Home Repair Fuckwittery

On Friday, I discovered that the GFCI outlet in my bathroom had suddenly stopped working. Pushing test and reset had no effect. I finally got around to working on that little home repair problem this morning.

I started by taking off the face plate and pulling the outlet box out of the wall to make sure all of the wires were properly connected. Everything looked good. Like I am an expert, pssht, but at least there was indeed a ground wire connected to the box, and two white wires were inserted on one side, and two black wires were inserted on the other. Okay, symmetry is good.

I next made a trip to my circuit breaker box, which is stupidly and inconveniently located on the outside of the house. No breakers were tripped.

Now I was facing the possibility of having to replace the GFCI outlet. With home repair, it's always half a dozen steps back before you can take a step forward. I needed to turn off the power to that outlet before I started messing around with it. But none of the fuses in the breaker box were labeled. Why would they be? Are they labeled in your house?

Excluding the large voltage ones which certainly powered the fridge, HVAC unit, and washer and dryer, I had 17 mystery fuses to sort out.

I turned on all the lights in the house and garage, and began systematically working my way through the fuses, filling out a table as I went along and turning off lights once I figured out which fuse controlled them. I had to go back and check a few of my "unknowns" when I realized that half a dozen outlets in the kitchen were not on the same circuit as the one that controlled the overhead lights.

It took me well over an hour of traipsing back and forth. I never figured out which circuit controls those kitchen outlets. But I did find the circuit for the upstairs bathroom--yay! Even better, the process of throwing breakers on and off reset the GFCI--yay again! No replacement needed.

Unfortunately, when I was pushing the box back into the wall, I neglected to remember it was live and gave myself a bit of a shock. Not enough to trip the damned GFCI again, thankfully. But enough for me to call it a fucker, and to make a trip back outside to shut off power to the bathroom.

I finished my day of home care by planting some flowers, and vacuuming the car then driving it to my favorite car wash. I also cleaned the upstairs bathroom, vacuumed the house, and started some black beans in the slow cooker.

It's not much, but it's a start. I rebuilt the rock wall myself.

As a reward for my virtuous activities, I am out on the deck with the entire pack, even the annoying cat, enjoying the beautiful breeze and balmy temperature.

Archie is off patrolling the perimeter.

Non-Stick

The blast from the past in the bedbug post reminded me that I wanted to post this tidbit too.

Back in 1994, I acquired a set of non-stick cookware. It was a big purchase for me at the time. I was extremely proud of my 10-piece set of Circulon pots and pans--not the top of the line but reasonably priced and durable. I can certainly attest to the durability part: I hauled that set of pots and pans and lids all over the U.S. and even the world. Like Harry and Mimi, the set went with me to Saudi Arabia and back.

Circulon, circa 1994.

For decades, I have been diligent about never using metal utensils when cooking. There's plenty of plastic and wood options out there. But even with care, well made things still wear out. The saucepan was the first casualty--even boiled pasta would stick to the bottom. I kept the pan but it got shoved to the back of the cabinet, replaced with a series of cheap pans and lids I picked up here and there. The skillets went next. They became increasingly hard to clean as the non-stick coating was worn away with use.

Out with the old...

So last month, 26 years after that first acquisition, I decided to get a new cookware set. I went with Calphalon this time, another 10-piece set. One less pot, one more lid--but that lid is for the sauce pan! What a luxury!

...in with the new!

Cooking with the new pans has taken some adjustment. They heat up much faster, and more uniformly, than the old ones, so I have to use lower settings on the stove. I had
forgotten how nice non-stick coatings can be to use and to clean.

The old set is boxed up and sitting in the garage. I can't bring myself to throw it away. I have a history with these pots and pans. I could pull out the still-usable pots and donate them, but I can't bring myself to separate them from the rest. Who knew owning a set of cookware was going to be such an emotionally demanding relationship?

Argh! Bedbugs!

I am working my way through my second interaction with bedbugs. The first time I encountered these savage little blood-sucking bastards was way back in 1995 or so. There was no question then that I picked them up on a trip to Thailand. This time, they came back with me from a hotel in Fayetteville, where I stayed for two nights for an agility trial. The trial was in mid-March, so it took a while for them to make their way from the travel crate containing dog bedding in the garage upstairs to the bedroom.

Over a period of three nights, these disgusting pests ravaged my legs and arms. The pustules don't always appear right away so it took that long for the full horror to be exposed. Bedbugs often leave bites in short tracks. And the itch gets worse over several days. I had many dozens of bites on my legs, fewer on my arms. I will definitely have some scars from this.

The solution now is the same as it was in 1995. Wash everything that can be washed, and dry on high heat. Wash it all again just in case. Tear the bedroom apart, moving all the furniture away from the walls. Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum. Empty canister after every vacuuming, carry the trash bag to the can outside, and spray the canister with alcohol.

Then I applied diatomaceous earth. I piled that stuff up along the baseboards, rubbing it into the carpet. I rubbed it into both sides of my futon and all of the bed frame crevices. I let everything sit for a week, vacuumed it up, and repeated. Make sure you wear a mask when using diatomaceous earth (we should all have plenty of masks these days) since breathing those tiny silica particles is not good for you.

After two weeks, I decided to move back into my bedroom. Sadly, I may not be done, since I got a single bite on my knee two nights ago. I will have to move back downstairs tonight, and treat the bedroom again this weekend. But I'm just as persistent as bedbugs, and I will prevail.

Notes From A Pandemic

I was chatting with the director last week. Even before COVID-19 changed everything, we would chat 3 or 4 times a week, and that seems to be a habit in which we continue to indulge. Often, the director describes some proposed change to lab activities, and asks me, on the spot and with no preparation or notes, to riff on what I see as all of the consequences of that change, good and bad. This is not to say that he asks me for advice, as the process is not that direct. He asks me for my perspective. Even so, I know that he has modified his arguments for and against proposed changes based on what I say. I'm just coming up on my tenth month at the lab, and as a supervisor, I'm a relative newbie. But I think that he appreciates that I've been around the block a time or two. And my newness can be beneficial since I look at things with a fresh eye.

While the central topics of these chats are nearly always some administrative or technical process at the lab, we usually spiral out into fairly wide-ranging discussions of politics and science. We tiptoe around religion and similar landmine topics.

We of course talk about how the pandemic has been affecting us personally. With some exceptions, mainly administrative employees who can work from home, all of the technical employees have been coming in to the lab every day. Back in early April, when the stay-at-home measures were being widely implemented, I mentioned to him that it made me anxious to be the only person on my street who was going to work--daily I was driving past all my neighbors who were out walking or gardening or playing with kids. He said, yes, I know, when I get up in the mornings, my house is the only one in my area with lights on inside.

So last week, he mentioned that he had been feeling... he hesitated, so I said, feeling an existential dread? And he said, yes, of course, that (crazy how we both just rolled right past such a huge elephant in the room), but that he'd also been having real trouble focusing on projects that required planning for the future. We decided that the best word to describe this was "viscosity."

I told him that I had been feeling the same thing. There are a bunch of quality management documents that need my attention and even though I have time set aside for that type of activity, I couldn't seem to get to those tasks. It seems easier to focus on small activities of the moment--spending more time examining the biopsy submissions, spending more time reading up on a specific disease I found in a necropsy. We were both feeling dragged down, unable to tackle projects that required us to envision where we wanted the lab to be in six months or six years.

We decided that we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves. If we (we personally, and the royal "we" of the lab) got through this pandemic without making any big mistakes, that would be okay.