Following on from last time’s thrilling heroics, I spent some of the weekend slapping my pipe (ooh vicar!) The tap I bought wouldn’t accept the adapter for the moveable dishwasher we have. I bought a second adapter to see if that would help, which broke off inside the tap without sealing it up, so the tap went back and I installed another replacement. After some fiddling, and yet another trip to the store to buy yet another adapter, this one works just fine.

That should be enough, one would think, for one week in the world of plumbing. But no. Wandering the basement trying to find some pliers, I noticed that a section of pipe had sprung a leak. Not a joint or corner, just a standard length of pipe, sheltered under the floor joists, with nothing rubbing on it or draft blowing to promote freezing. Just a hole in a pipe. Fortunately this was fixed with a resin-impregnated pipe bandage (which I cunningly bought on a combined trip to get the new tap), so I kept my total for visits in single digits.

Did I mention I hate DIY?

I remembering reading a story years ago whose moral was that, no matter how small the home improvement task you’re engaged in, it will always require three trips to the hardware store. Our kitchen tap (that’s a faucet, but I can’t say that word without sounding stupid or Canadian or something, so humo(u)r me and we’ll call it a tap). Trip one was to get a replacement cartridge, which turned out to be a daunting prospect – it looked like a tour of several plumbing shops would be required. Being easily daunted, I switched to plan B, and took home a nice yet cheap replacement tap. Trip two was, as you may already have guessed, to get the connector bits that the new tap needed that the old one didn’t. I got home, screwed everything together, only to have it leak.

Now at this point the inevitable third trip was looming. In an attempt to deny my fate, I called the manufacturers and they’re sending a new cartridge for the new tap (yes, I just realized that I could have done that with the old one. The new one is really much nicer though. Honestly.) “Fate denied!” you’re thinking. Paul laughs in the face of destiny, and tweaks the nose of the crappy Reader’s Digest article that kicked all this off, right?. Sadly, no. See, the thing about inevitability is it’s sheer…inevitability. The drain from the sink was on its last legs, and my thrashings around under the sink seem to have been more than it can take, so I’m off to the hardware store after dinner for some replacement pipe. Trip three.

I haven’t posted for a while, as you may have noticed. I thought I’d put in a short uber-post about all the things I normally post about, just to let you know I do still care. Starting with…

Politics – Actually I don’t still care, at least not right now. Republicans are dishonest liars and traitors, Democrats can’t seem to decide on anything, and when they do they’re witless chumps, and whatever party politicians are from their main focus seems to be getting re-elected for as long as they need to build their post-service earning potential. Big insight, huh?

Rowing – It’s a bit nippy out, in case you hadn’t noticed, so no rowing except for the indoor sort. I’m gradually picking up the pace in the basement, but still have a long way to go to get close to my personal bests. On the upside I’m now the Vice-President of the Minneapolis Rowing Club and also the temporary webmaster, but it’s a design I inherited so no complaining). which means I’ve now done pretty much everything there (coach, captain, techie, builder, board member, officer) except row well. And on a related note, I stopped cycling for the year on the day the first snowflake hit.

Family – I won’t bore you, except to say that they’re great and I’ve decided I’m definitely going to keep them.

Faith – Still definitely falls in the “-less” category. I’ve been learning a lot about Christianity recently, principally evangelical forms. I was going to say that I remain unconvinced, but I’m a loooong way from being even unconvinced. It’s interesting stuff though, and really shows what you can do with some judiciously applied logic plus an omnipotent being.

Tech – Love my iMac, love my Shuffle, love my Minolta. Happy the man who has toys to fill his time. It has really highlighted to me that these three items, along with the Mazda MX5 (Miata) we had in the UK, are the physical items I have treasured most, and all are focused on getting the experience right first, then on hitting a price point. There was an ad for Cockburn’s sherry in the UK some years ago with the tagline “One instinctively knows when something is right”, which sums up that issue. Oh, and Web 2.0, cus everyone has to mention it once this year, right?

Rambling over, normal service will resume as soon as the ire patches I’m using kick in.

…just not in a blogging frame of mind. But to keep the blogging tradition of inane commentary alive even here, I just noticed that my arms have turned Minnesota-pasty once again. I guess winter is really here.

There is a concept in rowing called ‘swing’. It describes a state where the crew becomes more than the sum of its parts. Their timing is together, their efforts are matched, and their technique is clean. The end result is that, while the boat may not be going at maximum speed, it is racing along seemingly out of all proportion to the perceived effort from the crew.

Last night I hit a similar state on my bike. It was rainy and dark, I couldn’t quite get comfortable on the seat, my feet were wet and cold, and I was getting splashed with mud. But I was cruising along, maybe at 90% of my normal speed but with what felt like only 50% of the work. It only lasted for 15 minutes, out of a 45 minute trip, but happiness is made of such moments.