Pure Gonzo Engineering

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Let's get down to brass tacks. How much for the ape?

So it’s really starting to hit home now that I’m going to be a father. We’ve started taking birthing classes, and the worm baby can now be easily felt from the outside, kicking and punching.

I actually felt like crying today as I drove into work. I imagined talking to my child and trying to tell him/her that they were born in Peoria. Then explaining how my life was while I was living here, what I did, who I knew, etc. I felt like crying because this town is terrible, and I feel bad my daughter/son has to be born here and consider themselves a native Peorian(?), and Illinoisan(?).

The second reason is that I know so little about my father’s life prior to me or my sisters. I know from hearsay that he was engaged before he met my mom, thus I almost never existed. (That’s kind of crazy shit to wrap your mind around). Imagine all those little choices you make in life that completely determine how your life will turn out in the end. But anyway, I have no idea what my dad was like when he was just starting out as an adult. That’s kind of why I like this blog. My kid can look at this and see how I was, for better or worse. What I though, how I felt, what decisions I had to make. (As long as Blogger doesn’t go bankrupt or somehow change its services, which is probably inevitable)

I’ve got this home issue too. I think one of my old natural gas lines may have a tiny, tiny tiny, tiny, tiny leak in it at a joint. If you get your nose right up close to it, you can smell the faintest tiniest bit of rotten eggs, but not all the time. I smelled it once before like two months ago, and my house hasn’t blown up since, and I never smell it strongly when I just walk into the basement, I have to get up close to the floor joist where it runs and smell right next to it. This leads me to believe it’s not accumulating at all. I put an open flame up near it and it didn’t really do anything, so I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t really want to call the gas company cause I don’t know if they charge just to come out and see if it ends up being nothing. I also don’t want to pay a licensed pipe fitter (plumber) $100/hr to come in and take out this totally unnecessary line. (It would be used for a gas stove if I had one, but it’s capped at the end right now). I don’t know, I guess I’ll keep a nose on it.

Hey why haven't you donated to my life yet?

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3 Comments:

  • I'm not sure that checking for a gas leak with an open flame is nessecarily the best idea, unless you want to be part of the next big bang theory. Hehehe. Sorry. Anyway, might I suggest you mix 1 part dish soap with 10 parts water & then take a small paint brush and brush that on all of you gas line joints & fittings. Got bubbles? Got leaks! No bubbles? No leaks! Just don't ask me how I learned this lesson. There are some things better left in history!

    Be Blessed!!!

    Big Scott

    By Blogger Unknown, at 1:04 PM, October 25, 2005  

  • Also, dealing with an old house, there is a product that you can get at an old house called wrap and seal. It looks like electrical tape and basically you wrap the pipe tight with this stuff. It'll look like you rolled tape around it like some white trash dude repaired it with duct tape (I consider myself upper class white trash, my family owns a tractor, it's so cool) but when you go back a day later it'll mutate into this black bond that holds pretty damn well. Costs like 3 bucks a roll. I had a MAJOR water leak one evening in my basement at my old house and I freaked out so bad that I couldn't wait for my dad to come up and bend some new copper pipes in and shit.

    By Blogger Steve, at 10:34 PM, October 25, 2005  

  • Uh... "get at a hardware store"

    By Blogger Steve, at 10:35 PM, October 25, 2005  

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