BEST LAID PLANS, AND ALL THAT

When I began this collection of sense and nonsense, it was my intention to add something daily, or almost daily.

As the saying goes, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men gang aft agley." That was the poet, Robert Burns giving his interpretation to, “No matter what you do, it will get screwed up.” (I didn’t take all the English Lit courses for nuttin.)

It all began when She mentioned there might be a small leak under the kitchen sink. She deduced this by the puddle of water there so She thought there “might be” a leak.

Being the man of the house, of course I could fix this. I started by looking under the sink. Sure enough, there was a small puddle of water. Independently I came to the same conclusion. It appeared there was as small leak under the kitchen sink.

I could handle this. First, I needed to go to the garage and get some tools to make the necessary repairs. No problem.

I crawled under the sink and began to make the needed adjustment when I realized that somehow a part had broken and water had spurted all over the place, including directly in my face. After I shut the water off I had time to examine the faulty part and concluded it needed to be replaced. This involved a trip to the hardware store where I purchased the part with no trouble. I suppose I should have asked someone at that time but I neglected to buy the special wrench that’s needed to install the part. So, I can’t blame anyone for the second trip to the hardware store, as it was solely my fault.

Now, as most people know, and now I do too, these parts are located in positions where it is impossible to for any normal human being to reach, much less do whatever it is that needs to be done after you do reach it. So, this involved calling a plumber who agreed to attempt to fit me into his busy schedule sometime between 12 and 4.

Eventually two plumbers arrived. One knew how to fix pipe things and the other knew how to write on a clipboard. He was the one who said his wife was expecting a baby. When I asked when the arrival was to occur he told me it was next Thursday afternoon, between 12 and 4.

As they worked they smiled a lot and made remarks about how it was a good thing that I called them as this really was a job for a professional. Eventually they finished, left and went to another job. I had a new garbage disposal, some new (unused) gadget for inside the faucet and a bill for one third of the National Debt.

You can see how much of my blog posting time this is consuming, but that wasn’t all.

I went back to the hardware store to see if they were hiring any part-time employees in order to get some money to pay for the leak repair. I got to meet with the manager who was a little punk kid who couldn’t have been more than 60 years old, if that. He told me they no longer employ octogenarians since the last one had died on the job, thereby clogging the aisles with paramedics and firemen. He said, “We lost more money that day than we saved by hiring him at  minimum wage.”

So, you get some idea of why I haven’t had time to post much here. In fact, I can’t do very much right now either. I’m expecting the plumbers to return to fix a small leak under the kitchen sink. It’s still there. So I will get this blog posted sometime between 8 and 12, unless they are late.

P.S. They just called. It will be between 1 and 4.

The Old Professor
November 2004
Carmel, CA