Don't Ask Me How, I Just Live Here

Same back yard, one week later and fifty-five degrees warmer. There's no way to describe it other than just plain batshit crazy.

And I can't take advantage of the warmer temps by, say, going for a little walk around the neighborhood to finally get out of the house and stretch my legs for a bit, because it's raining! I suppose I could take a bumbershoot along, but then we're back to batshit crazy again. The weather can go ahead and act crazy if it wants to, but darned if I'm going to be a part of it.

"Do you ever feel any regrets about moving back to Wisconsin?" my Mom asked me the other night, and I told her "no," because that was the only self-respecting thing to say, but ...

Find The Brass Monkey

It's a state law that when the temperature plunges below zero, and if you have a blog, you have to post a photo of the thermometer and prattle on for a bit about how cold it is.

Man, is it cold! It is so cold in Wisconsin, all the brass monkeys go south for the winter.

I have to admit, I never got the brass monkey comparison. I always assumed it was code for something we weren't supposed to say in mixed company, but nobody ever told me the dirty version, so I've never been sure what "colder than a brass monkey" means.

In my neck of the woods, the more popular expression was, "Colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra." Brass seems to be a baseline for measuring cold temperatures, I supposed from way back when there used to be more brass door knobs and handles you had to grab hold of to get in out of the cold. Good thing they came up with the saying back then; with all the brushed aluminum and stainless steel out there now, "witch's tit in a brushed aluminum bra" just wouldn't trip off the tongue as satisfyingly.

When it's this cold, every trip from the house, no matter how short, becomes a major expedition you have to provision for. Is there a shovel and a bag of kitty litter in the trunk of the car to attempt a dig-out? Do you have at least a quarter tank of gas to run the engine in case you have to call for help? Are you wearing the requisite half-dozen layers of clothes? I wouldn't even walk to the end of the driveway for the morning paper on a morning like this, and in fact, I didn't. I figured I could read it on-line from the comfort of my easy chair where I can stay wrapped up in quilts. That's how cold it is.

I Love This Backpack!

Tim's kitty getting some love from his backpack.

Hang 'Em High

Today's Home Improvement Project #1: Give My Darling B a place to keep her stemware.

The china hutch is full, there's no room in the cupboards for them, and there's no room for shelves anywhere.

The solution? Find a place to hang them. I've seen these stemware tracks on the underside of shelfwork in wine bars. The only trick was to find a place to hang them, but B suggested the underside of the counter end, which worked out fine.

Then I ran to the store to buy some wooden cleats and some pine lath, cut it to length and tapped it into place with some finishing nails. The most rewarding home improvement projects are the ones that are easiest, yet still produce impressive results. I'm going to get a kiss for this one, I can feel it.

What Would Chief Al Say?

I'm this close to having hair long enough to pull back in a ponytail. I asked My Darling B to show me how to tie it back, but she went further than that: she combed it and tied it with an elastic band from a tin of them she had in her store of hair-care stuff. Considering that she told me years ago she'd leave me if I ever grew a ponytail, I'm gratified she not only accepted my latest phase of middle-age denial, she also took part in helping style it.

Even though it's still pretty short, I wore it back this way when we went to the market, and blended in pretty effectively with the rest of the organic-food crowd.

I may have to wait another four to eight weeks before I have a ponytail that's more like the founding father look I'm shooting for and less a middle-aged man trying to look like a kid again, although in my defense I've never had hair this long before in my life, so I don't think I'm in denial if I'm trying it for the first time.

Adventures in Plumbing

Success! It took all day to get the water running again and, more importantly, to get the waste water to go where it was supposed to go, but I finally had everything hooked up in time to hand the kitchen over to My Darling B, who planned on a pizza for dinner tonight.

Look at the size of that thing! It looked nice and big in the store, but once I got it installed it looked even BIGGER! I could probably climb in there and take a bath! And I needed one, after taking apart the drain pipes and playing in the muck.

Adventures in Plumbing

Time for Adventures in Plumbing, where I take apart some vital piece of our house's waterworks, then try to figure out how to put it back together again.

Today, I tore out the kitchen sink. It was made of stainless steel, divided down the middle, and the faucet began to make an annoying knocking sound about two weeks ago that has gotten worse with each passing day.

The sink also had a garbage disposal attached to it, just to make the operation more interesting.

I planned to replace it with an enameled cast iron sink that was divided into a large and a small bowl, but when I went to the store to buy it, I found that it was made in China. Whoops. My Darling B would never have allowed me to bring that through the door, so I quickly re-evaluated the choices.

Everything was made in China except for a selection of divided stainless steel sinks much like the one I was trying to get rid of, and a number of acrylic sinks. I wasn't crazy about them at first, but found one in stock that had a single, huge bowl we'd be able to wash even our largest frying pans and platters in, and went with that.

Even though I got what I thought was an early start, I ended up working on this project until dinner time. It should go without saying that I've never removed a kitchen sink before, nor installed one.