Apologies to those who are now feeling imaginary ticks everywhere.
No clue which of you threw me wide-eyed awake with the imaginary tick on my leg at sunrise, but this is your reward.
Finally, an end to the year-plus saga of “But where is the water coming from?” In trying to establish why the downstairs bathroom ceiling was wet, I’ve pulled the upstairs toilet and reset it twice, replaced it with a new one, and ended up just taking down the wet, rotten plaster ceiling, and then resetting the damn thing again.
Saturday, I definitively identified the problem. It was never the toilet installation.
Total bill for replacing a 90 year old toilet drain elbow, made of lead, with a tiny, 8-drops-an-hour hairline crack in it, in a very constricted space above the only other toilet in the house, $483.
Worth every dime.
To a dedicated and experienced do-it-yourselfer, there is very little more affirming and gratifying than deciding that you’ve run into a problem that requires professional intervention, then having the professionals arrive and have precisely the same “Well, this is gonna suck” reaction that made you call them.
A couple of nice, warm, spring days, and as Magz says “It has begun!”
Feels safe to say summer mode is upon us.
The tulips have company!
It’s also turned into tulip and vinca season, it seems. And the first butterfly just cruised past my window.
Peak redbud has arrived.
There was no green at all out there last week.
blissandzen reblogged
If anyone out there has one of those annoying ear worms they’d like to be rid of, I will happily trade my four-day continuous loop of Daydream Believer taking turns with Footloose for whatever you have available.*
I’m too damn old to have any sympathy, patience, or understanding for people who claim to have absolute faith in their god’s wisdom, while spending all of their time bitching about how their god keeps fucking up by making people that aren’t just like them.
If the IVF providers in Alabama want to get back to work making babies, I have a simple fix for their current difficulties.
Simply add a clause to their standard patient contract stating that all embryos created during the process which are not implanted within x number of years of creation are to be delivered as a personal gift, complete with full custodial and parental rights and responsibilities in perpetuity, to the home of a random member of the Supreme Court of the State of Alabama.
I’m fairly sure their view of the situation would rearrange itself when a permanently recurring requirement for weekly liquid nitrogen delivery landed on each of their front porches, along with a couple thousand potential cases of negligent homicide of a minor if they don’t pay.
Happy last Friday of February on you, yours, and theirs. Hang in there, y’all.
A couple of days of very nice weather has kicked spring into gear. Mid-morning, there were buds, but no flowers yet. And I noticed the sweet gums just starting to look a little orange. I guess the redbuds will be next.
Those who bet on the possums are hereby awarded a pat on the head for being correct. He now lives in the next river bend over.