test

When we moved in, we quickly discovered there was a teensy bit of a leak uner the right-hand kitchen sink. Specifically, where the end of the basket screwed onto the rest of the drain pipes. One look at the setup and we knew it was not going to be a quick fix.

So we deferred it till now and just used one side of the sink. The other side could still be used, but not if you put the plug in and filled it. Then it leaked. The picture above shows a total of thirteen fittings including six elbows, some of which are hard to see.

Ron made sure he had all he needed and only had to get a couple new fittings. The job took five hours with him counting down the last bit with Meaghan, so she could get the dishes done and go watch her tv show.

The final result:

It took some less because we didn’t hook the broken dishwasher back up, but it still would have been better than what was there. Now our strainer baskets are all shiny. Before, they were white plastic. (???) This time, we even managed to make the pipe level, although in the picture it’s a bit tilted as I was tired and in a hurry.

In Ron’s version, he used 2 elbows, a trap and 2 45 degree angles. The bend and pip between the two drains is all one piece and came in a kit.

As a side note, ABS plastic pipe and the ABS glue is an interesting science experiment.

© Andrea for AtypicaLife dot net, 2008. |

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Original post by Andrea

I was poking aroudn online and just go see what I found. Messages from me as early as November, 1994. I kept writing about my 2 year old, and there was one notation where she was using a quilt in a frame as a trampoline. I think I finally remember which quilt, and no, it’s still not finished.

I was mildly disturbed to find out my typing has not improved. But I’m still adorable.

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Original post by Andrea

Yeah, it’s been that kind of week. I twittered some though. Mostly I worked, or tried to stay awake. I don’t know what was going on with that. I could not be alert during the day and could not sleep very well at night.

The circut board came for our stove on the very day we were going to buy another one. We’re still going to get the other one, but now we can wait another pay cycle. We found out some interesting stuff about this stove, but I’ll let Ron tell it.

I cleaned. I changed one of the blankets over the living room windows to a white one, so we could see. I miss the sun! The thing is about throwing blankets over windows to keep the cold out, is it also blocks a lot of light.

I rearranged the office. I did this today, actually. It was clean and mostly de-cluttered so it was optimum time. Now we don’t look so squished in here, just by rearranging things.

Tonight Ron is taking apart the drain under the sink. It’s had a leak since we got here, just from one side and only when you fill it with water. There will be pictures forthcoming, but imagine this: a double sink and a dishwasher hookup. Got the picture in your head? Good. Now imagine using THIRTEEN fittings to hook the drain all up.

Work-wise I am moving along. There’s tons of it out there, that’s for sure. I’ve been installing, upgrading, designing, consulting over the phone, fixing blown-up blogs, troubleshooting and answering a pile of emails. Not to mention the pile I have yet to answer. At least I’m down to around 60 or so just from this month.

There hasn’t been much funny going on with the kids or Ron this week either. I know! I’m boring myself. We didn’t really do anything for V-Day as the previous three we weren’t together for, so we just basked in the glow of being here. We did do a little shopping that night and Emma hugged a random teenage girl out on a date.

I haven’t even hardly taken any decent pictures this week, but I’ll update Flickr anyway. The snowbanks are huge. One of our neighbours came by with his big tractor and did our driveway because he coudln’t stand to see Ron out there shoveling. of course, he also got one of ourpotted rosebushes that didn’t get moved before it was frozen to the pavement, so that was interesting.

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Original post by Andrea

For a couple weeks now, I’ve had an idea brewing in the back of my head. It came from seeing a whole pile of ugly MU-based sites, and occasionally a very nice well-designed one, or one with an incredibly innovative use. I thought it might benefit the community as a whole to showcase a really well-done site once a week.

Sound good? I have some in mind already, but feel free to leave suggestions.

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Original post by drmike

So, it’s winter.

It’s February.

I am in Canada.

Thus, you may correctly deduce there is snow on the ground. There is, in fact, massive amounts of frozen white chunks of semi-solid but occasionally fluffy bits out there. Not just flakes fallen from the sky, but piles heaved, areas blown over and drifts everywhere, leaving wavy sculptures by the roadside and heavenly swirls on the surface. I do not expect to see my lawn until June, and if you’ve ever been here, that’s not much of an exaggeration.

I mean, I *like* snow, don’t get me wrong. It’s pretty. Christmas wouldn’t be the same without it, and I have to admit: I’m not the one who shovels it. Also, we can build fun stuff with it like forts and snow people that had unfortunate accidents. We can shovel it against the house to help bank it and keep the cold out. (well, not *me* shovel, but you know what, or who I meant)

But seriously, this is crazy.

If at some point we disappear, come dig me out, okay? Bring a large tractor, and possibly an empty dump truck. There’s nowhere else to put this stuff. Seriously, a plow came down this morning to try and skim some off the sides of the road. He didn’t know where to put the extra either.

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Original post by Andrea

Not that the job being down is in itself a reason to blog, but it left me wondering a few things.

How can we get so much stuff *in* there?
Why does all the dirt then collect itself on me?
Why don’t I do it more often?

Oh yeah, it’s exhausting, dusty (I’m allergic), makes me feel like crap, and gets me cranky.

But at least this time my abdomen did not hurt and I wanted to clean up. Maybe I’m finally “better”.

I’m sure there’s another point I wanted to make when I started this post, but I’ve since forgotten it. Meanwhile, the study - the room next to the living room - is an absolute disaster area. Since it’s holding the stuff that doesn’t belong in the lviing room. Oh yeah, now I remember! Does it strike anyone else that a large part of cleaning up is just shuffling items from one end of the house to the other?

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Original post by Andrea

We stoped in to the post office the other day, after running errands. Sarah disengaged the key from my ring and went inside. I grabbed the almost empty can of pepsi from the driver’s side cup holder, my shopping-day treat, and lifted it skyward to free the last mouthful. From the corner of my eye, I caught a neighbour coming up the other side of the building and turned my head.

The pepsi, leaving the can finally, continued on its gravitational flow, disregarding my slight head movement, and solidy planted itself - the last heavenly caffienated mouthful - right in my left nostril.

Figures.

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Original post by Andrea

Jason has made the One Search WPMU plugin which searches across all blogs on your system. I haven’t tried it myself (yet), but if it delivers as promised, it could be quite the nice add-on.

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Original post by Andrea

Well, it seems like I’ve had some new visitors around here lately, so I thought I’d give a quick overview. You could also read the “Aboot me” page and the “best of” page, but if you’re like me, then you’re all about the laziest way possible. So I’ll help enable that, okay?

- our family has been homeschooling since.. uh.. lemme think… March of ‘94? Long enough anyway.

- I have four kids + 1. Addison is the oldest and the only boy, and he’s married to Kaytlyn.  (she’s the extra. ) Then I have three girls - Sarah, Meaghan and Emma. Emma is 7 and doted upon.

- Ron the hubby is a programmer. We met in college while taking a computer programming course. Addison now takes the same course, where he met Kaytlyn. See a theme here?

- we really like computers and use them heavily

- we also just moved back to the country, back to the land. We compost and recycle.

- I had a bit of a writing phase a couple years ago. I go thru phases. A lot.

- I started homeschooljournal.net - a free blogging site for homeschoolers based on the software behind wordpress.com. the software is a semi-fork of Wordpress called WordpressMU.

- I write a tutorial blog for WPMU. It’s kinda technical.

- I’ve been working from home the past couple of months, drumming up my own business. I help people set up sites like HSJ and/or troubleshoot the sites for them, and even (with Ron’s assistance) write plugins.

- I used to own a craft store, used to sew all the kid’s clothing , used to grow most of our food. We’re getting back to some of that.

- it’s been almost a year since I had a hysterectomy to get rid of stage 0 cervical cancer.

- I breastfed all my kids for varying lengths of time, from as little as two weeks to as long as 3 years 3 months. We co-slept and did cloth diapers too. But not exclusively all the time.

- in our spare time Ron and I like to renovate old houses.

-  my extended family reads my blog.

- I am blonde at heart.

After a couple years of waiting for things to work out and get where we are now (we moved last year), there’s some things afoot in the background that aren’t ready to be fully publicized yet. So stick around - it’s gonna be exciting.

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Original post by Andrea

Apologies for the downtime this morning / afternoon. Not sure how long it was down, because when it went down for a while, I submitted a support ticket and had to leave the house. I also upgraded, because homeschooljournal.net eats on massive pile of memory and we’ll have to tweak and tweak and comb through config files and adjust and try again and wait and… that’s how it goes. Part of it is the nature of the beast. MU is a memory hog plain and simple. Add in an active community and all kinds of bells and whistles and oooo boy, makes for an interesting ride.

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Original post by Andrea