Rolling into Week Three of working from home and barely going out at all, I may have had a stray thought to the extent of “Gee, this is all going really well so far!” That, of course, was a mistake. Week Three started to go off the rails like, well, a speeding locomotive driven by a crazy conspiracy nut. (Side note: the engineer of that train is named Eduardo Moreno. Which is an odd name for one of those white, right-wing racist radicals the Media and Democrats (but I repeat myself) are always claiming are the causes of all domestic terrorism.)
Okay, maybe my week didn’t quite go off the rails that badly. Really, a good chunk of the damage was self-inflicted anyway, thanks to my decision to send 2/3rds of the motorpool here at The Homestead out for maintenance, since we aren’t going anywhere anyway, and the mechanics aren’t terribly busy right now. That turned out reasonably well, at least. The family kid hauler now has a fully functional back seat again (we burned out another seat motor), and the Milwaukee Missile has clean oil, a new battery, and a working running light.
No, the big problem last week was in the plumbing, when one of the two toilets in the house had the central flush mechanism break. Which, for folks who’ve never had the dubious pleasure of making that repair before, requires unbolting the toilet tank from the base of the commode, removing the old flush system, installing the new system, reseating the tank onto the commode base in a way that water doesn’t leak out around the giant rubber gasket, and tightening down the retaining bolts enough that the none of those leak, but also not enough to shatter the porcelain tank itself. Oh, and if it’s a toilet like the one I was working on, where the tank doesn’t appear to have been unbolted for a solid twenty years, it’s probably a good idea to replace the retaining bolts with new bolts, washers, and gaskets which haven’t been marinating in chlorinated water since the Clinton administration. Especially when you find out that rather than using the now standard top gasket, middle gasket, bottom gasket bolt assembly (which has been standard for at least fifteen years), whomever assembled this particular commode last decided to just drool silicone sealant all over the bolts, top them with thin white rubber washers, and directly secure the bottom of the bolts with just a metal washer and nut.
But now everything is back together, not leaking, and functional. Which is good, because a new flush valve and washers is a lot cheaper than replacing an entire toilet. Even if what I’d really like to do with this particular toilet involves fabricating a hardpoint mount, an A-1 Skyraider, and FAA clearance to drop ordnance.
