Stop, You're Cracking Me Up

It is a Tuesday but since I was doing something else last night, and I like the chicken sliders, I am sitting in my usual Monday night haunt.  I was unaware Tuesday is Karaoke night.   And not like good Karaoke.  More like late night on the Love Boat style.  I fired off several disparaging texts to The Wife, even taking the time to look up and send the _Anguish Face_ emoji.  Of course I had no sooner gotten done and a woman came up and sang an amazingly passable version of Tina Turner and _Proud Mary_.  It didn’t last long though.

April here in the frozen wasteland of the north.  The middle of April in fact.  I know this because I can look at the calendar app on my device and read the date.  Yet I had to shovel twelve inches of snow this past weekend.  This spring I did a: “Here son, let me give you my old snow blower for free!  …And can you come back and blow me out once in a while?” Quite frankly if it hadn’t have been for that The Wife would be lining up a bagpiper for my wake today.  …And telling her boyfriend they no longer have to sneak around.. ;-)  It has been a crazy year. We have plans to go out of town this weekend and where we are going is predicted to have six inches more starting the day we leave. “Ugh.” There is just no other way to describe it.

The pump as it was mounted, way in the back.  The new
pump I will mount much closer to the front where it is warmer.

I worry it is going to be one of those “flip the switch” years where it is thirty four and random snowflakes on Monday and eighty six on Thursday with ninety eight percent humidity and that lasts until mid October.  Going from the haunting cha-ching of the heating gas meter rapidly turning right straight into the electricity sucking AC season. But so far it has only been cold. Colder than expected over the past weekend as well so I arrived back to a van empty of propane.  When I left on Friday I debated turning the heat off completely.  I have been doing that the past few weekends just to save a little propane cost.  As it turned out I am glad I didn’t.  There isn’t a whole lot left in the van to freeze  but I hate surprises.

I did a double tank exchange at Johnny Menards, using the self service machine. It worked fine the first time, but then tried to give me an empty tank for the second one.  Customer service had to get involved and they didn’t seem the least bit surprised, telling me this happens often.  I am really glad it wasn’t the middle of the night after the store was closed.  That would have then sucked.

The under counter sink in its above mount configuration.

Then there is a moment in Karaoke where a burly guy gets up and sings an amazing rendition of _Poor Unfortunate Soul_ from _The Little Mermaid_.  Wow.

Last week I did some digging into what is going on with my water system.  I thought I had gotten lucky with the whole dead battery/freezing up/getting towed debacle  which happened over Christmas break. I wrote about it a few posts back.  (If you haven’t read that story, eh, that’s ok.  Don’t bother. Nothing to see here, move along.) Thinking everything was ok, I put water into my freshwater tank and turned the pump on but got nothing.  Pressurizing the system a little bit by blowing air into the water tank got me a leak somewhere in the vicinity of the pump.  To really track it down I took it all apart.

What I found was I was not so lucky.  My pump had a crack going across the top of it caused by the expansion of water in it when it froze.  I did some checking into replacement parts but they really don’t seem to be available.  I guess we live in that disposable world.  A $72 pump was shot.  That sucks.

The crack in the pump chamber.

I did a little more checking around this time buying a replacement pump.  The one I had was a Shurflo 4008.  Top rated, but since the moment I opened the box I was a little shocked at its large size. It measured 5.5 x 4.75 x 11.5 inches.  Half a cubic foot.  Not something you normally think of in your house but I just think, “great, only 283-1/2 cubic feet left.”  It suddenly becomes significant. The new pump, a Flojet 03526 also purchased off of Amazon, is going to be 9 x 4 x 4 inches.  It should be noticeably smaller.

Involved in this whole pump change out, I am going to move my sink to an under-mount.  That was my original plan, but was persuaded against it by my friend, Craigie.  The trouble, he said, was the Paperstone countertop.  It was so hard, glue wouldn’t stick and you couldn’t really attach screws.  So there was no way to firmly attach a sink to the bottom side of the countertop.  And you know, in a normal kitchen, I am sure he is correct.  But what I have is something different than normal.  I don’t have stacks of dishes in my sink, I only rarely have one or two.  I don’t have a sink full of water and even if I did have, I bet it wouldn’t be much more than a gallon.  I never wash any babies.

You rub its spine of course!

So with all this going for me I think it can work out.  I am going to build a wooden frame to hold the under side of the sink and increase the glue surface.  This ties together because at the same time I am going to move the pump into this sink area.  Maybe suspended from the sink frame by some rubber straps.  Plus, I have some ideas to sound proof it with some auto body sound deadening material. I just need spring to come so I can go park in Craigie’s driveway and schmooze him into helping me with using a router to cut the countertop to fit the sink. ..I buy the pizza.

A woman who should have been told she couldn’t sing years ago singing KISS _Beth_.  Gahhh.

I am always on the search for someplace to go and something new to experience on a week night.  Last night I went to a bar that has a monthly Harry Potter trivia contest. I discovered this event a few months on Facebook.  It was one of those deals where I thought, “I know what a horcruxe is.  I should do this!”  It was kind of like that time I thought I should enter a Jesus look alike contest because my son described me as looking like Jesus in a red truck.  My Lord.  No.  I guess I don’t really.

Chapter name and book?  Uhhh...

Back at the time I found it, something came up and I couldn’t go that night, or the interceding months but last night worked out.  It was really a pretty amazing experience.  This is a bar filled with ~400 people who have forgotten more Harry Potter knowledge than I will ever possess.  Do you know Luna Lovegood’s mothers name?  How about I show you an illustration and you give me the chapter name and what book it is from.  People were in costume.  Wands were frequent.  I have to go back.