Friday, September 26, 2014

Good morning crew,

One week in the new house and the repairs have already begun. I started last Sunday with a load of laundry. Bath towels. After about 45 minutes I figured the cycle should be done and went down to the basement to put the towels into the dryer, but what I discovered was the wash basin still full of water.

I tried fiddling with the controls, restarting the cycle, but the water would not drain. It being a Sunday I knew I wouldn't be able to get a repair guy out that day, so the only alternative was to figure out how to drain the wash basin and finish washing the bath towels by hand.

All I can say is that before the invention of the washing machine people must have had incredible forearm strength. I filled buckets with water in the basement sink and began rinsing the towels one-by-one, but in between each rinse I had to wring the towels out by hand. Have you ever tried to wring a soaking wet bath towel by hand? It felt like each one weighed a ton.

Of course, water is squirting and splashing everywhere, and since they were all white towels I had bleach in the water. That means that in order to avoid turning whatever I might be wearing into polka dots from the bleach I had to do all of this towel wrangling naked.

The wife got a good laugh at that.

But the least appetizing part of the whole ordeal was draining the wash basin. Having taken physics in high school (I got a C) I decided to use a short length of hose to create a siphon, and in order to start the siphon I had to create the initial suction by sucking on the lower end of the hose with my mouth.

If you have never done it I can strongly caution you against sucking in a giant mouthful of soapy bleach water. It completely ruined the taste of my lunch.

On the plus side the repair ended up only being about a hundred bucks.

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

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"Some sad news from the world of reality TV. Mama June and Sugar Bear from 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo' are splitting up. Their lawyers are citing unintelligible differences." -Jimmy Fallon

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"Many of the leaders and assistants to the leaders from around the world were in attendance at the U.N. Climate Summit. They say this was arguably the most high-profile, significant meeting that will in no way change anything whatsoever." -Jimmy Kimmel

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"A bachelorette party missing since Monday after a hurricane hit has been found and safely returned to California. When asked about the ordeal one of the girls said, 'We were screaming, everything was spinning, there were bodies everywhere -- and then the hurricane hit.'" -Seth Meyers

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I had been teaching my seventh-graders about World War II, and a test question was, "What was the largest amphibious assault of all time?"

Expecting to see "the D-Day invasion" as the answer, I found instead on one paper, "Moses and the plague of frogs."


*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
My teenaged niece Elizabeth was nervous as she took the wheel for her first driving lesson. As she was pulling out of the parking lot, the instructor said, "Turn left here, and don't forget to let the people behind you know what you're doing."

Elizabeth turned to the students sitting in the backseat and announced, "I'm going left."