Year: 2009

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

And I Thought I Had A Bad Day Yesterday

When we got to work this morning we were greeted by this gruesome discovery. First time I had seen anything like this. Poor dove.

How could this have happened? We had some thunderstorms come through the area last night, maybe high winds? Another bird/animal chase it into the fence?

Just as mysterious as its appearance, was its disappearance. By our afternoon walk, the bird’s body was gone with no sign of it on the ground, nary a feather anywhere…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 184

How To Buy A Miata Battery In 10 Easy Steps

1. First thing Monday morning call a Miata.net vendor to purchase new battery. I chose MMMiata because they are 200 miles away, not Moss Motors which is 2000+ miles away, so I could get it before Thursday when I would return Rudy his battery at the MMC meeting.
2. Confirm with CSR that the battery is in stock.
3. Await emailed shipping confirmation.
4. Tuesday mid-morning call MMMiata to find out why no email. Turns out when they said it was in stock, it was in stock at the manufacturer and it would ship from Pennsylvania. My order was taken Monday morning and faxed to Westco on Tuesday, so it would probably ship Wednesday, with a 2 to 3 day delivery. Meaning if I’m lucky, I might get the battery Friday.
5. Hang Up in Disgust.
6. Get butt chewed by wife for not ensuring prompt delivery.
7. Call local dealer to see if they a Miata battery in stock. Augusta sold their last one yesterday and might get some more on Wednesday or Thursday. In Columbia they have two on the shelf.
8. Call MMMiata to see if they can expedite delivery. They have to call Westco and get back to me. Receive phone message that they could do it and it is not too late, just call and let them know if I want that. Call MMMiata back and be told it would be approximately $50 more (over the $18 already paid for delivery) to get it to me by Thursday.
9. Cancel order with MMMiata. Be told it will be at least Friday before my charge card is refunded because that is the day they do that.
10. Drive to Mazda dealer in Columbia and hand them my charge card.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 182

I Hate Plumbing

Sunday I got the screened porch cleaned off of pollen and we moved into our “summer” bedroom. Tonight I finished editing down the vacation pictures to 124. For most, the title will be enough, but I still will need blurbs for quite a few of them so they make some sense. I ordered the new Miata battery this morning. Tonight I fixed garbage disposal, it grinds up stuff just fine

But in the process I created two leaks under the sink. There is now a plastic bin under there to catch the water. I knew I was in trouble when I disconnected the disposal drain outlet, the rubber gasket was all gunked up, along with the seating surface of the unit. I was not going to be able to make a watertight connection no matter how hard I tried cleaning up, but I tried anyway. As a bonus the thin wall tubing’s flange was eroded away in a small area. The other leak is over near the trap section of the Rube Goldberg maze of piping required for a double sink with a disposal.

Tomorrow it is off to the Big Box Home Improvement Store to buy a new unit, some piping and a gasket or two.

The FRS are playing the MFY tonight on ESPN and the game that was supposed to start at 7:00 PM just started (2-1/2 hours late) because of a rain delay. Every time these two teams get together it is a marathon heavyweight fight lasting around 4 hours, so I will be reading about how this one comes out tomorrow morning.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 181