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I’ve been chasing a water leak for months now. It is taking so long because I don’t want to risk half side of the build to be without water because I broker the water shaft.
I don’t like this because it is bothering my neighbor at the apartment below mine, but in my defense, I solved the other three leaks quite fast.
Not an usual issue for old buildings.
And there tons of other stuff outstanding quickly pilling up. Need to tackle some of these things before year end.
Problem is that it is almost year end.
Boy do I have a lot of non-car stuff to do.
I recently got back from what was supposed to be a two-week trip to visit my folks at their place in Idaho and maybe help them with some landscaping, but they have an acre lot and it was in worse shape than anticipated. It took a lot longer than two weeks to hack that yard into shape. As a result, the houseplants in my apartment ended up getting badly neglected. Thankfully most look like they’ll survive, but a lot of repotting with fresh soil is in order once they recover, mainly so the new pots will make it easier to water them. Next time I’m leaving friends a key.
The plant sadness wasn’t the worst thing I found once I got home, though. A warning to the easily disgusted: If mere pictures of teeth make you uneasy, stop reading now.
One of the first things I did on the night I got back to my place was to go to the kitchen sink to wash my hands. I was in a rush and didn’t turn the kitchen lights on, but the dim light of the hall behind me showed that something looked… wrong… about the sink. I flicked on the lights and was immediately glad I hadn’t kicked my shoes off yet, let alone turned on the kitchen faucet. Sometime in the past few weeks, something like five gallons of sewage had crested my sink and flowed out onto the floor. It had since thoroughly dried so the smell was not as hideous as it could have been, but I definitely wasn’t washing dishes anytime soon.
The next morning my building’s management had professional cleaners tackle the mess, but… ugh, there’s just not enough bleach in the world, you know? So I scrubbed the everloving hell out of the wider general area with a bleach-based sanitizer all over again and now that the area’s been double-tap nuked of germs and totally vacant of all the stuff that had to be tossed, I’m finally going to install a reverse-osmosis water system under the sink. Maybe even one of those fun bar-style glass rinsers, too. It’s nice to be home now that home’s no longer nasty.
I’m a double-edge safety razor guy myself. Being car centric you may have heard of Merkur razors. They’re a good product but under no circumstances should you try their blades. They’re the worst things ever dragged across my face. That includes fists and asphalt. A good razor doesn’t cost much and the blades are incredibly cheap. Go crazy and treat yourself to some Feather blades. Made in Japan and some people claim that they’re too sharp. That’s silly talk, of course. Great find on the Gillette!
I once purchased some knockoff Gillette Chinese blades, for science, to test out.
The blades were so hilariously over-hardened they were brittle and chipped themselves in one use.
But the Merkur blades are somehow even less useful.
I’ve been happily using Bic lately. Near the sharpness/feel I get from Feather & Kai, but will actually last for a week of use.
I’ve ordered many DE sampler packs over the years and I keep coming back to the Feathers. They are truly the best.
I’d also second the Merkur razor recomendation. I spent a lot of year messing around with vintage razors that folks on the forums raved about, and finally found that the the quality vs price of a new Merkur can’t be beat.
I just moved into my new to me house, built sometime in the late 19th century. I’m leaning so much about steam heatin. I have finally learned why bsteem heat in nyc rental apartments is so “entertaining”
Plaster on stucco on wooden lath walls are another new obsession. I have hundreds of paintings and photos to hang so I’m designing a picture rail system.
I live in the “bad” neighborhood of a very fancy town. One of my new neighbors seems to have a 1950s gas station as a hobby. It’s not actually open for business, it may be a social thing. There is also a pretend Porsche dealer. It has the various state licensing signs but also signs that it doesn’t accept customers.
I just unloaded 8000 pounds of stuff from a container into a three story house today. Not bad for a 71 year old. The house is pretty full o stuff though
Still have a tr3 project car and a MB 220 SE that hasn’t run since the late 80s that I need to dispose of. I was hoping to find a Devin body for the tr3 but that never happened and dragging it 2800 miles to finish it sees insane. I’m bring a pretty nice Jensen Healey that was stored for 25 years instead. Lotus 907 d distributors who the hell thought that was a good idea? It’s sort of running badly, the carbs don’t dump gs onto the distributor and starter, but the timing is a wild guess and the carbs need to be taken apart, but I’m tempted to just switch to Delorto carbs, and forgo the mysteries of the dash pots and constant velocity carburation.
Still have the wwii jeep trailer , still on it’s original tires that I couldn’t give away to Tracy and need to get rid of that as well. Why doesn’t the Autopian have a buy, sell, and give away stuff thread?
Brought a 1860s Steinway with me from California, I don’t play but my children and visitors do, and it’s so totally different sounding from modern pianos I couldn’t bear to leave it. It does take up considerable space though. Just did a count and somehow I brought 40 chairs and about 30 guitars. It wasn’t premeditated. Also not as bad as my mom who lived alone and hhad as over 180 chairs. Counting couches and garden benches as on chair.
My son the former indy rocker just started teaching fifth grade in Brooklyn and loves it. My 16 year old cats are somewhat confused by upstate* NY they stick their heads out the door and immediately sense that something is very off. Wait till they see snow. That’ll be interesting.
Oppo has a somewhat sparsely used member swap section: https://opposite-lock.com/category/19/swappo
You might have better luck with Grassroots Motorsports: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/
Non-car stuff I have going on:
-have been trimming back trees and bushes after doing no trimming for a couple of years. I’m not much of a green thumb
-Converting my basement from being a basement apartment to one outfitted to store our crap
-gonna move crap stored in garage into the basement and am turning the garage into a workshop that I can also drive my car into as needed if I need to work on it when it’s raining
-I have to replace the tap in my kitchen. I bought a new tap, I just have to get around to installing it.
-I want to replace by back patio sliding door. I got two quotes… one for a cheap door for around CAD$3000 and one expensive door for CAD$10,000.
“ When all is said and done, I will have spent more money in my mouth than I have spent on any car.”
Hey, this is not a bad thing, Mercedes. Because when it’s all said and done it will likely be life-changing in a way no car could ever be.
I can’t wait for it. I am not exaggerating when I say I’ve never liked my smile. If you look at every single picture I’ve taken before January 2025, my mouth was never open. The partial finally allowed me to smile, and I can’t wait for that smile to be permanent.
Also, the last time I was able to bite into an apple without causing bleeding was when I was a teen. That’s how worn the baby teeth were. I can’t wait to bite an apple, and I don’t even care about apples!
Mercedes and Griffin, I feel you on the dental stuff! And it’s always so very pricey too. I did the Invisalign thing when my bottom teeth finally got to a point where they were hitting in uncomfortable ways with the top teeth while chewing. Again, pricey, but worth it! I have noticed I do smile more widely now. Enjoy your new smiles!
David, keep the sink, toilet, etc. in the garage. They will all be handy for wrenching, esp. late at night. And it can be a handy backup crash pad for wayward Autopian staff, family, friends, etc.
Leslie, I also feel you on the renovating stuff. The previous floor and wall choices are um, something. Carpet and cats often do not coexist well. We did some painting of walls real colors (on the pastel end of things, nothing dark) and ripping up of all carpet before we moved into the house we bought way back when. Most unusual find I can recall in all this was the Hustler and Playboy magazines under the carpet in the back bedroom. What the heck? Though there was also the radiator hose doing sink exit plumbing duty in the scullery. And lots of vinyl accordion doors.
Re: Steinbeck, I’ve not read that one, so I got nothing for Annti. Been to Cannery Row several times though. The Monterey Aquarium is well worth a visit.
David, I’d seriously consider keeping the ADU as living space, you could save the site a fortune on hotel rooms from Torch’s seemingly monthly business trips to LA alone, on top of any other visits from Mercedes, Matt etc. And also your parents and brothers.
Still want the garage instead? Keep the sink. Nobody ever regretted having a sink in their wrenching space.
I’d also keep the toilet, so you don’t have to trapse through the house when you’re filthy and have to pee.
Mercedes and Griffin- I am 55 and have had nearly perfect teeth my entire life. No braces, and I didn’t even get a cavity until I was in my early 30’s!
However…
I have had my front three teeth replaced twice. I shattered them on the 3rd row seat of our station wagon when I was about 12. Got ’em capped, but I had to go through Christmas with an exposed nerve and eating everything lukewarm because my dentist was on a skiing holiday. Got those capped.
Then, when I was 16, one of my very best friends knocked all the teeth I had capped clean out in a miniature golf incident. Car related, that same friend had the engine on his pickup blow the head gasket on his way home from said miniature gold incident.
The ironic thing is that, aside from like a third of my teeth being all baby teeth, they were healthy! Never any pain, sensitivity, cavities, or anything like that. My surgery prep has thus far included just a cleaning and then braces to pull one of the natural teeth into alignment.
I learned how to use a double-edge safety razor during the pandemic, b/c why not, and one of the fun things is figuring out which blades work best for you.
There are a million brands (much of the world still shaves this way), even the most expensive ones are still hugely cheaper than the cartridges to which we’re used, and nearly all of them have fantastic names and artwork on their little cardboard boxes.
Yeah when I dove into it, I bought a razor and it came with a sampler pack of blades from different manufacturers which is how I wound up with the blades I’ve been using for the 15 years since. I don’t shave much these days as I’m mostly bearded so I don’t wakeup staring at my grandfather, but when I do, it’s very satisfying; and I’m not spending more for blades than I am gas anymore.
For Antti: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is one my favorite novels. Many years ago I was stuck on the couch with a broken ankle and was looking through the television channels for something to watch. I happened to find the movie version of Catch-22, right at the very beginning! I was excited…
and then I turned it off. I had formed my own mental images of the characters, the surroundings, etc. and I didn’t want the film to intrude on that. 🙂 Just a thought.
Also for Antti: Having spent much of my life in the Monterey area, Steinbeck and Ricketts are childhood heroes for me. Doc’s lab became a sort of clubhouse for the people who founded the Monterey Jazz Festival (Louis Armstrong played there) and is now a museum that’s open on second Saturday mornings except in December. If you’re in town for Car Week this year you should be able to catch a tour on August 14, it seems: https://monterey.gov/your_city_hall/departments/museum/pacific_biological_laboratories.php
Ricketts is generally known as a friend and collaborator of Steinbeck who appeared in his writing, but he had a wide circle of friends that also included Joseph Campbell, with whom he went on an expedition to Alaska similar to the one described by “The Log from the Sea of Cortez.” There’s a book about that trip that I hope to find locally (https://www.emptybowl.org/store/p/waveshock) but I can recommend another about a collecting trip Ricketts made to the Pacific Northwest: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/985543.Beyond_the_Outer_Shores
Steinbeck is such a pleasure to read that screen adaptations of his stories make for pale imitations. Mixed reviews lead me to believe that Zoe Kazan’s new “East of Eden” series might be a little more successful than previous efforts, if mostly by reframing some of the focus on different characters.
Thanks! I really enjoyed Sea of Cortez, so anything in that “cinematic universe” is really appealing to me. I also read recent reviews on East of Eden, and since it’s on Netflix I want to check it out.
Coincidentally, The Red Pony must’ve been one of the first novels I ever read as a kid.
If you haven’t read “Travels with Charley” yet you’re in for a treat. Last month I gave a copy to someone who’d loaned me their own journal from a trip around the Lower 48 and they finished it in days.
I’ve seen the movie first, so I didn’t have that issue! The movie is great. There’s also a semi-recent Catch-22 miniseries, but it didn’t have the zaniness of the 1970 film.
So my grandfather was a barber. He and my dad both used safety razors, until the Trac II was released. He was so impressed with it that he wrote a letter to Gillette, saying that it gave the closest the thing to a straight razor shave that he’d found. He thought maybe they’d send him some razor blade refills, but they did better than that. They put him on a commercial that aired during the Super Bowl that year.
What I find amazing is that Trac II blades are *still* available brick and mortar retail – Walmarts often carry them. Gillette hasn’t made the actual razor in like 40 years, but it has that much of a following.
I got my first one when I was around 14 and kept it until I left it in a motel when I was around 35. Got another one after that and used it until I was in my late 50’s. By then, most of the replacements I could find were off-brand Chinese versions that weren’t very good.
Was the Trac II the “push, pull, click, click” brand? I vaguely remember those commercials. I also remember my dad giving me his old safety razor (minus blades) to play with. I’d use it like a crane to grab Hot Wheels.
Not sure what you’re referring to, but I don’t think so. It was a pretty basic twin blade system.
OK, had to look it up. It was a jingle for Schick razors with a blade replacement system that changed the blades without you having to touch them. Turns out this system was way older than I thought, going back to postwar 40’s. Here’s a commercial from 1976…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef2Tut76uEs
Cool – thanks!
I have a massive (navel length) beard also terrible terrible terrible teeth. the facial growth covers the dental fail quite well.
My house is in need of help. bits of it are old, as in 1427 old but the staircase does not have a carpet. The other stairs are cool as whatsit, a spiral of teak and ebony built into a ships main spar. the thing has bookcases all the way up on the outside curve. The non car job is cleaning the thing, and cataloguing the books. there are more than an thousand of them!
That sounds like the coolest staircase ever!! My daughter would KILL for something like that.
So, are you in the Big Book of British Smiles from The Simpsons?
My beard only goes down to a couple inches above my navel but I abandoned more than half my books in the move and I’m down to maybe 2000. Maybe 200 feet of shelf space That’s not counting the inventory of my self published books. There are literally seven tons of those. I can’t figure out what to do with them. I have about 6 pallets of them.
Maybe the Autopian will start an autopian marketplace where you could sell some.
My work got all the software developers and designers Claude code and told us to go nuts with it to see what we can come up with. I’m currently Vibecoding myself a 3D modeling solution with tools I’ve always dreamed of having but don’t exist in commercial packages.
The scary thing is it works perfectly. I’m not a fan of AI artwork, writing, music, videos, lazy slop games etc. But holy shit. The coding side of this is an eye opener.
I find if you do something programming adjacent, like mess around with spreadsheets, modeling, design, etc. and have minimal actual programming skills yourself, Claude in particular can let you do a lot of things you couldn’t before.
Agreed the other stuff it produces tends to be hot garbage. And maybe the SW it’s writing is also hot garbage compared to something a capable human wrote. But compared to what I could do it’s incredible.
Yeah I’m going to have actual engineers look this thing over. I can code a bit but could never in my life have made this. I’m primarily a designer.
I feel you about the teeth, Mercedes. Teeth care is really expensive. I’m lucky to have my adult teeth, but I had really bad gum disease for most of my life that hopefully has finally been banished this past year due to surgical cleaning. I’m likely going to need gum grafts in the future, and possibly more bone grafts for my top right canine, but those things cost money and augh.
Griffin, you have unlocked a new fear in my soul. This must be what being a car panel feels like when you’re sanding down Bondo or something.
Pru I’ve had a lot of painful things happen to me, often accidental, sometimes from my own stupidity. This was easily the worst sensation of them all.
A few years ago I picked up a first edition of Cannery Row at a garage sale in their “any book for a dollar” pile. I subsequently learned that it’s a first edition, second state (yellow cover), and therefore, particularly as it lacks a dust cover, it isn’t exactly a big-money item. Still, well worth the dollar just to have a copy of it.
David- sink/utility sink in the garage is great, id say keep it or swap to the big plastic tub style. As for toilet… well,late night wrenchin deuces are better when they dont wake up the house!
I’ve been through the teeth “slenderizing” procedure. It is unpleasant at best and positively painful when the orthodontist gets into the gum a little bit.
Mercedes, I know how you feel about bad teeth. They can really drag you down. After I had mine straightened it gave me a real confidence boost. Feeling better about yourself is awesome and worth every penny.
I’ve renovated two houses and done a few small projects on my current house. The older I get, the less I want to take on.
Razors… I’ve used an electric for decades, but there is something cool about those mechanical safety razors. I recently decided to go full cue ball, so I bought a nine head electric head shaver. The one I bought was cheap, but it works surprisingly well. If I had to use an actual razor, I’d probably bleed out.
My father (also a UVa Engineering grad) started out with the Gillette Fat Boy razor which was basically a non adjustable Slim. In graduate school, he swapped his Fat Boy for the new Slim, in part, believe it or not, because it had prominent product placement in “Goldfinger”. He loved Bond movies. He continued to use that same Slim razor until his untimely death in the mid 80s. My first razor that I used until my 30s was the Gillette Super Adjustable “Black Beauty” a development from the Slim. After that I switched to a Trac ll multi edge razor and then a Mach 3. Now it’s Bic disposables. The multi blade razors did give a cleaner shave, but were not nearly as mechanically elegant or fun. Enjoy your Slim, but don’t be surprised if you find Delmar pretending it’s an alien spaceship opening its forward bay doors to scoop up unsuspecting humans. Not that I ever heard of a kid doing this …
Safety razors are awesome! I have a few, and my favorite right now is a “Henson”. The ones YouTubers promote all the time. I’ll admit it’s really nice for my sensitive skin. I might try and find an old razor like what DT bought though. The only issue I have is that it’s hard to travel with, and I’ve gotten searched at TSA because of it a few times.
Goodness! Sorry to hear about y’all’s teeth! My god Mercedes, I’m sending internet hugs as I can’t imagine the pain and suffering you’ve had to deal with for so long. Same with flossing with sand paper! Yikes!!! I’m one of the few people who loves the dentist, that being said I do have horse teeth, never needed braces and have caught any cavities before I needed numbing agent. I did have my teeth ground down when a dentist applied a sealant on my
Molars to prevent any severe cavities when I was a teen. I was oddly surprised at how teeth grinding and burning rubber smelled slightly similar. My dentist did force me to get a night guard, I apparently grind my teeth, which is how I got said baby cavities.
I’m currently in the middle of helping my mom reorganize her loft and redoing my desk. We moved some bookcases around to form an L against the wall, and I mounted a TV for her so she can do yoga up there. We will be painting it soon too. It’s what my mom calls “realtor beige”. That 2000s light brown taupe color almost the same as an old hearing aid. My desk is also up there and I’m trying to figure out how to declutter and make it look nicer. I was thinking about a new desk, but then I saw the prices and decided that my 20yo desk will survive a little longer, and I can make a butcher block desk on my own for half the cost of one I can buy. Once I get money for that, that is my next project. We just finished painting the basement as well.
I’m also getting my suitcase packed. I’m going on a vacation for a while, so I’ve been figuring all of my travel plans out and booking hotels and flights.
Yikes, $38k for dental work! My gum grafts were avocado toast in comparison.
I replaced stair treads at my old house. It was a shorter stairway, but it wasn’t a bad DIY job to do at all and came out looking pro (I did have some wood work experience, but I had never done stairs). Satisfying, too.
I’ve been thinking of getting an old school razor. Got sick of cartridges that don’t last long and add plastic to the waste stream and, now that I have gray hairs that are apparently some form of titanium, the electric I moved to has a tough time cutting them. Ideally, I would shave every day, but I’m too lazy for that, so it’s about every 3 days, when it has grown in enough that it annoys me. Hair on the top of my head? Nope, f you! Odd hairs on my ear that appear irregularly out of nowhere fully formed like they came off Rapunzel’s head and obnoxious gray neck hairs that I can barely see, but sure as hell feel? Yup.
Oh the white hairs grow 3 times as fast as the brown ones. And the ear hair is crazy. I can trim it off and it seems like I have a birds nest growing out of there a couple days later. and what’s with it growing on the earlobes? My god, am I devolving back to monkey state?
So far, it’s just the tragus and antitragus (had to look those up) and it’s an odd one here or there, but I check frequently and there will be one that’s like 1/2 long apparently overnight. Does it lie in wait under the skin for weeks before bursting out all of a sudden like the ugliest drunk stripper from a novelty bachelor cake? I tried some at-home waxing to just nuke the whole area from orbit*, but it seemed like it only made me look like I got a sunburn on my ears. I probably did it wrong, though it wasn’t exactly a complicated operation.
*Used the bachelor cake comparison instead of a chestburster so I wouldn’t have two Alien movie references. Under the Skin was also an alien movie, but it wasn’t an Alien movie.
I learned new words! I too looked them up.
I somehow went my whole life without ever knowing what those parts were called. Since those aren’t very lay-friendly terms, I would guess they’re not a common topic of conversation for most people, ear fetishists aside (I’m sure they’re out there).
“Man that last guy fucked this all up” is a phrase that exists across every trade ever.
But congrats on the bright work! And sorry about the insane cost!
Amazingly, the cost I’m paying is on the cheaper side of the quotes I got. My original estimate was $60k!
We considered doing dental tourism. Coincidentally, some of my wife’s social media followers are dental professionals in other countries. When we told them what needed to be done (pulling a tooth down from inside my gums, fixing my weird overbite, my thin mouth bones, grafts, etc.), they all said they would never recommend going to them, as I’d have to fly there and back so many times that my life would be miserable.
Holy shit. And yeah, oral work is never a “one and done” thing, and it would probably be harder and more expensive long-term to get the initial work done the tourism way, then continue with a different doctor after getting back. Still, big congrats ????
Glad you discovered safety razors.
David, keep the restroom, sink and fridge!! It’s nice to have a counter. So do you plan to actually park a car inside, or is it your wrenching space?
Also is the deeper side double deep, or did they make the bathroom side too short to park a car on that side? Most likely that side will be a workspace anyway.
My only fear is that if he keeps the bathroom, the fridge, the sink, combined with AC, all you’d need to add is microwave and his family would never see him again.
Inquiring minds need to know… is that a St. Petersburg pre-sanctions blade, or the new India made stock? I’m hoarding my Russian ones and loath the day I have to switch. Nice that you found a slimboy in good condition. The shaving rabbit hole is deeeep, be forewarned…
Luckily, I shave ever 2-3 weeks, so my 100 blades will basically last my life. I’ll check to see if these are the Russian ones.
Unluckily, I shave daily due to the quantity of fur on my face and the rate at which it grows. I gave up on disposable razors about 20 years ago, in favor of 3-piece safety razors, which pre-date the adjustable Gilette razor. I purchased mine, made by Edwin Jagger of England, from Amazon for about $35 and note today they go for about $50. They are well worth the price and are very well made. They are not adjustable for the length of beard you wish to leave, and do shave closely. I use blades that I will argue are the best available, Wilkinson Sword (historically made in Sheffield, England; now made in Germany). I typically get about 3 to 4 weeks of daily shaving from each blade; they outlast any other double-edge blade I have tried, and by far outlast any disposable razors.
The Russian-made Gillette platinums are some of favorites when I’m using my safety razor (though I mostly use my now vintage Sensor, as I find it faster for everyday use).