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A Plumber's Helper Of A Different Sort

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The view from below, minus my head. With Ben's high school graduation coming in a little less than three weeks, we have been catching up on many badly-needed house projects, both indoors and out. There's nothing quite like having 50 people come to your house to get you to take a look around and see what needs work. As a result, we both have mental lists in our heads and whittle away at projects as we can. Today we tackled our kitchen faucet, a project we've been putting off for about a year now. Our old faucet had built up so many mineral deposits that it didn't even pivot to the second sink. Like so many aspects of home ownership, we just kind of lived with it thinking...someday. Besides, who uses that second sink anyway, right? Well, just the rest of the world, that's all. I have said many, many times on this blog that I don't consider myself "handy". On the other hand, I've said equally as many times that I don't give myself enough
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Cars, Crowns And Colonoscopies

So my 23 year old daughter bought her first car this week. She is in living up in Minneapolis and recently moved out of college and into her own apartment. While she was a student, mass transit worked just fine for her, but now she needs a car to get to work among other things. Now, it's hard to say I ever had a pleasant car purchase experience. Ever. But here's the deal. It sucks but it's part of life. It's part of being an adult. I rank it right up there with a colonoscopy or a dental crown on the fun scale. I'd sooner get blasted by a fire hose, frankly. I hate looking for cars. I hate test drives. I hate negotiations. I hate pushy salesmen.  I hate pushier finance guys I hate the paperwork and I hate sitting in sterile cubicles of salesmen who are likely looking for another job. Some people get a charge out of a new car. I am not one of those. To me, a car is a good way to get from here to there. Simpler is better, but hey, if I have to have seat warmers
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On the Eve of Forty Eight

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Today marks forty eight years since my father's murder. I've never really been able to remember the exact date until the past year or two -- June 28, 1967. It's not a date I like to remember, so I always just kind of knew it was in June sometime. Those of you who know me, know that I was only 5 years old when it happened, so remember little of my dad - a handful of memories, or cerebral snapshots of our times together. As the story goes, he was murdered in a seemingly random, racially motivated attack while minding his own business in Happy Harry's bar in a racially transitional part of town. I originally thought there were 4 men that beat him, but was corrected after my mother read a poem I'd written about that night. She said it was a band of 11 people. I guess the numbers don't matter, what matters is that he was outnumbered and singled out because of his skin color. They beat him, left the bar and returned and beat him again, fracturing his skull. As
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