Okay, I promise this will be the last Alabama-themed post for a while. But I couldn't NOT post about the Bama Snuggie. Now that I'm posting, I don't quite know what to say, except that I love it. I am seriously considering sneaking it into my suitcase. It's warm and it represents. Who could ask for more?
I figured if I couldn't be in Pasadena to see my Alabama Crimson Tide play for the national championship, then watching the game with family in Alabama was the next best thing, so off we went.
Alex and I arrived in Alabama just a little before 11pm and wearily trekked toward baggage claim. Imagine my surprise when I saw this sign outside a gift shop.
Since it's late and I'm tired, I'm putting my reactions in boring but oh-so-handy list form:
1. That's a bit premature isn't it? Is this a prediction? Is this some magical, future-seeing banner?
2. Oh crap, did I somehow miss the game? No, no that's impossible.
3. Wait, it says 2009- this is the 2010 championship. Maybe it's a
time traveling banner. (it would also have to be a future-altering
banner since Florida won in 2009)
4. Maybe it's supposed to say "2009 SEC Champions"- that makes sense, it would make the year right.
5. Oh crap again, I hope this doesn't jinx us. Like I said, I was pretty tired. ;) ROLL TIDE!!!!
Epiphanies can happen anywhere - sometimes they come to you after a period of meditation. Sometimes they come to you after a life-changing experience. And sometimes they come to you in the car on the way to Lowe's. It hit me - I could go spend more money on yet another wrench that probably wasn't going to get the stuck slip nut to budge, either. Or I could admit defeat.
Admit defeat - that's heavy stuff. When I decide I can do something, I like to get it done. That's especially true when I go public with it as I did with the plumbing repair. And honestly, with the right tools, maybe I could have. My brother-in-law Gary, who is pretty handing with a pipe wrench thanks to everything he learned from his plumber dad, said that most of the time people can't do household repairs not because of skill or competence, but because they lack the proper tools. I mulled this over and considered two new challenges. I had to remove dishwasher drainage hose from its connection to the tailpiece and the metal fitting (whatever it's called) the hose connects to broke off the pipe and I can't dislodge it from the hose. And the pipe that leads through the floor into the basement looks to also be in bad shape, and I in no way think I have the skills to replace THAT. (Nor do I have the tools. I don't know what tools it would take, but I'm betting I don't have them.)
With these challenges in mind, I did what any sane person would do--I cursed to myself. Here I was on the road at 8:30 when I still had work to do and hadn't even packed the first item for a trip less than 24 hours later. Was I really so gung-ho about plumbing that I was making my third trip in as many days to Lowe's? (Maybe i just wanted to maintain my status as the Mayor of Lowe's.) No, this was ego. I didn't want to admit defeat. I know how silly that sounds, and now that I've resigned myself to calling a plumber, I realize that's for the best. But that doesn't mean there isn't some part of me totally chagrined and mentally poring over the challenge to see if I can find the solution.
And with that, I'm covering up my plumber's crack and moving on to the next project. If I can stay awake long enough to finish it...
On the bright side, I got a great haircut today:
I took this photo in my self-portrait studio (i.e., the bathroom with a black tablecloth clothes-pinned to the shower curtain), It came out okay, although I couldn't get the lighting right at all. Now if I could only get it to upload properly to the TED website to finish my badge for this year's conference!
I got a late start on the plumbing tonight thanks to a great Fiesta Bowl. I didn't expect to be so caught up in it, but it was pretty great football from start to finish. At one point near the end, Joe asked who I was rooting for (a fair question, believe me) and I responded "I don't care who wins as long as there's more good football!" I was rooting TCU to pull out a last-minute touchdown not so they'd win, but so the game would go into overtime. The game was that good!
Or maybe I was just trying to avoid the inevitable underneath the sink.
Finally, I gathered all my new pipes and elbow pieces and whatnot and began an epic struggle to remove the duct tape wrapped around one pipe. Not to say this was old duct tape, but I think the receipt for it was chiseled on stone tablets. I put a nice gash in the pipe in the process--no worries, I'm replacing it--before I finally got down to the slip nut.
Here is where the friendly guy at Lowe's* let me down. When I told him I didn't have any of the tools I needed to do this job, he assured me that I would not need a wrench to attach the PVC component. "You need to hand-tighten those." But what about the galvanized piping I'm removing? His advice was that it's so old, I could probably tap it loose with a hammer or remove it by hand.
Guess what? I can't get the damned thing loose. So my next step is going to be to go at it with the hack saw. I had to take a breather before I did that, so I figured I'd post an update. I'm sure there's someone out there who wouldn't sleep comfortably tonight not knowing the status of my crappy pipe situation.
And as if I weren't in over my head enough, I'm also going to reposition the trap. It's currently separated from the drainpipe by about 10 inches of horizontal pipe, which is why the drain has never been terribly effective.
I figure, what's the worst that could happen? I spent about $30 bucks on supplies, I've learned a good bit already, and I was already planning on calling in a plumber. If I can't make it work, I'll graciously admit defeat and call the plumber. But there's no harm in trying, first. At least, there's been no harm so far, but I haven't used the hack saw yet.
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Update: I used the saw and successfully removed the pipe and the trap came loose at the same time with no extra effort. Bonus!
But the bad news is that the pipe still attached to the sink drain has to come off. Why? Something about the little hole I put in it with my thumb tells me it needs to be replaced, too. (Who knew I had thumbs of steel?) But the slip nut attaching that one REALLY isn't coming off, and I can't just hack this one off. I took a 2am trip to Wal-Mart in search of the appropriate tool, and though online guides tell me to use groove-joint pliers and I dutifully bought two different sizes, neither worked. So I will be going back to Lowe's tonight to get something...anything...that will get this pipe loose. I'm also going to have to replace the clamp connecting the dishwasher drainage hose. I have a little bit of fear that when I remove this final pipe I'll end up having to replace the sink drain, and from there I envision a domino effect that in two weeks' time will see me in the attic replacing the insulation.
At the risk of making yet another ill-advised promise, I promise I will call a plumber before it gets that far.
When we bought our house in 2001, like all good buyers, we had an inspection done. No big problems were uncovered, but I do remember the inspector, his head under the kitchen sink, saying "You'll eventually have to do something about this." Apparently, by "something" he did not mean "put all your cleaning supplies and trash bags in front of the pipe and don't think about it for 8 years. How do I know that? Something about the water pouring down the basement wall anytime I ran water in the sink was a little clue that he might have meant "fix it."
Upon closer inspection, the water was not only running down the pipe coming through the flooring and into the basement, but dripping from the underside of the sub-flooring as well. So I dragged everything out of the cabinet (why do I have 3 different types of vinyl floor cleaner?) and thanks to low-rise skinny jeans, I'm sure I looked every bit the plumber as I tried to figure out where the leak was. Aside from a massive wad of tape wrapped around the kind-of-straight horizontal pipe--as you can see, I'm going to have to work on my lingo, but a quick Google tells me it's called a "tailpiece"--anyhow, there was also a small block of wood wedged under the trap. (See, I do know something about plumbing.) When I removed the block, a little water dribbled out and a quick inspection revealed an inch-long slit in the underside of the pipe. I'd call it a "gash" except that "gash" implies something punctured it, and the truth is that I think it just plain rotted through.
Great. Just great.
Off I went to Lowe's in hope of finding some magic, temporary fix until I could get a plumber in to fix it. Magic is just what I found.
The kind man at Lowe's shrugged as he handed it to me, saying, "It really isn't hard to replace the trap," but I assured him I just wanted to survive until the plumber showed up. Back home I went (after completing a half-dozen other errands) and started carefully wrapping the trap in this strange, stretchy rubber tape. It was going swimmingly until I put my thumb right through the pipe. I don't know what this pipe is made of, but my guess is aluminum foil wrapped around graham cracker crumbs.
Ever the optimist, I kept wrapping, covering the thumb-sized hole, careful not to make any new holes or gashes. I put on an extra layer for good measure and confidently turned on the tap.
Still leaking. Damn. But then something happened. Dejected, slumped on the kitchen floor and staring at my tin-foil pipes, I found it. My mojo. My "screw paying someone to do something I can do myself." Never mind the fact that I've never done it before and the extent of my plumbing knowledge involved Drano and apparently showing the crack of my ass. But, the guy at Lowe's said it wasn't hard and in my family I am known as "Aunt Handy" (that story will have to wait for another day).
Watch this space for news of my plumbing prowess.
I am not a cook. When I do cook, I do it moderately well. I rarely attempt anything terribly complicated because I'd rather spend my time doing other things. But the things I do prepare are generally satisfying and based seldom on recipes but more often on old advice from my father, notes jotted in a spiral notebook while talking to my mother, or just experimenting.
Tonight, Joe and I watched Julie & Julia and maybe it's as much the turn of the calendar as it is the content of the movie, but I am feeling inspired. With a couple of clicks mid-way through the movie, I ordered Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the cookbook for "the servantless American cook" that made Julia Child a household name, made French cooking accessible to Americans, and made tonight's movie possible.
It isn't just the movie, though. It's this:
Inside that Dutch oven is perhaps the most delicious food I've ever had in my entire life. It was my first night in Paris and, exhausted after a full day at Disneyland Paris and walking the Champs Elysees after my train ride into the city, I checked into the Hotel Lutetia. All I wanted to do was order room service and stare from my balcony at my amazing view. (Do click as this was one of those moments Americans with travel aspirations dream of. I was not expecting it and unabashedly jumped up and down and clapped when the hotel night manager showed me the view as he introduced me to my room.)
But I digress (and with a view like that, it's easy to digress). After being informed that the room service was provided by the hotel's brasserie, I selected the poulet fermier de Challans rôti à l'ail et au thym, pomme purée du Lutetia. Or, chicken roasted with garlic and thyme with mashed potatoes. For the moment I will skip over that rond de chèvre, although just looking at it makes me want to buy a ticket to Paris, and get to the actual point. Among those who frequently dine out with me, I am known as something of a mashed potato connoisseur. So when I saw pomme purée du Lutetia on the menu, there was no question of what to order. Being a somewhat picky eater in a foreign country, I'll admit I was a bit nervous about what I would receive. But there was no need--what I received was a revelation: never did I dream that mashed potatoes could be so amazing. The small chicken, perhaps the size of a Cornish hen, rested in the oven on a bed of mashed potatoes with whole cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary. The chicken itself was astonishing on its own - tender and juicy beyond any I'd experienced. The jus (can poultry have a jus? "Drippings" seems too crude for something that tasted so divine) only enhanced the flavor of the potatoes. I would have licked the oven clean if it weren't for the fact that it was smaller than my face. They were THAT good.
Two nights later I dined in the Brasserie du Lutetia, "one of the Left Bank’s most famous culinary institutions" and had the same meal. You know all that stuff about the second pressing of the grape and all? Not the case here - it was every bit as wonderful the second time around. I think I could eat that meal every day for the rest of my days here on earth and be happy. Of course, that would likely reduce my days here on earth significantly. C'est la vie. Or should I say, la mort?
It is the memory of those meals that made the movie more enjoyable and prompted me to order the cookbook. I do not intend to cook every recipe in the book, ever, let alone in one year. But I do intend to try a few things. The book will be here on Tuesday and I have it on good authority that page 520 will be my first venture.
One more thing...did you know Julia Child is credited with introducing to America the idea of adding garlic to mashed potatoes? I nominate her to be Patron Saint of Mashed Potatoes.
Almost 30 years later, the pool of public knowledge about AIDS and HIV is almost as deep and unfathomable as those early fears were. The numbers remain staggering:
In the face of such statistics, it can be easy to maintain that early helplessness or those same feelings of being powerless. With the pressures of life and the constant din of so many media sources telling us what we should care about, it can also be easy to forget that, despite the fact that it isn't in the news every day, AIDS kills almost 4 people every minute. (based on 2008 death rates) Feels immense, doesn't it? Unstoppable? I hope not.
Apparently I'm not the only person who believes that a lot of little actions can add up to great things and that we sometimes need an arbitrary marker as a reminder - it's beliefs like those that lead to days like today - World AIDS Day. Today we pay a little more attention to the breadth of this disease, the global implications of it, the cultural beliefs and behaviors which influence its spread, and the efforts underway to slow and stop it. We shine a light on the fact that this disease is still relevant and threatening, and even those of us who aren't vaccine researchers or powerful philanthropists can still do something to stop it. Here are just a few ways we can help in the course of this day:
Or, go straight to the source and make a donation. Here are a couple of organizations that would be glad to take your money:
For as long as there have been creatures who could dream and wonder, they've gazed at the moon with fear and awe. It was a moon much like the one pictured here that helped inspire this poem, along with the memory of a poster on the wall of my high-school girl self and snippets of song lyrics by the person on the poster which happened to come out of my iPod that morning.
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Measures
The measure of a morning,
Twelve even, brick-red ovals,
A misshapen, onionskin moon
Ambling toward the horizon.
I look ahead now,
Toward a wall that isn't there.
A wall I will myself towards—
One more, one more.
I, I was standing
You were there.
I'm not standing anymore.
Once, when he looked back from another wall,
Eyes heavy and beckoning,
I thought I was moving,
But it was a chimera,
Created by the speed
Of life flowing around me.
Just as the passing river
Could trick me into thinking I was moving
As I watched the ripples lap past my grandmother's pier.
Happiness is not rooted in place.
It is the flowing water, not the solitary dock.
But once I started moving,
No one ever kept up.
He can't now, of course,
But he isn't the only one.
It is always the same—
Out of the void comes
A peripheral jumble and then
…Convergence.
Footfalls in unison.
And I want it to
Go
Please, let it just go on
Forever.
But I cannot maintain forever.
I can only maintain this singular stride.
Neurons still vibrate with the wish as
The feet fall out of sync,
The planes diverge.
When you looked back from the wall, you were
wrong.
Worlds don't collide.
And when each trails away,
I am betrayed
I find the fault in myself,
Doubting my own gravity.
Perhaps there is no fault,
Only a difference in pace,
Mine always pushing me ahead
Until looking back reveals nothing
But the gentle arc of what once was
As I orbit the center
And the moon slides away.
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And the song that played a part in this...
Photo:
