Brain Drainage

I had every intention of posting a nice little "Friday Food" post tonight. I was going to talk about grilling hot dogs out in the driveway on our little charcoal grill, and follow up with a tale of the amazing chocolate malts that Christopher made. (ohmigod. Blue Bunny ice cream was on a 2-for-1 sale this week. And Christopher makes amazing malts. It was a very nice end-of-week treat!)

Then I was going to fill you in on the "Fred-day" that I have been having, as Christopher and I are dog-sitting for a miniature schnauzer (named Fred, obviously) whose owners are on a lake somewhere "up north" for the weekend. He's a great dog. Really. Although, at 4:25 this morning when he got Christopher up to let him out... and at 6:30 this morning when he threw a fit because Christopher left and he didn't know I was still in bed... well... let's just say the morning did not start well.

I contemplated telling you a little of what I've been learning about Islam, Alexander of Macedon (aka Alexander the Great), and how the passage of time can alter historical perceptions, but decided that I had dealt with enough of that after 10 hours of working on my latest editing assignment. (8 essays on various historical topics ranging from the Jewish Akedah to post-9/11 fundamentalism.) I will say that I'm sure that I've now landed on some government watch list because of all of the terms I've had to look up online. I'm sure I'll forget them all by Monday, but right now I've got words like "mujahidin" and "midrash" bouncing around in my head along with "hadith" and, yes, "akedah." (I'm gonna let you look them up yourselves. That way we can all be on the watch list together...)

** Sidenote ** When I spellchecked this post, that paragraph lit up like a highlighted Christmas tree! Not sure why that surprised me. Possibly because, after working around the words for multiple days, they all seem pretty normal to me. ** End Sidenote **

Instead of all of that, though, I decided that today I'd celebrate the fact that I have finally (after 4 tries!) found a Korky 54BG toilet tank flapper and gotten it installed and adjusted in the upstairs bathroom. I have to admit that, when I found it at Home Depot, I wasn't sure it was going to work. It didn't look like the circle of rubber at the back end would fit around the pipe it needed to slide on to (onto?). But I brought it home and went to work. The loop stretched nicely, and I slid it into place. And I waited. I could still hear water dripping. Turns out, the flapper wasn't centered. So I adjusted it. And I adjusted it, again. On about the fourth try, I got it to create a seal. I celebrated this afternoon by listening to (with all due respect to the Mssrs Simon and Garfunkel) the glorious sounds of silence. In fact, I'm doing that right now as I type, too.

What a great way to end the week: with things NOT all going down the drain!