“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”, faucet installation, “I’m Not There”

(posted from home)
(This post covers 23-26 October, 2008)



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Sunday, 26 October –

Last night was a lousy night for me. Yesterday evening Labashi believed my headaches might be caffeine-related so I took a caffeine pill and that turned out to be a mistake. It didn’t help the headache and I couldn’t fall sleep. I know I didn’t sleep at all until 0230 or so and then woke at 0500 and couldn’t get back to sleep. I read a few chapters of “Hunter’s Moon” to while away the time.
This morning I caught up on the offline blog, then we watched the extras disk from “I’m Not There”.
Afterwards I took the DVDs back and then Labashi and I washed the north side of the house. We have to wash the siding in this area every other or every third year to remove a greenish sheen that grows in this always-shaded area.
I then went back to work cataloging video clips from the Alaska trip.
Late in the day I took my four-mile on this nice 60-degree day.

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Saturday, 25 October-

This morning I double-checked all the connections on the kitchen-faucet installation and found them all dry. We put all the tools away and cleaned up but I’ll give it another day before re-installing the under-sink storage rack and bins and calling the job complete.
I spent much of the day working on the laptop. I recently bought a portable hard drive and today copied all the video clips from the Alaska trip to it. I’m a bit leary of the portable drive after reading about high rates of failure on these devices but I have to do something— my main hard drive is 95% full.
I also spent a few hours viewing video clips from the Alaska trip. It’s a slow process to view, write a short description and assess how useful it is for later reference.
That evening we watched “I’m Not There”, the movie about Bob Dylan’s life and music. It’s an interesting premise. Dylan is represented at different phases of his life by six different actors, including a woman (Cate Blanchett). We’re not Dylan fans so missed many of the movie’s references. I don’t think I’d recommend it unless you are indeed a Dylan fan or want to see how this experiment works out.
No walk today.

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Friday, 24 October-

I’ve been dreading today. Labashi bought a new kitchen faucet last week and today’s (sigh) installation day.
As I feared, I ran into problems with the removal of the old faucet and accessories. The old American-Standard-brand faucet used hoses with non-standard fittings which were impossible to remove. I couldn’t undo the faucet mount because I couldn’t remove the sprayer hose. There was no way to grip the hose nut because the manufacturer had chosen to use an el-cheapo ‘nut’ consisting of two small flats machined onto the round fitting rather than a standard six-sided nut. And if I couldn’t remove the hose, I couldn’t remove the faucet-mount nut behind it. I tried a special plumbing wrench from the local hardware store but clearances were too tight for it to work. I ended up cutting off the old faucet by using a cutoff wheel on a Dremel tool.
I also had problems removing the sprayer mount and a drain but eventually prevailed.
Late in the day we drove into town for plumbing supplies and on the way home stopped at the Farmer’s Market and then picked up a couple of pizza slices at a new restaurant (‘Parma’) in Manchester.
That evening we finished the faucet installation and testing. The job that should have taken an hour or two took all day. But now that it’s done, it looks great and works better than the old one.
No walk today.

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Thursday, 23 October-


I spent the morning updating the blog and posting it online. Today’s post marks the longest-ever delay between posts for me (17 days) and I’m wondering whether that means anything for the future. I hope not.
Perhaps I’m getting a bit lazy. On the other hand I had caught up the offline version of the blog just before I came down with this cold or flu or sinus infection. But since then, I’ve just not felt like doing much with it. And once I miss, say, five or six days, it’s tougher and tougher to catch up.
I finished ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon last night. On a one-to-ten scale (ten high), I think I’d rate it about a six or a seven. I very much enjoyed the off-beat approach in the novel. The narrator, Christopher, is an autistic 15-year-old--- a fan of Sherlock Holmes stories-- who finds a neighbor’s dog inexplicably killed. We learn about Christopher, his family and neighbors, and the workings of Christopher’s mind as he attempts to solve the mystery. Recommended!
In the afternoon I returned two books to my local library, then drove into the Martin Library in York for others. There I picked up two Randy Wayne White books (“Hunter’s Moon” and “Batfishing in the Rainforest”) as well as another Matt Willen book (“The Best Tent Camping in Pennsylvania”). The first is a novel and the second a collection of White’s non-fiction writing about fishing. I’m hoping the last will point me to a new-to-me campground or two this Fall. I recently bought Willen’s ’60 Hikes within 60 Miles of Harrisburg’ and thought I’d take a look at his earlier book.
I then drove to Rocky Ridge and walked five miles on my end-to-end course. It felt like a bit of a push today. This might be a mistake.
That evening we watched ‘Survivor- Gabon’.

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