Need to quiet down, but feeling a little too classy for a steaming mug of STFU?
Why not just shut your La Trappe instead?
Ah, nothing quite like the flavor of everyone closing their damn mouths.
So how about it? Are you an Isid or a Trappist? Your call.
Bene edite.
Nabisco has been going crazy with their (often terrible) new Oreo flavors over the last few years, but the package that I picked up the other day seems to indicate that they’ve finally gone off the deep end: “Cookies & Creme” flavored Oreos.
Let that sink in for a minute.
When something is “cookies and creme” flavored, you know what that really means is Oreo-flavored-please-don’t-sue-us. So what does that make these?
Oreo-flavored Oreos.
Nabisco is straight-facedly selling Oreos whose special flavor is Oreos. They’re not even trying to hide it – for God’s sake, there’s a full-on Oreo in the background picture of what the flavor is supposed to represent.
Do you want to guess what these things taste like?
Did you guess Oreos? Because it’s Oreos. Oreo-flavored Oreos taste like Oreos.
Bang-up job, planet Earth.
Bene edite.
At last, at last, I can breathe again.
There was a secret open drain to nothing inside the wall behind the furnace, branching off from the sewer line coming down from the kitchen, venting up rotten gasses from the depths of hell right into the air return path.
No idea what could have been down in the furnace room once up on a time to make use of that drain. Not sure why it was just walled off instead of closed when the furnace was installed in front of it. Hard to say why it would have taken this long for the trap to dry up. But shame and frowns and shaken fists upon whoever decided that HIDING AN OPEN SEWER LINE INSIDE A WALL USED AS AN AIR INTAKE WAS A REMOTELY O.K. THING TO DO.
AAAAGGHHH.
Anyway, after ripping open the wall, capping off that pipe, and venting out the house once more, I can sleep in a room that is both cooler than 88° and does not smell of death, which, let me tell you, is pretty swell.
Bene vīvite.
This is so not cool (why, yes, I do mean that both ways).
I can barely breathe in my own house.
No theory is panning out.
Can’t escape the rot and heat.
I need help.
Help.
Bene vīvite.
This is a special kind of nightmare come true.
A week and a half later, I still can’t use the air conditioning, and the rotten stench is getting steadily worse. I paid an HVAC guy just to come out, look around, and shrug. A plumber-and-everything-else friend of mine came over to investigate, but couldn’t find anything going on with the plumbing, or any methane leaks anywhere.
The smell started only a couple weeks after I stopped using the basement shower, so I though maybe there was some dried-up trap down there letting sewer gasses through, but I ran the water down there again to no avail. My friend even found a dead mouse on top of the ducting in the furnace room that looked like it’d died a little over a week prior. Perfect timing and location – surely that must be it. No. Got rid of that and aired out the furnace room, but the smell is still coming, stronger than ever.
Maybe there are other dead mice in the ducts themselves that conveniently died at the same time as the other. Maybe I’ve been infested by a mouse suicide cult on a mission to make everyone have a bad time. Maybe it’s still something completely different and there are simply a number of wild coincidences strewn about to throw me off.
I’m at my wits’ end. Getting desperate. This is not O.K.
Ugh.
Bene vīvite.
I have a frowny face today.
I’m not sure why I have such horrendous luck with central air conditioning. Maybe it’s because I have a low heat tolerance, so naturally, it’s a great avenue for cosmic spite. Seems as good a reason as any for it to have broken down five times over a seven year period in the last three places I lived before this one.
When I got this house, it had a nearly-brand-new, massive, high-efficiency unit that has worked pretty fantastically, keeping the pretty well-insulated place (well, the ground floor) at 68° in 110° weather without a hiccup, so I figured I had finally escaped this recurring theme.
You know, because I’m a stupidface idiot.
Since it’d be a little too ridiculous for this heavy-duty unit to break down already, the fates contrived a new, far more heinous way to deprive me of this modern comfort this time around: sewage leaking into the air ducts somewhere.
Or maybe something found its way in there and had the bad manners to die. I don’t know; I haven’t actually tracked down what it is, yet. Likely whatever will be the most expensive to fix.
So I could have cool air, if I wanted to choke on that air and vomit.
I don’t want to do that.
Bene vīvite.
After many weeks, screams, dollars, and disasters, I have a newly remodeled master bathroom. Yesterday was the first day I was able to take a shower in it since owning this house.
You always try to steady yourself for everything to go terribly wrong when remodeling, though no matter how much you prepare for, it’s always more. Rotten walls and floor behind the old shower – sure, I expected that. Pipes the wrong length, height, or size for the new stuff – of course. Things breaking left and right and needing to get three times the parts and materials as anticipated to compensate for bad design – naturally. I wouldn’t have guessed the floor would end up delaying everything for days.
Whoever did that floor is just, well, a bad person. Linoleum on top of linoleum stapled six-hundred times through a layer of plywood and even more linoleum beneath it into the subfloor. I threw my back out trying to get it all up, leaving me useless as my dad and a friend had to finish the rest of the demolition. Bad times.
I could go on a tirade detailing the countless setbacks and frustrations the whole process entailed, but at this point I’m just glad it’s over, and grateful to have gotten so much help with it all, particularly from my father, who willingly came all the way up here for the first week just to take part in this misery.
In light of that, here’s hoping he has an especially happy father’s day today.
Bene vīvite.
[I kind of regret that I never got a true “Before”, but I’d already repainted and replaced the switches/outlets when first moving in.]
Today’s post is brought to you by the letter F.
F stands for Remodeling.
FFFFFffffffffffffff
Bene scribete.
My brother wrote and directed a silly little short film.
It is entirely possibly to view it below.
Entirely.
Bene scribete.
Yeah, filth burner, that’s what I’m talking about. Cleanse it with fire. Scorch those germs away. Got a pile of dirty dishes making an eyesore out of your kitchen? Screw cleaning – just stack them all up on this baby and turn that adjustable temperature control up to immolation and poof – no more dishes. It’s tested. It’s proven. And it wipes clean.
Durable Filth Burner*. You know you want it.
[ * May or may not have simply been a misreading upon first glance and in actuality been something far less ridiculous ]
Bene vīvite.
Writin' Fish 