Then on Monday
After all was said and done I went home and slept last night.
The said and done, though, that’s an interesting story.
Maybe not.
What happened was that I was at Erin’s, after she was at my place, and when I got back to my place, after being at her place, one of the roommates pointed out that the sink (in the kitchen) was backed up. I did what I do, rolled up (figuratively) a sleeve, stuck my arm into the cold water, and proceeded to see if there was a clear reason for the water to be… well, not draining. Then, with a wet arm, I opened the space under the sink and started to feel the PVC pipes that connected the two sides of the sink to the sewer system. I could feel differences in temperature before and after the trap (looks like a “J”) and deduced (cause I am a genius) that the problem was inside the trap.
At that point I dumped in some ammonia (don’t ask why) to see if it would clear up the problem and then proceeded to wait. Lesson you should learn from this: Don’t dump ammonia into a sink full of water.
The sink didn’t drain. I then looked (again) at the trap and noticed that I should be able to remove it without finding any of the tools that would be specific to that task; and proceeded to look for a bucket so that the two sinks completely full of water had something to drain to. I then removed the trap.
At this point I learned: Don’t wear new clothes when working on things that are inherently dirty and/or have had ammonia poured into them.
I had water and ammonia splash onto my clothes and me and began to smell bad.
At this point I re-learned: Ammonia smells bad. Really bad. And when it gets onto you, you smell bad, really bad.
However, having the trap off of the sinks the water started to pour, rather forcefully, straight down into the bucket. The bucket filled quickly. I replaced the plugged trap back into its spot and said to the roommate standing there, “I need something else, quickly, that can catch water.” His solution was to take the bucket and dump it into the downstairs bathtub. Good solution.
Once the bucket was back I pulled the trap back off, let the rest of the water drain, and then pulled out a butter knife and removed the blockage of grease and whatever that wouldn’t allow the water to drain. The blockage was about two inches long in a one inch pipe. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, was getting past it.
At this point I learned: Grease, dumped down a drain, and not properly flushed, will harden sufficiently to stop water in a pipe. Grease removed and placed in a garbage can no longer stops water from draining. Always flush greasy material properly if pouring it down a drain.
The roommate that had (sort of) been helping me said, “I wasn’t sure what we were going to do. I didn’t know how to do any of that.”
I said, “Does anyone know if ammonia is a caustic or bleach?” No one could tell me. One of the guys at the house (not a roommate) said, “It’s a base.”
I said, “Bases, like acids, have similar properties in concentration. Therefore, it is possible for a base to be caustic (or acidic) and still be a base. The nature of the base is to cancel out an acid.”
He looked at me and left.
At this point I learned: People don’t want to learn about things they don’t care about and, in some cases, can become passively hostile when given an opportunity to learn something new.
I called Erin and asked her. A conversation ensued. The outcome: she didn’t know either. (She offered an opinion, which I appreciated, and then offered another one this morning.)
My outcome, I decided it was best to soak the shirt I was wearing in the hopes that the ammonia was: A) diluted in the sinks of water; B) was diluted in the bottle; C) did not have heavy bleach characteristics; and D) gave me something to do before going to bed to help get the smell of ammonia off my clothes.
I then went back into the front room and sat down. Two of the roommates are brothers AND they are the grandsons of the owners, therefore, they have more responsibility in the house and a conversation was going on (between them) about the nature of people, cleanliness, and responsibility – and how they were raised differently, in their estimation, than the majority of other people in the house. I was, to an extent, included in the conversation and, as a result, was somewhat entertained at the ideas that were being bandied back and forth between the two brothers. They were discussing (and debating) some of the virtues of how they were raised.
That conversation changed. I realized I was very tired. I got up, said. “Goodnight,” and went to bed.
The Erin portion of the night was far more entertaining than the sink portion of the night and I will have to let you all know what happens to the shirt once the ammonia has had a chance to do whatever it’s going to do. And then I went to bed and slept until my alarm went off and got up and showered and shaved and went to Erin’s house to take her, her car and then road in her car back to my house where we got my car and then went back to her house where we parked both our cars and then went to school.
And then…
It has proved to be an interesting experience.
School is interesting. Had a professor, this morning, say, “If you’ve ever wanted to experiment with coming to class without pen or paper and just paying a lot of attention, this is the class to do that in.” He expounded on that idea; but since I pretty much rely (heavily) on my computer, that’s not likely. In that class my phone lost connection with the network. That’s the second time in a week that’s happened. I am wondering if something is amiss.
Uhm.
I think that’s about the extent of new things having happened. I’ve learned that something that is intuitive to me isn’t necessarily intuitive to someone else. That pipes can be like reading Greek or Latin or Sanskrit and, as such, some people don’t have the chutzpah to jump in and see what happens – where, apparently, I do. I’ve learned that late nights make for interesting mornings. I’ve learned that the sky is blue; grass is green; the moon may not be made of cheese (though asking Neil Armstrong might help); the world is round (not flat, who knew?); and that the rain in Spain, allegedly, stays mainly on the plain. Oh, I also learned that using the word “allegedly” doesn’t make it so. That when reading something you should then quote it if you don’t want other people to realize you’ve read it; and using “allegedly” doesn’t change the fact that you just quoted a passage or mentioned a section on something you may, or may not, have just read. Allegedly.
John Hattaway | Denny Crane | Alicia Grey | smokingpen | Bond. James Bond
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