--JOINTS, THAT IS, often enough to be really good at it. No points for style tacked on to my performance. I'm in the If-it-works-it's-good category. I sweated 5 joints today and only one of them made that slurping sound of flux sucking in the solder that you're supposed to get. I got entirely too many of those silver spatters on the floor. And the copper is scorched. Like the sun is a light source. Excess solder all over the joints. BUT... the darned thing DOES NOT leak. Whereas, the valve the pro (who put in our new water service -- all props to him) put in DID.

Be fair, Alger. You sprung the thing on him by surprise...

I seem to recall he volunteered to do it in odd moments while waiting for things like his crew ruining SWMBO's beloved front flower beds with a backhoe. But he hadn't expected to do it when he left the shop that morning, yes. And he did have to use the materials on-hand -- including the valve that was in situ. But I'd have to give him at least a small ration, because I'm guessing the corrosion that caused the washer's retaining screw to snap off in quarters under my screwdriver was pretty well advanced a year ago. "Hey, Jimbo. I'm guessing you must have looked real close at that valve stem when you were putting it back in..."

But you're getting a head of yourself.

Quite true.

Last episode, we had promised that we would be laying sod in the front yard this Saturday. SWMBO had contacted a sod farm and been told that I could pick up a load (all of 9 square yards) Saturday morning, weather permitting. They open at 8. Orders can be picked up after 8:30.

Meanwhile, we also had a rescheduled appointment to have our furnace cleaned -- factory required warranty keeping-upage kinda thing -- between 10 and noon.

Friday night, I got the last cabinet hung.

Therefore, Saturday, the plan was:

1) Pickup sod at the sod farm. (Take plastic drop cloth to protect the back of the Jeep.)

2) Bring it back to Casa d'Alger and begin laying sod until furnace guy shows.

3) Finish laying sod.

4) Spend the rest of the day pleasantly puttering around doing things like putting the knobs on the doors on the cabinets and cutting and affixing the dentil molding.

...

Saturday morning, it rained.

I called the sod farm, hoping they'd say, "Nope. Sorry, boss. No can do in the rain." But they -- wiseasses -- had cut the sod Friday. Bleah.

I took a look outside at the cold and wet miserable rainy weather that was making the front yard into a mud bowl and copped an attitude like a teenager. "I don't wanna do it and I'm not gonna."

So I didn't. Instead, I put the knobs on the doors on the cabinet and affixed the dentil molding atop the east wall cabinets. And did the prettiest job coping the...

Coping! You used a Dremel!

(Rotary tool, registered trademark of Dremel, Inc.) So?

You didn't use a coping saw!

So? If you cut a miter with a regular saw, is that allofasudden not a miter because you didn't use a miter saw?

No. But...

No buts.

::twists and checks:: I got one!

Two "t's".

Them too! See?

No! Two t's in "butt".

Ew!

What!? Didn't you read LabRat's essay?

ANY way...

Anyway.

Sometime, SWMBO remarked that the supply valve for the outside hose bib leaked. I allowed as how that ought to be fixed, since we're gardening and yarding again and will want to have the hose working. So I went down and checked it out. Turned off the water to the house and took the valve apart -- thereby starting the clock.

I think we went ten hours without water.

More like eight.

Whatever. For somebody who hates to have his hands dirty unless he's actually working on something dirty -- and sometimes even then -- it was an eternity.

OK. Twelve. WHAT everrrr.

I had actually had the nerve to grab the drawer from the little Drawer Thingy™ that holds all of my various plumbing repair kibbles-and-bits -- like washers and screws and stuff -- and take it with me when I went to inspect the valve. Thinking, you see, that it would be an easy fix.

"If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." --Amanda Marshall.

As I think I may have implied up there ::points::, the washer retaining screw was so corroded it disintegrated, leaving a bright pink screw shaft right up the center of the valve stem.

Nothing to be done for it but to head off to the Home Despot to find a replacement. I did not have a warm-and-fuzzy about this, either. I seem to remember trying to get a replacement valve stem for the hose bib (which I'd had the plumber replace because of this problem), and fruitlessly chasing it all over town. This current valve in hand we're speaking of is of the same vintage -- and probably the same vinyard -- as that hose bib.

But it would have been foolish to simply give up and buy a new valve without first checking for a replacement valve stem.

The difference in price being...?

Having to sweat the old valve off and the new one on, with all the tsuris that implies.

But you ended up having to...

Who's telling this story?

You are. And you're doing such a brilliant job of it, too!

Dolly? Stifle!

I should mention here that I have a bad back. Not an official Bad Back, mind, with doctors and prescriptions and time off work. Oh, no. That would make things too easy. This is a kind of a biscuit bad back (Pooh reference). The kind you don't tell anybody about. But it keeps me from being able to stand comfortably for longer than -- oh, say -- thirty seconds.

I went to Home Despot with a list. A 3-pack of furnace filters. Replacement valve stem. Something to build up the door jamb to support the casing molding at the level of the battens for the bookshelves. Ten rolls of sod (net wt 500#).

They didn't have the filters in 3-packs in our size. I ended up getting one stop-gap. What Mom used to call a lick and a promise. I'll get a three-pack some other trip.

What they had in the way of wood might have worked, but it didn't suit my mood and it was all in 16-foot lengths, which meant I would either have to cut it -- back starting to act up, making me REALLY want to get OUT of that place -- or tie it on top of the Jeep. Half-inch by three-quarters pine molding strips sixteen feet long. Tied ontop of a Jeep Cherokee in high winds and rain. There's a recipe for getting home without the weeping and the wailing and the gnashing of the teeth.

The replacement valve display at our local Home Despot is chest high on a tall garden gnome. Finding your valve is a bit like deciphering Linear A script. While I was standing there stooped over in the valve aisle, trying to find my valve stem, my back began to spasm. I really wanted Mommy to tell me I didn't have to do it and I could go home and take a nap.

Nope. Not happening.

I went over to the valve display and dithered between basically what I had and a ball valve and a gate valve. After a half-hour of pain and dithering, I got gate valves in half-inch and three-quarters (I can never remember which is the right size) and fled the scene.

But what about the sod? I can hear you ask.

I feel I would have been justified at that point in saying, "Sod the sod." But NOOOoooo. I have this overdeveloped sense of duty...

More like incurable muleheadedness.

Didn't I tell you to stifle?

Stifling.

...so after I checked out, I dumped my booty in the car and went back in to the garden store and got my ten rolls of sod. As I was struggling to load it -- keep the cart from escaping down the steep grade of the lot, get the rolls on to the drop cloth without scattering dirt all over the inside of my Jeep, what am I going to do about my hands, which I can't wash until I get the water back on at home -- this Arab-looking guy asks me, "How much is the sod?" "Five bucks a roll," I told him.

And I drove home, wondering as I went whether I had enough propane for my torch. Feeling very nervous about the impending doom -- er, repairs -- because it's been (I think) fifteen years or more since I sweated a joint.

And, of course, I made a total disaster of it. I overheated one section of pipe and ended up having to remove it (It was 1.75" long, OK?). Which wasn't as easy as it should have been. It was attached to a tee and I was trying to keep from overheating the tee as well...

Well, long story short...

Too late!

::picks up a Stilson wrench and menaces Dolly with it::

Stifling!

Long story short, I ended up having to essentially rebuild the entire union to get the valve back in. And, as I said, made a dog's breakfast of the solder joints.

But it doesn't leak.

Looking for my tube cutter, I pulled down the plastic shoebox in which we keep an assortment of plumbing-type stuff. It's not the exclusive destination for plumbing stuff, mind. The plastic shoeboxes are just a system for corralling miscellaneous clutter into categorized containers. It's that kind of a thing.

When I pulled that plastic shoebox off the shelf and opened it up, lo! And Behold!, evennn, there was another valve -- just like the one I'd just de-sweated from the pipes. Brand-new. Which could have supplied a replacement valve stem, had I only remembered I had it.

I washed my hands and, at about quarter to nine, went outside to lay the sod.

Long story short, I got that done, too.

But I got all my chores done, so I can go to Indy on Sunday. Yippee!

Well! That was boring!

The beatings will commence immediately!