ACE | Temporary Sanity ...

I was going to rant today, but forgot what I was going to rant about.

Oh, ya … it’s about our illustrious Senators and Congressmen who vote on some pretty important bills without reading what they are all about. One was Obamacare, and most recently it’s about amnesty. The bills have different names, but it’s still all about politics vs. the people. My opinion, of course. Many of our elected officials are absolutely wonderful. It’s just too bad they are out numbered by all those other folks.

Diane fed me chicken again for dinner. It was awesome.

I have two things to address today – one is about quantum theory. I know, we’ve talked about this at length in the past, but we still haven’t come to an agreement on what we should believe or not believe. Maybe we really do live in the matrix and everything we perceive as reality is simply created in our minds. We do not, as I’m sure you already know, use all of our brain so I postulate that the part of our brain we don’t appear to use is the part that creates our reality about all the nifty things we do in life.

This topic popped up yesterday for me when I was looking for a new book to read. I just finished my last Harlequin Romance novel and decided to broaden my range a little. So, on iBooks, I just searched for “quantum”. Do you have any idea how many books there are with ‘quantum’ in the title? It’s amazing! Some of them are reasonably priced at $2.99, or less, but some authors are charging up to $200.00 for their blessed books that are, I suspect, full of their theories. I’m pretty sure those high-priced books are text books written by the author, and required for his class. Old versions are unacceptable for new students because he revises it every year with a new theory, or two, or simply to correct the spelling of a few words. If new students don’t get the new book, they don’t pass the course. Nifty business.

Well, I have theories, too. I have theories about lots of stuff. Just ask Diane. I’ve shared some of them with some of you, too. Sadly, I don’t remember them until I’m involved in conversation, say, about napkins. It’s my theory that with a bit of adjustment to our digestive tract, and use of proper material, if we had napkins made of that material, and swallowed it after every meal, we would not need toilet paper because the napkin would be the last thing out, cleaning things up as it exits. Just a theory. Might not even need to modify the digestive tract at all. Maybe a good linen will work. I’m still waiting for ‘that’ first person to give this a shot and let me know how it works out. Or, ‘if’ it works out by itself or requires surgery.

Regarding quantum ‘anything’ … I’m thinking about quantum Haiku based on the popular 5-7-5 syllabic symbolical construction devised by someone in Japan in another dimension. How it got here, we still don’t know. But, it’s here, and here’s what it looks like.

I’m not, you’re not, we are one : some say that we don’t exist : well, son of a gun

It doesn’t have to make any sense as long as the syllables run 5-7-5. I suppose it would be more interesting if it made sense, told a little story, but that would add another degree of difficulty that I’m not always willing to accept. For you, however, I’ll do it. Here it goes …

Blogs are fun, you know

You can blog your head right off

And ignore comments

Suggesting you stop

Blogging about some dumb stuff

No one cares about

That’s just off the top … funny how things work out when you write haiku. Maybe I’m doing it wrong.

As you know, Cedric stayed with us last night. He’s really difficult to have around because he’s almost as big as me and I can’t boss him around any more like I used to. He’s on to all my lies, too, and just feeds them back to me. I only had one suggestion for him – to take a course in school that might help him increase the speed of his speech. Right now he’s on the borderline between fast and really fast. With a little practice he’ll be able to talk so fast I won’t understand a thing he says. As it is, I only miss about every fifth word so I’m able to grasp his meaning. Kinda. He left around eleventy this morning with Daniel. They went to Oaks Park for the afternoon. Every once ina while INTEL rents the entire park and just turns employees loose in there. What fun. They also have been known to rent out an entire theater, in Forest Grove, for the employees to watch movie premiers. I got to go to one of those, once.

I installed the new water pump in the RV today but it caused me, and Jack, a great deal of consternation trying to decide how in the heck we were going to get it connected. Somewhere, in the land of water pumps, a decision was apparently made to change the size of all fittings to ensure those installed in older RVs WILL NOT fit new pumps. That was the problem. One alternative, I suppose, is to just replace “all” the pipes in the RV but that’s a lot of work.

The input side was simple. It could be fixed with the purchase of a hose increaser niblet allowing me to fit the smaller hose, that’s already in the RV, to the larger niblet required on the pump. The output side, to the faucets, and toilet, was an entirely different matter. I had a six-inch piece of tubing, flared to seal inside the attached female 1/2″ fittings on either end. One side goes to the RV plumbing, the other to the pump. Though it was a 1/2″ female fitting, and the pump output was 1/2″, they just did not fit together. That when Jack gave me a lesson on the different types of threads used – there are pipe threads, plastic threads, PVC threads, and other kinds of threads. It didn’t matter that they are the same size, they just don’t always fit together.

I stood staring, literally, at bags and bins of PEX, Shark, and some undisclosed type fittings, for one and a half hours trying to figure out what combination might work. Thankfully, Jack was working at ACE today and came to my rescue, more than once. He would stop every once in a while to help a real customer saying to me, “I’ll be right back, Sir.” Yes, he actually called me “Sir”. It was kinda nice. He was respectful, too, an unexpected treat.

He always returned, and finally helped me solve the dilemma with two brass fittings that fit together, and into the female side of my supply line, providing a niblet on the end to which I could attach a hose. The pump had replaceable fittings allowing me to use niblets for in and out supply lines so we were good to go.

One and a half hours! Diane was about to start calling around to find me because I had been gone for so long. She said I set a record for “Length of stay at ACE,” which made me kind of proud. It’s not often that I set records. I got popcorn, too. The up side of all that is that I stayed the course, not buying something I ‘thought’ might work, buying it, going home, finding out it didn’t work, then going back to ACE to do it again. There have been some days that I’ve made up to seven trips to ACE to accomplish a simple task. Today I did it in one. A really long one.

What an ordeal.

While I was working on the pump, with the correct parts, I had the RV TV fired up on and watched the LLWS for a while. It was California vs. Connecticut in the regionals. California won something like 12-1. It was quite a game. Now California will play Japan for the title tomorrow. LLWS means Little League World Series, in case you’re interested. These kids are 12 years old, but it’s hard to tell they way they play. They’re pretty good, and fun to watch.

Maybe tomorrow will be more interesting. Right this moment it’s just a mystery to me because I have no idea what we’re going to do. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’m guessing that puts thoughts in some of your heads that make you go, “Hmmmm.” Diane did the same thing, but she wanted me to go to the emergency room to have a professional look at it. I didn’t think it was necessary because I was tired, hungry, and just wanted to sit down for a while in a quiet place and wait to see if my thumb would turn a different color. That’s usually what my body parts do when I break them.

Not this time, however. It didn’t even swell up. It just hurt. A lot. For a long time. All the way to my shoulder. “How,” you may ask, “can a normal human being hurt their thumb that badly on a toilet without slamming their hand under the lid?” It’s complicated, but I’ll see if I can explain without pictures …

You see, Wednesday, Daniel and I worked diligently to accomplish our goal of getting the linoleum put down. We did that, but I was an incredible mess by the time we were done. The glue was everywhere. If you leave it on your hands long enough it will glue your fingers together. I know that’s can. Daniel helped peel from my sticky fingers.

After cleaning up a little, we used a really heavy roller, that we got from Don’s Rental, to squish out the air bubbles under the linoleum. There weren’t many bubbles, but the roller smoothed out the flooring nicely. Once that was done we called it a day and I went home. Sore and tired.

Yesterday the goal was to get the toilet installed. Doing that required us to replace the sheet rock behind the toilet. I have no memory of why we found it necessary to remove it, but we did. Replacing it was a simple task that required only two trips to ACE Hardware for drywall screws and whatnot. Jack was working today so we got to see him on one of the trips. One of the ex-Mayors of St. Helens was working today, too. He’s Diane’s cousin so we greeted to him, also.

While getting the drywall bolted to the wall, Daniel asked one of the children to clean the toilet so we could install it when we were ready. This caused a complication in the other work going on around the house which Diane was supervising. She had all three of the resident kids, plus a couple of their friends, cleaning up everything, from the roof down, all the way to the street. It was impressive because all she had to do was give instructions once, then walk around the house once in a while smacking a large spoon into the palm of her left hand. They all realized the threat and worked really hard. Besides that motivation, they were all working to earn money for the Columbia County Fair which started yesterday. The fair also has a rodeo which is always fun to watch, partly because Jack, Jack’s first wife’s brother, is the rodeo announcer.

Sorry. I’m getting a little off track, aren’t I?

One of the children took a feeble stab at cleaning the toilet, but it wasn’t quite good enough to install on a brand new floor. So, Daniel cleaned it up again, then we added a brand new wax ring, set the toilet bowl, and bolted it to the floor. It was during this last evolution that I think I broke my thumb. Here’s how I did it … I had already tightened the left bolt and was working on the right one, while resting my chest on the toilet seat. I was using a box end wrench to tighten the nut and it was going well until the metal washer shifted to one side into a position that would not have allowed the plastic cap to be snapped to the underlying receptacle. You know what I’m talking about … this little bubbles on the sides of toilets that always get sucked into your vacuum cleaner if you don’t secure them properly.

Anyway, I felt a compelling need to adjust the washer to allow the cap to get by it so it would snap in place. I did this by losing the nut a little then used the box end of the wrench to push the slippery washer back into place. Sadly, I didn’t loosen the nut enough the first time and had to exert far more pressure than necessary to accomplish the task. Of course it slipped off and, since pressure was being applied in the direction of the toilet, the second joint of my right hand slammed into the toilet bowl really, really hard. It hurt a lot.

After the pain receded to a tolerable level, due to the rapid intake of air while make the “SSS” sound through clenched teeth, I looked at it and determined that it wasn’t a job ending injury, because it wasn’t purple, I realigned the washer and tightened the nut. Then Daniel attached the tank, and the plumbing, and we were ready for the “flush” test to see if it leaked. It didn’t so we quit while we were ahead and so I could go home and ice my poor little thumb, which I did.

Diane wanted to take me right to the emergency room, but I showed her that it wasn’t an odd color and the only time it hurt really bad is when I try to touch my injured thumb to my little finger (on the same hand). I cannot do that. So I don’t.

Now it’s Friday and a lump had started growing on my injured digit which, Diane thinks, might be because I’ve been typing all this time. I explained, however, that typing does not required me to touch my thumb to my little finger, so it’s OK. Still, I sense that she will find a way to get me to Urgent Care so they can take a picture of it and see if there are any bone fragments floating around in there.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

Oh … Diane wasn’t really smacking a spoon in her hand to keep the kids busy. They all worked really hard and were a huge help getting things cleaned up outside. Diane was pleased, as ware Jennifer & Daniel.

Now I must dress and mind Diane and go see a doctor.

Cheers.