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Aug. 2nd, 2006 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickToday, as constant readers probably predicted, I spent much of the morning in the mud underneath a trailer. For those of you who have never been underneath a trailer, allow me to enlighten you. No matter how much they want to be mobile homes or modular homes or whatever, they're trailers. They are built very cheaply and are not really expected to last more than fifteen years, which is about the amount of time most people take to pay one off.
In our particular trailer's case, the floor is insulated by pink fiberglass insulation held up by shitty plastic netting. The insulation is between the ground and the pipes, which means that (a) it helps to keep the pipes from freezing and (b) when the pipes leak, they get the insulation wet and it drips endless bits of wet insulation droplets on anyone who happens to be underneath it. There is also no good way to PUT BACK the insulation and netting once you've removed it so that you can see the fucking pipes that are leaking and maybe reach them with tools. Kwalidy construction all the way, you betcha.
The pipes on this specific trailer are plastic pieces of shit called Quest. They break frequently. We wind up patching the plastic pieces of shit about once every six months. You'd think that this would mean we'd run out of the plastic shit, but you'd be wrong about that.
Anyway. The first problem with the water was that the soft copper water supply line to the hot water heater was perforated like a lace doily. Soft copper (can be easily bent by human hands of normal desk-job strength) is not real durable and Everett water eats away at it, eventually reducing it to doily-texture. While that's lacey and pretty, it don't hold water for shit. The line to the hot water heater looked like a fucking lawn sprinkler. (I am pretty much entirely certain that this did not happen all at once of an evening.) So we replaced that. Someone had to crawl sixteen feet underneath the trailer where there could have been snakes (but weren't) and unattach the far end of the pipe from the plastic pipe shit that goes to hot water heater. Bill does not fit under the trailer, so you know who that was. We replaced it and re-heat-taped it and re-insulated it and then turned the water back on.
That's when we found the second problem. The water supply line for the powder room toilet was leaking under the floor where the pipe (plastic shit pipe) had a big-ass crease in it after it squoze between the joist and the floor (crunched so tightly in that non-gap area that we couldn't pull it out and finally just left it the fuck there, cut on both sides.) and right where it angled sharply upward to an inexplicable elbow and thence to the toilet above the floor. We (I, lying on my back with insulation bits dripping down into my face, neck, and hair and with water running at a fine clip down into my armpit and Bill, kneeling outside the trailer in the sunshine and offering helpful advice) cut out the old, bad pipe and put in new, better (but still plastic shit) pipe. The revised construction has one elbow, one end-to-end joint, and no creases. It also doesn't leak.
That was the day until lunchtime. In the afternoon, I changed the locks at 218, painted the child-bedroom ceiling, the bathroom, and the hallway. I also scrubbed down the porch so that when I prime it, the primer will stick to the porch rather than to the layer of dirt ON the porch. Then I went to Everett to pick up a truckload of shrubbery trimmings and spray the dumb-ass magnolia tree for scale. When I got there, I went to open the passenger-side door of the truck to get out the sprayer and the scale-killer. Imagine my surprise when a brand-new, never-been-opened gallon of Bin primer fell onto the parking lot. It wasn't never-been-opened after that. Bin primer is very, very white. The parking lot is, well, black although now it's not nearly as black as it used to be. There is absolutely nothing more likely to make one feel like Upperclass Twit of the Year as spilling a brand new, never-opened can of white paint onto a parking lot. *sigh* I did what I could to clean it up. I picked up shrubbery. I sprayed the magnolia tree with the scale killer.
I went grocery shopping. Grocery shopping had REAL TOMATOES!! And sweet corn. And almost-ripe peaches. (Dinner this evening consisted of those items.) While I was grocery shopping, the other grocery shoppers stared at me for sniffing the tomatoes. Look. They were ninety-nine cents a pound. If I'm paying that, I'm going to sniff the tomatoes. How else will I know they're any good?
On sniffing the produce: I do not generally buy fruit that fails the smell test. Pineapples, mangoes, apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, grapes, strawberries, lopes, bananas, cherries, most berries -- it's like the fruit world (tomatoes are botanically a fruit) is kind of interested in letting your inner primate know that there's some good eatin' out there. If the fruit *smells* good to you, like it's SUPPOSED to smell, buy it. If it doesn't smell like anything, it isn't ripe yet -- give it a pass. (Bananas will ripen if bought green and mangoes and pineapples improve somewhat.) Lopes you smell at the stem-end scar -- the rest of them doesn't always smell very much but if the stem end smells like lope, it's good to go. People frequently tell me that they don't know how to pick "good" (fruit/vegetable) at the grocery or farmer's market. Here's the big secret to picking good produce: Trust your inner primate. You are specifically evolved for being able to locate ripe fruit and good veggies. Use your secret primate powers at the supermarket to help you pick the best of the available produce.
I also sailed (no wind) after work today.
In our particular trailer's case, the floor is insulated by pink fiberglass insulation held up by shitty plastic netting. The insulation is between the ground and the pipes, which means that (a) it helps to keep the pipes from freezing and (b) when the pipes leak, they get the insulation wet and it drips endless bits of wet insulation droplets on anyone who happens to be underneath it. There is also no good way to PUT BACK the insulation and netting once you've removed it so that you can see the fucking pipes that are leaking and maybe reach them with tools. Kwalidy construction all the way, you betcha.
The pipes on this specific trailer are plastic pieces of shit called Quest. They break frequently. We wind up patching the plastic pieces of shit about once every six months. You'd think that this would mean we'd run out of the plastic shit, but you'd be wrong about that.
Anyway. The first problem with the water was that the soft copper water supply line to the hot water heater was perforated like a lace doily. Soft copper (can be easily bent by human hands of normal desk-job strength) is not real durable and Everett water eats away at it, eventually reducing it to doily-texture. While that's lacey and pretty, it don't hold water for shit. The line to the hot water heater looked like a fucking lawn sprinkler. (I am pretty much entirely certain that this did not happen all at once of an evening.) So we replaced that. Someone had to crawl sixteen feet underneath the trailer where there could have been snakes (but weren't) and unattach the far end of the pipe from the plastic pipe shit that goes to hot water heater. Bill does not fit under the trailer, so you know who that was. We replaced it and re-heat-taped it and re-insulated it and then turned the water back on.
That's when we found the second problem. The water supply line for the powder room toilet was leaking under the floor where the pipe (plastic shit pipe) had a big-ass crease in it after it squoze between the joist and the floor (crunched so tightly in that non-gap area that we couldn't pull it out and finally just left it the fuck there, cut on both sides.) and right where it angled sharply upward to an inexplicable elbow and thence to the toilet above the floor. We (I, lying on my back with insulation bits dripping down into my face, neck, and hair and with water running at a fine clip down into my armpit and Bill, kneeling outside the trailer in the sunshine and offering helpful advice) cut out the old, bad pipe and put in new, better (but still plastic shit) pipe. The revised construction has one elbow, one end-to-end joint, and no creases. It also doesn't leak.
That was the day until lunchtime. In the afternoon, I changed the locks at 218, painted the child-bedroom ceiling, the bathroom, and the hallway. I also scrubbed down the porch so that when I prime it, the primer will stick to the porch rather than to the layer of dirt ON the porch. Then I went to Everett to pick up a truckload of shrubbery trimmings and spray the dumb-ass magnolia tree for scale. When I got there, I went to open the passenger-side door of the truck to get out the sprayer and the scale-killer. Imagine my surprise when a brand-new, never-been-opened gallon of Bin primer fell onto the parking lot. It wasn't never-been-opened after that. Bin primer is very, very white. The parking lot is, well, black although now it's not nearly as black as it used to be. There is absolutely nothing more likely to make one feel like Upperclass Twit of the Year as spilling a brand new, never-opened can of white paint onto a parking lot. *sigh* I did what I could to clean it up. I picked up shrubbery. I sprayed the magnolia tree with the scale killer.
I went grocery shopping. Grocery shopping had REAL TOMATOES!! And sweet corn. And almost-ripe peaches. (Dinner this evening consisted of those items.) While I was grocery shopping, the other grocery shoppers stared at me for sniffing the tomatoes. Look. They were ninety-nine cents a pound. If I'm paying that, I'm going to sniff the tomatoes. How else will I know they're any good?
On sniffing the produce: I do not generally buy fruit that fails the smell test. Pineapples, mangoes, apples, peaches, nectarines, plums, grapes, strawberries, lopes, bananas, cherries, most berries -- it's like the fruit world (tomatoes are botanically a fruit) is kind of interested in letting your inner primate know that there's some good eatin' out there. If the fruit *smells* good to you, like it's SUPPOSED to smell, buy it. If it doesn't smell like anything, it isn't ripe yet -- give it a pass. (Bananas will ripen if bought green and mangoes and pineapples improve somewhat.) Lopes you smell at the stem-end scar -- the rest of them doesn't always smell very much but if the stem end smells like lope, it's good to go. People frequently tell me that they don't know how to pick "good" (fruit/vegetable) at the grocery or farmer's market. Here's the big secret to picking good produce: Trust your inner primate. You are specifically evolved for being able to locate ripe fruit and good veggies. Use your secret primate powers at the supermarket to help you pick the best of the available produce.
I also sailed (no wind) after work today.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Paint in parking lots
Date: 2006-08-03 12:35 pm (UTC)I dropped a gallon of grey paint onto the parking lot in back of Zimmerman's one time. I was lifting it by the handle up into the back of a truck. The handle quit on me, and the can of paint moved gracefully in a tumbling arc until it hit the pavement. Just a hair of a moment passed and the paint blew out everywhere. It was very John Woo-ish.
The proprietor of the store even offered, I think, to replace the paint free as the handle was clearly defective. I declined, citing operator error. This was probably a good 15 years ago, and I think that the parking lot has returned to normal. I think I was painting the porch at 219 at the time.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-03 05:09 pm (UTC)