Update At Spent the weekend trying to avoid the crud that partially overtook me Friday. Saturday, I felt better and decided to replace the disposal which appears to have been original to the house and packed it up along about the 20th of December or so. "Packed it up" is a technical term for "I turned it on and it buzzed and did not grind." Hey, I had nothing to do with it at the time. So we went to Home Depot and I decided against my more fiscally restrained nature to get something a little bit more high-quality; we went with an Insinkerator Compact, 3/4 horse motor. This thing had some sort of "covered operation" in that it was supposed to sense when it was covered, and then actuate when needed. I didn't quite like that feature, but decided that it met all of the other requirements I had (save one), and brought it home. That one missing requirement? Self-installation. On the off chance that it would jump out of the box, remove the old one, and install the new one, I left it sit for a week. Not a devout nun's prayer, apparently, as it was still sealed in the box on Saturday. I'm no plumber, but I do know one thing that scares me silly - electricity. When I was much younger, I didn't have that fear of electricity. Electricity was my friend - ran my trains, ran goofy little projects I put together - generally, it enabled the fun stuff I wanted to do. One evening, in my bedroom, after my bath, I was working with lights and circuits and things - you know, typical teenage boy geek stuff - and was busily connecting and disconnecting things. I didn't notice as a pair of wires which were disconnected from a circuit fell into my lap - until the giant blue flash in horrifically close proximity to my genitals. There's not a man alive that wouldn't jump ten feet when that happened - I jumped about sixteen. Unfortunately, my bedroom was about eight by nine, which meant I bounced off at least two walls. Then I unplugged the wires from the wall outlet instead of the outlet bar with the breaker in it... And I've been avoiding household-level electric current ever since. And despite the fact that there were no burns, marks, or really anything to show for it, the mental scars ran pretty damned deep. But since this needed to be done, I dug in - with restrained gusto. Problem the first - cleaning out the cupboard below the sink. I delegated that little chore to the person in the house best suited for it - Jack. He took care of it - sadly, when he finished, the collection of crap that came out was about half the kitchen floor's worth. Then I noticed that the fiberboard base in the cabinet was warped all to heck. Lots of water had apparently pooled, dried, and repooled. Ick. A fair amount of bluish tinge let me know there was also mold and mildew under there as well. Ick. I did a quick swipe through with Lysol (probably didn't kill everything, but I had work to do) and went to work. After tugging, pounding, and grunting, it became painfully apparent that the disposal was not attached per the removal diagram - funny how things like that sometimes work out. So I tossed in the towel and went to a cheap Mexican dinner with Ann and Jack, after stopping by Menards and discovering that no, people there probably didn't know what I was talking about - so I came home with an inexpensive (57¢) plastic putty knife and cheap (87¢) container of "plumber's Putty". I then called my friend, the home-improvement guru.
Me: Is your hubby home? I then asked the important question, to wit - was it possible that a formerly flexible collar may have hardened over the years into a non-flexible collar, and that, if removing two huge hose clamps made no difference, would I harm anything by cutting the collar? Stupid question, I know, as the new disposal came with a new flange and mounting ring and all the fittings, but I wanted to check. After confirming what would have been obvious to anyone else, I pulled out my trusty pocket knife and proceeded with cutting up the collar. After about fifteen minutes, I started working the collar down, and finally over the bulge at the lip of the flange - removing the compression collar and other fittings was the work of a moment. Once that was done, it was time for some fun. I pulled out the putty, and sliced the package in half, and began kneeding it with my hands. In about five minutes it was quite pliable. I formed it into about a 1/4 inch-in-diameter rope (about half of what was needed), and then (rather expertly, in my humble opinion) began laying it around the sink opening, where it went - twice. Ain't that pretty spectacular? I then placed the flange on top, pushed down, and went under the sink, only to find I needed someone above, pushing down. My wife did the honors (I later saw in the mistructions where I was supposed to put the insinkerator on top to hold it down - what, and get my beautiful new insinkerator dirty? I think not). I got the pieces lined up, snugged up, and properly tightened - and then gave my son the remaining 7/8 of the package of plumber's putty, which he now thinks is greater than clay, because it's nowhere near as messy. A few more grunts and swear words lubricated the final return tube and the hose from the dishwasher (said connector lockout already having been knocked out by yours truly), and I filled the sink - only to find not one but two leaks. Sadly, only one of them was anything I worked on, so it looks like I've had a leaking trap for quite some time. A trap I shall be replacing shortly, but until then, there's a bucket with a fair amount of bleach in it and a hole in the concave lid to accept the incoming fluid... That was Saturday. Sunday we spent a little time lounging around the house, then Jack did his Wee Faith training, Rhiannon came home from YiG (next year she wants to be in Media), and we went over to my sister's for cake and belated Christmas. That was nice. Now, we simply need to prepare - it looks like this week will live up to it's billing and hit all the cold records - we may have a difficult time getting above zero come Wednesday. And guess who is going camping Friday? That'd be me...
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Update At About as close as I can get to reality TV programming, however, is a show that airs on our cable system on BBC America - Gordon Ramsey's Nightmares. Ramsey is apparently a Scottish chef who runs a fair amount of high-class restaurants, and can afford to be gone for weeks at a time. Apparently what he does is goes into horribly run restaurants and turns them around. Aside from his challenged vocabulary (he needs to add a few more adjectives to his range, and lay off the "f" word), I find the man fascinating. Not necessarily what he can cook (I doubt I'd like it, as I have those unsophisticated midwestern-American tastes that just don't get too excited about the sort of thing he cooks), but what he can do with a restaurant... And how painfully obvious it is on what needs to be done to turn things about. The sad thing is that half the time, I can figure out what he's going to say before he says it. Food's too complicated, poorly cooked, and there's a fair amount of trouble with the non-kitchen end of most of these restaurants. Oh well, I still enjoy it.
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Update At Put on your long johns...
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