which_chick | (no subject)

I had a busy day today.

Before 8 AM, I took out the trash and prophylactically turned on the pump because this is a Deer Season Weekend and the summer people are up in force, wearing blaze orange and trying to kill Bambi. I noted that it was exceedingly cold (20 degrees F or so) and that the ground was squeaky-crunchy.

I cleaned out the hallway and generated space in the book room for the dresser in progress and the disassembled cedar chiffarobe. When I had a place to put them, I moved the dresser-in-progress and the disassembled chiffarobe out of the living room and into the book room.

I moved the sewing machine (cabinet style) into the bedroom so that I could put my TV (new) and PS/2 (slightly used but dirt cheap and fully functional) on top of it for easy access. I am pleased to report that it only took me about three tries to hook up everything properly so that the PS/2 would show movies on the TV. Yay me! While technologically literate six year olds can do this, I have never owned a game system, let alone one that came with absolutely zero documentation. (That is what happens when you buy used.) I did watch to see if the guy gave me all the pieces, and he did. Turns out that it doesn't work so well if you plug the yellow into the white and vice versa. I figured it out eventually, though, and all is now well.

I split a week's worth of firewood into flinder-sized pieces and stacked that in the indoor wood rack for later. I still need to do another five or six weeks of wood (guesstimating) but that will have to be stacked outside in the cold because it won't fit in the house. Most of the wood is from the Fleetwoods' trees -- it's splitting a hell of a lot better now that it's freezing cold out. I was tearing through it with *thwacks* like gunshots in the sharp cold afternoon.

I cut up several cardboard boxes (including the huge one that the TV came in) into cardboard-for-starting-fires, stacking the pieces neatly in yet another cardboard box. (Normally, I use my hands to rip the cardboard, orthoganally to the rib structure, into suitable sized pieces. Usually I leave the leftover box parts in the middle of the floor until I need them. This does not bother me one bit. Squalor is my normal habitat.)

I grocery shopped with an eye to the future which means I'll be making and freezing soup tomorrow. I think lentil sounds good. Yeah. Lentil. Fuck, I didn't buy any damned mushrooms. Fuck. I'll get some tomorrow, then, when I'm out. I'm going to make more of that delightful potato and leek soup, too. That was really good. (I had no difficulty purchasing leeks this time. Now I am the master!)

Oh, and I took apart the bathroom sink drain because it wasn't really draining correctly and I didn't want to field questions from visitors about why the hell my bathroom sink wasn't draining properly. There was hair in the sink drain, a foot-long mass of wadded hair resembling a cat hairball only with more black ick. It was ghastly. However, the sink drains like sixty now. Yay!

I gathered up all the wood-refinishing chemicals and stuff and stowed them in the closet along with the ladder (it folds up) and the circular saw. All of that crap had been out in the living room. I put away the pressure canner and the other canning toys which had been sitting on the kitchen floor since I made grape jelly.

Along about two in the afternoon, Mr. M. called to tell me that he had no water. I told him I'd go up and turn the pump on and he should have water in like fifteen minutes. I was kind of confused about the no-water business, because I had water just fine and because I'd turned on the pump bright and early in the o-dark-hundred hours, but what the hell. I didn't figure Mr M. was making up a lack o' water to piss me off. I investigated his claim of having-no-water by driving up to look at the pump, which was running. I flipped it off and on again to reset it to run more. I went out to the pit and felt the pipe, to see if the pump was really running like it said it was. (You can kind of hear the pump whine and feel the pipe vibrate slightly.) It was running. I went back home to see what transpired. Mr. M. called again to say he had no water. I allowed as how it'd been right cold out the night before and that still wasn't up above freezing and so it might be that his pipes had froze up (I am aware that normal people say "had frozen". I was in friendly redneck mode.) where they came out the ground to go into his house. I asked if he'd had any pipe freezing action going on in the past and he was all "Nope, we drain the pipes every winter. But this is downright odd, it's never happened before. There must be something wrong with the water. C. (his son, I think) says that there's water running clean out the tank up on the hill." (Water runs out the tank on the hill when the tank is full.) I did not get mad or accuse anyone of fewer smarts than a turnip. I said that it had really been quite cold, unseasonably so, and that possibly his pipes were frozen slushy where they came out of the ground to go into his house. That'd cause no water for him even if the tank was clear full up and running over. I offered to come up with my hairdryer (I own one specifically for the purpose of thawing frozen pipes) and see what we could find out. He said that sounded like a plan, so I went on up. By the time I got there, Mr. M had water again. Turns out someone forgot to plug in the heat tape that was wrapped around the foot-and-a-half of naked, exposed pipe running from the ground to the wall of his cabin. The pipe had froze up slushy, thawed right out when they turned the heat tape on. I smiled and allowed as how it really had been unseasonably cold the night before, could have happened to anyone. No worries.

And right now, I'm making potroast out of a beautiful piece of chuck that was on sale at the grocery. There should be dinner in another hour and a half, fork-tender chuck with potatoes and carrots and onions. After dinner, there is Mr. and Mrs. Smith on DVD. Oh, and my house is eighty degrees of toasty warm even though it's brass monkeys and witches' tits outside.

And that, thar, was my busy day. What did *you* do all day?