Andrew's View of the Week

As The Pizza Cooks – Episode 11

Posted on 03/13/2023 by Andrew Reynolds

This has been a more interesting week than I wanted. On Wednesday they shutdown the electricity to my house to replace the neighborhood transformer. When the power came back on I found that one of my central heater’s thermostats had failed so we couldn’t get heat in the kitchen or living room. The good news there is we have a gas fireplace in the kitchen and the heater for the bedrooms was still working.

Yes, our house has two heaters, two A/C units. It’s a big house, don’t judge.

The HVAC tech showed up on Friday to install a new thermostat. They could have come out on Thursday, but I had a number of doctor’s appointments that day and wouldn’t be home. The tech brought us a nice thermostat that is easy to read — very important for those of us with old eyes. He also did an inspection of the furnace. I had mixed feelings about this as there is always a danger of the tech finding another problem, which of course he did. It was only a gas leak, but he seemed set on fixing it and charging me another hour’s time for it. I could have skipped the expense, but I wouldn’t want to have this conversation with Heather: “Okay, so the house burnt down, but I did save $125 on the furnace repair bill.”

I have been making some changes to my writing habits. I’ve started a “Writing Ideas” file where I’m tracking all the things I’m going to post on the blog. Last week was first in a series on words and this week I had intended to start on my, “As The Music Plays” series. I have a play list of music that I play while I write and I thought it would be interesting to share what songs I listen to and why.

That was going to start today … but … well, before I tell that story, Heather and I were looking at the classes offered by our local quilt shop and found a class where you make an optical illusion quilt. This one is a labyrinth pattern. It looks really cool so we both signed up for it. We had a nice afternoon outing Saturday afternoon to buy all the fabric we’ll need. There’s nothing like spending time on a creative project. I know it seems like an easy thing, to go buy a few yards of fabric, but we did spend a good amount of time comparing colors, contrast, patterns, etc while deciding on what our final quilt will look like. Likely we over spent on fabric, but it was good entertainment.

So Saturday night, after watching a good TV show and reflecting on what a nice day it’s been, Heather went to the kitchen to rinse her tea cup. She discovered that the water pressure to the house was only about half of normal. We’ve been having bad weather here and some flooding warnings have been issued, so she texted our neighbor to see if they were having the same problem. I just assumed this was an area wide issue with some failure in the water system. Turns out it was just us and it was raining, dark and cold.

So, I put a raincoat on, got a big flashlight and went out on an inspection run to check the water main. Didn’t take long for me to step into a large puddle and see a broken irrigation pipe pumping out lots of water. Great, 9:00 pm, dark, rainy, and a major pipe burst. You just can’t ask for more fun than that. As I was wondering what to do Heather was having a text exchange with our neighbor (he’s a power company lineman so knows about this kind of emergency stuff) and they suggested calling the water company.

So I did and they said for $50, they’s send out a tech to turn off the water at the meter. Which they did around 9:45 pm in the rain, dark and cold. On the phone the emergency operator suggested that we should fill a bath tub, buckets, etc so we’d have water on hand to flush toilets until I could get a plumber out to fix the problem.

So I did call a plumber but … yeah that didn’t work out. I was able to trace the problem back to a leaking irrigation valve which turns out to be three feet underground. The plumber company charges $220 per hour for emergency service and I wasn’t going to pay that to have someone spend four to six hours digging a hole. The other option was to cap the end of the irrigation valve, which he said he’d do, but they’d charge for two hours and wouldn’t guarantee that the fix would hold.

Well, this was Sunday morning and I figured that I knew enough plumbing to cap a broken irrigation pipe and none of my work is guarantied, but I charge a lot less so I went to the big box store for parts. It took awhile but I managed to dig out the broken line and put on an improvised compression fittings to cap the end. Feeling brave, I turned the water back on and so far it’s holding.

None of these adventures really helped me write my essay on music so instead I just wrote this. Now, I think it’s time for a cup of tea and hope that my plumbing patch holds.

Posted in As The Pizza Cooks, General | Tagged As The Pizza Cooks, broken heater, plumbing problem, quilting, writing process | 35 Comments

Friday Wisdom – Electricity

Posted on 03/10/2023 by Andrew Reynolds

This week the local power company came out to replace a transformer for out neighborhood. Our power was out for a couple of hours, but when after it came back on, one of our furnace’s thermostat was dead. That thermostat is a programmable one from about 2002 so was likely near the end of its life and the power surge of switching on the new transformer likely finished it off. An HVAC tech will be here today to fix it which leaves me with the question of, do I talk about HVAC or electricity. Well, I know more about electricity than heaters so here’s watt I know:

My electrician drives a Volts-wagon van.

Just so you know, it hertz if you stick your finger in an outlet.

An electrician’s favorite ice cream is Shock-o-lot.

Many people are shocked when the find out how bad an electrician I am.

I bought a sweater that was just full of static electricity. I returned it and got another one free of charge.

There’s a new electrical supply store in town. It’s called the Ohm Depot.

A wind turbine meets a solar panel in a bar. The turbine says to the panel, “I’m a big fan.”

Old electricians never die, they just slowly discharge.

Little known fact: Electricians have to strip to make ends meet.

The transformer at the ice making plant blew up. Now the ice plant has gone into liquidation.

The lights in my house won’t come on and I’ve called an electrician because I just can’t handle the current situation.

I sure my gardener is wrong, planting a light bulb will not grow a power plant.

How many government utility regulations cover the changing of a light bulb? Just four: 1. Requires you to change your light bulb. 2. Specifies what light bulbs you can use. 3. Warns you that changing a light bulb can cause cancer. 4. Bans the disposal of used light bulbs.

I walked by an electrical outlet this morning. I swear I heard it singing, “I’ve Got The Power.”

What do they call London when the power fails? Londoff.

I use to work with an electrician who was so bad that we called him, “Shock absorber.”

Posted in wisdom | Tagged electricity jokes, humor, wisdom | 24 Comments

As the Writer Writes #1 – Inflection Point

Posted on 03/05/2023 by Andrew Reynolds

This is the first in a new series of reflections and musings about writing. Sometimes this will be considering a word or concept. Sometimes a more serious thing about writing, but mostly it’s about what I’m thinking about during the writing process.

Sometimes words just get stuck in my head. This week it is, “inflection point.” There’s a poem hiding in those two words. There’s a feel on the tongue that is just satisfying as it starts with the soft relaxed, “en” and concluding with the sharp snap of “t” – “in flec tion poin t” The sound starts vague and casual, but ends with a decisive click of the tongue off the roof of the mouth as a final bust of air concludes the thought.

Inflection point.

There’s a poem there. It both starts and ends there.

By definition it’s a mathematic term meaning the point where a curve changes sign or slope. It’s the point where a curve changes direction – the point of undulation. Consider a sine wave plotted on a graph, it curves up for awhile and then curves down. The inflection point is where the wave changes. Think of writing the letter U. Starting on the left we draw our pen downwards until it touches the bottom line and then we curve it back up. It’s that point at the bottom that we call the inflection point.

Sometimes it’s a business term, describing that time of significant change. Perhaps a product takes off and profits soar, or disaster strikes and income plummets – a turning point.

Extend the words beyond science and now there’s a metaphor. Think of a time in your life when things changed direction. Perhaps retirement, marriage, divorce, death, illness, addiction …. all can be that point when your life changes direction. Families, cities, nations, ideologies, religions … all have the points in their existence when things change directions. Fire, flood, drought, famine, earthquake, war …

Consider that point of change. A poem, many poems, live at that point in time.

It’s the poet’s job to consider the undulations of life and bring out in word those points of change. Those points where we gain and where we lose – where story exists.

That poem ends, “inflection point,” where our tongue clicks and our lungs push the words into the wind.