Home Depot

My nearest Home Depot is 3.7 miles away and there are six sets of traffic lights in those 3.7 miles. How do I know? Because I spent this delightfully sunny Sunday afternoon repairing my watering system. Thing is, I hadn’t planned on spending my Sunday afternoon up to my elbows in dirt and water. No, I had not…

Sundays are for sleeping in, going the gym when I feel like it and spending the afternoon with my closest. This Sunday I had arranged to squire the delightfully wicked Miss K to a movie at a certain independent cinema. She had plans prior (but expected to be finished by 4pm) – playing tour guide to the boyfriend of a friend she worked with for four months, two years ago in a state several thousand miles away. He was in our fairly fair city on business and e-mailed the lovely Miss K a sob story of loneliness. So it was that, when it became clear to Miss K that 4pm was no longer viable, we swapped voice mail messages to move our rendezvous to next weekend. Miss K was now free to chauffeur this unexpected guest around town. In the spirit of sharing pain with my friends, I decided to fix my garden watering system.

My watering system had sprung a slight leak and it needed repairing. This would involve me getting my hands dirty, so if I was going to get grimy, I was taking someone down with me. That’s why I called The Admiral. He’s very useful in home repair matters and it’s always good to have at least one wise head around when things aren’t quite going to plan. So, he arrived and the leak was identified – it was coming from the automatic valve. We agreed very quickly to get rid of the automatic valve and go with a manual one.

So, off to Home Depot. With it being Sunday, the place was a hive of activity. ‘twas packed with amateur home improvement people – many with the scars of previous home improvement attempts – and loaded to the gunwales with home improvement stuff. Some of it looked useful. Some of it looked lethal. We found what we were looking for and, $3.25 later, we returned home. We fitted the valve. Turned on the water. And there was a leak. A section of the pipe screw in part of the pipe had split: we had NOT been as gentle as we thought.

Off to Home Depot. We picked up a new threaded section of pipe, a reducer (don’t ask) and a cap. The cap was the back-up plan. Should all go to pot, the line could be capped off while we thought of another angle of attack over, say, the next week-ish. The girl at Home Depot only charged us for two items – I got the cap for free. $2.75 lighter, back home. The threaded section was the wrong size.

Back to Home Depot for the third time. Swapped the wrong size for the right size and headed home. This time…S-U-C-C-E-S-S! After some minor adjustment, all leaks were gone. Sprinklers work. I’m a happy boy

Post script: a phone call Sunday evening from Miss K. Her day went much better than expected and she sounded very happy. The gentleman was engaging and bought her lunch. She also announced to me she was on the third day of her new-found vegetarianism (REAL veggie, too – no fish!) and that she felt very healthy and clean. Yes, well, overdosing on fibre does that to a person. No, all kidding aside, I’m not far off vego myself. Only one meal out of the five I eat each day contains meat. But I’m not willing to give up my daily dose of dead animal just yet. Vegetarianism really isn’t that bad: chocolate is vegetarian.

A successful Sunday all round, I’d say.