07-VIII-2004.
Saturday, seventh.
Went to Go and Ricardo. Restocked them with groceries, had a long chat, full schedule. Go's website is progressing nicely, one just needs to download the quicktime plugin to see her videos.
When we returned, we found out is that the contraption under the sink doesn't drip anymore - that was the first thing, because she hooked the chain on the front door, so we came in from behind. The other thing was that Mića succumbed to its disease, seems to be it must have been some cancer, so we buried it in the patio, by the fence. Lena was sad for a while, but held firmly. It didn't even eat anything for the last few days, while Mrvica didn't even notice anything, all she cares is to have a bed, water and food.
On sunday we glued the tiles to the wall above the kitchen counter. Them being heavy floor tiles, we used some serious glue, which has to dry for a couple of hours first, and then also has to be left alone to set. The tiles didn't stick right away, so we supported them with a horizontal beam (we only need one row of these) and tightened it to stay firm and left it so.
Then we moved to the patch between the front door and the stairs. That should be tiled, but there's already some linoleum or something. That something turned out to be some thin plywood, horsely glued to the concrete, with a simple layer of (okay, plastic) oilcloth (!). Took us a couple of hours to remove, peeling plywood layer by layer in some places. The vekšmajzl (v. house dictionary) proved its worth (and probably earned its nickname at the time).
At sunset there was fire in the neighborhood, seemed nothing serious, so only four fire trucks with full crews came. Tried the zoom, mighty it is, the pics are as if I was there, though it's on the other side of that playground behind the house.
The only place where we have hot water is the lower bathroom, and we're already due a bath, hosing each other in the patio isn't enough. We could use this small bathroom as a shower cabin, if I could only attach the shower hose to the faucet, using the aerator's thread. Hmmmm.... went to Lowe's and explained to some older guy in the plumbing section what I wanted to do. Straight screwing is impossible, not the same thread, nor size. But I got the guy interested in the problem, and he started combining various fittings. On third try we had something, mostly brass, also including a piece of rubber hose in the middle and two braces, which will get the job done.
To bathe, we had to stand in a plastic tub, knee high, which was originally a box used for the move. The limitation was that we couldn't run the water full speed, because we'd had to mop the water later. The room has its own floor sink, but it doesn't look right. Even if I could unclog it, it still seems too small. So just watch out not to spill out more than we can mop. And this contraption worked almost the whole year, until we got the upper bathroom fixed. Sometimes we'd use the kids' bathroom in Richmond, always wary of chunks falling from the ceiling.
Monday, 9th.
I went on errands - new driver's licence because of address change; report the same to the post office so they'd redirect mail from the old address for a year (except ads, which a postman once said is almost reason enough to move), to the bank to order checks with the new address, to Glotz to get extension cords for the teevee, bread and milk - the milk is back lower than before, used to be 3-3,20$ per galon, then in may-june went all the way to 3.73, then back to 3,33 last week and now 2,99 again.
Package from Cox came in the afternoon. I rejoiced too early, thinking I'd be able to get internet right away - it's not the modem, it's a largish box with a decoder for the digital teevee (internally runs some linux, I guess), where we'd have a hundred or two of extra channels. The modem being more important, I spent half an hour on the phone with Cox, until I finally got someone who knew what was up - they ran out of modems, will have them on wednesday, I get it on thursday (nope, friday). I asked how much will my bill be - said 98 dollars, 116 with tax. Well, think about it, the phone services, internet and television, taken together, have already cost more than this. Competition works - the price doesn't go down much, it's just that you keep getting more for the same money.
In the evening we were fixing Lena's ceiling. The little powered jigsaw worked its fullest, because we had to cut two slats into a special shape, inset some 7mm from under, to compensate for the 4mm of hard gypsum, and grooved in the middle to thickness of 35mm to be screwed to the existing joist - all of this to make the board flush with the surrounding boards... which we eventually succeeded. We even had an extra slat above the sagged old part, which we then managed to screw to it and thus unsag it, to make the whole ceiling flat without making it from scratch.
And then I went to suffer all the cabling that came with the teevee contraption. There's one active cable in Lena's room upstairs, and the thing came with sufficient couplings, spliters and whatnot, but... even after RTFMing we still had only the fifty regular channels and none of the 200 digital. Then I remembered that the guy said the digital would work only downstairs, from the other cable, this upstairs cable is hooked into the analog only. Will try some other day.
Tuesday, 10th.
The big AC cleanup. At Lowe's they don't have that special tube cleaning spray, but they claim there's a shop on Witchduck*, which is one of the more prominent streets. The neighbor's majstor said his pal has them for 35$ a can... but then the next time we went to Lowe's, looking at all those american barbecues, with wings, expecting them to fly anytime, it's about a size of a worksho lathe, we noticed some spray bottles lined up on top of some. The degreaser spray. Well if it can dissolve the baked in grease and soot, it can deal with dust and cobwebs. And it cost 3$.
She went to the attic, and I stood on the ladder and passed the tools. She opened the box and sprayed copiously the cool pipes. Then splashed them with water. We turned it on, and at least felt the smell of the spray in all house (which meant it worked), now only to see how much good will it do. The weather cooled enough since thursday, so it was pleasant even without the AC.
[epilogue: it did work, the AC worked like that for a whole year]
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* not a duck and a witch, duck is a verb here, this is where they'd duck them into water, so if she survives, she's a witch.
Mentions: Gorana Sredljević (Go), house dictionary, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), majstor, Mrvica, Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), in serbian