Humor

Perhaps this conversation is a sign that we've been in the country for awhile:

"Terah, if you ever drive the pickup..."

"Why would I ever do that?"

"I don't know, but if you ever do, I just want you to know something. The reason there's a towel connecting the brake pedal to the steering wheel..."

At this point I had to wait for her laughter to die down.

"As I was saying, the reason there's a towel connecting the brake pedal to the steering wheel is that, unless you park facing uphill, the brake lights stay on all the time and will drain the battery."

More laughter followed.

I didn't even have the chance to tell her to remove the towel before she starts the truck. Oh well, guess she'll figure it out.

On the other hand, perhaps this is a sign that we haven't been in the country long enough:

Today as I went to lunch, I saw a long, narrow, light gray line across the door on my car. I was pretty annoyed that somebody would have pulled keys or something across it to do that. But as I got closer, I realized it was just a spider web. Terah and I park our cars a few feet apart, and every week or so there will be a spider web connecting the two of them when we go out in the morning.

Back when I was in high school, I heard a Jeff Foxworthy CD once. He had this "you might be a redneck if" routine. We resemble one of his comments: "If the directions to your house include 'turn off the paved road', you might be a redneck."

What if the road -- the county road, not our driveway, mind you -- has weeds growing down the middle? And you can tell that the county maintainer has been by recently because there are fewer, and shorter, weeds than before?

While everyone else is excited about their iPhones and whatnot, technology isn't leaving us country dwellers behind. Consider these two recent events:

1) The weeds growing down the middle of the road were gone for a bit. That was surely evidence that the county road maintainer has been by.

2) Word from our letter carrier that we just *may* be able to have our mailbox at our driveway. Someone wants to build across the road near us, and asked about getting a mailbox there instead of almost a mile away where ours is. Apparently if both of us want our mailboxes closer (Terah said "YES", I'm sure), they just may consider it.

That's right, we may need to now have only a 1/2 mile round trip to get our mail.

Back to the iPhone: we do get a signal from Cingular at our place, but I can't help thinking "what's the point?" I don't really need an always-on Internet connection everywhere I go.

I was visiting with our homeowners insurance company the other day (very good folks). Because we weren't living in our house during renovation, we had to get a more expensive type of policy. The agent that sold it do is is no longer with the company, so the new person handling our account asked me, "Why did he want you to get this policy?"

"Well, he said it was because we weren't living there." Then I suddenly remembered the rest of what he said, and couldn't help cracking up. "Plus, he said that if something like a fire happened, people might not notice."

What can I say. Psychic insurance salesman.

On that note, I was having a discussion with someone about large windows on a house. That person was saying that "everyone" always puts their large windows on the front (or back of their house, I forget which) so that potential burglers are easier to spot. He was concerned about where we were putting windows on our house.

This had never occured to me.

But I pointed out that our yard was on fire and nobody noticed for hours. What difference would it make where our windows are?

"Ah, good point," he said.

On that note, you ought to check out rush hour in the country. Truly this is a lot of traffic for roads around here.

If you ever feel a bit like Darth Vader or some Bond villain, you really need to check out Peter's Evil Overlord List.

It starts out with "My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones."

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this photo of Terah holding Jacob:



When I first saw the gowns that the hospital was giving to people, I almost burst out laughing. Let's take a closer look at the gowns:



This looks similar to Debian's logo:



When Peter came to visit us, I said, "Do you notice anything odd about Terah's gown?" About a second later, he burst out laughing, too.

That's right, all moms in this hospital get covered with Debian logos. Geeks worldwide are envious, I'm sure.

I found this amusing page today. My favorite is the one in Frankfurt.

I just read the absolutely hilarious account of a call to AT&T asking them to install a telegraph line. The even funnier part is that nobody at AT&T seemed to realize that he wasn't talking about a telephone. Or even knew what AT&T stands for.

While at ZUG, I also read the very funny story about impersonating Michael Jackson by getting a credit card in his name, complete with al sorts of media coverage.

Just today, in a bathroom really quite near....

I woke up this morning. I used the toilet. I flushed it. There was the satisfying sound of a toilet, well, flushing.

Then there was the very unsatisfying sound of the toilet not refilling its tank. I tried a faucet -- sure enough no water. Obviously, the ants were at it again. (Read this story from yesterday for how they disrupted our water supply once before.)

So, now I have to rush out there and fix the well before I can get to work. This time, I'm going to be prepared. I found a can of insecticide, a metal file, and head out there. Sure enough, more ants had been killed in the pressure switch. I cut the power to the switch, cleaned off the metal contacts, and sprayed insecticide everywhere I could. I restored power, and there was a satisfying faint hummmm as the water pump whirred to life.

So then all I had to do was cut power again for a moment as I did a final cleaning and reassembly of the switch and headed back inside.

All was fine until this evening. I noticed somewhat low water pressure. I tried to be optimistic -- "the pump's probably kicking on right now." But no. Once again as I flushed a toilet, the toilet tank didn't refill.

By now I am MAD. These ants are going down. I was a few minutes late to work because of them, and now I'm going to have to go out to the well in the dark to fix them. So I again grab my tools, and this time I find the stickiest thing I can -- some tape. I figure I'll wrap it around the post the pressure switch is on, sticky side out, and trap them on their way up.

So I turn on the flashlight and head out to the well house. I open it up. And hmm -- different problem this time.

The power is off entirely. The little twerps have somehow applied 20 pounds of force to the power lever and cut it out!

I'm sure there is no way that I would have forgotten to turn the power back on this morning, in my thirsty trying-not-to-be-late-for-work semi-tired daze...

All I can say is: it amazing how much water you can store up when you have two pressure tanks. Terah even ran the dishwasher today.

I made a shocking discovery today.

Terah called me in from outside to inform me that the washing machine was just sitting there. No action. Just stalled in the middle of the cycle. I poked around a bit, and sure enough. It's stuck.

I then turned on the water faucet next to the washing machine. Nothing came out. So naturally I thought: the terrorists have attacked our water supply! Run for the hills! (which in Kansas are a 3-hour drive)

(Actually, what I thought was we want to put this house on the market next week, and the last thing we need now is a lack of running water. But I'm sure if I watched the cable news channels, I'd think of terrorists first.)

Now before I can explain how SUICIDE ANTS were the cause of our water problems, we need to take a small diversion into the fascinating realm of rural plumbing. When you have a well supplying water to your house, there's a pump connected to a pressure tank, which is then connected to the house's plumbing. When you turn on a faucet, you drain water out of the tank. When the pressure reaches a certain minimum, a pressure switch turns on the pump. The pump pumps water into the tank until the pressure reaches a maximum, at which point the pressure switch turns the pump back off.

Now, inside the pressure switch are little metal plates. To turn on the pump, the plates snap together, completing the circuit. To turn off the pump, the plates snap apart.

So, back to our story.

I went out to the well house (the small outdoor structure that houses the tank and switch) with my usual well-adjusting tools: pliers, screwdriver, gloves. I open up the well house and cut the power. I take the cover off the pressure switch and stare at it for a minute.

Hmmm I think to myself. The system pressure is 0 PSI, so the pump should have been running... And indeed the pressure switch plates had snapped together....

...or had they?

No! There was -- and I am not making this up -- a cake of DEAD, PARTIALLY SINGED ANTS between the metal plates. In fact, there were ants crawling around all over the pressure switch. So I used my screwdriver to scrape the plates off as well as I could. I couldn't get them perfectly clean because of the angle, but I figured it'd be enough to make contact.

I turned the power back on. Little blue sparks appeared at the pressure switch (burning up the last of the SUICIDE ANTS), and then half a second later, the pump sprang into action.

Now this raises some alarming questions:

Why didn't our government do anything to stop the SUICIDE ANTS from attacking our water supply?

And more importantly, who is behind this sudden sinister interest in pressure switches on the part of our hill-building friends?

I can see the headlines now:

"Ants attack water supply in Kansas... Is New York far behind?"

"Gitmo Intelligence Links Suicide Ants to bin Laden"

"Price of Raid Hits $200 A Barrel Amid Fears of Ant Attacks"

"5 Troops Deployed With Cans of RAID to Terrorist Ant Training Camps in the Pakistani Mountains"

"Thirsty Latchkey Children Forced To Scrape Dangerous Terrorist Ants From High-Voltage Switches Before Using Faucet"

"Is Your Water Safe? Watch the story about the latest threat tonight at 11"

"Small-town Kansas man detained for posting instructions for attacking rural water systems using ants"