Archive for July, 2004

Most of my body is now dry… except my crotchal area, after a slight accident this morning. Not an accident of the crotchal kind, but of the not-turning-the-water-off-while-plumbing kind.

I was down at the School of Ministry building fixing two taps that didn’t work. The water main for the hot water was really stiff, and so to turn it all the way off, you had to use channel-locks. So I had taken the hot water tap apart, and everything seemed fine, and then I had taken apart and fixed the cold-water tap. However, when I turned both water mains back on, no water came out. So, in my laziness, I turned the hot water tap off as much as I could with my hand (and not with afore mentioned channel-locks) and then took the tap off, and began to remove the stem. As I did this, water began to leak from around the stem.

Here is where you have to use perspective. Most people would stop at this point, and guess that the water was still on, and go and turn it off. But not I. Along with everything else I do, I repair toilets as well, and on occasion water will leak out of the top part (a system toilet, not a tank toilet), even after the water main is off, because of the vacuum created. So, that’s what I guessed was going on. Just a little excess water, no big deal, it would spill out and then be done with. So I kept unscrewing the stem.

I guessed wrong.

Hot water burst upward like blood in Kill Bill. Knowing that I had turned the water main as far as I could turn it, I figured that maybe I had turned it the wrong way. So I turned it all the way the other direction, which sent the water higher and higher, and hotter and hotter, until it was bouncing off the ceiling right onto me. I called the boss at this point, and he suggested I forcibly try to screw in the stem, to stop the flow. I quickly put on my work gloves and attempted the first of a series of painful and ultimately fruitless excursions into a stream of burning hot water.

Eventually, my brain took hold of my body and I grabbed the channel-locks and turned the main off properly. So yeah. Fun times. Completely and utterly soaked. I laughed out loud looking at the dripping goon I could see in the mirror.

That alone made the day fun, but that wasn’t all. I fixed the taps after that, and discovered that the water spout was also damaged and had to be fixed up. Then I moved on to a second set of taps. One was corroded and so I was squeezing the channel-locks as hard I could, and trying to turn the tap, when the locks slipped off the tap and the handle parts came to a crashing halt on my middle finger. Bloody middle finger.

Then, a few minutes later, I was unplugging a clogged sink. I placed a bucket underneath the pipes, and opened the pipe drain, unleashing a one of the foulest odours I have ever smelt. I actually had to put paper in my nose in order to keep working on it. The problem? A rat? A ham? No no… hair. Long, brown hair.

My message to girls: Don’t let your hair fall into the sink; someone has to clean that up.

In other news, my brother fractured his collarbone at rugby practice last night. He’s quite alright, but his arm’s in a sling and he probably won’t be playing for a little while.