Book Board Chat

I have to give Jim a lot of credit for taking those cruise ships - it would drive me nuts to be jammed in with that many people and no way to get solitude anywhere except in my stateroom. I have to actually LIKE the people I'm surrounded by, in order to feel comfortable for very long; or at the very least have to have somewhere to go to be alone and recharge the batteries. I don't mind stepping into crowds for a period of time but I know I can leave when I want to. That, I guess, is the crux of it. Yesterday, I got under the kitchen sink where I store a lot of cans and bottles of stuff, like Murphy's Oil Soap, SOS pads....you get the idea....and thank God I did; I felt water on the tops of a couple cans. The plastic, or PVC pipe from the double sink, leading down through the floor had separated and allowed water to get into that cabinet; not a lot, and fortunately, there were a couple of towels which absorbed a lot of it...but I haven't a clue why...and just have to be glad it must have been only a day or a few hours or we'd have had an awful flood next time the sink was full of dishwater. I had to get Dan inside from his yard work and tell him....he was able to get it put back together. I guess with the pvc pipe you just tighten the joints by hand; no glue, no wrenches. This had been done maybe 10 or 12 years ago when Mom had a leak under the sink and the local handyman had replaced the old pipe. It's always something!! Next, we have to unblock the basement door and go down to turn on the outside faucets. That's always a project. In these older houses, there's a valve, or maybe two, in the pipes that run under the house and you have to turn them off in the Fall so they don't freeze and burst....then do the opposite in the spring. I remember hating to do that in the old house in Bridger, MT, where the basement was simply a sort of dugout area, and there was a tiny little screw-on cap on a pipe that you'd screw on, and then open a valve. That popped off once, and I happened to hear it, as I was in the kitchen, and heard water gushing down there....I lifted up the cellar door on the back porch and had to get down there and turn off the water as quickly as possible, and then we had to pump out about a foot of water from down there....that whole place was a comedy of errors, but my grandparents made do with it for years and years. AEG, sounds like you and the hubby are really into Steampunk! I don't have a full understanding of it, but it sounds funky enough to be fun. Good for you!