Luckily, the valve is on a vertical run and, therefore, it is easy to be replaced due to its easy drainage.
It’s been a banner week here in the Martin-Lee household. I will not delay in telling you that Jeremy WON the cookie competition. I’ll let you guess which one was Jeremy’s:
Cookie 1: KXL Bituminous Chocolate Cherry “heavy, dark, and sour” accompanied by a train to transport the oil, a refinery, and the final combustion in the minivan
Cookie 2: Chewy Chocolate and Raspberry Sandwich
Oh yeah, and that report? The main draft is IN. DONE. Woo hoo. Cookie & report stuff all done. Jeremy is sleeping well. What else could possible make the week any better?
That would be a dryer that works! We are very excited. We went about 10 days without laundry. I was starting to wear Jeremy’s underwear. We were all getting a little stinky. The dryer is the most energy intensive appliance in the whole house – so Jeremy wanted one of the few energy efficient models. This dryer has an “ecoboost” setting which means we are saving energy – to the tune of about $20 a year. When you engage the ecoboost, the dry time is about 80 min because the machine lowers the heat setting. Costs less to spin than to heat apparently. It was important to Jeremy. So we survived a total of 2 mis-deliveries (where they came with gas dryers and not electric dryers) and finally it came to the house on Thursday. It plays me music and it dries my clothes! Woo hoo.
It is just pretty rare for me to fumble like this. Mom was laughing and making fun on me 🙂
When Mom came home, she managed to prepare dinner without using a lot of water. After dinner, she managed to wash dishes too. She also put two clothes strings to suck up remaining water inside the pipes – the pipe needs to be dry to do the soldering. Right now, just wait for tomorrow.
However, tomorrow morning, we have to drive to our farm to meet PA forestry guy about harvesting trees. Hopefully, I can fix the leakage after PA trip and before dinner. If not, Mom’s creativity (using limited amount of water) is put on the test because we have a family dinner gathering tomorrow night. Also I hope Jeremy the Company will use their bathroom before showing up 🙂
Mom also mailed out two boxes of our front yard’s persimmon fruits using flat rate priority mail by US Postal Service. Boy, they are pretty heavy and,of course, it is a good deal.
We also booked our South America Cruise (Argentina, Uruguay and Chile) which starts on Jan 2nd next year.
Jeremygot Edda her very own Totoro outfit. She is pretty cute. A cutie-patootie.
It was a beautiful day today! Ruby agrees.
The dreams I have when I’m asleep now (as an adult) are so mundane and such a departure from the nighttime tales I could conjure up as a child. I remember vivid dreams of living in a jungle house with all my friends – swinging on vines that grew from the ceiling. Of being on an ocean voyage with saltwater creatures who, when I went swimming, would curl themselves around me and I would believe for a moment that I was part of the sea.
Now I dream of regular life. I dream that I fold laundry. I dream that I run errands at Target. The worst is when I dream of the regular morning routine right before I wake up and when I open my eyes, I realize that all the things I just spent doing in my mind have to be done right again in real life.
Jeremy has been working on this report for months now. Every Friday I think he’s going to be done. Every Friday he thinks he’s going to be done. It’s been invading his dreams, he dreams of defending various technical points he’s making. He dreams that people take issue with his positions on fuel. He wakes up many mornings already tired from a made-up technical argument in his head. It’s made for an anxious husband.
On Friday, he won the semifinal round of his cookie competition at his work, though this was yet another Friday the report did not get finished. When he came home, he was happy. He said that it was such a little thing – making it to the finals of the cookie competition – but it really made his week, perhaps even more than the Keystone decision made the same day.
He spent the evening thinking of the cookie he’s going to make for the finals.
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I spent a good part of the day studying for my OB exam on Monday. I’m tired of studying. It’s so boring. What am I doing? Why do I want to memorize the 15 types of fetal heart rate tracing? In math or science, the tests are always little problems… Like – how long will it take Peter to make 15 pies, or get to Paris, or find a lover? How would you synthesize something that smells like pineapple or make sure your pineapple aroma reactor doesn’t explode in a huge fire pit? In nursing school, you just sit down an memorize random stuff from random lists. And because I don’t have any clinical experience, it all doesn’t make much sense.
*****
To save us from ourselves (Jeremy from working and me from studying), his friend invited us to his 47th birthday party at an ice rink. There was another birthday party at the rink as well, but she looked like she was 40 years younger than Ben. I have not been on skates in a long time, but here you go:
I consider it a success because I looped around the rink at least 5 time without falling and breaking something. We did have dreams of taking Edda on the ice, but she told us without a doubt that it wasn’t her jam.
We had Friday night dinner with my parents tonight. The first of the fall/winter season. I had ordered a new dryer from Sears for delivery on Thursday, but my parents said they had an old, working dryer in the basement that we could use. So I cancelled the order and waited until tonight to pick it up.
I brought it home and plugged it in. It spins, but does not heat. We still have wet clothes. OK, they aren’t really wet now since without a dryer, I know not to start a load of laundry, but now we just have dirty clothes. And I have a great dryer graveyard in my garage.
I reordered the new dryer from Sears. Delivery on Monday.
Today is the day of Jeremy’s 2nd round cookie competition. The theme is pumpkin.
I might have forgotten to document Halloween. Vince got dressed up. None of the rest of us did.
Jeremy repaired Vince’s broken screen on his phone yesterday. Triumphant! He’s a better repairman this week than I am, I couldn’t fix either of our broken dryers this week (Yes. We have 2 broken dryers).
When Britain, against the USA wishes, decided to join as one of the founding fathers of “The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank” sponsored by China, it is not against USA but rather it is pro-business for their own good.
China was pushed to establish their own banks. After so many years, look at IMF, China has voting rights less than Belgium even though it is the second largest economic in the world. Also look at the Asian Development Bank sponsored by Japan and USA, Chinese voting rights there is also inconsistent with current world economic landscapes.
British has long records of dealing with the outside world and, I believe, they are much more successful than USA. They are more mature to handle conflicts and differences. Look after WWII, there is not a single war that we (USA) can declare as the clear victor and yet we are generating wars after wars with no sound reasons (vital to our national interests) and with no ending in sight.
Again, I hope the sons and daughters of our House Representatives, Senators, military brass will first go to Syria to fight those crazy ISIS to demonstrate that we (USA) as a nation are willing to draw a line on the sand with our own blood, not with poor’s (or underprivileged) and illegals’.