i went to get some gas first before stopping at the cafe to drop off some extra scallions i had. i then went to home depot to get a new wall outlet (15A 96¢) to replace the one for the incoming washer, as well as a long single bolt (55¢) for driving the pins from the basement door hinges. the bolt had no price sticker on it, but when i went to go pay, somehow just by typing in the product name into the computer and scanning the bolt, it was able to come up with the correct price, not sure what kind of inventory magic i just witnessed.
i was at my parents' place by around 10:30am. i wanted to get here early so i could paint the 2nd coat on the window frames and still have enough time to dry before the all night rainstorm arrived by evening.
i saw the open-boxed rosewill induction cooker i bought off of ebay. i saw it on webcam last night but i couldn't be sure, but seeing it in person confirmed my suspicion: this was not the item i ordered. i ordered the RHAI13001 but they sent me the RHAI15001 instead. it might be a newer model, but two things about it i don't know: it has a much larger size and the control buttons are not recessed but lie flat across the tempered glass. i'll contact ebay later today and return the item.
instead of painting first, i went down to the basement to see if i could remove the basement door hinge pins with the bolt i purchased. at 1/4" diameter, it was actually the same size as the pin. the middle one came out easy enough, the bottom one was removed after i sprayed it with WD-40. the top pin however just wouldn't come out no matter how much i whacked at it with the bolt and hammer. i tried a few more times throughout the day but finally gave up. figured worst case scenario we just remove the top hinge from the door frame.
finally by 11:15am i went outside to do some painting. 2nd coat usually goes faster, and i was finished after just 20 minutes. i put away all the equipment (including the ladders) and went back inside the house.
the bolt holding my motorcycle clutch lever keeps on working loose. so i decided to coat it with some loctite blue thread locker before re-inserting it back into place. but that's when i found out the threads of the bolt actually pokes out from the other side, and what was holding it in place was a threaded cap nut. suddenly i remembered i fixed this problem last year, when i went to home depot and bought a replacement 6mm cap nut. it must've fallen out, so i need to get a new one. it costs less than $2 at home depot, but i decided to go online and order an authentic honda cap nut, which hopefully stays in place better.
around noontime i went down to the basement and replaced the wall outlet for the washing machine. at some point in the past, something we plugged in had burned the outlet, leaving scorch marks on the metal face plate. i only found out about it much later when i saw the damage, we were luckily whatever it was didn't burn down the house. but i figured before the new washing machine arrives, it'd be smart to replace the outlet with a new one, they don't cost very much anyway.
first i had to shut off the electricity to the outlet. the index was written entirely in chinese so i had to take a photo of it and send it to my father and ask him which one was for the washer outlet. that one apparently was never marked, so i ended up doing trial and error and i finally found it. i double-checked with a multimeter to make sure it was really turned off before removing the old outlet.
the old outlet didn't seem damaged, and we could probably reuse it, but given that they're so cheap, better to replace it anyway. the old one had a brown-black face, the new one i got had white. given that it's an old house, there was only two wires connecting to the outlet, a black hot and a white neutral. i decided to make my own ground by taking a piece of pure copper wire and connecting one end to the inside of the metal housing and the other end to the green ground screw on the outlet.
when i went to close up the receptacle box, i ran into a problem: the top screw was so long that it hit the collar of the incoming conduit. we had the same problem when we recently replaced the power switch for the cafe furnace. the fix at the cafe was to use the old screw, which had been manually trimmed down so it was shorter. i had to do the same thing in this situation, but i didn't have any tools that could cut the screw. i ended up going around the house trying to cut the screw with various tools, from industrial scissors to diagonal nippers. i ended up using a heavy duty pair of scissors to finally trim half a centimeter from the screw. unfortunately it wasn't a clean cut, and the screw wouldn't fit in the metal receptacle hole. i ended up finding my father's dremel tool and filing down the end of the screw so it came to a slight point. only then did the screw finally fit, and i managed to close up the box. that whole ordeal took about an hour.
at 1pm i continued cleaning the basement. for some reason we have a long wooden platform in front of the cellar sink. i lifted it up and underneath was decades worth of dust and spiderwebs and dead insect shells. it was gross cleaning all that stuff up, and most likely i breathed in a lot of that dust. i then reassembled the old dryer and moved it to one side of the basement so it'd be easier for the delivery guys to take it away. the old washer however (amana LW3303W speed queen, supposedly one of the best washers out there in terms of reliability) we're still keeping. for some reason the washer seems to weigh many times more than the dryer. maybe because there's still water on the inside? but when i rocked it, it didn't slosh around, so i don't know the reason.
i wanted to disconnect the water inlets so i could move the old washer out of the way for the new washer. i moved the shutoff valve to the off position and disconnected the cold water line from the washer. it leaked some water but that's to be expected. however, it wouldn't stop leaking, which made me think the shutoff valve wasn't working, so i went ahead and closed the water main to the house. that seemed to be stop the water. i then removed the hot water line from the washer. i put the two lines in a basin, and went to go turn on the water main. almost immediately i heard this roar of water coming from the washer area. i took a peek to see water spraying from the hoses, and quickly ran to turn off the water main. so yeah, about that shutoff valve? totally not working. i couldn't just leave the two water lines disconnected like that, so i ended up reconnecting them back onto the washer. it's not a deal breaker, we can still install the new washer even with a broken shutoff valve, but we just need to turn off the water to the entire house to do so.
there was a watery mess by the back of the washer and i had to clean it up with my bare hands, god knows what i was scooping up. the remaining water i soaked up with an old towel. that will be job number for the new washer, washing these dirty towels!
with the basement cleared of obstructions, my work was finally done. it was 2:30pm, i'd been here for 4 hours. i originally thought it'd be a quick visit, and that i'd have enough time to go to haymarket/chinatown, which would not be the case. with rain arriving soon, i decided to just go home, getting back by 3pm.
i went to the community garden to collect some more hyacinth beans and to do some fall plot cleanup. tomorrow is a garden work day but i won't be able to go because i'll be at the cafe. i figured by cleaning up my plot, it'll appear less conspicuous, and nobody will be wondering where i was. ann was in the garden, haven't seen her in a while. i had some bitter melon seeds for her but i forgot to bring them, wasn't expecting to see anyone in the garden. she said some other gardeners had been asking about me (like lynn), it's nice to be missed! we noticed a lot of bumblebees just "sleeping" on flowers. the weather wasn't cold - in fact it was so warm it felt like late summer, not mid-november. maybe the bees are just at the end of their life cycle, a final drink of nectar before they all die for the winter.
after ann left, i went ahead and cleared up a bunch of hyacinth bean vines, all the goldenrods (which had gone to seeds), and all the dead bitter melon and long bean vines. besides beans, i also harvested a bunch of serrano peppers (mostly green, some red) and a few tomatoes. i'll need to come back again and do more cleaning, there's still about a third of hyacinth bean vines that need to be removed. i left a bit before 4pm when i started to feel some raindrops.
i didn't eat all day, but i was too tired to make anything. it was already so close to dinner anyway, i figured i'd wait a little bit more and just have dinner instead. i finally got to use the bathroom in peace, to continue the bowel journey i started early this morning, more than 7 hours ago. i also fixed my toilet. the past 2 days i've discovered the toilet bowl leaking from the tank no less than 3 times. i think the problem is the chain that attaches to the flapper is too long, so there's too much slack and sometimes the flapper doesn't close properly. now the flush handle is tighter, which hopefully fixes the problem. if not i may need to replace the flapper assembly. afterwards i took a shower.
i went online looking to see if i can repair the laundry shutoff valve. turns out the one that we have - symmons - are actually pretty easy to replace, no resoldering necessary, just need to simply replace the housing assembly. only catch is it costs $43, but a small price to pay for a working shutoff valve (in case of future emergencies).
home depot finally called me tonight with details about the washer dryer delivery tomorrow. the delivery window is between 8am-12pm, and they'll call me 30 minutes in advance. it's just an automated message, and because i didn't recognize the number, i didn't bother answering, but heard the voice mail they left. later in the evening they called again, and this time i did answer, but it was the same automated message.
that didn't take long: i cracked the tempered-glass screen protector on my pixel phone again! how long ago did i install this one? right at the start of october, before meeting frances and her family, because i didn't want them to see me using a phone with a "cracked" screen. so a little over a month ago. to be fair, i did drop the phone a few times, but the screen never cracked. it happened today when i accidentally let it drop a few inches face down onto my work table. makes me wonder if i should go back to a plastic film screen. those don't have the clarity of glass, but at least i've never shattered one before.
for dinner i was going to make a bagel sandwich, but feeling lazy, i had some ramen instead. not even the luxury korean ramen, just a simple chinese ramen with an egg.
DC didn't get home until 10:30pm, went out to dinner with friends. he has a lot of coworker friends in the area, seems like he has an excuse to eat out every night. that's good, because hopefully he'll find someone to go with him to chinatown to haul back all the asian supermarket supplies he plans on taking back to new mexico.
breaking news tonight: mark kelly wins reelection in arizona. so now the senate race is tied at 49-49. democrats need just one more win to reach 50 and control the senate. we're still waiting to see if democrat katie hobbs will beat republican kari lake in the governor's race. as of tonight's count, hobbs leads lake by about 30,000 votes. in nevada, the democratic incumbent governor lost to the republican candidate, but the senate race is still too close to call, with democrat catherine cortez masto now trailing republican challenger adam laxalt by just 800 votes. the uncounted votes remaining all seem to be skewing democrat, so there's a chance she'll overtake laxalt once all the votes are counted.