June 16, 2013

Most of my day today was spent at my grandma's, watching my uncle work on the shower. The most interesting thing I learned today was about the trap that is right by the shower drain (and possibly all drains?). It is a little U-bend in the pipe that is constantly filled with water. This water prevents gases from the sewer to come out of the drain and stink up the place. This became evident when my uncle was cutting out the pipes and soaked up all the water in the trap with a rag. As soon as the water was gone it immediately smelled like the sewer. I found this to be pretty fascinated and now I am curious about the history of the trap. Did someone purposefully come up with it or was it an accident that lead to innovation? It's cool how simple it is, just water in a pipe, but it is incredibly effective. My dad was saying years ago at work they would occasionally get complaints about rotten smells and it would be from drains that hadn't been used recently and the water in the trap had evaporated. And the fix was to just pour water down the drain.

At one point when my uncle was dry fitting the copper water pipes he pulled them out and a three inch pieces flew off and fell down an inch and a half PVC pipe. It was a one in a million shot but he hit it and it was too far down to reach. His first attempt to get it involved putting some glue on a stick and then putting that down into the PVC pipe and sticking it to the copper pipe. He apparently used the same technique to get a wedding ring out of a drain years ago. It ended up not working so tomorrow they are going to try and fish it out with some wire. If that fails he is just going to push it the last several inches and get it into the main, four inch sewer pipe so it won't cause a problem.

At the end of the day we all went back to my dad's house for dinner. A few hours before I had already gone home and eaten dinner (leftover pizza) but I ate again. It kind of reminded me of when I was a kid and we would have dinner at my dad's house and then go back to my mom's and have dinner again. For my second dinner I went with a roll, two different potato salads, a pickle, green beans, asparagus, and watermelon. It kind of matched my lunch which was just raw vegetables, grapes, crackers, and a gingersnap cookie.

After dinner we sat around the table and talked about various family stories which is always a good time. The most interesting one was actually from lunch. My grandma told us how when she was in fourth grade she made friends with a girl who's father was in town for the year upgrading Highway 40 to gravel. That is crazy. Before that it was a dirt road, which is equally crazy to think about considering it is a highway. She also told us about getting stuck on various roads around town when they were muddy dirt roads. One time going up a hill with a car full of cub scouts. The same hill is paved now but it is still one I avoid when it is snowy because it is still hard to get up. She also told us about the time she went into the ditch when she was on her way to a church meeting and she was trying to read something in her lap for the meeting. In the modern day we have a texting and driving problem, back in the day they had a reading and driving problem.

On my first dinner break I was able to frame the QR code I made for my dad for Father's Day. I then downloaded the barcode scanner on his phone so he could read it. It turned out looking pretty cool so I will call my first cross stitch framing a success.