Since we are waiting for Cecil to get out here to install our new dishwasher (item at bottom of page), I have been washing our daily dishes by hand - just before toddling off to bed. Last night I finished up a rather goodly batch and toddled down the stairs. Hmmm...what is the strange odor tinging the air as I reach the bottom of the basement stairs? I look around. Good grief! The kitchen sink had obviously met a clog, and taken the path of least resistance - flooding the bar sink, inundating the whole cabinet/drawers/doors/contents/carpeting with relatively clean water that had chunks of green floating about in it. Two hours later, the scene looked like that in the photo, above; but, my oh my what fun I had getting to that point - bailing with a quart measuring utensil into the waste basket that had been under the sink, moving stuff off and away, and sucking up water with the wet Shop Vac. I went over the wood and stainless steel parts with ammonia water, sopped more water out of the carpeting with towels, and set up a fan to (hopefully) blow away some moisture. And...oh, yes...I turned the air conditioner down to 76 degrees. It had been set to 78 degrees; but, the outside air temperature was 78 degrees (at midnight) and the humidity was about the same and I wanted the air conditioner to help dry out the area.
This (photo, below) is about 40% of the stuff I took out of the drawers and cabinets - stashed on a table at the other end of the room. (Bogie, is that your Monsster Energy Drink?)The only real use that the bar sink gets is when HH uses it to mix up a few quarts of Gatorade from powder every week or so. He keeps the Gatorade in pint-sized bottles in the basement refrigerator. When he goes for a run/jog/walk and/or works out with his weights, he re-hydrates with that Gatorade.
The one good thing to have come from all of this is that it convinced Hunky Husband to let me recycle a bunch of plastic bottles that he had been saving (forever) - photo, below - which comprised another 40% of what I removed from the cabinet.
What about the other 20% of the stuff I removed from the drawers and cabinets? It is in the sink or on the washing machine in the laundry room. I had neatly folded HH's bar towels and the towels with which I had soaked up the water from the carpeting after washing and drying them, last night. It was about 2:30am when I fell into bed. You can imagine my joy when, an hour later, I was awakened by HH standing at the top of the stairs yelling down to me, "[Cop Car!] Is everything all right?" He had been met with the sight in the photo, below, when he had gone into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. It was one of those mornings when he had awakened early. Not early enough to help with the cleanup, mind you - lol. At any rate, I had not wanted him to use the kitchen sink, causing another overflow of the bar sink. The plumber is due to be here between 4pm and 6pm, today. Just in time, since Cecil may install the dishwasher, tomorrow.
UPDATE of 7/17/2020- 3:12pm -
The Plumber arrived early. He had finished another job, early, so called to see if he could come on over. When I opened the front door to him, I asked him if he would like a mask (I was wearing one, of course). He cheerfully returned to his truck to retrieve his own mask, donned it, then used the hand sanitizer that I keep near the front door before donning his gloves. Thirty minutes later I paid him and sent him on his way. He did his job well and efficiently, and he was pleasant but not chatty. (I stayed upstairs while he worked in the basement, of course.)
Public health officials in Houston are struggling to keep up with one of the nation's largest coronavirus outbreaks. They are desperate to trace cases and quarantine patients before they spread the virus to others. But first, they must negotiate with the office fax machine. From a report: The machine at the Harris County Public Health department in Houston recently became overwhelmed when one laboratory sent a large batch of test results, spraying hundreds of pages all over the floor. "Picture the image of hundreds of faxes coming through, and the machine just shooting out paper," said Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of the department. The county has so far recorded more than 40,000 coronavirus cases. Some doctors fax coronavirus tests to Dr. Shah's personal number, too. Those papers are put in an envelope marked "confidential" and walked to the epidemiology department. As hard as the United States works to control coronavirus, it keeps running into problems caused by its fragmented health system, a jumble of old and new technology, and data standards that don't meet epidemiologists' needs. Public health officials and private laboratories have managed to expand testing to more than half a million performed daily, but they do not have a system that can smoothly handle that avalanche of results.
Today was interesting. Hunky Husband drove me to my appointment with an eye surgeon up in northwestern Wichita. My visit with the surgeon was delayed by my undergoing various types of scanning/photography of my eyes. Although it was my left eye that sent me there, every test/photo series was accomplished on both eyes. Having been given a heads up by Bogie, I asked to see the images of my floaters. The images were not at all what I expected: they were actually profiles of the retinas (see image, below, from Internet). There was a definite difference between the right and left retinas. In the image from the Internet, below, the "pinched" area at the center is a normal feature of one's retina; however, the other hills and valleys are peculiar to the individual eye.
The most interesting procedure was an eye angiogram (image, below, from Internet).
During an eye angiogram, the dye is injected into a vein in your arm. Once injected, it takes about 10 to 15 seconds to circulate through your body. As the dye enters the blood vessels in your eyes, a series of photos are taken to chart the dye's progress. More pictures are taken after most of the dye has passed through your eyes to see if any of it has leaked out of the blood vessels. Any dye that leaks out of the blood vessels will color the tissues and fluid in the eye. Filters in the camera allow the areas colored by the dye to show up in the photos.
Unlike other angiogram procedures, an eye angiogram is not an X-ray procedure, so you are not exposed to any radiation.
Fortunately, the technician warns her patients of an untoward side effect of the dye injection (other than 16 listed possible side effects). The technician said that the dye turns urine bright yellow. Had she not told me, especially since the effect lasted for at least 30 hours, I would have panicked - thinking that I had pancreatic cancer.
When I placed my online order for a dishwasher, on 7/2/2020, I shortly received notice that it would be delivered on 7/12/2020. I didn't even think about the 12th's being on a Sunday - especially since the email also mentioned that they were having a hard time filling all of the orders during these times (normally, I should have expected delivery within three days of placing the order.) This morning, I just happened to check my phone for voicemail - a rare occurrence. There was a message left yesterday that I should expect delivery after 3:00pm, today - perhaps as late as 6:00pm-7:00pm. Hmmm...
At about 2:00pm, as I was closing my eyes to take a nap, I heard a truck outside. Thinking that perhaps deliveries were running ahead of schedule, I peeked outside. A Lowe's truck was parked up-and-across the street - offloading a clothes washer and dryer. About 45 minutes later, when the two guys had loaded the old washer and dryer for hauling away and seemed to be ready to leave, I caught their attention, asking if they had a dishwasher for me. "I don't know. We do have a couple of dishwashers in there. I'll check."
They checked. They carried our dishwasher across the street and deposited it in our garage. I was happy to get the delivery and they were happy that they would save the extra driving that would have been required had they needed to come back. Who knew that the truck hadn't been loaded with an eye toward efficiency of travel. Amazingly unthoughtful of someone.
Comments
Well that clog was a NASTY surprise - especially at end of day. Glad the plumber was able to get there fairly quickly and your dishwasher arrived.
Your eye pictures are different from what I was expecting. I expected a frontal shot straight to the retina - in which the floaters are clearly visible as black dots (and in the case of my left eye, a mass). I also have not had the angiogram.
Bogie--The surprise was not pleasant; but, I am pleased that the clog happened before Cecil got around to installing the dishwasher. Can you imagine the clamor had the overflow happened while he was checking out the dishwasher installation? I would not have been happy.
I finished up, last evening, by putting what little goes back into the drawers and cabinets and scrubbing the carpeting with "Spot Shot". All better, now.
Interesting that the photos were not what you expected - especially since what you describe is what I was expecting. We gets what we gets. I couldn't hazard a guess as to why the technology used on you differs from that used on me. I must assume that our respective doctors know what to do.
Goodness, that was a lot of cleaning up! You must have been exhausted for sure. I feel kind of guilty reading about your eye exam because I have not had one since 2014 – I was going to this spring, but with the covid was afraid to go anywhere.
It’s fortunate that you found a good plumber – not an easy task.
Surprisingly enough since the cleaning up was mostly done in the wee hours of the morning, I didn't feel worn out. Maybe my lack of having done much housekeeping since January accumulated the energy for me. Who would have thought? One or two years ago, we had a backup of plumbing at the other end of the house. Since "our" local plumber had retired by then, I called the company that does our HVAC work - which company had bought out an electrical shop and a plumbing shop a few years ago. The guy they sent out was pretty worthless. I knew where the clog had to be, but he kept insisting it was tree roots in the main line in our front yard, with which he was not equipped to cope. He did, however, call a buddy of his at a company that specializes in such adventures. The buddy came to the same conclusion and, for some inexplicable reason, had not brought equipment with him that would do.
I finally bullied the young man into using the equipment that he did have with him to attack the clog that I had "pinpointed" to an area that could easily be reached by that equipment. Voile! He cleared the clog. Thus, I tried that company for this work. It wasn't the same guy, but Dennis did a good job.
The coronavirus has driven you to more blogging, I venture. I'm happy that you at least have a cat! Thanks for dropping in.
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Well that clog was a NASTY surprise - especially at end of day. Glad the plumber was able to get there fairly quickly and your dishwasher arrived.
Your eye pictures are different from what I was expecting. I expected a frontal shot straight to the retina - in which the floaters are clearly visible as black dots (and in the case of my left eye, a mass). I also have not had the angiogram.
Posted by: bogie | July 19, 2020 at 04:42 AM
Bogie--The surprise was not pleasant; but, I am pleased that the clog happened before Cecil got around to installing the dishwasher. Can you imagine the clamor had the overflow happened while he was checking out the dishwasher installation? I would not have been happy.
I finished up, last evening, by putting what little goes back into the drawers and cabinets and scrubbing the carpeting with "Spot Shot". All better, now.
Interesting that the photos were not what you expected - especially since what you describe is what I was expecting. We gets what we gets. I couldn't hazard a guess as to why the technology used on you differs from that used on me. I must assume that our respective doctors know what to do.
Posted by: Cop Car | July 19, 2020 at 10:20 AM
Goodness, that was a lot of cleaning up! You must have been exhausted for sure. I feel kind of guilty reading about your eye exam because I have not had one since 2014 – I was going to this spring, but with the covid was afraid to go anywhere.
It’s fortunate that you found a good plumber – not an easy task.
Posted by: vagabonde | July 20, 2020 at 07:39 PM
Hi, Vagabonde. Long time no....
Surprisingly enough since the cleaning up was mostly done in the wee hours of the morning, I didn't feel worn out. Maybe my lack of having done much housekeeping since January accumulated the energy for me. Who would have thought? One or two years ago, we had a backup of plumbing at the other end of the house. Since "our" local plumber had retired by then, I called the company that does our HVAC work - which company had bought out an electrical shop and a plumbing shop a few years ago. The guy they sent out was pretty worthless. I knew where the clog had to be, but he kept insisting it was tree roots in the main line in our front yard, with which he was not equipped to cope. He did, however, call a buddy of his at a company that specializes in such adventures. The buddy came to the same conclusion and, for some inexplicable reason, had not brought equipment with him that would do.
I finally bullied the young man into using the equipment that he did have with him to attack the clog that I had "pinpointed" to an area that could easily be reached by that equipment. Voile! He cleared the clog. Thus, I tried that company for this work. It wasn't the same guy, but Dennis did a good job.
The coronavirus has driven you to more blogging, I venture. I'm happy that you at least have a cat! Thanks for dropping in.
Posted by: Cop Car | July 21, 2020 at 07:28 AM