And Something I Love

Thank-you, "The Office".

Some Things I Hate

Why does this suck so so so so bad?


Demolition String Band covering Madonna's "Like a Prayer."

And how much do I hate when bluegrass bands call themselves string bands?

And another thing I hate: discovering a new string band that sounds good on instrumentals, but sing in that saccharin cutesy voice that has somehow become attached to "old timey" music. I'll take my old-timey singing raw and with some grit, thank-you. If it sounds "cute" and "pretty," you aren't doing it right.

Okay, I'm done.

Why You Shouldn't Trust Plumbers

We had a leaky faucet.

It wasn't a drip problem; it was a split seam on the side of the spout so that water jetted out the side of the spout (and over the side of the tub) every time we used the shower problem.

When I looked at it, I thought: "No problem. We just screw off the busted spout and screw on a new one" That's when the doubts set in. What if it isn't that simple? Why are plumbers paid so much if it's really that easy? Maybe I should have a professional look at it.

We had some professionals look at it. They suggested replacing the whole faucet and piping to the shower head. For $550!!!!! The other professionals we called wanted to charge us $85 just to come and look at it!

Fortunately, Molly's dad suggested we look at England Plumbing, on 33rd East and about 10th South. England is an old-time locally owned plumbing supply shop that carries new and salvaged parts. Today we drove out and showed them a picture of our tub spout. In less than a minute the guy had the part in our hands and we were paying for it. He said: "Just unscrew the old spout and screw this one on."


Like I thought originally! And the best part is that the new spout cost $10. I'm not sure why I doubted myself. I've always had an intuition about how things are made and put together. I probably should have been an engineer.

So, in my experience plumbers WILL take advantage of those who are unsure about how things work. If I hadn't had that nagging doubt in my mind, we may have paid $550 for a whole new, fancy, metal faucet and spigot and shower riser that we didn't even need!


NEW SPOUT!