And a bottle of beer!

We’ve completed nearly all of our holiday tasks, most of which constitute a pain in the ass! But one of the things I like is getting cards and hearing from friends. We generally keep our cards. Not because we’re sentimental but because we’re CHEAP. This is what we do – we cut the covers off the cards and use them to make gift tags. They’re high quality and cute and no two are generally the same and they’re FREE. Free is a good word – especially in this most materialistic of all seasons. The old cards were piling up though since we get far more cards than the number of gifts we give. Hey we have many friends and we’re poor – what can I say!

So tonight Janet and I went through our backlog of old cards and clipped the tag worthy ones and disposed of the remainder. The backlog of cards started from about 1989 and went on from there. Janet read all the cards and we had a few laughs and remembered a lot of friends. Some of the friends were deceased, some divorced (now), some grown up and left the house (separate cards now), some from europe, some from canada, some lost touch, and some unknown (victims of poor handwriting and aging memory). So it was a fun time. My scissors fingers are somewhat tired though.

Another thing that we found was that we could predict who the cards were from before opening them. The Joe Conrad family always had a cloying religious theme and were dollar store cards, the Lalos always and I mean always had a Mountain (Nittany) Lion and were always gorgeous, the Dunyaks were always nice tasteful oversize glossy, the Buss’s were tough ranging from homemade felt reindeer (really cute) to professionally embossed cards with family pictures printed on the obverse, the Urbans were always gold embossed on red with the names printed, Slick’s were always funny or zany, as were Ying and Marlins (I still miss the Ying produced cards though), and the British cards could be spotted a mile away (odd humour and dimensions) and so it went. After this small exercise I was thinking that I should apply for a government grant to correlate card types with personality and situation – gee I think i could head up an entire CIA task force. But there’s one problem I don’t think terrorists send christmas cards. Hmmmmm.

Happy Holidays to all!

To crack!

Not a drug reference – its a plumbing reference. After putting on a loose pair of jeans I replaced the trap and drain on the bathroom sink. I knew it was going to be a problem when I noticed a tiny drip at the bottom of the trap. Living in a house for much longer than 20 years gives you an interesting perspective. You know about when the last fix was effected and you know the culprit responsible for the botched job. It’s nice working in the bathroom too cause you can see the perp in the mirror every time you stand up! Actually it wasn’t a botched job – I just replaced the old trap, last time, with the similar light brass chrome plated pipes. As anyone knows that has worked with these pipes – its a problem when you see a leak at the bottom of the trap. Invariably the brass pipe has eroded and the only remaining material is the wafer-thin chrome coating. Its also a real trip attempting to disassemble the trap when it falls apart in your hands.

Well this time I got serious and tore out the entire shebang back to the copper drain pipe. I had to tear a small hole in the wall (bonus) to get to the 1 1/4” brass sweat on street “L”. Heating it with the torch was fun in the wall without burning the house down. But with the trusty spray bottle and fiberglass insulation it was concluded without too much sturm und drang. But here is the odd thing, I was unable to secure a replacement fitting! So I had to make do with a plastic compression fitting! It wasn’t as pretty as a newly sweated joint – but what the hell its in the wall. The rest of the entire assembly was replaced with heavy plastic. Not as pretty as the chromed brass but much more durable! I then filled in the gap with polyurethane foam in preparation for replacing those gorgeous black plastic tiles so popular in the 60’s. It’s so satisfying when a new drain is put in and it is free flowing and leak free even after a judicious jiggling!

Moral to the (boring) story: Plumbing can be a good centering of priorities after a disastrous election!

This brings me to my election joke. The joke is courtesy of Larry Gabriel who told me it after Bill Clinton was elected to a second term. I have altered it somewhat to reflect my views though. The joke – Dick Cheney and W Bush are in a small boat in the icy Potomac River. Neither man can swim, there are no life preservers, and the boat is leaking badly……. Who will be saved? Answer: THE NATION! I didn’t say it was funny.