Also, if you ever happen to find yourself in Kuching, Malaysia with a few hours to kill, and are tired of the brothels, insert the following address into your GPS-enabled thing:

Bangunan DBKU, Bukit Siol, Jalan Semariang, Petra Jaya.

(If headed southbound on road 1101, first left out of the Manja Enterprise traffic circle.)





You're welcome.

 

Oven fresh.

 

Hours old, and already hissing at me.

 

Helper cat




smiley cat




both top 20 lbs

 

 

I don't have any day-old, fresh outta 'da oven fluffballs to share. (But s distributed as warranted.)

What I do have is Dexter:



Dexter is doing a truly professional-grade job of ignoring me. He is seriously winning at being a cat.



Today, while doing some minor plumbing mods on 98th Sears, I found myself wanting of a 3/4" schedule 40 PVC 90° fitting. I called my usual downtown hardware store, and they didn't have 'em. So I trekked across the bridge into River North (mind you, it was cold and windy as hell today), to the Ace Hardware near Merchandise Mart on N Orleans St. (Mind you, that's North Orleans St., no relation to the homicide capital of the south.) Down two flights of stairs into the first sub-basement was an Ace Hardware and a pet store.

I bought the fitting I needed, and then stopped to admire the kitties. They did not admire me back.

Good kitties.


Picture of minor plumbing modifications (the white Sch-40 is the part I did today, along with the machining of the brass drain grate to clear said aforementioned pipe):




Now we can vent the centrifugal strainer without blowing water halfway across the transmitter room.

Small victories.

 

Your ace hardware does not have sch80 in stock?

This is rather shocking to me. I work in basically farm country. There is little to no heavy industry. Yet my local Ace has a very hefty supply of industrial supply. One would imagine, in such a large metropolis such as NYC there would be suppliers to outfit such. Though, i guess space would be the major constraint.


I sit down for 2 minutes. Cat-on-lap.

 

 

They do not. I hit up two different stores.

Space is a major constraint. As an example, the nearest Home Depot to me is five stories tall, of which levels 3 and 4 are parking, and level 5 is gardening. This isn't nearly as large as it sounds. The lot it's on isn't much wider than your average suburban Walgreens.

In dense metro areas (Manhattan, Chicago downtown, Hato Rey, etc), the hardware stores tend be very cramped, and cater more towards general domestic needs (housecleaning supplies, paint, sundries, rat / insect killers, etc) and stock only the most basic hardware needed for things like hanging picture frames and repairing cabinet doors. If you want to take an hour-long train ride to the outskirts, then yes, you can find every sort of industrial hardware imaginable (you can also buy live poultry, though that's another thread), but I was in the middle of the Loop and didn't want to waste the time. This pipe is a drain which opens directly to atmosphere, and is subject to only minor vibration while venting. I'm not really concerned about sch40 vs. sch80. Thank [deity] that the two have the same outer diameter and are solvent-compatible.

 

 

Sonny under curtain by Braineack, on Flickr


DSC_8589 by Braineack, on Flickr

 

Munch.

 

Winter was tough on these poor cats. Just this last week we had snow, sleet, rain 20F, 70F, and an earthquake.

Much needed time outside.

 

 

Our youngest has been doing this more lately. He'll jump up and sit with me on the sofa. He insists on burying his head in my arm pit. Every once in a while, moves back and peers up at me.

 

 

This guy has me wrapped around his pawsie

 

wow that looks a lot like my Sonny!

 

 

my friend is there now -- she's live feeding me it:



at one point, a float was being pulled by weird goblin slaves, and the main dude was carrying a served head. unsure what that has to do with cats...