January 16, 2009

11:29 p.m.

Geeks Win

The cello pegs will have to wait again. For one thing I couldn't imagine going to the barn in ZERO temperature, yes, zero, and getting the electric sander and setting it up on the porch which is, oh by the way, Zero degrees also, and doing the preliminary sanding for delicate, expensive-wood instrument pegs. In addition, both corn stoves needed attention and Marc was busily trying to get them both operative again. One had blown a fuse and the other had a "death biscuit" in the auger. That's a hunk of solidified, burned-but-not-ashified corn that clogs up the exit ramp for everybody else. So he was busier'n a one-legged fella at an ass-kickin' contest. This is two nights after inventing a downright brilliant fix for the cold air that was being sucked into the house from every crack and hollow, because of two stoves pumping air OUT of the house at all times. I can't even begin to explain how he did this, not without using diagrams, but suffice it to say it involved copper plumbing pipes, welding, and an ingenious method for warming the zero temp air from outside before it gets into the stove to combust the corn. He figured out that he can now get the stove 40 degrees hotter without turning it up.

Anyway, tonight's stove party was made even more festive by the fact that a pipe in their basement has frozen. Just one; the one that brings hot water to the kitchen sink. The pipes down there (remember, very old house, and some of the plumbing done by at least one nincompoop) are in a tiny crawlspace, and getting to them involves inching oneself, on one's back, into a tubelike space and pulling oneself forward by grabbing floor joists above one's head. Oh, by the way this is in the basement where it's, oh yeah, below freezing. He went in there with a torch and tried to thaw the pipe but the freeze is apparently farther under the house where he can't get to it. Argh. The freeze is not going to let up in the next few days. What to do?

Other owners of this house likely didn't have this problem because a) this cold is not normal for here, and b) regular folks would have the furnace on all the time, which would create enough heat downstairs to avert freezing. But Rose and Marc use the corn stoves most of the time, and though they did turn the furnace on yesterday so that the radiator pipes wouldn't freeze, it wasn't enough.

So Rose and I were talking at the dining room table and Marc was fixing the fuse in the parlor stove and we heard him talking to someone for a while on the phone. Then he comes in and announces that there is a fix for the frozen pipe.

"You know that 200 Amp generator I've had all these years, because it's so cool?" he asked.

"Yes?" Rose replied. "You're selling it on eBay along with the runway lights?"*

(*I am not making this up. He owns runway lights, and a complete stoplight.)

"No; my friend Frank just told me how I can unfreeze the pipes, because he and his father did it. And guess what they used?"

"A 200 Amp generator?"

"Yup."

So as I understand it, it works like this: You get about a quarter mile of really thick cable (which he has in the old house) and this mofo of a little power generator (which he has in the old house) and some jumper cables and you connect one length of the cable to the pipe that is frozen, and the other to the kitchen pipe under the sink. Connect the other ends to the amp, plug it in and turn it on. It sends an impressive amount of juice (well, about as much as your hair dryer) down the cables, and turns the pipes into heating elements. Very quickly they get hot. Ice melts, kitchen sink burps a few times, water runs. Voila.

Sadly, we won't be here to witness this tomorrow, as we'll be on our Girly Trip. I can't wait to hear how it works out, though.

********

So then we watched a very silly movie, and I came home in the unbelievable cold to pack for the weekend. I was hungry. I ate Monkey Bread. Even though it was store-bought and not homemade, it was divine. Well, in a "snacks of a lesser god" way. Fortunately I'd gone to the gym again today.