time was a lot of traipsing back and forth to outside where the three new cold water taps are located. One hose bib, the 3/4” line for the projected water tank, and the washing machine outlet. Right now everything is stubbed, all install the faucets and fixtures later. Then a slight mis-measurement tapping into the cold water feed line. It makes the line cross in front of one of the drain cleanout plugs, but it can be easily shifted out of the way. Plastic, y’know. I cut a series of cross-braces so the floor has a 2-foot by 4-foot access panel that can be lifted out over all the working parts. See next photo.
The hot water lines are not connected, but they are roughly where they have to be. That was also a messy chore since the new water tank means the pipes had to run under the bathtub, the one spot I can’t get to all that easily. There’s another spot on the hallway floor that needs shimming, so that hold me up a half day. The happy bulletin is that the cold water tubing tested perfectly on turn up. Excellent pressure, everything held, no dry joints. That alone calls for celebration. If you want to do a load of laundry, all you have to do now is buy the machine and hook up the hose. Cold water wash only.
Then I find out JZ was out there y’day. So why didn’t he continue on up here and give me a hand? He had no wheels. His older brother needed him in Naples and when done, they drove up to visit in his van. So, I let JZ off the hook on this one. It was enjoyable today working in silence. I got to thinking of my old job at the phone company. I could repair satellite circuits, some of which get pretty hairy. Nowadays, the links are all digital, if one line fails it automatically grabs another. Then the repair can be done at leisure.
In my day, when that line went down, you were under the gun to find and repair the problem. Like all hourly repair work, the profit was the quiet times. For example, during sports events, the phone lines were all dead, then after, came the rush. But, one man could only work one repair at a time and that’s how it was—until 1993. I barely remember that year. Some management idiot who could not repair the lines himself decided that the procedure left the customer in the dark. They decided we should give customer service and call back with progress reports. This often mean scaling down a ladder, walking to the end of the frame room and taking the elevator up to the eighth floor. Then talking to a customer who had no idea of what you are saying and often you could not tell them what the problem was. Okay, two drunk linemen backed over the service box pulling out of a stripper club behind Front & Chestnut. This “customer service” resulted in repairs taking half again as long as normal. I’m glad I left when I did.
Bridge.
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Whew, a lot of work and I’ve just put in a ten-hour day. I’ll keep going until most of the bathroom floor is in. I’ll leave the area around closet (see, I’m learning) until I have the new one ready to install, and I’ll get the floor boards around the new unit when I can physically see it fits the old plumbing. I’m putting in three more braces and restoring some of the hallway floor. Then calling it quits. I’ve got a gallon of limeade in the freezer, double strength. This is a vintage year for key limes. I like ‘em tart, eye-opening tart.
Corn is another item we did not have on the farm, so I’ve only seen other people work these machines. That’s fine by me. That’s how you find out that hard work teaches you nothing except that you hate hard work. What? They said what? Well, dammit, that’s because they are not working hard enough. Spend a year piling lumber like I had to before telling me about how hard you work. Exception, coal miners and fishermen. They definitely work hard.
The siesta DVD is “Touristas”, a flick about a group of gals and their tag-along boyfriends who wind up at a beach bar in Brazil after their bus crashes. Ah, women the way they used to look.
I went back to work on the floor and got it ready for some final adjustments. That’s when I noticed I’m feeling congested and full of small aches and pains. It’s like working for a living. I’m out of my usual decongestant (consisting of a Vick’s inhaler) so I see this last dose of non-drowsy cough medicine 325 mg of pain stuff. Excellent, I’m breathing easy but non-drowsy? Zonked me for an hour. I’m back. Did I miss anything? Yes, I didn’t go for evening coffee and post this blog. Hey, I’ve long since noticed when I don’t post, readership drops but most know what is going on and the next round catches up.
And turtle gifs. Don’t forget turtle gifs. How many blogs give you turtle gifs? And this is a letter to the turtle. Hey, it’s blurry. Right, because it is turtle code. This is probably what it looks like to turtles because I heard they are near-sighted. You are admiring the neatness and format and stuff anyway, not the content. Speaking of letters, this morning I wrote computer letter number 100 to Marion since I left Aurora. That’s only computer letters, there is no record of newsletters, postcards, or anything hand-written.
ADDENDUM
It’s year-end backup time and the blog statistics needed for backups are staggering. Because of the rate disks get stored and lost around here, I tend to back up the whole set of blog files that have been posted. This means the text and the pictures. (This was how I discovered that gifs were gobbling up space.) There are many related files that may or may not get copied. So, how many bytes do I need for this year’s (Dec. 2018 to Nov. 2019) backup? That’s bytes, not letters or words. It’s 41,153,500,000. In English, forty-one billion, one hundred fifty-three million, five hundred thousand bytes. And 2019, with the discovery that gifs will post is going to cause byte inflation like we’ve never seen.
Pictures are always a bonus. They were never part of the original plan. I know from experience I type just over 500,000 words per year. It’s actually 438,000 but I include, as everyone should, the space between the words as the 27th letter of the alphabet. After all, you do have to type it. While my journal is approaching its 40th anniversary, this blog as we know it is just nearing 14 years. If I can find it, I think there are hand-written notes beginning November 1979, so this could already be 40 years and counting.
Why, I was just a kid when it began. I read it time to time and have totally forgotten many of the times and people. Then again, as I’ve pointed out, this blog is the most complete documentation of some people’s lives that will ever be found. Who was it that said the undocumented life is not worth living. He actually meant it the other way around, that those who have nothing worth documenting are the sad part. Golly, in that case the lonely hearts of the world should rejoice—the government, FedEx, Google, and Facebook are documenting every move they make.
