Diary of a Network Geek

So, I’m tired of everything tasting like metal.

I know the antibiotics are helping me, curing me of a terrible, wasting disease and all that, but I hate the nasty metallic aftertaste they leave in my mouth. It’s like licking the cheap, stainless steel, diner spoon after stirring sugar into your ice tea.
Oh, and what they’re doing to my insides! The other day I belched so loud my dog jumped and ran for cover.
Saturday night I hardly slept at all. I just couldn’t get comfortable and find a position that didn’t leave me feeling like I was going to drown in my own bodily fluids. I fell asleep on the couch Sunday morning after putting on a pot of coffee. A pot of coffee that went to waste, naturally, since I slept beyond the auto shutoff timer.

However, on the good news front, my former roommate finally got all his stuff out of my garage! Yea! So, now, I can move my nasty, brown kitchen table out into the garage and use the nicer butcher-block table my ex left behind. I almost feel guilty using it, not because it was hers, but because she stole it from her second husband. I offered it back to him at one point, but he declined, so I guess I shouldn’t feel strange about using it. It is a nice table. I’ve made quite a bit of space in the one room that used to hold virtually everything the Queen of the Damned left behind. Later this week, I’ll be donating another eight bags of clothes and shoes to the Salvation Army. And, yes, I’ve finally been convinced that it’s okay to donate the stripper shoes that she left behind to the Salvation Army. I’ve been told the working girls shop there, so they’ll go fast. And, no, it’s probably best not to disclose how I found the right people to ask those kinds of questions.
So, soon, I’ll start working on my office and getting that room straightened up. But, I think that can wait a couple of weeks while I heal up some more.

I’ll need to paint, eventually, too, but that’s going to require a bit of thought and planning. Also, I think it will require a second opinion as I’ve been told my taste in colors may not be the best. Well, perhaps, by then, I’ll have a feminine touch around the house somewhere that might lend a hand. Anything’s possible! The people at church keep telling me how God works miracles, so, I figure if He can part the Red Sea for Moses and the gang, certainly, He should be able to find me someone to love all the rest of my days. We’ll see how that works out, but I’m praying for it.

Well, I’ve sort of rambled all over here tonight, so, instead of giving this post a clever title, I’m just going to let WordPress number it. #1194. Almost seven years of blogging and I’ve got 1,194 posts. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Well, more brackish than fishy, I suppose.
I’ve been having some pond problems. First, there were the leeches in the skimmer. No, not the little red worms that turn into some kind of tiny fly that the dragonflies love to eat, but actual leeches. How do I know what leeches look like? Well, let’s just say I was the only one smart enough not to swim in that “special” lake at Boy Scout Camp. So, I poured a bunch of salt into that filter to get rid of them. That seems to have worked so far.
Then, the waterfall started to leak. Well, to be fair, I’ve been expecting this. The waterfall is really not all that great. It’s not very good as a waterfall and had gotten clogged with the nasty papyrus the former owners seemed to have liked so well. I tore all that out, trying figure out a way to fix the leak. The problem is, the leak is caused by the fact that the rotting wood which makes up the sad, sagging framework has given way in one corner, pulling the pond liner down below the water-line there. So, I had to bypass the waterfall with PVC and redirect the water flow back directly from the filters into the pond. I have to replace the water fall with something more aesthetic than two, plain PVC pipes. It just does not work with the rest of the decor!
And, now, two of the three pumps that run the filtration system seem to have given out. So, I have to buy at least two pumps and, if I do what I’m contemplating for the waterfall, most likely, three pumps. No small amount of change, but, unfortunately, neccessary. And, again, not entirely unexpected, considering the age of the pumps. I knew I’d have to replace them eventually, but I’d hoped to do this all next Summer at least. Ah, well, it never rains but it pours. (Which is true here in the Gulf Coast, but the additional fresh water going into the ponds works to my advantage at the moment, so I don’t mind!)

So, now here’s what I’ve been thinking about for the waterfall replacement… Imagine a boiler, or some other similar structure, with its top cut off and plants growing out of it with the final, center auxillary pipe emptying into the pond. Imagine a symetrical network of pipes feeding out of the structure, wrapping around the outside of it, being topped with three plumbing fixtures that have plants growing out of them and feeding into that final pipe before it drains into the pond. Of course, this entire monstrosity would have to be created out of PVC, so as to not poison the fish, but the exterior could be painted so that it would resemble old metal of some kind. It would be strange and surreal and, hopefully, fantastic, but I’m not sure that I’ll actually do it. It’s not the work or even the expense, but, rather, I’m not sure this is the artistic aesthetic that I really want for that portion of my backyard. If it works, it would be a great, cool, wonderous thing, but… But, if it doesn’t, it’ll be hideous. Thus my dillema.

And, yeah, this has been going on for weeks, but I’ve held off posting about it for fear of giving one of my regular readers more information about my life than they deserve to know. In fact, I may end up shelving the project for several months for that same reason. Or not. We’ll have to see.