Plumbing adventures (first preparation and idea collection notes. March-April. See http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/various/standup/ -------------------------------------------------------------- A snapped pinky ---------------------------- When Lincoln asked me to contribute here, I had been in a lot of pain. My little pinky had transformed badly while falling on the path near the Charles river. The pinky got bent almost orthogonally, broken close to the joint. I went to Harvard university services, payed my 30 dollars copay ment and was after an hour admitted to a nurse who took my blood pressure (a perfect 70/110), then sent me to x-ray. The doctor who looked at the picture said: "that's fucked up badly. Broken at multiple places. We can not help here, you have to go to MtAuburn emergency! After walking over there with my pinky greeting everybody on the way (luckily it was not the third finger), I arrived in a large waiting room full of people, many more badly hurt than me. A cook told me that he had cut half his hand down and that he waited for 3 hours. After waiting and getting admitted, (Co-payment of 30 dollars and a measurement of blood pressure (90/130), the doctor on call told me "that is fucked up. You have to see a surgeon". Here is the number, a splint and by the way, you have to see something about your blood pressure!" The next week, I saw the surgeon twice, got x-rayed twice and he could put things straight. Did I forget that each visit was again 30 dollars co-payment? One good thing: they did not measure my blood pressure. But you can be assured it is ok again now. A broken sewer --------------------- We live in a nice little home in Arlington. A couple of years ago, we had a problem with the sewage. Every time, we would flush the toilet, the street down the hose would be wet. It was first only a tickle but it got worse. There is a problem if you take a dump and you find things on the street afterwards. We knew this is going to be expensive. And also complicated as it required to break down a stairway which essentially supported the entire house. As a trained problem solver, I had a great idea: I bought some cement and poured it into the drain in the lower floor, the idea being that it would fix the leak from inside. It really sealed things, but just the drain to the sewage and not the sewage itself. It was clear we needed help. One of the plumbing companies offered to send a camera equipped snake down the sewage to look what is wrong. They came I could watch and was pretty impressive to see. Obviously the pipe had completely shifted so that there was no connection any more, Any sewage would go into the ground. The prize was `obscene". Literarily. I payed 800 dollars just for watching that hole. No touching, no poking around, just watching! Obscene indeed. Anyway, the problem had to be fixed. We had to replace part of the sewage and that costed us an other 8000 dollars. Be assured it is ok again now. Compromised chicken -------------------- About 6 years ago, I bought some chicken. Sweet live little chicken to be raised. They arrived by postage mail. I have to warn that the story is a bit gory as all but one of the chicken got eaten eventually. Not by us but by wild life. What is nice about chicken is that the first person they interact with, they consider their ``mommy". There is nothing more rewarding than chicken who consider you to be their mommy. We called them Newton, Leibniz, Lagrange and Cauchy (even so they were girls). They were very nice, led wonderful eggs and enjoyed being fed (roast beef was their favorite!). But then, disaster stroke. First, Newton lost his head. Literally. One day the poor fellow just had no head any more. We don't know what happened, but it must have been a hawk who liked chicken. The second chicken biting the dust was Leibniz. It had been night and when I came down to the den, there was a raccoon climbing out of the 2 meter fence. We have also grapes and the wines helped him to overcome the fence. The raccoon obviously liked eggs because it was not the chicken which was eaten: the raccoon had opened the belly of the chicken and taken out the eggs. So we were down to two chicken. One night, we again heard a big noise coming from inside the den. There was an animal inside the den! I could not understand, as the den was closed. One chicken (Cauchy) was still alive but Lagrange got eaten by a fisher cat which was still in the den. It was 2 AM in the night. I put the last chicken in safety and closed the den intending to kill that beast killing my chicken in the morning. In the morning however, no fisher cat was there any more. Looking more closely revealed that that animal had managed to dig underground from outside into the den. Of course, it could also go back through that tunnel. Since a lonely chicken is unhappy, we gave it to a nearby farm with lots of chicken. Interestingly Cauchy was the most cautions character of all the four, dominated by the others. The most timid one has survived the hunger game and happily lived ever after. A lemon tree ------------------ I'm already quite a good plumber since owning a house. I changed the toilet, the water heater, the bathroom and kitchen sinks and cloth washers or dish washers. One always learns a lot, especially from errors. I could teach you about ``shark byte" piping for example or why a good old wax ring at the bottom of a toilet is better than any modern replacements. There were also some adventures there, but I want to tell an other story. About two years ago, we bought some trees, pear, peaches, apples and also a lemon tree. During late fall, winter and spring the Boston weather is a bit harsh for this tree and we take it inside. It has an other advantage since as we learned, raccoons not only like eggs, they also like lemons. There is a serious problem however when bringing the tree inside: there are no bees inside the house! Well, we have all heard about how bees do it and there are even youtube videos about how to do things right. Anyway, we did it lovingly with a toothbrush. It worked, and I'm now the proud father of 8 nice lemons. So much about lemon tree sex.