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an uncomfortable sausage party
Sunday, June 26 2016
You may remember back in January me replacing our perfectly-good stainless steel sink with a ceramic so-called "farm sink" because that was what Gretchen wanted. I'd grumbled about it, because it was a lot of work and completely unncessary, but it made Gretchen happy, and that's important. Fast forward nearly half a year. The sink is still doing its job and looks great, but the drain hardware the sink had come with now looks terrible. It had been made of stainless steel covered with a white enamel to match the white of the sink itself. But the enamel had peeled off in chunks and now that hardware looked patchy. Gretchen complained to Signature Hardware and other day they'd sent a replacement drain. I'd been hoping just to replace the crumb basket that sits in the drain (since the drain itself is only a little patchy). But then it turned out that the crumb basket wouldn't fit the old drain. Was I going to have to replace that old drain too? I remembered the hours it had taken to install that drain, which had involved multiple attempts, each failing to pass a leak test. There had also been problems with the hardware that had force me to modify it slightly in order to make it so it would tighten sufficiently. Initially I'd said there was no way I'd replace it, but today before she left for her shift at the bookstore, Gretchen left a little pink construction paper cut-out of a pig on top of the hardware with the question, "Pretty Please?"
At some point this afternoon after taking a 25 milligram dose of ground-up time-release amphetamine salts, I decided to replace that drain. It was a difficult job, involving at least one failed-leak tests, enormous amounts of plumber's putty, and not a small amount of frustrated swearing. But I managed to do it, and the results looked good.
Later I returned to the architectural drawings I'd made two years ago of the solar and laboratory decks. Gretchen had managed to scare up the structural engineer we'd contacted about this issue two years ago after the Hurley building inspector dredged up the issue from nine years before. Both the structural engineer and building inspector had then dropped the issue without a word, and it wouldn't've come up again had we not been trying to get a mortgage on our house to buy the brick mansion. Now my job was to better label the fasteners in those two-year-old diagrams. It was dull, depressing work, and that was why I'd taken the amphetamine salts.
Later after Gretchen came home, she and I and the dogs all drove down to Ray & Nancy's house in Old Hurley for dinner with them and Eva & Sandor. Ray had made a delightful summery meal of gnocchi with vegetables and pan-seared garlic bread, and Eva had brought a bunch of bears, including a disgusting grapefruit-flavored wheat bear and a Fat Dog Imperial Stout (it was good, but I've had better). The plan was to ultimately watch the final episode of this season of Game of Thrones, and since Gretchen doesn't watch that, she left just after the meal, taking Ramona home with her (because Ray had erroneously stated that Ramona must've rolled in something stinky). Just before the show, Ray handed out "weapons" from his martial arts collection. I suspect this was sort of a mock "let's dress up as our favorite characters before going to Rocky Horror Picture Show" kind of thing. My weapon was a short-handled hay trident, which I was able to absentmindedly twirl around my hand for most of the episode, which was delightfully revengalicious, pairing well with the not-especially-peaty single malt scotch I was sipping. Interestingly, the dog dynamics had completely changed without Ramona around. Both Jack and Neville love Ramona, but without her around, they don't have much to say to each other. At best it's an uncomfortable sausage party.
After the episode and the behind-the-episode show and some further jabbering, Neville and I got a ride home with Eva and Sandor.
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