Saturday, March 27, 2010

Plum(b) Happy

Herman, how we adore you. Thank you, O ye godsent plumber from the boondocks. Praise be, praise be.

Herman is the name of the marvelous man that came today to fix our plumbing. He was wonderful. This experienced, well-behaved, easy-going yet hard-working guy with a delightful southern accent is my hero. Praise be to Herman! Patron Saint of Plumbing!

So. You all remember the other day, when I was bitching and moaning about how everything in this apartment is broken and yada yada, and on like that for hours? Well, the next day, I was nursing my emotional hangover and Poncho was doing PR with Katie & Laura. (Random Fun Fact: They call me "Lefty" after the song.) And they said they were going to get Herman over here to look at the problem with the clog - or whatever it was - that was backing up our bathroom sink. And we're like, "we don't have money for that" and they're like, "well, tough - it has to be fixed" and I was like, "!@#$%" and dove promptly into the bottom of a cup of chamomile tea where I stayed for the remainder of the day, occasionally poking my head out for a glimpse of whatever movie we happened to be watching at the moment. (We watched a lot of movies yesterday.) And the landladies responded to this unspoken sentiment (well, unspoken to them - I let Poncho know just what I thought of their position on plumbing) with a lovely compromise: "If the clog is the renters' fault, you guys can pay us back monthly in small, $5 increments; and if it's the fault of the house being old or whatever, it's on us."

As I was quite certain it was not the fault of Poncho or myself, I was appeased.

So along comes Herman today, and it's all I can do to keep myself from constantly defending our way of life in the means of pipes and water use. "We don't dump grease down the sink, what a terrible thing to do! No, we have a grease catcher for that. Nice, durable glass mason jar full of lard to prove it." Or, "Just look at the hair-catcher we employ with great care in the tub! We don't let any hair or grit get down that drain. Just you look!" On and on like that.

So, in order to occupy myself and not get in the way, I played the Sims all day. I made a new character that I'm quite proud of. H.P. Lovecraft, of the knowledge aspiration. He wants to be a Criminal Mastermind. He has 3 cats. Cthulhu, Nyarlet Hotep, and Shubnugoreth. I'm sure I spelled all of those names wrong, but what the hell - it's for a game, for fun. That's my excuse, because the real one is far too nerdy - I didn't want to downsize my game window to go online and wiki the name spellings because it takes forever to load the window again in order to open the game after being downsized and I didn't want to wait that long to play my shiny new characters. Cthulhu is green. I'm quite proud of him, especially.

Anyway.

So, Poncho dealt with Herman all day and they actually bonded a bit - which was cute to hear. Poncho's accent changed after a while, because he does this thing where he mimics people's accents without realizing it. He used to do it at the factory, and at Carlyle and it always made me giggle to overhear him like that with customers. So the day started off with "boy-ling" water and ended with "boh-lin" water. Made me giggle.

Well, after cutting holes in the wall to expose the problem pipes, and dumping tons of "boh-lin" water down on top of what turned out to be grease clogs buried way deep down in the pipes - Herman decided it wasn't our fault and we didn't have to pay for the dumb old clog anyway. He also fixed the water pressure in the kitchen sink - turned out the faucet had all kinds of gunk clogging it up. Gross.

Poncho and I celebrated our new healthy plumbing with some lovely spaghetti - yellow bell peppers, sweet onions, shitake mushrooms, and tomato in a parmigiana/oregano red sauce, with seasoned ground beef crumbles. Garlic toast on the side. Yum.

3 comments:

  1. Yea Herman!

    And man, that pasta sounds delish! :-)

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  2. Yay! Reading this made all my tension for you melt away. It went down your drain with your new water.

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