For as long as I’ve known Susan she’s had a wonderfully oversized classic London Market clock hanging on the dining room wall, but for the past year or so it’s becoming increasingly inconsistent in its time-keeping capabilities, finally quitting for good in November. Thinking it was done for, I went ahead and got her a …
In the big scheme this ain’t much. But in the annals of making lemonade outta lemons when it comes to improv’d bike repairs, it’s worth mentioning. It all started the week before last when one side of my left pedal malfuntioned while on the way to work. Now these aren’t your normal every-day platform pedals …
I have no patience with holiday lights. Especially the kind that are fully functioning when I take them down January 1 only to find them fouled up after 11.5 months of doing nothing but sitting in the basement. When I haul them out If they work, great! But if all or part of a string …
Read more “And The Light Strings Were Staplegunned From The House With Care”
Yesterday in the midst of my recollections of right-hooking drivers, I made mention of a couple instances where I was pedaling and from out of nowhere a pretty violent slippage and thunk of the bike’s drivetrain would occur. What I failed to mention was that the drivetrain was in its second day of use. Over …
The floor-level outlet that has provided the power to our entertainment unit has long needed upgrading. It’s old two-pronger (as evidenced by the interesting decorative detail around the plugs, as shown above) that has been an overloaded trooper in steadily supplying the needed juice through an eight-outlet powerstrip to all our audio/visual stuff. But it …
In the most desperate days of my long stretch of unemployment — I mean freelancing — I drove all the way down to Dominguez Hills in the summer of 2007 and applied to be a dependent contractor for DirecTV, installing their satellite TV systems. In fact, perhaps the only reason I didn’t take the $10-per-hour …
Ride a bike enough and the out-of-the-ordinary noises they make become readily recognizable, such as the sharp sound that emanated from the front wheel after I’d angled off of La Brea onto Redondo yesterday morning on my way to work. To the ear of the unfamiliar rider it might have sounded and felt like you’d …