CurlyShavings

One of the nice things about my current employer is the privilege of working from home on occasion. (Right now my work PC is crunching item 79 of a 3900-long list, so I have a few moments to take a break.) Working from home (WFH) is nice largely because of the flexibility—for example, if you "leave for work" at the normal time, you get all that commute time as work time and can spend it during other parts of the day. Same thing at the other end of the day. And getting a cup of coffee can be a lot quicker at home than at the office.

Of course, there are dozens of other reasons WFH is awesome. And of course, there are are drawbacks, too.

One of my personal frustrations is how it exposes my well-oiled house as a creaky wreck. Before starting this 3900-long list, I went downstairs for a coffee refill to find that two of the five are still in their PJs (9:30 am), breakfast had been a free-for-all (eat what you find), people were walking over and through a pile of clean laundry, one kid had thrown something at the other and was now crying on the couch, one kid was making bread, one was devising a meal-plan for this weekend's campout and the smallest was running around yelling "I not the bucket girl!"

Before you go and blame the other adult in the house, please note that all of this rests on my shoulders. When all is said and done at the end of the ages, it will be I who is asked to account for this. It is my responsibility to see that the right things are done. It's my job. And when Corporate America takes me out of my home, I am not able to accomplish my job* as effectively as I should.

So, what's the plan? Well, some things are not important, while others are. Learning to get up early, get dressed, prepare and eat breakfast and start tackling the challenges of the day—learning these things has long-term temporal significance. Having my house look like those "museum" homes with no children in them: that's not important.

Well, we're at 97% (3819 of 3900), so I'd better get back to the stuff that pays the bills. Things are running again downstairs and I think I can look forward to a clear floor and fresh bread around lunchtime. Your prayers are appreciated.

More on the important but non-temporal (i.e., eternal and spiritual) items later.

*Note: "job" in this instance is my real job, the one with eternal consequences, not this silly nine-to-five one that I have taken on to pay the bills.

So, I have this really old house. Built in 1917, so it's really old. And I hate most things about it.

The plumbing hasn't given us too much trouble. The shower drains fairly well, especially after we use a quart of Drano in it. Monthly.

The kitchen sink drains fairly efficiently. Well, the left side leaks. Someone broke off almost all the threads on the drain before we moved in and wedged the coupling on just tight enough not to fall off but not tight enough to not leak. Oh, well, we'll replace that when we redo the kitchen someday.

The kitchen faucet leaks where it connects to the base. We'll replace that when we redo the kitchen.

The third floor toilet used to leak but then I replaced everything. Those quarter-turn shutoff valves are nice. They sure beat the turn-forever valves that seem to leak unless they're tightly open or tightly closed.

The faucet on the basement slop sink used to leak. Then I replaced the washers. Now they don't leak.

OK, so maybe I don't like the plumbing in this house, either.

The sink in the 2nd-floor bathroom used to drain quickly. Until the 1½" drain pipe fills up and some leak in the upper portion of the pipe causes water to spill over into the kitchen. Seriously.

We've tried snaking it out, using Drano and nothing seems to help except letting it slowly dry out until we fill it up again. Crazy; no way to live in a house.

So this upper picture is what I pulled out of my wall this weekend. I think there's just about every type of plumbing in this. Galvanized iron, cast iron, bronze, PVC. About the only thing missing is copper. Or maybe stainless.

The PVC on the left is a compression fitting that connects to the P-trap for the sink. The white thingy on the right is a plug of unknown purpose that stuck out into the room on the other side of the wall. The "thing" on the top wasn't totally attached—when I cut through the lower pipe, this just fell off. Hence the leak. Never mind the fact that there is nothing in the upper part of this pipe, just air. Yes, that's correct, my drain vents right into the space between the walls.

So I replaced it with $6 and change of Home Despot parts (second picture). Oh, and I snaked out the drain; you should have seen the hairball!

It's funny to watch the kids use the sink. They've been conditioned to only use a few drops of water at a time so as not to fill up this drain and leak into the kitchen. I wonder how long it will take for them to get used to being able to run the faucet forever.

Now it drains slowly. But it doesn't drain into my kitchen. That's nice. But it drains slowly. That's not nice. I guess that leaky drain was letting air into or out of my drain system.

If it was letting air into my system, then I have a gadget (an Air Admittance Valve) for that problem. If it was letting air out of my system, well, then I guess we'll deal with a slow drain.

It will be nice to shave in the sink tomorrow. And not in a bucket.

I still have a hole in my wall, though. That's nothing compared to the hole in that room's ceiling. Yeah, the third-floor toilet caused that hole.

Sigh.

I hate my house.

When I was in Middle School, I bought a red Schwinn with my own money. A Made-in-America Schwinn 10-speed with a steel frame and toe clips and racing handle-bars.

I loved that bike. I used to wax it. I rode it everywhere. Fishing trips, around campus, to town for that museum job, that radio job and eventually that other summer job.

In High School, I traded it in for a black Schwinn 10-speed. Lighter and nicer, but not red.

It helped me run away from home once and helped me compete in the triathlon in college.

I used to put on my pink shirt, fill up my white water bottle with the blue top and get on my bike. Cinch up the red leather straps on my toe clips and get going. Fifty miles was nothing in those days. Neither was eating a pound of M&M's, a loaf of bread and starting on a six-pack of Cherry Coke.

Yeah, strange habits back then.

The last two years I rode my bike consistently I got hit by two different cars. OK, I hit them. Turning right, right in front of me so that I hit the rear, passenger-side door—what is that? Me hitting them or them hitting me?

Once I moved out of the country, I stopped riding the bike. Too many ways to get killed.

Too many stop signs.

Not enough open road.

So I gave away the bike.

Well, I still have the open road and stop sign problem. But as of today, I don't have a bike problem.

Today I purchased a brand-new, FCR-3, road-ready bike.

I got a new helmet and a tag-along, third-wheel for the youngest boy to ride. So far it's been a lot of fun.

The oldest boy and I have been putting on the miles exploring here. Quite fun.

More later!