The Diary of A Simple Man

The plumbers came today, right on time. Another ten feet or so of piping needed to be replaced; they showed me the green corrosion here and there, and I had already noticed that that particular pipe was thin and weak metal. Part of the pipe that they replaced was in the bulkhead area, and some of it went through part of the cellar wall, but they were able to pull out the old pipe and put in a new PVC one pretty easily. The bill was only $200, so I was delighted. We can wash dishes and use the kitchen sink again!

It's funny how good it feels to have something old and broken in the house replaced with something new and sturdy.

A couple of days ago the town shut off all the street lights down the middle of our street. The two ends of the street are still lit, but the middle portion is not. I assume it's a cost-saving measure.

It's pretty dark out there. I have to wonder if this increases the chances that we'll be burgled (which isn't something I stay up nights worrying about, by the way).

There's a full moon tonight. It made a ghostly glow on the driveway when I took out the trash. Kind of pretty...it almost looked like snow on the ground. Normally the street light washes out the moonlight.

I wonder if the lights will ever go back on again?

My phone cross-posts status updates to Twitter and Facebook - but not LiveJournal. There are a few Droid apps for LJ available, but I'm not at all sure which one is best. Any suggestions would be very welcome.

Last night I staple-gunned pipe insulation to the exposed edges and corners of the wooden platform of our bed and Sebastian's bed. I think it worked pretty well. With any luck, we'll never hit our shins against those frames again.

And I have to say, the platforms really worked out well. Our mattress has great support now, and the bed is absolutely, startlingly silent.

Tonight I worked on the platform for Sebastian's bed. I screwed down three new slats across the underside of the two plywood boards that make up the platform, and then screwed down the original central slat, which has a central support. It had never worked right, but screwing it into place made it perfect. I broke two drill bits in the process, and the drill battery ran out of power towards the end, but I finished it off manually. Fortunately the drill had just enough power to make shallow starter holes for the last few screws.

Then I took a cheap flat bedsheet that Teri had bought for the purpose, and stapled it into place - on both sides of the platform, including the underside where it wraps around the edges.

It wasn't an easy project, but I got it done and it looks good. It's certainly MUCH sturdier than the two loose boards were! And it looks nicer, too. Time will tell if it holds his mattress in place; it has tended to creep off the foot of the bed, and all his pillows fall into a trough between the headboard and the mattress. That's what a bed salesman told us recently. But if it doesn't help, I'll buy some of that stuff that's used to hold rugs in place on the floor. That should work!

Next I have to think about a platform for our bed. I'm thinking that the bottom can be a pair of open boxes, kind of like large bookshelves with the back sides made of heavy 1" MDF and turned upwards to support the mattress. The frames can be made of 2"x6" wood, with "shelves" of the same wood across the underside to give support. It would actually have to be in two parts, the size of two twin boxsprings. Cover them with a pair of cheap twin-sized fitted sheets, staple them securely, and we have a nice king-sized platform for our bed at about 1/5 to 1/3 the cost of a commercial one - that is, around $125 instead of $300 - $500.

But things could go wrong, I suppose. In which case I'll be wasting $100 worth of wood. Has anyone else tried to do something like this?

Sebastian sprouted a bean in a plastic cup in school a few months ago; it was a project. It wasn't the healthiest plant in the class, but it was doing pretty well.

The problem was that when he brought it home, it didn't stay in one place. It was left on top of the refrigerator for a while, and did poorly because there was virtually no sunshine. We couldn't put it in a window with sun, because our old cat Baby would eat it. He's hell on plants; when I bring flowers home for Teri, he'll do anything possible to get at them and eat them.

The bean plant was dying. So I put it outside, in the sunniest place possible. Sebastian didn't like that; he was afraid that some animal would eat it. We also had a lot of rain, which wasn't good for the plant either.
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I'm not sure what we'll do with the plant in the long run. I don't think bean plants live for more than a year, so I suppose we should save the one bean and plant it, or sprout it, or something. Does anyone know what you're supposed to do with a bean?

Had I mentioned that our new kitten Widget - well, he's pretty much past the kitten stage now - has been making me pay the price for saving his claws?

He was tearing the liner in the litter-box to shreds every time, so I had to clean it out and wash it every Tuesday. It was disgusting. I tried a lot of different solutions; multiple liners, filling the box more, taping the liners down...all sorts of things. But I finally seem to have worked out a solution.
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Ridiculous, I know, but it's really nice to have taken a horrible chore and made it much less disgusting!

We'd been told that the fence and porch would be done by Saturday. We left the stain - a 5-gallon bucket of it that cost us around $150 - on the back porch before we left. We'd paid most of the fee up front, including $100 in cash during a surprise late-evening visit because of an "emergency".

When we got home from the vacation, a twelve-foot section of the more than 60-foot length had been stained...and the rest hasn't been touched. Neither has the porch been done. There's stain all over the grass under the fence (he said he'd put something down to protect the grass), and there are two large areas (3-foot circles) of stain in the grass out in the middle of our back yard. The pickets that were removed from the fence to be repaired have not been repaired or replaced. That includes a missing picket in the stained part of the fence.

We do know that the fence hadn't been touched at all as of 10 AM Sunday morning, so this was apparently a hit-and-run partial staining.

Teri is pissed off. I'm counseling a certain amount of patience...but even I am not at all happy about this.

Oh, and that five-gallon bucket of stain on the back porch? The lid wasn't sealed - it was just lying loosely on top. I tried to fasten it down properly.

All in all, this doesn't look good.

Haven't felt like writing here lately.

Everyone's basically fine.

Teri's mother recommended a guy/company to strip, repair, and repaint our fence and front porch for $350+paint. We're doing it.

Sebastian has been making us play "baseball" with him in the back yard lately. He hit the ball and it smashed me in the face. Fortunately it was a beachball. No damage.

I've been thinking about political vs. religious discussion:
http://askville.amazon.com/Christians-atheists-fear-feel-people-side-fence/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=49722175

Really tired. Need to get onto a better sleeping schedule - need to REALLY BADLY.

More and more brown spots have been showing up on our bathroom ceiling, particularly over the bathtub. For some reason we didn't do anything about them...for months. We assumed we'd have to strip and repaint the ceiling.

But just for the hell of it, I took a swipe at the ceiling with a tissue. And the spots came right off. Five minutes of work with a sanitizing wipe, and the whole ceiling looks positively beautiful.

One of our shower curtains was getting pretty grungy. It might have been mold, or soap scum...I don't know. It was a translucent gray-black stain that covered four or five square feet.

It was a decent shower curtain, a $3.99 one instead of one of those cheap $0.99 ones from the dollar store, so I decided to see if it was cleanable. To tell you the truth, money wasn't a factor; I just felt like giving it a try, and since the vinyl was on the heavier side, I thought it might survive the experiment.

First try: Formula 409 and paper towels.

I took the curtain down and spread it on the bathroom floor (it was dry, of course). I squirted it with 409, waited 30 seconds, and then went over it vigorously with paper towels. Result: dirty paper towels, and some reduction in the grime, but the curtain still looked pretty dirty.

Second try: dishwashing detergent and scotch-brite.

I put a few drops of dishwashing detergent on the curtain, wet an old piece of scotch-brite, and scrubbed fairly gently with a circular motion. Result: the grime came off like magic, instantly, with no visible damage to the curtain. The whole thing took less than two minutes. I put it up again, rinsed it off in the shower, and it has been fine for days.

I also found that dishwashing detergent works great for cleaning the toilet, the bathroom sink, and the tub. It just takes a few drops, too!

Jeeze. How do I end up making posts like this?