Easter Sunday

There’s a guy I work with every once in awhile whose career revolves around making sure that sewage gets from where it starts to where it needs to go in a manner that does not attract undue attention. Usually this work is just once of the many things that Joe the Plumber does, but this particular guy doesn’t assemble pipe or solder fittings or install water heaters. He spends his days clearing out sewer lines by jetting water at high pressure through clogs; using medieval style cutting heads on the end of his jets to cut through nasty debris; and checking his work with a camera that scopes and locates lines far underground and tells us what condition they’re in. The resultant video tapes (now he uses DVDs), known as “dirty movies”, are invaluable to property owners and landlords that need to maintain the arteries of crap, as nothing defines squalor more than sitting in 2” of filth because the orifices in your waste pipes are overwhelmed with, well, waste.

He is an interesting character, Robert is. With a Scottish brogue that is not nearly as thick as Groundskeeper Willie’s, he still talks about extracting DEbrree from pipes with a glint in his eye, as if the relief exacted from the operation is actually a release of pressure in his own body.

He’s done quite well cleaning and filming sewer lines, and the most tedious part of his job is cleaning his equipment. I’d say it’s constantly being covered in filth, but that’s just me.

I wished he was at my parents’ house on Easter Sunday.

While we were cooking and cleaning up after the feast, my mother and brother in law were furtively active in the basement, having mentioned that there was a minor stoppage in the wash basin that takes the discharge from the clothes washer. Nothing a little Drano couldn’t fix, so things seemed fine. Until we went downstairs and saw that the dishwater wasn’t going down the drain, instead it was overflowing the basin and creating general havoc on the floor. The kitchen sink sewage wasn’t getting past a clog just past the wash basin in the basement, so it was going into the only catch basin it could find, and Drano wasn’t working.

So we bailed the greywater into buckets and dumped it all into the toilet, continuing to do so as dishes were washed upstairs, and seeing how Drano splattered on my shirt creates neat new patterns, though not nearly as fun as tie dye. The next day the plumber came and used his electric snake to power past the clog, and everything is running clean again.

Turns out that the DEbrree in the pipes, which is usually loose, greasy, and in a more liquefied state in normal house operations seemed to calcify and harden over the past few months, as both of my parents were on the other side of the world while we were all being buried in snow. While we would periodically check the house to make sure that the mail wasn’t piling up and the roof wasn’t caving in, virtually no water ran through the waste lines. Therein lay the source of the clog—usually on the dirty movies we see a diaper or tampon or some other not-supposed-to-flush object as the major culprit, but in this case, a general lack of activity gummed up the works.

Much like the human body. Keep those wheels turning. Your veins, arteries, and heart will thank you.

Easter Saturday

We never bought a video game console until the Wii came out. It was a way to save myself from myself, as I was a bit of an arcade rat as a teenager and was addicted to Defender, among other games.

Those graphics are so AWESOME!

So now we have a Wii, and no doubt we all have seen innumerable YouTube videos showing the destruction wrought by inadvertent handling of the Wii remote (which is why they have straps now, which should ostensibly be used). Very funny in a "haha boy that's funny I can't imagine what it must feel like to have a piece of disposable electronic equipment become toast" sort of way.

Well that destruction visited our house this weekend. Being Easter weekend and all, families converged on our abode to visit and relax, eat and drink, and have the good times that families have, often magnified by the holiday (Thanksgiving comes to mind). So my nephew was bowling against my teenager, the latter of whom rolled a gutter ball (WHO ROLLS GUTTER BALLS IN WII BOWLING???) but that's another story which will be played out later in life, as he will be irreparably damaged by my criticism from failing in one frame of a fake video bowling game.

I digress. My nephew, who (or is it whom?) I love very much, and is named after me (only in his first name, and I think that was not intentional), was rolling some intense frames against Mr. Gutter Ball. His younger sister, who has a propensity to bother him in a most exacting manner, pushed him, which threw him off his motion and led to the unfortunate loss of grip of the remote, amidst much yelling and other consternation. Since none of this happened in slow motion, the resultant sturm und drang became the highlight of the day, as John was quite upset about destroying our TV and at one point would have gladly exchanged his sister for the TV. Therein lay the daily lesson where we told an 8 year old the major differences between people and things, and how they cannot be equated, and that his uncle and aunt were not really angry, because accidents happen. He's the type of boy that needs to process these thoughts and emotions for awhile before moving on to the next adventure.

So here's what the destroyed TV looks like now:

I know. If my iPhone had a better camera function, one would still not be able to see the tiny scratch a bit northwest of the centerpoint of the screen which looks so innocuous to the naked eye...until you turn on the TV, thusly:

Pretty cool. The emanation of the impact point is quite evident here. Unfortunately it's kind of hard to watch hockey and the Tur day Fraaaance when the technicolor dreamcoat is draping the screen like some sort of psychedelic Etch-a-Sketch.

So after everyone left I thought briefly about Lenten sacrifices (briefly) and then went to Best Buy and bought a new TV. I've been meaning to get one, as my eyes have been failing me as I age, so the obvious solution was to spend the money I would put into glasses on a new hi-def instead.

Priorities, ya know. You can't live a solid life without 'em.

19 years ago...

we had a big party after a Saturday church service. Lots of friends and family were there to share a grand time. Then we went for a short weekend trip out of town so that we would be home again for Christmas, as all of our families were still around and we didn't want to miss the fun. We had our whole lives ahead of us.

Good times continue to be had by all. We have the rest of our lives ahead of us, and we're happy to be able to share that with the two freeloaders that live with us...

Timeless weekend

Weekends are usually reserved for running errands, attending mandatory events related to family (sports, social, or otherwise), and (hopefully) recharging after a typical suburban middle class drone 40 hour work week.

Unless it snows 20 inches.

Then the cars stay put, we sit around and spend time with each other, catch up on so many things that we're typically "too busy" to do, and have a lazy good old time. Time goes by the wayside; the days are much brighter due to the reflecting sun on the snow, and I quite possibly gained a few lbs., given the amount of food I consumed. Gotta keep the calories up to fuel the shoveling. I would insert the perfunctory photo of the snow covered landscape here, but we've all been bombarded by the endless accounts on the local news, so there's no need. I've never seen such happy meteorologists.

For its uniqueness, this was a great weekend.