Resist Entropy

I think I have written about this problem before. Well, recently two of the ancient crumbling stick on vinyl tiles in front of the fridge just up and came completely loose. So today I went into the scary basement and looked in the recesses of the storage shelves and found a stack of the original tiles. No idea how old they are. Not even sure the last homeowners put down that floor. Possibly these tiles are from the ‘70s. I found some in the middle of the stack that looked ok if slightly warped and I stuck them down to replace the loose ones. A corner on each tile where they were warped does not stick down so well so I didn’t go crazy and try to replace other tiles that are crumbling but still adhered to the underfloor mostly. It is a temporary stop gap measure at best but at least we won’t wipe out on sliding loose tiles.

I also pulled out the vegetable drawers on the fridge and cleaned underneath them where the fridge is supposed to drain condensation. The drain gets plugged up periodically. Quite yucky. But I am sure the fridge will work a little better now and I won’t have water sloshing onto the floor every time I open a vegetable drawer. The drain pan under the fridge was also gross.

I do these things so the sweetie will catch spiders and bats and stinging insects. (I clean up gross stuff, dog vomit, and dead things like mice and birds. Equitable I think)

I love my tiny little antique reproduction bathroom sink but its one drawback is that it periodically really clogs because the drain and trap pipes are sort of small and narrow. I have spared you all pictures of the gunk I pulled out of the pipe, though I really contemplated taking one and sharing. I even managed to put all the parts back together again on the first try without them leaking! That’s really just because I have had practice at it at this point.

There were any number of other things I probably should have done tonight, but now the bathroom is clean and the sink drains. Still need to clean the bathroom floor.

But that is one punch in the eye for entropy for the time being. It took me 2 weeks to feel ok about cleaning up all the dog hair in the bathroom too. Goofy to feel sentimental about dog hair on the floor, but once it gets cleaned up it is gone and no dog to shed anymore.

Thursday evening sweetie most innocently stood up from napping on the futon in our tv room and part of a leg on the frame snapped off. Now the frame tilts precariously and there is a chunk of wood broken off about 6 inches long. I have some thoughts about how to fix it but am not sure how sturdy the repair might be or how ugly looking or how much it will affect folding and unfolding of the frame. It will require more investigation and getting my good drill back from my friend B. Here is an instance where having my good Makita drill will be most excellent. I am bummed out though because it is a nice looking futon frame and we did pay a lot for it. It offends my sensibilities and sense of practicality to go out and buy a whole new frame. I had to ignore it for 2 days before I could even wrap my brain around a solution. Any ideas folks have would be most appreciated.

My current thought is to glue the break with wood glue if the pieces fit together well but then reinforce the new joint with small pieces of wood lapped over the joint far enough that I can screw them on into solid wood beyond where the break is. I thought I could try to stain those pieces so they look like the stain on the rest of the frame so they won’t look totally ugly. All my construction experience and techniques come from stage construction which is often about appearance so I am really not sure if this is a repair technique that would be sturdy enough. Of course it is plain to see that the original design of that part of the frame wasn’t sturdy enough in the first place. I guess this is next weekend’s project. There really always is something.

1) I have a spiffy new MacBook! Yay! My little 5 year old ibook went a little crazy last week and it turned out that the hard drive was failing. :( So in the interests of defeating entropy, I upgraded to new hardware. I am probably really out the the loop now on folks here on 43T. Not having a working computer at home was about as bad as not having a car.

2) We have had a little mouse in our kitchen the last few weeks and it was coming from under the oven. So, we finally broke down and bought poison (yes, not very humane but past experience showed us that the humane options didn’t work at all) and put it far under the stove where the dog can’t get at it. So far, no more signs of mousy. It is astonishing how fast the little buggers move too because I saw it twice and it was gone in the blink of an eye under the stove. I will have to try to figure out where it was getting in when spring comes.

small amount of snow on front walk and a little of my neihbors’ walks as well. Spread ice melt. It will snow again though I am sure.

cleaned the bathroom the other day I also unplugged the drain in the sink which requires disassembling the drain stopper and reaching in with needle nose pliers to pull out hair and drain gunk. Then it requires reassembling the drain stopper and making sure it doesn’t leak.

windshield is in place. I am also delighted that I didn’t have to go away from home or leave my car somewhere for this to happen and they have Saturday hours too. How many services for your car can you get right at home on a Saturday? Totally convenient, and what seems like a reasonable price. Yay. That’s one punch right in the eye to the evil entropy.

Just as the auto glass guy began to replace my broken windshield the track pad on my laptop decided to go on the fritz. I have done all the magic trouble shooting one does in such situations like turning the computer off and letting it rest, resetting all the track pad settings etc. Working with a usb mouse for a bit. It seems to have worked.