War On Junk
Today I undertook fixing my leaky kitchen fawcett. Whenever I ran cold water, it would dribble out the bottom of the tap and spread along the counter. Previously relying on a j-cloth as a stopgap measure, today I decided to unleash my mad plumbing skills and remedy the situation once and for all.
But, as the Bush Administration is fond of repeating as if it were exculpatory, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. In this case, if my counter-top represents New Orleans, then I guess my junk drawer is Iraq. It was definitely a quagmire; I knew I had some thread-sealing tape (=WMDs?) in there somewhere, but could not locate it within the foreign and inhospitable terrain, no matter how vigorously I shoved and prodded the junk. Instead of cutting and running to Home Hardware, I decided to open a second front in my home repair mission: cleaning out my junk drawer.
Inventory:
- Paint: acrylic x 5; watercolour x 7
- Disposable camera with five pictures taken (~7 yrs. old)
- Sewing materials: thread X 14; needles; leather lace; fabric scraps; a button
- Head lights (Sort of like glasses with little flashlights on either side of your face. Great for camping.)
- Cork
- Silicon weatherproofing spray
- Tools: screwdriver x 3; wrench; pliers; hammer; scissors x 3, x-acto knife x 4, etc.
- Batteries: AA x 7; AAA x 6
- Tape: clear tape x 3; masking tape x 2; electrical tape; packing tape; thread-sealing tape!
- Paperclips
- Sponges
I eventually located the tape, brought order to the region and Accomplished the Mission. A well-spent Sunday.
Meanwhile, two car-bombs explode in Baghdad, killing 60.