HNT #18: Dirty Work

I've been busy lately with planning for Portland's summer Buddhist Festival, though that hasn't stopped me from watching too much TV, or reading too many blogs. I've added a bunch of books and library-related blogs to my bloglines, under the guise of "professional development." Librarians are interesting people, and it's easy to find more and more people to read and I myself write less and less.

MySpace seems to be the way to connect to younger people. Anybody interested in reaching teens and young adults needs to use MySpace, whether libraries or bands or activist groups. In the interest of promoting the Buddhist Festival in the Park, I created a MySpace page for BPF Portland. Within a week I got an inquiry about Buddhism in Portland. I guess Yahoo is just too old school.

Yesterday though I spent my time catching up with household chores. The toilet needed fixing. I installed a new flusher mechanism. Except for the uber-messy bits, I like putting together mechanical things. This was not as bad as the other messy chore I did yesterday...anybody who knows me I procrastinate from hell to high heaven over cleaning the filter media for my turtle's aquarium. ew ew ew. But, I care for my turtle and want it to live in a clean "pond," so I do it, eventually.

So the messiest thing about installing a new flusher mechanism, the old black rubber washers. Some kind of chemical reaction takes place so you get inky black goo all over. I could not get it all out of my fingernails. I missed the replacement of one: the cone washer in the water intake hose. This of course caused a leak and I drained the tank again, pulled out the brittle inky washer with a pliers, replaced it and connected it all again, and still it leaked, but just a little. I may be able to do these things on my own, but I still need the strength of a male hand for that final quarter turn that will close something up snug. Steve gave the final twist when he got home late last night.

Not feeling very naked lately, so here are the naked dirty nails from my busy day yesterday. Happy Half Nekkid Thursday.