I don't want a pickle

Jun 01, 2008 07:07

My bathroom smells strongly of pickles.

I've been meaning to finish re-potting my tomato plants in five gallon buckets for a while now, but didn't have enough food-grade buckets (something about using pool chemical and other such buckets didn't feel right to me) to set up the dual-bucket "self-watering" style planter I'm attempting to make. A trip to The Pantry yesterday remedied that situation, as they were happy to be rid of the several empty pickle pails they had laying about and I was happy to take them off their hands. I walked awkwardly home with my briny score and set them down in the tub before getting distracted for a bit. By the time I returned to do a cursory rinse of the briniest bucket, the bathroom had taken on an air of kosher spears ("I'll take primitive Jewish hunting implements for $200, Alex..")

In the gospel according to Arlo Guthrie, the obvious alternative to pickle possession is motorsickle riding. To that end, I finally shipped the damaged left cylinder head from the BMW off to a fellow on the west coast who specializes in repairing that sort of thing. I had a beautiful gearhead-meets-old-house-geek moment when the head refused to part with the cylinder without popping the jug out of the engine block. I had bonked it repeatedly with a rubber mallet as the repair manual suggested and was reluctant to pry at it for fear of breaking aluminum fins. In a moment of inspiration, I grabbed some of the cedar shingles I use for shim stock on door jambs and drove them between the head and the jug. The head popped free in a few seconds. That was very satisfying.

two wheels good, flora

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