In my ongoing theme about women on the Orange line metro I mentioned that they’re getting better looking. Well that is definatley true the last couple of weeks. And they’re staying on past Federal Center SW (my stop) which can only mean that they’re going to the capitol. That or there’s some kind of hot young cult in Southwest Maryland. This new crop is looking mighty fine and having me hope for some kind of sex scandal on the Hill.

Later!

Why you ask? Not because of the best mullet in the free world, but because his stuff always worked the first time. I guess he wasn’t trying to fix anything long term with that kind of haywire stuff. I think he’s the kind of guy that would want to fix something the right way. But no I senor.

So when we last left our heroes they were shoe sole deep in water in the basement trying to fix the AC unit with some sheet metal and lots of glue. Well that seemed to be a good idea. So after we sealed the new pan and coil back in the unit we crossed our fingers and flipped the switch… bwaaawwwwwwwwww. (that’s the good AC noise) yah! High fives all around. lets go have a beer… well that lasted for about 2 days. The house instantly got 10 degrees cooler and we assumed success. But 2 days later the house was back to it’s sweaty self despite the AC constantly running. I decided to investigate.

I put my hand on the side… “what’s cooler than being cold”… ICE COLD. I knew this was a bad thing. So I took to the task of dismantling the sheet metal box that the coil was held in and what did I find inside? Oh just a 2 foot ice cube. The unit had completely iced over and the ice had taken the shape of the vent. I turned it off and went off to sulk while it deiced. The next morning I had an epiphany… we had sealed off the airflow with the sheet metal we glued to the bottom of the pan. (the pan is shaped like a donut) so the next day we took it out again and used tin snips to cut out the middle of the pan. We put it back in and hoped for the best. It was sure to work this time.

but…

After a few days Charlie noticed that the laundry room was full of water… again. So after a few days of depressing shop-vac-ing water I decided that it was time to give it another go. So this time instead of gently popping open the sides of the vent, I grabbed the hammer and ripped of the side like Superman. (opening June 30th) And I see there that we’ve done something right, the pan isn’t leaking! It’s spilling over! I knew that the drainpipe had to be blocked somewhere. so I poked it a little bit with a coat hanger. That didn’t work, so frustration set in and I hulked-out and ripped off the pipe. water spilled everywhere… and what was the problem you ask… to answer that you have to know this. You see we had already done this once, so getting the coil out took half the time, getting it back in went smoother, but we only had enough plumbers epoxy to do this one time. So to re-attach the drain pipe to the pan Jesse used a LOT of some kind of industrial model glue. Which like all of our well thought out plans involved some string and duct tape.

Well, back to me holding this pipe in my hand getting dirty rusty water spilled on me. You see this model glue stuff was really flexible when it dried and it dried slowly. Well it had formed some kind a booger-like shield over the inside of the pipe, completely sealing it off. So after I removed all the gunk I was ready to reseal it and get this party started. again.

This is where I should have stopped…

but…

I decided to do things the right way and screw this plastic pipe joiner back in there the right way (something we didn’t do the first time because it was stripped out. Well I got one end back in.. but then I couldn’t rotate the other end because it was attached to the wall. We had some extra pipe corners laying around so I thought I’d just cut the pipe, rotate it, then slip these on and whammo, done. So I hack off the pipe, with a large serrated kitchen knife cause that’s the only cutting instrument we had. That’s when I realize that the corners don’t fit, then trying to unscrew the end of the pipe I break it with my kung fu grip. Everything is going swimmingly at this point. So I have to race to the hardware store 5 minutes before they close and look for these larger corner pieces to fix this whole contraption. AHHHHHH.

So anyway…

I THINK we’ve finally done it. I THINK the seals will hold. Everything is screwed in the “right” way and I THINK it’s working properly… of course I’m going to wait a week for final judgment.

Pheww. Longest Post Evar.

Later!

So basketball season ended last night. Or I should say that it was put out of its misery. To put it lightly we sucked. To be more harsh would be to tell you the truth, that we considered it an achievement to say that we only lost by 20. We just couldn’t play together, not to mention that some of the times we only had 5 people show up.. and that’s counting my dad… who’s 59. But I think the last game ended the season well. We seemed to play well together. We didn’t throw the ball away too many times. And there weren’t that many times that we got the ball stolen while bringing it up (it could have helped that they also only had 5 people.) But I eneded the season with a double double (triple double if you count walking up the court as a stat) 20 points and at least 20 rebounds. I don’t feel bad about it, it was a good workout and I got to play with my dad. Maybe now I’ll have some more time to finish things around the house.

Later!

I remember way back in the days of yore (2005) when we first turned on the AC in the house we had this strange problem with water in the basement. The laundry room would be constantly damp and horrible. We called Lauren and she came out with a shop vac to vacuum up the water, she left it for us, I think that was her way of fixing it. So I think she eventually called her friend Brett’s dad (who is actually an AC guy) or so he seemed. I think that he told us that we needed a new pan. I say think because I could be making that part up. I kind of remember Jesse saying that he thought it needed a new pan too. So flash forward to the same time this year. We turn our AC on for the first time and… wow… looks like we never got that fixed. Because it took Lauren (our landlord) about… say 6 months to get the fan replaced in the AC unit outside we decided that we would tackle this problem ourselves.

Surprisingly Jesse was up for it. He usually squashes my ideas of “ghetto rigging” something. I think it’s due to the fact that his room is hotter than a nutsack. Though I just chalk that up to the fact that his dad is a carpenter and my dad has a basement full of crap. We do things the Schumaker way around here. But fixing things around the Vienna Sausage Factory takes recycling to a new level.

Taking apart the AC was a chore enough; I wanted to quit halfway through it. I swear to god that all the screws were coming from the inside, like they shrunk down the workers and had some kind of incredible voyage to put this thing together. And since we didn’t have all the right tools it took about 2 hours of banging, sliding, talking about it, screwing, and finally using the Dremel cut-off wheel to get the thing open. Oh what treasure did we find? Only that the drip pan, or rusty doughnut as I’ll refer to it, Had A hole the size of my finger in it right where it was supposed to drain out. Which BTW makes all those times I spent in the basement with Lauren while she tried to figure out why the pipe wasn’t draining really sad and hilarious.

So we go the damn thing peeled open, now what do we do? Well I had to reach into the bowels of hell to unscrew the pan from the “A-coil” (I leaned terms!) I took it outside to clean it off while Jesse went on a Home Depot run to get the supplies. There was literally a dixie-cupfull of horrid rusty paste in the pan. It had almost gone back to mud. Ashes to ashes, AC to dust. I Think parts of this was from the coils themselves actually rusting, which can’t be good. So after I scraped all of that up and washed out the bottom I realized that on one side there were probably 7 smaller holes, not just the big one. We decided that it would be futile to just patch the holes, the metal was so gone that another one would just show up to take it’s place. So we needed to re-enforce the bottom of the pan. I knew just what to use! The sheet metal from the front of the Pregerator! I knew I didn’t just keep that because I was too lazy to cut it up to fit in the trash. So Jesse comes home with some assorted glues and adhesives and we get to work. We covered the bottom of the drip pan with something that smelled suspiciously like model airplane glue. “Building model airplanes he says, crazy glue sniffer” then while that dries Jesse uses the plumber’s epoxy to fill in the bigger holes. There’s no way this can’t be awesome. Jesse had the bright Idea the next day to coat the pan with Fiberglass resin to make it more waterproof, we’ll see tonight if that was a good idea. It sounds good, right?

I’ll update tomorrow with some pictures too!

Later!

So I usually have these weird dreams then wake up all scared/excited then instantly forget them. But today was a little different. Not that I remember everything, but it’s enough to write down. So It was sort of hot in the house last night because We’re going all Macgygver on the AC right now. (but that’s another story) So I was tossing and turning a little last night. But that’s when I usually have the best dreams!

So it goes a little something like this.. hit it!

I don’t know if my car was wrecked or I just got it back but I remember that I decieded that I would fix it myself. So I go on what seemed like a montage from an 80’s teen comedy, fixing things and painting. I mean it really seemed like a movie, like it had music a quick cuts of close up parts being slapped on. (Gotta have a montage.. montage.. ) I remeber it being white (like it really is) and that I was painting something on it. So I get all done and I’m dragging my hang across my finished work. I step back to see my creation… and I’ve apparently turned my 05 Scion tC into a beat old El Camino. With blue curly things painted on it and gold leaf accents. Needless to say I was really disappointed. Which might have been enough to wake me up on a normal day, but then the car show was taken over by French revolutionaries. At least that’s what I think they were, I really don’t know how I know they were French… they just were. I remember them blasting music or something and then shouting something liek VIVA LE REVOLUTION! and then that got drowned out by some horrible noise that they were blasting out from their megaphones… which turned out to be my alarm clock. Then I woke up wide awake…which is when I should have got out of the bed… but I didn’t…and now I’m late for work.

Later!

And apparently I don’t care who knows it. I’ve been listening to their new album “Taking the long way” the last week or so. It’s actually really good. I think I like them more now that all the rednecks are mad at them. I still think that if they had been in any other genre of music this wouldn’t have even been a story. In fact they might have been even more popular, I’m looking at you Green Day and Kanye. So it’s just my guilty little pleasure, music about not being sorry. Check it out if you dare.