thou shalt not smile

A large volume of paperwork is never fun. When done in a rush, it's quite taxing. Oh, that reminds me...

Anyway, I have applied for a passport. The most amusing aspect of the application was that one is forbidden to smile for the photo.

I'll be leaving the country for the first time ever: work demands that I fly to Southhampton, England, where I will board a ship and immediately return to the americas, by way of the Atlantic Ocean.

Hopefully by the time the ship pulls into New York, the hardware & software that we're installing will be fully functional.

I'll only get a brief glimpse of Southhampton, but it's fun to note that one or two famous maiden voyages began there. At the end of the transatlantic crossing, I might catch a glimpse of a famous French statue that bears the same name as the ship I'll be on.

This assumes, of course, that my passport arrives in time.

green river

Back in August I mentioned that I had "pulled the dishwasher door off its hinges, incurring household costs I fear calculating".

The whole affair started one day when I noticed that the machine would tip forward when the dish racks were extended whilst fully loaded. It turns out that these devices are not balanced in this configuration, and rely on the screws affixed to the underside of the counter to take the force of the imbalance. Unfortunately, years of steam had rotted the underside of the old laminate countertop, giving those poor little helical inclined planes nothing to grab onto.

And, in a hasty attempt to pull the dishwasher out to fix the situation, I underestimated my own strength. Or overestimated the strength of the hinges. Well, I'm an idiot and I didn't even think of the hinges. Ok, it's out there, now we can deal with it.

I hadn't read my Thich Nhat Hanh back then, a'ight?

Now the escrow payment from refinancing my house has arrived, so I can bring this chapter to a close by replacing both the dishwasher and the counter.

This morning's shopping resulted in "green river", pictured above. Mine won't have the fancy, curvy edging, but that's the color. The old countertop had a faux-woodgrain that was trying hard to match the cabinets -- and not really succeeding. (Yuck.)

And now, back to my death march.