Two Adventures in One Day

Upon getting home from church yesterday, Lucy noticed the Crock Pot that was supposed to be cooking the Spaghetti Sauce we were going to enjoy when some of our kids and grandkids came up to celebrate Father’s Day, the Crock Pot wasn’t working, no heat coming from its base.  It’s an older Crock Pot and we thought, perhaps, it might have given up the ghost. Fortunately, we have a newer, even bigger Crock Pot so we poured the Spaghetti Sauce into the newer version.

We plugged it into the same outlet in the kitchen; but it didn’t work either.  Maybe the problem wasn’t with either Crock Pot, maybe the outlet in the kitchen had blown a trip breaker.  Not a big deal, as I walked back to the electrical circuit breaker box; none of the breakers appeared to have tripped.  Rather than spend a lot of time hunting down a short in the system, one that wasn’t showing up at the breaker box, we plugged the newer Crock Pot into a different outlet on the other side of the kitchen.  Problem temporarily solved until I could go into it on Monday.

Monday morning arrived and I rechecked the breakers, nothing appeared to be tripped. I ran an extension cord from the suspect electrical outlet in the kitchen, hooked up a plug in battery charger and figured it would make noise and flash a light the moment electricity had been restored to the kitchen outlet.  Each breaker in the box was then turned off and on, going through the entire panel except for the double breakers that control the AC, Heat and Electric Stove Top; no change which meant the loss of power to that outlet was localized.

It was then Lucy suggested I try the fancy blender that was on the other end of the kitchen counter.  I plugged it into the same outlet, nothing happened.  Except, that’s when I saw there was another outlet on the wall behind where the blender was stored.  It had one of those modern reset switches built into it.  After pushing the reset button, power was restored to both outlets. We had solved one mystery; one was still on the To Do List.

This past week I noticed there was a slight dripping that came from the AC overflow pan that landed outside our bedroom window.  Being half deaf, it may have been dripping for weeks and I hadn’t noticed.  I’d planned to go out to our storage unit on Saturday and retrieve the wet/dry vacuum which would be needed during the maintenance process. A solid plan that was interrupted by a line of thunderstorms that left over 8 inches of rain on Saturday.

That was a good idea since I’d paid a tidy sum to the AC repairman one time in the past to fix the problem.  I’d paid good money; but more importantly, I’d paid attention to exactly how he solved the problem.  But with so much rain and my not wishing to run back and forth to the storage unit, the AC dripping would have to wait until Monday.

What’s the line from the insurance commercial, “So simple even a caveman could do it”?  He’d unhooked the P-trap plumbing under the sink in our bathroom.  That’s when I learned the overflow from the AC in the attic drained into the bathroom sink.  He hooked up his wet/dry vacuum to the open end of the drain and sucked out a clog that had formed along with draining the AC collection pan of its accumulated water.  I can’t remember how much he charged for this service; but it was enough for me to take notes on how to do it the next time.

My knees don’t bend like they used to, sitting on the floor while taking apart the plumbing under the sink was challenging.  We’d been resourceful in placing items under the sink, making trays that were easily removed and replaced for just such an operation.  Having gone out to the storage unit and brought the wet/dry vacuum into the bathroom made for an easy job.  And it would have been had I not decided to rinse out the hose by attaching it to the sink’s faucet. 

That’s when I learned that the plastic hose had a small hole in the middle of it, spraying water and loosened gunk out onto the bathroom countertop.  That’s the gunk that had been sucked out of the pipe only a few minutes earlier.  That was my inspiration to clean the bathroom countertop along with each item that normally is found on that countertop.  Sure looks nice now, putting the wet/dry vacuum back into the storage unit. 

After a while I’ll take the plastic trash bags that have been sitting in the back of my truck over to the dumpster.  That was another item on the To Do List from Saturday, the day all that rain fell.  Right now, I’m enjoying a breeze from an old fashioned fan while sitting in the office recording my thoughts.