Weekend Review

Two things I dread awaited me as the weekend approached:  Wife insisted that the dog be washed, kitchen faucet insisted (by having a non-repairable leak) on being replaced.

Wife does cardio on Saturday mornings, so I went to O'Connor Hardware in Billerica and not Lowe's, which is just as close.  Why?  The former isn't that much further, has better selection and much better service.  Though, this time the kid who helped me, steered me wrong: He got me stringers to go from the 3/8" compression fitting advertised on the faucet to the 1/2" threaded supply lines from under my sink.  The problem was that the 3/8" fittings were both female.  Luckily, I had been down this road before and already had 3/8" male compression fittings at the end of the stringers which were already installed.

The difficult part wasn't in installing the new faucet though:  The old one was attached by a single nut, which had to travel about 4" of thread.  This nut is sandwiched between the wall and the back side of the sink and is nearly impossible to get any kind of wrench onto it.  Luckily, the brass stem also threaded into the valve body and so it only took about 10 turns--instead of hundreds to remove.  The new faucet has the much more sane attachment method of large diameter plastic nuts that have fins on them, so you just use your hands.

The rest of the day was spent on a marathon of weightlifting:  I did 20 clean and jerks at or above 145 lbs. 11 of which were at or above 150 lbs.  The 26 total lifts took about 90 minutes.  Wife caught-up on work for her job all day and so at the end of the day, we were too tired to cook and ordered out to Max and Leo's.

The next morning we forced ourselves to get up early and do a pre-breakfast grocery shopping.  It was  a good idea:  Daylight Savings Time caused the store to be mostly empty and we shopped efficiently.  After breakfast and a 6 mile run, it was dog-wash time.  I lucked out on this, though it was somewhat unpleasant:  Normally, I suds-up the dog twice and condition twice, but after the first sudsing,  the water began to get cold--wife was doing laundry.  The washing was cut short!  Both dog and I were a bit shivery but at least the ordeal took less time.