A Brief Interlude

Some thoughts not related to our house-hunting trip that just need to get written down before they get unthought.

Sometimes when presented with an opportunity for humor, you connect right off the bat. Sometimes, it takes longer. A lot longer.

Tonight, The Mrs. made guacamole to go with dinner. She makes excellent guacamole, and tonight was no exception. One of the ingredients of guacamole is fresh lime juice. For that, you use one of these jobbers:


I was washing up the non-dishwashable dishes tonight after dinner whilst The Mrs. put little MaxieC to bed, and a thought occurred to me. A long time ago, maybe 4 months, The Mrs. invited some of her girlfriends over for margaritas. She enlisted me to make the drinks, as making drinks is something I have, shall we say, a bit of experience with. Plus, you know, I don't know why, but you always get some crazy girls-gone-wild idea in your head when your wife says she's having all her girlfriends over for drinks. You know it's not going to be that way, yet you'll hang around to make the drinks just in case. I think men are programmed that way.

I think women know that, and that's how they have kept us subjugated for so long.

Anyways, I'm mixing up the second batch of margaritas, and one of The Mrs's friends wanders over, points to the juicer thingee, and says, "That's called a 'reamer'."

Now, I quickly go over in my head what the appropriate response to that is. If this were one of the boyz, I would have countered with, "You'd know, wouldn't you?" But that's not something you can necessarily say to a lady. Or maybe the old standby, "That's what she said." Or perhaps, "Jealous?"

But again, none of these things can be said to one of your wife's girlfriends.

So I said that only thing I could think of. "I know. But I can't say that with a straight face."

To which she replied, "Me neither," and giggled. Then she wandered off.

Tonight, I'm washing the reamer, and I'm thinking about this episode when it suddenly hits me.

I'm sorry. Did I leave my fly open?

God is still speaking,

I bought some portable DVD players at Best Buy today. Big hassle that was, since they were supposed to come with a $19.99 carry case free, but they were out of the cases, and I got a massive run-around that ended basically with a GFY. These are for the flight from SJC to DEN that The Mrs. has to take with MaxieC and HannieC while I drive the pickup with the dog. I learned on this last trip that HannieC will sit tansfixed watching a DVD for just about the whole flight. It's a 2.5 hour flight, and you can't use electronics for the first and last 20ish minutes, so you need a moovie that's a bit under 2 hours and over 1.5 hours to fill the whole flight. We've been using my work laptop to play her DVD's, but I'll have that with me for this trip. Plus, it's pretty complicated for The Mrs. to be able to set up and run on the plane with two screaming kids. And I'm not allowed to give her the passwords or anything.

Well, I charged up the batteries when I got home (early - more on that later), and when MaxieC went to bed, I broke one out for HannieC to play with. She loved it. She sat at the kitchen counter on the barstool we bought but perhaps intend to return (despite having a bar at the new place) eating Oreos in milk and watching Narnia. I honestly can't stand this moovie. However, there is one bit I find entertaining. There's this goat-boy called "Mr. Tumnus" in the moovie, and every time someone says "Mr. Tumnus", in my head I hear Fat Moother say, "Mr. Numb Nuts."

Those of you who know Fat Moother know exactly what I'm talking about.

The stupid house is trying to keep me from selling it. First, three sprinklers go bad in the front yard at once. Then, the dog barfs on the carpet and leaves a stain that can't be cleaned. Then, a sprinkler goes bad in the backyard when we're on the house-hunting trip and geysers all over. Happily, that was fixed by a neighbor who was watching over the place. Then this morning.

I'm up with MaxieC not too terribly early (back on Pacific time, after a day on Mountain time), and he's walking through the kitchen with me. He stops in the dining room and says, "Ooops. I walked in the water. My foot is wet now."

What? What water?

"In the kitchen. The floor is wet. Careful, it's slippery when it's wet. I accidentally walked through it."

OK, so my kid, who is only 2.5, understands the implications of a wet kitchen floor, and he knows he's not supposed to walk on the floor when it's wet. This is all great news.

Except why is the floor wet at 7:30 in the morning?

Let's see here. MaxieC shows me where he stepped in the water. Yup. a puddle there. Hmmm...follow the puddle all the way across the floor to the refrigerator, where it heads underneath.

Argh. Ice maker connection. I roll the fridge forward and look for water. There is water. I feel the connection at the wall - dry. Feel the connection at the fridge. Wet. Wet is bad.

I dry it off, and the wetness comes back. I get a wrench and tighten up the connection. It's a compression fitting, and I can tighten it about 1/4 turn. I wait. No more water. No more water is good. I put the fridge back.

Crisis averted.

About 3pm, I'm sitting there in my cube IMing with a guy in Fort Collins who is complaining that I don't own a particular feature of the processor I just joined there, and that feature is related to what I do own, and that he doesn't trust the guy owning it, and that he knows it would be too much for me to do that and also do the job I actually have, but could I please keep an eye on the guy who just this week started owning it? And The Mrs. calls. "There's a puddle of water from the fridge all the way to the dining room."

Shoot. I'm on my way. Roll the fridge out and shut off the valve.

I call my realtor. Hell, it's his job to worry about this stuff. He says my home warranty will cover it, but I should take a look to see exactly what's wrong before calling them, cuz usually it's something easy like the compression fitting.

The Mrs. calls back. Can't get the valve to budge. The neighbor (the sprinkler-fixing one, damn good neighbors, these folks), can't either. She tells me not to break it off in the wall trying to shut it off. She repeats it.

I get home. Roll the fridge out. The compression fitting is still leaking, but almost imperceptibly so. I can't imagine it would create any puddle at all. Not in this heat. But now I'm also in the realm of having to hypothesize mutliple failures - what are the chances of there being two leaks at the same time?

I go to work on the valve. Ever cautious that The Mrs. has told me not to break this off, in other words forewarned me that she'd be using this as one of her "my husband is such an idiot" stories, I get two wrenches.

Boy, you snap off one water main feed and go without water for two days, and your wife never lets you forget it.

I get the valve unstuck very quickly, and I turn it all the way with the wrench. The drip does not stop. In fact, now the valve is leaking, too. So the thing is leaking at both ends. Then I notice that the 1/4" copper tube connecting the wall to the fridge is dripping in the middle. Hmmm... One drip every two seconds. That's a pretty fast drip. Much much faster than the tiny weaping at the fridge connection. Drip. Drip. Drip. That's my culprit.

I get a bucket to put the coil in. As soon as I put it in the bucket, it lets loose with a spray. I get down there with the wrenches again and try to shut off the valve. No luck. I shut off the main. I take off the copper tube and the valve.

Quick trip to OSH, where I talked to my favorite plumbing department guy. He gets me everything I need. I fix it right up.

I spend like half of dinner trying to get The Mrs. to acknowledge how handy I am. She seems to be more focused on how I did not fix it right when I found it in the morning. Or on how great her guacamole is.

Marriage. Bliss.