Week in Vegas Summary

March 9-16. A trip to see Mom, Bro, sis & nephews.

Guaranteed: a 1 hour walk with mom daily. Food pushed at me like it was opium. Lots of talk.

Unexpected: A request to replace 4 faucets around mom's house, all ancient, ugly and leaking. I accepted--I knew what was good for me. First, plumbing is a crude art that involves a lot of connections that are often rusted shut or will start leaking if you look at them funny. It also involves working upside down with your hands in tight places where little sharp edges will take out a chunk of your skin if you forget to wear gloves. Then when you put things back together, you find out just how many places a faucet and drain can leak.

I worked on that pedestal sink by mom's kitchen until I just got fed up with lying on the floor working upside down. And yes, I did lose a chunk of skin from my left index finger. I turned off the water supply, removed the supply tubes, supply valves & drain and then lifted the sink from the wall hangers and, turned it upside down. Some WD 40 and time loosened the faucet handles. three more trips to Home Depot and it was done. The faucets upstairs were a cinch now that I knew to remove the sinks. Nothing but faulty washerless faucet cartridges slowed me down. Don't buy Glacier Bay if you can help it. ALWAYS buy all the tools you might POSSIBLY need to reduce the number of round trips.

Baking bread. I brought two just-add-water batches of unbleached fl./Eagle Mills fl with yeast and salt. The first loaf baked in a 9" covered casserole--turned out ok. the second loaf was a flat loaf baked in a 9x13" pan covered tightly with foil and baked for 40 min at 400 deg F. then 5 min uncovered at same temp--everyone seemed to like the thinner crust much better.

Mom said the PC wouldn't work for her. Since Andrew got it working a few weeks ago, it has been fine, but Jennifer and Tom still thought she might benefit from a new computer. Andrew had said that the PC had hung up in a power-on state after "shutting down." He had unplugged the works and everything began to work as new. I took mom to Best Buy to see if someone there could help--they couldn't understand that PC's (Apple or Windows) weren't mom's friend. We left and decided that Andrew would be mom's PC fixit man and that we wouldn't replace the pc until it was dead, dead, dead.

Charcoal barbecue. Yummy.