This post is entirely non-fiction

Dog Language:

The Truth, Part 1:

The Animaniacs really need to do the Periodic Table.

The Truth, Part 2:

Does this mean psychiatrists are engineers?

I was going to say four out of five of these seemed to be a theme, then I realized the first one fits the theme too. At least philosophically.

But first, it's clean up my Desktop night!

House updates are coming, but first we need to clean up my Mac's Desktop of images collected over the last few months.

But first, it is Valentine's Day!


And for all the over-the-top radio yacking in Boston the past ten days...the ball was in Tom Brady's hands, down by 5, with 2-1/2 minutes to go. 9 times out of 10, that's a win. Two 13-3 teams put on a hell of a good show with almost no penalties, only a single punt, only one turn over each, etc. Doug Pedersen didn't give into the biggest challenge Patriot's opponents face...

Days 127 and 128 -- Of Mantles and Microwaves

Wes,

with Bob supervising.


I'm guessing today's snow squall made them decide not to put up the chimney and instead do stone work. It was quite the surprise when I got home!
Thought this up today -- a microwave shelf. My plan is, come spring when the weather is better, to take the iron pipe brackets and paint them black, and I'll take the pine board and "distress" it and dark stain it like the mantle.

Since I don't know where my shot glasses are, a jelly jar will have to do for a shot of Crown since Wes & Bob went to the trouble of decorating the mantle :D

Day ... I have no idea. February 4th.

Lowes, Walmart, and Big Y trip to start the day.

Before I start on the house, let's put some Pulled Pork Chili in the crock pot.



So with that cooking for tonight, put up another cabinet.

I definitely don't have as much cabinetry as before (mainly from the fridge moving to where it is now, costing me 3' linear feet). I also think the old cabinets were slightly larger dimensions.

24" was definitely the largest I could fit here :D


Liz M. stopped by. Preliminary choices...though I haven't made the absolute final choice yet.




It's 7:11pm...now if that damn chili would just finish. Hopefully by 8 or I'll need to cook some fish sticks for dinner...

Yep, done. And even Justin Timberlake couldn't ruin it :)

House & Food...January 5 -- February 3rd

January 7th. -7 outside. 34 in the basement :) (Snow was helping insulate the bulkhead).


January 13th. Chicken Stew? Chicken in a crock pot with root vegetables?. I was actually pretty disappointed -- it really lacked "pop."



Thursday, January 18th. Got word that Wes will be coming to start tiling tomorrow. Shit, better neaten up!


Like a sadastic game of Twister, he texted me to let me know to not step on the tiles, just the cement board. I had my hands full of groceries to.

Monday's progress. Now I'm just not allowed to step where the paper towels are :D




January 24th, time for Beef Stew. This did come out very good :)





Saturday, January 27th. I ran to Home Depot to get supplies for hooking up the Washer / Dryer, and while down in Lisbon swung over to Campbell's stand since they had said on Facebook they were open for the morning. (In winter they open the stand up on mild days for like four hours)

Dryer outlet wired in.

New valves for the washer water supply. I found at Lowes later right angle adapters so the hoses can hang straight down instead of bending at 90.

This outlet needed an adapter...it was set back not taking into account the sheetrock.


Let's take a look at this dryer and the change the exhaust from the bottom to side...
Download service manual, mother of God...this IS the procedure to change it:


Sunday, January 28th. Hot dog! Got up early re-assembled it, it works!

Um...almost. No heat.

Took off mid-morning, picked up Eric, and spent the afternoon in Salem Sam. Started at Far From the Tree Cider House. Most of them were very good, except one that me and Eric both decided tasted like ass :D

Some mid-week troubleshooting...I have no power on the black. I know my tester had been red for it at least at one point (it wasn't red, I re-did the outlet, it turned red, now it's green again). My meter confirmed it.

After I did some debugging during the week it looked like a power problem with the new work ended up calling the electrician who came today and sure enough I had a bad breaker. At the breaker he got 100v between the two legs, it should be 240v. I wonder if it was changing, which would explain why my circuit tester was acting funky on it, and there wasn't 100v when I tested it with my voltmeter up stairs.


Saturday, February 3rd.

Electrician came out to fix the circuit, and I had him move the stove outlet about 6" to line up better with the stove back while he was here.
Meanwhile I got the washer hooked up since I was now optimistic I'd soon have a drying dryer.

One of the Neptune line's "features" is it drys as fast as it washes...I suspect they achieved that claim by slowing down the washer. Is an hour long washing time normal? I don't remember that :D

Leaving the back open to check for leaks

And we have a fail!

Thought it might be the vent, which after I cut it off and tried again it wasn't. Small amounts of water drained, but when it would try to pump out the washer in earnest it came flooding back in.

I bought a $10 snake at Lowes and fortunately found a blockage pretty quickly -- it was basically soil at this point. Worked the snake through it, ran the hot water hose down the drain, put on the new air vent, and everything worked A-OK now.

I guess I got to think about painting soon...

First time since October I've had a working stove and dryer. First time in 10+ years I've had a working washer!