Month: May 2009

Never Argue with a Woman

One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap. Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out. She motors out a short distance, anchors, and starts to read a book.

Along comes a Game Warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman and says, “Good morning, Ma’am. What are you doing?”
“Reading a book,” she replies.
“You’re in a Restricted Fishing Area,” he informs her.
“I’m sorry, officer, but I’m not fishing. I’m reading.”
“Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment. I’ll have to take you in and write you up.”

“If you do that, I’ll have to charge you with sexual assault,” says the woman.
“But I haven’t even touched you,” says the game warden.
“That’s true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment.”
“Have a nice day ma’am,” and he left.

Three Hillbillies

Three Hillbillies are sitting on a porch shootin’ the breeze.

1st Hillbilly says: “My wife sure is stupid!…She bought an air conditioner.”
2nd Hillbilly says: “Why is that stupid?”
1st Hillbilly says: “We ain’t got no ‘lectricity!”

2nd Hillbilly says: “That’s nothin’! My wife is so stupid, she bought one of them new fangled warshin’ machines!”
1st Hillbilly says: “Why is that so stupid?”
2nd Hillbilly says: ”Cause we ain’t got no plummin’!”

3rd Hillbilly says: “That ain’t nuthin’! My wife is dumber than both yer wifes put together! I was going through her purse the other day lookin’ fer some change, and I found 6 condoms in thar.”
1st and 2nd Hillbillies say: “Well, what’s so dumb about that?”
3rd Hillbilly says: “She ain’t got no pecker.”

Vacation Photo Outtake 2

Dino – In front of Flintstones Bedrock City in Custer, SD.

I wish I had taken a few more pictures of this place, but it looked a little rundown (sort of like nothing had been done to it since its heyday in the early 70’s) and neither Donna nor I felt comfortable parked in the empty lot out front, we didn’t even want to go in the Gift Shop which looked open.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 190

Brian The Plumber

Friday afternoon was replace the garbage disposal day. On the way home from work we stopped in at Home Depot and bought a Badger 5 and a 12″ long 1-1/2 diameter metal flanged pipe to replace the eroded original.

Right up front I caught a break, Insinkerator has not changed their sink flange/mount in the intervening decades since the old disposal was produced. I got to skip the first dozen steps because I didn’t have to remove the old sink drain/flange and install a new one. Little did I know this was the last break I’d get until the next day.

Unhooking the electricals and rewiring the new disposal went smoothly and in flash the unit was mounted to the sink. I took the old pipe and the new one into the garage, dug out my $1.98 hack saw, measured the old pipe, transferred that number to the new pipe and cut it off. Crawled under the sink and mounted the new discharge pipe to the disposal. Uh, oh. It was too short, it didn’t reach the drain pipe on the other sink. The new disposal was a couple inches smaller in diameter than the old.

At this point I have to interject an observation, both my wife and I agree that it took 3 trips to HD to complete the job, but neither of us can remember what the second two entailed exactly.

Not only was the pipe too short, but it was misaligned vertically as well. Back to the store for more pipe. I could get another 12″ metal pipe, but there were no metal T sections for under the second sink to be found, so we ended up with three pieces of plastic 1-1/2 pipe. I also spent $6.50 on a new hack saw.

At home I measured twice and cut once and got everything back together. Now for the test. We ran the tap and hit the switch. No leakage at the disposal to sink and disposal to outlet pipe, but that pesky u-trap was dripping pretty good. I tried two different types washers (a hard plastic wedge and a square rubber gasket) with no help. I put a wrench on the normally hand tighten joint and even that didn’t do any good. After about three hours of monkeying around it was decided to just clean up and leave a plastic bin under the u-trap and revisit it another day.

When we looked in on the bin on Saturday it was dry. Huh? Ran some more water, spun the disposal and there was no leak anymore. Cool.

The only problem with these spontaneous cures is wondering when they might spontaneously fail.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 191

Sheetrock Fairy

We returned the dead battery to the dealer in Columbia. The fellow was supposed to charge us 9 bucks for a core charge the other day, but he waived it and asked that we bring the battery back whenever it was convenient for us. Well, it probably would never be convenient, but it was an excuse to go caching.

I picked out a few along the route there and a bunch more once we got to the capital city. First stop was Leesville. From the description and clues we figured it would have been an easy find, we were wrong. after a couple of passes with the GPS we were getting frustrated. To make matters worse, today was the town’s annual Poultry Festival and people started showing up looking for a place to park to get to the festival area, so we logged a DNF. There were two other caches in Leesville, but we went ahead and marked them for a return visit some time when it was quieter.

The next one was up the road about ten miles and it was another that sounded easy and ended up as a DNF. Number three was in Lexington in a small patch of woods and after poking around in the forest floor for 5 minutes we started to seriously doubt our geocaching abilities. Donna wanted to toss our electronics into the nearby pond.

After dropping off the battery at the Mazda dealer we headed to downtown to take a second pass at a cache we DNF last month just before starting on vacation even with the help of Donna’s sister Sandy and a helpful building employee. In another bit a bad timing, we couldn’t find a place to park close by and there were lots of people roaming the area because there was an event at the nearby civic center. Once again we couldn’t find a regular sized container inside a 5′ x 25′ garden.

Good thing we found the next three we attempted or I would have helped Donna throw the GPS and PDA into the nearest body of water.

When we got home I realized we had been visited by the Sheetrock Fairy. There leaning against the side of the house was a partial sheet of drywall, a box of screws, a roll of tape and a bucket of mud.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 189

Vacation Photo Outtake

Fourd Seasons – a car sculpture next to Carhenge in Alliance, NE.

I have posted my vacation photos online, both here and on Flickr. Right now there are titles and no captions, so it is sort of like watching TV with it on mute, you can get the gist of it, but not the full effect. Come back in a week or so…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 188

When It Rains It Pours

First the garbage disposal debacle, then the Battery saga, now this morning I get a call from the bank’s fraud unit. Somebody got a new wardrobe using my debit card. Three hundred dollars at Men’s Wearhouse, another $160 at Men’s Wearhouse and $140 at FootSmart. Oh, yeah, and a dollar at iTunes.

We had to stop at the bank on the way home and fill out some paperwork. Because it is a debit card the money is out of the account, we’ll get it back, it is just a matter of time.

The MMC monthly meeting tonight was at a Chinese restaurant and , no fooling, my fortune was: “Now is a lucky time for you – take a chance.”

So on the way home we stopped and bought a MegaMillions lottery ticket using the six numbers on the back.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 186