wiredfool

One from the UW Garage Shoot with the Seattle flickerites. Model is MattiP, MM#556328

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of tools is in need of something to take apart.

Last week, just before the big wind storm that battered Western Washington, our dishwasher decided that it was time for a little attention. Thankfully, I only had the help of one kid and one cat to work on it.

if you have a Kitchenaid Ultraquiet dishwasher (that only really matches the description when it’s off, but I digress) and the water isn’t draining from the bottom, there are a couple of things to check before you take all the bits under the sink apart like I did.

If:

– The motor runs and it sounds like it’s trying to pump the water out
– And you don’t hear gurgling from the air gap

Then: You likely have a clog in the air gap, and probably not in the line. If your air gap is a little silver thingy sticking up from the back of the sink, it’s entirely probable that you can take apart the bits above the counter, clean it out, and get working again. (Without taking it out of the sink, disconnecting all the hoses, leaking all over the place, and then realizing that you need to take apart the bit you had access to all along). Once the impacted bits of gunk are removed, things will drain a lot better.

If you don’t have the little silver thingy, then it’s probably dumping into a disposal or something under the sink, and you’ll need to attack it there.

And then there’s the wood stove. We’d noticed a bit of a wood smokey smell for a little while, but then Saturday, just before visitors arrived, smoke started pouring out of the flue pipe into the living room. Yay. The electric heat here isn’t exactly up to keeping the house as nicely warm as the stove, and it’s really expensive too.

But that turns out to be a pretty easy fix as well, once you get up onto the roof and pull off the chimney cap. Thankfully, we have someone who can do that for us. There was a lot of built up gunk there which needed to be brushed off — once done, the stove draws strongly again, and no smoke in the living room.

Memorial: Anita Rowland

Anita was one of the first people from online that I met in the real world — in one of the first blogger meetups when I’m not so sure that they were called blogs, and I’m not so sure that they were called meetups.

My thoughts are with Jack and R and the rest of the family.

Reminded by Susan’s Blog, some time in the last couple of weeks or so I passed 8 years on this thing. Pretty good for someone who had never kept up anything vaguely diary like for more than a month or so.

5 women sitting together over teriyaki:

So let me get this straight — You’re dating your ex-husband, and still living with your current one?

I boggle.

I was about to say that the three storms in three days was over without a power outage, but as I was writing the title, the power blinked enough to knock me off the internets for a minute.

As it is though, I think we’ve gotten through a pretty major storm without too much bother — Just a little snow yesterday, a ton of rain today, and nothing special in the wind department. I ould chalk it up to PSE taking last year’s debacle to heart, but I think the island just didn’t bear the brunt of it. This storm really nailed the rest of Washington, record flooding already (with rain still falling), 45′ swells off the coast, 120mph winds on the coast, and the mainland shutting down all over.