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Saturday during lunch the parts came for the Espresso Machine. However, I didn't get the chance to test the machine until evening. It didn't work. There was much more wrong with it then I suspected. So Sunday before lunch I tore into it. Now I am not, nor have ever been, an appliance repair-professional. However, I exceed at putting together Ikea flat packs, so I must be qualified to repair highly complicated, and somewhat dangerous steam pressure devices.
The pump was working fine. It must be the boiler. I uncoupled it and with a bit of effort split the two halves appart. After I mopped up the water from me, the chair and the floor I realized the entire inside of the boiler was covered in scale and there was about a 1/4 cup of scale bits all over the table, with more inside. Here was the problem. Our water is very hard, and our best intentions of using bottled water fell by the way-side long ago. I cleaned out the pieces and de-scaled the halves. I had to go to a neighbors to borrow his air-compressor to blow out the actual port where the liquid comes out of the machine. That took a bit of deduction. The tube had to be reamed out with a drill and a spring-loaded diaphram (all of which I couldn't really see) had to be freed up before even 125psi would blow freely through.
I tested the machine and it seemed to work. I had a massive headache by the time I had put everything back together. I was busy trying to cook Crumpets, finish baking bread my wife had to abandon to go to work, clean-up from my kitchen-table repair center. The espresso didn't taste that great. My headache worsened while I made dinner, so I didn't fire the machine up again.
This morning I made the usual Monday morning trio of mochas--one each for my wife, myself and Estrogina our tween daughter. The machine groaned a bit more than usual, but otherwise worked as good as it used to two years ago. If it breaks down again any time soon, I think I will add it to the pile of wrecks and buy a La Pavoni.
I may still be a contender for the job I really want. I received an email Sunday that indicated I may find out Tuesday or Wednesday whether I go on to the next round of interviews. Whew! only two weeks since the last time I heard from them.
Not for the faint of heart, or those who live in mobile homes.
Saturday our work party crawled into motion. Much as I suspected, nothing had been prepared. By 11 am we had barely begun on the trailer. The weather was mild and sunny but rain was predicted for later in the day. Things got started as we began to unload a shed loosely attached to the single-wide. Inside the actual trailer it was a stinking mess. Years of neglect and use as a party hang-out by drug using teens and thieves had left it a mess. It's last occupant is in jail at the moment and we had to deal with tons of his crap. Originally the shed on the side of the trailer was supposed to be cleaned out so we could drag it away to a new location and use it for a woodshed, but by Noon we had just finished cleaning it out and there was no hint of being able to move it. The Barn project wasn't even begun.
At lunch we reassesed the project and decide, rather than move the shed at the moment, we would tear down the trailer from behind it. So, after turning the water off and shutting down the power we took a power screw driver and removed the windows and doors. Meanwhile the interior was gutted. With a giant bar, the outside skin peeled off like a candy wrapper. Behind that there was a disgusting network of rot, bugs, mice, etc. We removed the insulation, started a large fire for the wood, and with sledges knocked the walls out and let the roof collapse. We stopped at dusk with about 80% done. There was nothing left standing and a wake of carnage. All told the actual destruction, only took 4 hours. It would have taken less time if we hadn't been salvaging the tin. The floor and underframe will be removed another day.
As for the barn--it got cleaned out. Sunday an attempt was made to tear it down, but due to equipment failures it still reamains standing. At least something got done.
It is cold and pouring rain today. A stark contrast to yesterday's mild and sunny weather. Tomorrow morning will bring the story of what happened yesterday. For now, I am slipping in a moment to check blogs, while I warm myseld over the hob, cooking crumpets.
In other news, the espresso machine may be on the mend. Initial tests are good. We shall see what the morning crunch brings.
Ebay man was contacted yesterday with two choices to make. At the moment, no news.
Ah, time to put more crumpets on the griddle. . . .
I just found out that my auction item will cost me a lot more than I spent on it. The guy who sold it to me mis-represented it (claimed it actually worked as intended and had all parts and pieces). Now he claims he can't find the parts and wants to know "what will make me happy. . ." Okay, that's decent, but either way I'm out money. If I send it back to him I've spent over $60 on shipping that I don't think he will feel like ponying up. If I keep it, then I have to spend at least $150 to get it running. Arrrgh!
Joergen and Carsten Bodum, who in 1974 began redesigning the Caffetiere, brought us the present day French Press.
Without my espresso machine, I have dug my French Press out of retirement.
I met my first press when I was 16 and it has been a passionate romance ever since.
I began drinking coffee when I was around 8.
My father religiously drank Yuban, which I couldn't stand the taste of, or the smell of. But on weekends when I went with him to the various airports he went Soaring from, while I was on the ground manning the radio I would spend my quarters buying coffee from those hideous vending machines which drop the cup in the tray and spew scalding liquids from whatever dank cauldrons exist within. I loved it. Coffee with extra sugars and cream.
But, still, I only drank it when I was at the airports.
All through high school I didn't drink that much coffee, not like today's teens. I just had the occasional vending machine brew, and sometimes a cup, black, from my father's drip cone. He had begun to experiment with whole bean coffees after a business trip to Brazil, but the Yuban was still there in the cupboard.
When I turned 16 I flew to London as an exchange student. The night I arrived I was picked up by the family I was going to live with. When we turned up back at there house they made coffee even though it was 10pm. It was the best thing I'd ever had. French Press coffee from freshly ground beans. Black and chewy.
When I woke up the next morning there was more coffee and so began a life long addiction. Soon the son and I were heading up to London every weekend to buy coffee beans at the most fantastic and Dickensian coffee purveyor. I really must ask him where it is, because since, everytime I go back to London, I look for it, but never can find it.
With the rare exception of owning a combination Krups coffee/esprsso machine, (which didn't last a year) I have only owned French Presses. Their simplicity, beauty and elegance is beyond measure. I have only owned two, or thee presses in the last 18 years. There was a while when a thoughtful nanny we had broke the caraffe everytime she touched it. She was too wonderful to ever take to task about it, though, and I learned to keep a supply of spare glasses on hand and hide the bloody thing after I used it so she wouldn't take it into her head that it needed to be cleaned so often.
But since my dearest, lady wife only drinks Mochas and cannot stand real coffee I have relegated the press unto the darkest corners of the cupboard. The Briel machine makes a decent Americano when I am not having espresso, so until this latest dire emergency it has remainded mothballed.
I am so happy to be reaquainted with it. Hurray!
If all goes well tomorrow and the weather does not conspire against us, a crew made up of family and friends will be tackling some of the mess created by a storm over 12 years ago. We own our own piece of property where our house is, but we also own 1/3rd of 20 acres next door. The barn was struck by a tree when a storm that 20 acres hard. Because the frugal users of the barn aren't just frugal but lazy it has gotten to the point where it is all but falling in, and we had to step in to get it torn down before it fell down on someone. Tomorrow is that day. We are also hoping to tear into a trailer home which is beginning to rot. The only hold up there is that the people we are working with want to save the siding from the trailer to recycle it.
I've got nothig against being Green. I am more fanatical about that then most. But this has nothing to do with conservation--they just want the money for the scrap. I am predicting that the three-ring circus which will evolve tomorrow doesn't actually get that much done. These people are all talk and no show. Step B can only be achieved if we begin at step F and work our way through C, D, E, G and H. Then we might be able to tackle A.
I am sure in the course of tomorrow something will break down, have to be custom made (as in re-forging an ordinary crow-bar into a trailer-siding-pulling-crow-bar) or after a morning of decision and no action, lunch will be taken and then nothing happen in the afternoon, because it is"too late to get anything done before dark."
Perfection should be a goal, not a life-style.
I'm more of a wade in and get something done kind of guy (although this has been greatly hampered by my back problems). I thank God for the ability to quickly size up a situation and decide steps to be taken. Consequently I have never fitted in well to the must-decide-a-course-of-action-and-discuss quorum forming family I married into. Come on, Come on, Come on--Let's get moving already! It 8 o'clock am!
Agonizing decision today. Do I harrass my agent this morning in an email? It's been almost a week since she said she would contact me about this job I'm agonizing over. I was going to leave it over the weekend, but that's 3 days more of nothing.
I think I'll stir the pot. The squeaky wheel and all that. If I don't get a result from that over the weekend, then next week I'll call the man again and remind him of my existence. And perhaps remind him of how unprofessional it is to leave someone hanging over this level of job.
I'm sitting on the worn-out but almost new living room couch.
It's 5pm.
The fire in the wood stove has finally taken off and the temperature has climbed to somewhere around 62F in the house. It's somewhere around 50F outside.
Dial-up has been really slow today, so my usually frustrated job of web surfing and news reading has dragged on longer than usual.
I am guessing that if I haven't received a phone call by now, today that I won't be receiving one any time soon. Monday at this point--because everyone knows no real work gets done on Friday--at the earliest. But I won't hold my breath. I am afraid I may have to go crawling back to a previous employer and throw myself on their mercy. The job is long hours of boredom. No networking, no people to talk to, no internet and no life. I'll have 1 day off, and only make abit more than my wife makes now. She'd have to quit her job because I'd be gone from home for 2 months. I'm dreading it. If they don't call me on Sunday then I'll be finding out if they''ll hire me back some time next week. They've said in the past they'd take me back if they could. Hate to do it, but I'm going no where fast here now. Besides, what quicker way to get the call I'm waiting for with my dream job, then to sign a contract for a job I don't want. 
Too many interuptions. My youngest twins are putting on a production for me, so their Mom can see it when she gets home.
Was that a bit of a whinge? Too right.
More like a reminder and reality check for myself, though.
I can't afford to go to a chiropractor regularly anymore, let alone a therapist to work through my angst and bitterness. So here we are!
I could say something about Appalachia here, but I don't want the emails.
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