Home Repairs

Here's something I knew, but had to relearn today. You can't cut roses in the kitchen sink and expect the garbage disposal to chop them up enough to go down the drain.

I bought some roses this morning and rather than take them outside to cut off the ends of the stems and remove the foliage above the water line, I did it in the kitchen. Then I shoved all the ends and leaves into the garbage disposal, turned on the water and the disposal and figured I was done.

Later in the afternoon, I was wiping down the surfaces in the kitchen and I partially filled the sink with water and added some Simple Green. When I finished I opened the drain and discovered that the water wasn't moving. I ran the disposal for about ten minutes before the water slowly went down. I refilled the sink and the same sluggishness happened.

I had to disassemble the piping under the sink to find the source of the blockage, which was clumps of rose stems. Of course, in the process, I found a Teflon washer that was distorted out of shape making a trip to the Ace Hardware necessary to get a replacement.

As I was just telling young Sneed this morning on the way to the dump, "It's the lazy man who does the most work". I should have taken the roses outside to begin with.



You may be wondering what this picture is. We have a gate on the north side of the house that is normally locked. When I have to bring things in or out of the backyard, I unlock it. With all the cleaning going on around here, I have been leaving it unlocked. A couple of times I didn't make sure it was latched properly and Lacie the Wonder Mutt got out and romped around the neighborhood.

This is an automatic closer that I fashioned from two springs and two eye bolts. Like most things I do, it cost too much and took three trips to Ace to get all the right parts.

I also saw that Dan Rather is suing Viacom and CBS for crashing his career over the made up George Bush / Air National Guard story. In my opinion, Dan should not have relied on his underlings to craft a story that he desperately wanted to be true, even though it wasn't. Long after everyone with a lick of sense could see the evidence of a fraud, Dan stuck to his belief. He got what he deserved.

In all the hoopla today surrounding America's least favorite homicidal maniac, was the revelation that one of the guys that OJ robbed is on tape saying the he helped the Juice set up offshore bank accounts. Isn't this how it always happens? I hope the Goldman's find the money.









Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky