July 2023

On Sunday, Mary said to me “Lets go to Cajun’s.”
In my mind, I weighed an extra hour of shop time vs a plate of fried food. Plus: isn’t it supposed to rain?
Nonetheless, we went off to Cajun’s for lunch.
It was a beautiful day, and we sat outside and watched 4 kids and 3 adults round up 6 chairs for a small table before they gave up and left.
We watched the  clouds move in and the sky grow dark. Time to go.
We hit the road, and the rain hit halfway home, and it didn’t stop for a day and a half.
Next time you’ve got a hankering for fried clams, check the weather report.

You gotta love a biblical rain storm.
The thunder. The lightning. The wind. The rain. The very gods, pounding on the walls and the roof, wanting in. News reports of death and destruction! And me, drinking my coffee in my crocs, watching the wet weather thru a window, from the top of a hill, while the rivers rage, knowing how lucky I am.

Another day, another downpour.
Only this time, the power went out, and Mary’s got a party of 8, due at any moment, staying next door.
No pressure!
Most of the time, our power failures are brief, but this one wasn’t looking good, so I set up the generators at both houses, and we waited for power, darkness, or guests, whichever came first.
At nine, it got dark. I powered up the house. The guests arrived. Everything went as well as it can go without power.
At midnight, the power came back on, so I walked next door and shut down the generator. That was easy, I thought.
At 6:30 am, Mary got a call. No water next door. wtf.
I walked over, and it turned out that … during my midnight shutdown, I’d flipped one switch too many, and -um- certain critical services were down.
I fixed it, but I felt bad. I know better than that.

The stove saga continues.
We took the stove back from the service shop, where it had been for 2 months, because we needed it to template the new countertops.
“Don’t hook it up,” they said. “It’s a bomb waiting to blow.”
And for awhile, I obeyed, because it was clearly not right, and I didn’t want to make it worse.
Then the flood came, and the service shop was under water. They told us that if the stove had been in the shop a week longer, we could have put in an insurance claim and had a brand new one. But no. It’s sitting, broke and useless in our kitchen, with a hot plate on top of it,  and a signed legal waiver taped to it. “Don’t fuck with me,” it said. “I’ll blow up.”
So I took it downstairs, and I took it apart. I hooked up a couple regulators and a propane tank, and I make a home-made manometer so I could make sure the gas pressure was just right.
I put it back together, tested it out, and then hooked it back up in the kitchen.
Four of the six burners worked fine, and  Mary made her corny shrimp dish that night. Yum!
The other two burners still needed parts, and they’d finally come in. Just before the flood.
They were intact, though, so we picked them up and I put them in and …
They’d sent us the wrong gas line. God damn it.
It’s only because I have a machine shop in my basement that I was able to make it fit. And for the first time since April, we finally have a cooktop that totally works.
So we went out to dinner. We’ll cook something some other day.

B3pr has had a rough month. I’ll tell you about it some day.