No Time For A Title - Starbucks Is Kicking Me Out

For those of you tired of having to hop all over the place for your news, piecing together viewpoints from the right, left, and center, I've discovered this little gem of a site. It's called The Moderate Voice, and it appears to be a place where people with differing viewpoints seem to have agreed to carry on a civil discussion of the important issues of the day without assuming that anyone who disagrees with them is a socialist/fascist/agent of Satan/enemy of progress (pick one).

Quite frankly, I had forgotten that that was even possible.

Today I decided that if Theo weren't coming home for fall break, we would just have to go visit him. That'll teach him to go to a school less than 2 hours from home, won't it? So we all piled in the car (sans Anna, who for some reason felt that she had better things to do than spend 4 hours of her Sunday in close contact with her younger siblings) and headed out to see if Theo still looked the same (he doesn't - he's taller). Theo regaled us with tales of freshman dorm life that made me realize (once again) how old I've gotten; and he got to hear the little ones bicker in the car on the way to lunch, which could only have reinforced his commitment to not flunk out of college and return home to live.

Oh, and Army ROTC taught Theo to jump off tall buildings and rappel down. Nice. After they were all strapped into the safety gear, one cadet hesitated and told the OIC he didn't think he could do the jump. So the guy (helpfully) pushed him off.

You're in the Army now, buddy...

Make Cakes, Not Faucets

Mummy McTavish sent me a picture of a homemade faucet from "There, I Fixed It" - a blog that is frequented by dyed-in-the-wool DIY'ers (judging from the comments). She claims that this contraption could have fixed all my plumbing problems quite cheaply. I mean, if Depression-era farmhouse decor were my thing...

Larry found the photograph intriguing, but not intriguing enough to rid him of his plumbing-induced PTSD.

Now I need to go bake his cake. Every year we make him a cranberry-upside-down cake for his birthday. We found the recipe years ago in a book called Cranberry Valentine, and the rest is history. I have no idea whether Larry actually likes the cake or whether he is simply loath to buck tradition. I'm just glad to be making a cake that requires neither creativity nor frosting.

There Are No Nobels For Plumbing

Reading the comments on my blog from the last couple of days has led me to this conclusion: There are 2 types of people in this world - those who wouldn't dream of paying a stranger to fix something in their houses, and those who have been so traumatized by previous DIY attempts that they will pay anyone any amount of money to not relive those moments of pain and humiliation.

Larry, apparently, falls into the second category.

What's more, both types feel very strongly about their respective positions.

Whew! Let's move on to something less controversial...say, Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize...

Well, maybe not.

At least now Larry knows there are people in this world more infatuated with the current President of the United States than I am. My feeling is that the committee just jinxed the poor guy. Now he won't get anything accomplished during his years in office. Oh, well, he'll always have Oslo...

Here's a decent middle-of-the-road post on the topic from the website of The Moderate Voice (plus links to various reactions from all parts of the political spectrum). Also, funny cartoons! What more could one want?

Time to go make Larry a b'day cake!

Oh, wait - here's the video of Obama's acceptance speech. Does he sound sort of rattled, or what? You can almost see him thinking, "WTF, Oslo? I'm busy here..."

DIY - Not

Who knew that the readers of this blog are, to a man, an army of rabid do-it-yourselfers who would never pay a plumber anything close to 700 dollars for the installation of a new faucet?

I told Larry what y'all told me yesterday:

Honey, everyone says that we should install the faucet ourselves.

(Silence)

They say it's easy.

Who? Who says it's easy?

You know, the commenters on my blog...

You're listening to imaginary voices again? Since when do they offer plumbing help?

Someone I know in real life says so, too. She says her husband always installs his own faucets.

Good for him!

They're making me feel extravagant.

That's because you weren't blogging in 1997.

1997?

You know, when we bought our first house? The fixer-upper?

No. We didn't even have Internet then. We were broke.

Yes. And I said, "Don't worry, honey. We can tear out all the fixtures in the bathrooms and put in new ones ourselves the month before we move in. It's easy. And way cheaper than paying a plumber..."

Oh. Oh, yes - I do remember.

Was that fun?

No.

Was it easy?

No.

Did you like living without bathroom sinks for months?

Not really....

Do you remember how we finally gave up and that weird handyman you found in the classifieds was at our house on Halloween installing bathroom sinks?

He wasn't weird...

Yes, he was. What was he doing at our house on Halloween night? And he did a crappy job. Remember how he spent all of Easter weekend with us, including Easter morning, installing ceiling fans? Do you remember feeding him dinner?

He was very inexpensive.

Right. That's why I am paying a top-notch plumbing operation with a proven track record to install my kitchen faucet. I have nothing to prove here. I cannot do plumbing. I do not like plumbing. I am not a plumber.

All righty, then...

Everything But The Kitchen Sink

Today our kitchen sink faucet broke. Or, rather, it worked too well and wouldn't stop running; so I turned off the water valves and called the plumber. When he stopped by (within an hour!), we discussed the ins and outs of repairing the faucet v getting a new one. "Tell you what," he said. "When I get back to the office, I'll look up a few models and see what I should recommend and how much they cost."

Trying not to sound pathetic but needing to communicate to him that this was an urgent situation, I said (faux cheerfully), "I guess I'll just hang out here with no kitchen sink and no dishwasher while you do that."

"Oh, no, the dishwasher should still be working, ma'am," he reassured me.

Yes, it should, shouldn't it? After all these months?

Another plumber called me later and said, "Brian was telling me about your problem; and he and John and I have been discussing which sink faucet would be best."

(I told you years ago - some people have interior designers; I have personal plumbers.)

And the solution? Only costs me...let's see...700 bucks. Or, I could spend 220 dollars repairing the broken faucet, with pretty much a guarantee of doing that every 2 years. Because that's how old this faucet is - 2 years. Someone do the math for me, will ya? I'm sort of tired.

You know, I never liked this faucet. Larry picked it out, and I managed to refrain from telling him that it's ugly. (See? I have learned something from 19 years of marriage.)

It may be time to enlighten him.