The Plentiful Vintage

Easter weekend had terrific weather, but I was down in Jersey so didn't get a chance to ride at all. I did get to play a little wiffle ball with a niece and a couple of nephews. It's the first time I've swung any kind of bat in almost a decade, yet I'm the only one of the crew who actually hit the ball. Apparently none of them have their uncle's hand-eye coordination. I blame my sisters. Actually, I whiffed on my first two swings, then tomahawked a pitch that was about two feet over my head for a line drive that reached the street. Go me!

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Al, Durrah, and I took a ride down to the hobby shop in Magnolia, then stopped at an LL Bean on the way back. Never been to one before. I spent most of my time looking at overpriced bicycle accessories and clothing. Nice stuff, but nothing I couldn't get cheaper at a local shop. They did have one bike, though, that I liked quite a bit. Alas, I already have plenty of bikes.

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The weather continued to be nice for most of the week, and I did get a couple of rides in. And Thursday I tried to give the lawn it's first mow of the season, but was stymied by my old adversary, the Briggs and Stratton two-cycle engine. Wouldn't start for love nor money. So I bundled it off the the repair shop Saturday. It should be ready to take on the meadow outside my front door sometime later in the week.

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The basement continues to dry out. Friday I tossed out a couple of loads of soggy trash, and with that and the dehumidifier still doing yeoman's work, by Saturday morning it was smelling a lot less musty down there. Still feeling pretty lucky about it all as one of my coworkers still has water coming into his basement as fast as he can pump it out.

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I finished varnishing the cabinets, drawer fronts, and cupboard door for the hobby bench Saturday, and today I attached various pulls and hinges, and attached the drawer fronts to the drawer bodies. I just need to fill some nail holes and I can bring them both upstairs... Um... After I clear out some space in the nerd hole.

Still to do are the bench top and a pair of sliding shelves for the cupboard. The plywood for the bench top is cut. The edges need to be trimmed out, then I need to finish it somehow or another, with something that can stand up to spilled paint thinner. I'm running a small experiment with epoxy appliance paint, which is only recommended for painting metal, to see if it'll work on primed wood as well. So far, so good.

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Meanwhile, I've been hacking up my lungs since Friday. I'm not sure if it's a chest cold or allergy/asthma due to all the plants popping off so early. Am taking loratidine and tussin in the am and nyquil in the pm. Whatever, I've felt like crap all weekend, enough so that for another weekend I didn't get any rides in. Blehh!

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"I always thought the knuckleball was the easiest pitch to catch. Wait till
it stops rolling, then go to the backstop and pick it up." - Bob Uecker

Charlie Haeger, a knuckleballer, started for the Dodgers today and turned in one heck of an outing, striking out 12 in six innings of work. Only ten of the twelve strikeouts actually resulted in outs as catcher A.J. Ellis was having as much trouble catching the knuckler as the Marlins' batters were having hitting it. Alas, it was all for naught as the bullpen blew another game in the late innings.

There's still a pretty good sized puddle downstairs, but it's a puddle, which means it has edges, which means some of the floor is no longer underwater. The pump worked as advertised, making short work of the top couple of inches of water. Unfortunately, that left another inch or so, which is where the new shop-vac came in. It's actually a 12 gallon model, not the 9 gallon one I was looking at and thought I bought. I think this was $5 more.

Works like a charm. It took about thirty seconds to fill it. Then it had to be hauled up the stairs and outside to dump it. Not fun. There had to be a better way. On my way back downstairs it hit me. The water on the floor may not be deep enough for the pump to work, but the water in the vac certainly is. Tried out my theory by filling the vac, taking off the top, plopping the pump into it, and firing it up. Fifteen seconds later about ten gallons of water was running out of the pump hose and down my driveway. Eureka!

Of course there was still a lot of water down there, so the process had to be repeated A LOT. I was able to do about three iterations of the process every five minutes, and it still took hours to get to where I am now. I didn't work straight through, though. It was just too tiring, so I did a half hour on and a half hour off to recharge. Still a lot better than carrying all that water up the stairs. And using the pump was certainly a lot faster than carrying it would've been, so go me.

Once of the first areas to emerge was the floor by the furnace and the water heater. I never lost the furnace, but the water heaters pilot had to be relit, something I'd never had to do before. It also involved moving a bunch of heavy objects so I could get at the little door at the bottom of the thing. But I got it lit the second time (the first time I dropped the match onto the still damp floor). The best thing about it was how well the tank maintained the temperature of the water. When I took my shower this morning, it was several minutes before I realized that the water wasn't quite as hot as it usually is, which was my only clue about it. Even late this afternoon I was till getting nicely warm water from the tap.

Anyway, now I am beat. I had a nice hot shower and some dinner, and now it is time seek my inner turnip. There's still more to do, but it can wait until I don't ache quite so much. The fun task for first thing tomorrow will be hauling the 6 x 9 indoor/outdoor carpet from the laundry area outside so I can hang it up to dry.

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My attention has been down in my basement, and I rarely watch the local news anyway, but as I sat down this evening I caught some of the local news as I was flipping channels. I had no idea that a pretty good chunk of I-95 is still underwater, as is the Warwick Mall, not to mention the Warwick sewage treatment plant. The Pawtuxet River hit an all time record high yesterday. Unbelievable.

A little closer to home, when I left work Tuesday I noticed that the police had blocked one lane of Rt. 403, the very new highway into Quonset that I now use for my commute. There were a lot of quality issues with the project, and this stretch of the road runs up a long, constructed grade, so I figured that perhaps they noticed some washout, and that there were going to need to be some repairs. Well, sort of. It turns out that the road is fine, but that stretch runs alongside Amtrak's main line, and a whole bunch of mud slid off the the side of the grade and down onto the tracks, burying one of the two lines completely. They're working on it.