2005-03-05: A Fairly Free Saturday

Next thing up, was getting the run to Socal Gun taken care of so that Brian's new shotgun can get transferred. After lunch at the UTC Red Robin and the ingestion of at least six of their strawberry lemonades (free refills), I set about the first of my housework.

Considering that the ants seem long gone, I went ahead and put some of the moulding back up on the door. That lead me to address the door's improper closure, which involved the use of Brian's dremel tool and a screwdriver. The door latch is now a few millimeters closer to sitting flush with the door. Before and ... well, after hasn't been shot yet.

Next up, I vacuumed out the bits of sawdust in my tub, in preparation to actually resuming work on the bathroom. That lead me to turn off the water to the bathroom so that I could tighten the shower pipes back up, but instead I was distracted by the numerous leaks in the water pipes outside. I've been long annoyed by the way water sprays out of the top of the spigot whenever the sprayer head's valve isn't open, so I decided that today it was getting replaced. I removed the old one and made a Home Depot run, which resulted in a shiny new spigot. After installation, I determined it was still leaking a bit, which prompted me to re-install it with plumber's tape - and the leak was stopped. I found out that the hose spool actually has a leak too, but the severity is minimal.

Next up, I evaporated all the leaked water from the pipes with the heat gun I borrowed from the house up in Oceanside. I determined there was leakage on the other spigot (the one which controls water flow into the house), but not from the valve itself. I removed the spigot, re-wrapped the ends in plumber's tape, and put it back in place. After repeating the heat gun procedure, there were no apparent leaks.

At least SOME projects around here start and finish on the same day.

Next up, mosquito hawks weird out Brian. At first he thought it was something that'd be inclined to bite/sting, but I reassured him they don't, and in fact they eat mosquitos. That turns out to have been entirely wrong, as my later research revealed. I guess that's just what I was told as a kid so I wouldn't freak out about them. However, I've discovered the joys of firing up Artoo and helping them fly faster than they've ever flown before. When caught in a 175mph wind, they disappear out the door amazingly fast.

Update: Turns out the locals in Tennessee told my parents that mosquito hawks eat mosquitos, and they believed it too, until reading about it here.