Day 1927

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I woke up a little after 8 and played games until about 9.  Then it was up for pet stuff and breakfast.  It's sad not making breakfast for Lucy.  After that I decided to start with two small projects.

First I attached the license plate to the trailer.  This should have been a quick job.  Unfortunately the builders had used zip ties to attach the temporary license.  I had to find bolts, nuts, fender washers, and lock washers.  This took some time searching through my hardware stash.

Second I used the pipe insulation I'd purchased to wrap the apartment's outside water spigot.  That was just time consuming as several pieces had to be cut and attached with either tape or zip ties.  I also reinstalled the clamps we'd taken off when we fixed the leak.  The result looks really good if I do say so myself.

By then Ellen had come out.  We looked at the note paper I'd left to confirm the location of the leak.  It's behind the girder like I thought.  Even better there doesn't seem to be a leak farther down the pipe.  At that point we couldn't do anything else until we had all the parts and tools we needed.  We needed two connectors, a pipe deburrer, and a pex cutter. 

We went inside and hit the internet looking for what we needed.  Both Lowe's and Home Depot said they carried what we needed, but didn't say if any were available.  We had backup sources at ACE and McCoys for some of it.  

We stopped at Lowe's first.  They had a pipe cutter that I'd wanted (their website said they didn't).  They also had the pex cutter, deburrer, and one of the connectors.  We bought it all.  Then we stopped at Home Depot.  We got the second connector there and a much better pex cutter.  We took the one from Lowe's back.

We stopped at Schlotkey's for lunch.  It was OK.  We ate outside and I needed to get a refill.  I got to the door and had to turn around to get my mask.  I walked back to my table, got the mask, and walked back to the door.  There was a boomer age Karen (right haircut but the hair was white) sitting by the door.  She'd been watching me intently, especially when I'd walked up the first time without a mask.  As I put the mask on and opened the door I said "next week the stupidity ends".  She muttered something to the effect that "it's not going to be over".  Pissing her off made my day. I can't wait until next week when the governor ends the mask requirement.

When we got back it was too late to work on the pipe because Ellen had to go to Hog Heaven.  I went to the garage to practice with the pipe and pex cutters.  The pex cutter worked great.  The pipe cutter was OK.  The deburrer sucked.  They'll all do the job though.

I originally was going to start constructing the pipe replacement.  I decided to wait until I'd cut out the leaking part.  That way I have a template.  Instead I replaced the trashed membrane switch on the trailer compartment lock.  It took a little while to remove the old switch's glue, but the result looks and works well.

After that I did YouTube until dinner, a HEB salad.  Then it was YouTube for the rest of the evening.  I'm getting hooked on 15 minute historical talks.  There are several "channels" of them.