i was afraid this might happen: i went to belmont this morning before 9:30am to meet up with my father when the roofer arrived so i could listen on some additional roofing work we wanted to do, including covering the entire back roof in grace ice & water shield and fixing a cracked support beam in the attic. but when i got there my father i saw my father replacing the screen door with the plastic window. he told me the roofer just left, having arrived earlier than expected. he agreed to the additional work for just $400 more, so my father decided they'll go with him to do the work.

my mother told me last night that their kitchen sink was leaking again (actually just still leaking) after she asked me if i'd used the sink while i was briefly there watering the lawn. she was washing some dishes and saw water leaking under the sink cabinet. so she requested that my father and i check it out, since we were there anyway. we started by filling the sink a little bit before letting it drain, to locate the source of the leak. water was coming out from the strainer body; in fact the drain pipe was entirely detached from the body. my father ended up removing the entire piping assembly. initially i thought it was unnecessary, but turns out there was serious corrosion elsewhere in the plumbing, so the whole thing needed to be replaced.

we got sidetracked briefly when i showed my father the extendable antenna for my SDR device. he used his SWR meter to gauge the best antenna length for the baofeng radio. 20", 30", and 40" gave the best results, with 30" being the best, with an SWR rating of 1.0.

we drove the honda element to the plumbing supply store. there was a strange metal clanging sound when my father pulled the car out from the driveway. while we were driving there was an unusual grinding sound. my father said it was just the rusty brakes since the car hasn't been driven in a while, but it sounded like something was damaged. when we got to fw webb in watertown, we checked underneath the chassis and saw that there was oil splattered on both left side wheel houses. apparently a brake line must've burst open, spilling brake fluid everywhere. the car was still operational, but eventually all the fluids would leak out and the brakes would stop working.

but first we needed new parts to fix the kitchen sink drain. the guy at the store was super helpful, we showed him the old parts, he disappeared in search of new replacement parts. this used to be watertown supply, but back in 2014 it was purchased by fw webb. now the showroom is open, and you can search for your own parts, unlike the way it was before, when the warehouse was private. after several minutes, he came back with everything we needed. the total cost was around $24, which was much cheaper than i'd expected.

we drove back to the house where we dropped off our plumbing parts then i followed my father to the car mechanic (tnt service center) in the other car so he could get the honda fixed. the mechanic confirmed our suspicion, that the brake line was cracked. he also noticed the rear brakes needed to be replaced, but said that was a different problem. we left the honda and drove the toyota back to belmont.

my father had at least 30 minutes before he needed to leave for the cafe to prepare my grand uncle's lunch. but my grand uncle ended up calling him with a bloody nose, so my father left, to come back in about an hour to fix the pipes. in the meantime, i watered the lawn and had instant ramen noodles for lunch. lucas texted me and asked if it was okay if he stopped by the cafe so my father could sign the solar installation work permit for the town of belmont. when my father did return around 12:40pm, he brought back some burger king takeout.

installation of the new pipes should've been easy but it still ended up taking us more than an hour. first the brass drain pipe needed to be cut. that material was hard, and it took a while to make the two cuts, sanding the ends to make them smooth. then when we pieced together the plumbing assembly, it took us 3 tries to get it right. the first attempt i put in the plastic washer the wrong way so there wasn't a tight seal (we found out when we ran the faucet and water started leaking out). second attempt everything worked, but we forgot to add the plastic washer to the bottom of the strainer body. luckily we didn't have to disassemble everything, just released the lockring from the strainer, which gave us enough clearance for me to slip the washer into place. that finally did the trick. the piping sort of has a slight awkward angle, but nothing was leaking and everything works now.

i returned home a little bit before 3pm. an hour later i went to market basket to get a few grocery items, just enough to make dinner for tonight (some tortellini for my homemade tomato sauce), will worry about tomorrow night's dinner tomorrow.

li came home early again, around 5:40pm. i was lounging on the couch watching netflix's animated series big mouth. i had so much for lunch i wasn't very hungry but finally had dinner around 8pm. afterwards i ate another slice of coconut custard pie.