What's Up With Home Depot?

The kitchen faucet we installed in March quit swiveling. The lever that controls hot and cold by going left and right should be independent of the faucet itself, which should swivel to either basin. Started out working just fine, but somewhere, some time ago, it locked up and you couldn't move one without moving the udder.

The new granite kitchen countertops and sink were installed today so the plumbing was pulled out and I tradfatted on down to Home Depot, rehearsing my Faulty Merchandise Return rant along the way.

In I comes, filled with righteous indignation, ready to make my point as often and to as many levels of nebbishes as necessary. The first poor devil walks square into my crosshairs.

"Help you?"
"Yeah!! I got this here and Look! it's supposed to swivel like this, but it doesn't!!"
"Do you want to just get another one?"
"Oh yeah?! Well I want to talk to . . . . . I beg your pardon?"
"Just go get another one and bring it back up here."
"But, but, I beg your pardon?"
"Down aisle 6, get a replacement and bring it up here."

Dazed and confused, I did as told, knowing the punch line was still to come.

"That one gonna do it for ya?"
"Yeah, it's about the same."

Waves it across the scanner, tells me I'm good to go, bids me good day, goes on about his business.

I still don't get it.

Dated Definitions

The OED - Oxford English Dictionary - one of my bibles, with word histories and definitions going back almost 900 years is nearly 22,000 pages long. However, from 1991 to 1999 the Oxford Press published a "Compact OED" - the entire contents in one 14 pound tome. With the type compressed to nine pages per page, combined with my myopia that makes Mr Magoo's vision telescopic by comparison, it was a natural. Then, to clinch the deal Amazon offered free shipping on my next order and Kaching! with its own magnifying glass, even.

Now comes the NYTimes Magazine with word that a major update is in the works. By 'in the works' they mean they began in 2000 with "M" and have almost gotten to "Re-". Definition of the word 'marriage' will be expanded, for instance. But sadly, definitions have fallen out of use and thus, out of favor.

Some of the definitions whose demise is contemplated:

The definition of 'Care' as "some kind of stuff"

'Murinoid': "resembling the mouse or its allies"

'Cretin': "One of a class of dwarfed and specially deformed idiots found in the Alps and elsewhere"

'Pope Joan': "After the fabulous female Pope Joan" (fabulous as in fabled, but I like fabulous better)

'Boodle': "a stupid noodle" which may have stemmed from

'Prothodaw'; which is/was "a prime simpleton, a noodle of the first rank" and, a personal favorite -

'Middle-aged': "between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner"

Now get out there and try to use one of these with their original definition. And let's not all use prothodaw and cretin, ok?

Things I Saw This Weekend That You Didn't

We spent a long weekend on the mountain in the cabin we own 1/8 of (LindenPines.com) and got a welcome respite from the twenty-some days already of 110+ temps in The Junction. The temps topped out at 78 and it was so breezy that while we picnicked at Fool Hollow Lake - (go ahead, I'll wait) - Herself had to wear a jacket.

The man who built the cabin, finishing it on 12/29/99 he says, stopped by with a companion whose mother tongue was not English for a tour. He hadn't seen the fireplace nor the finished basement. He showed us what he believes to be Anasazi ruins on the property, and the best places to scan the ground for pottery shards. We found a few shards with the same wavy, black on white thin striping as I had found a bucketful of up outside Snowflake twenty years ago.

We came across these bones, but my suggestions that boiling them for a few hours might make a decent soup were met with contempt exceeding derision.

Oh, and Snowflake is and/or is not eponymous. The town is named after two men, Mr Snow and Mr Flake. The Flakes are still prominent in the LDS community and in Arizona politics.

Knucklehead Golf Association

Bro DanPan:

Your RSVP and entry fee are conspicuous by their abscess. I was short-strawed into trying to assuage your reticence.

If your concern is the overnightedness of the outing, rest assured that twixt Lar's luxury fun house and my modest hovel, we have more than enough bedrooms with locking doors to prevent a recurrence of "The Sleep-Walking Incident" from the Tucson trip. And in that same sticky arena, GMac has sworn to not use the phrase "warm, soapy shower" in front of Ern more than twice in any four hour period.

If you're worried about the entertainment, GMac is bringing his Liza Minelli records and Lar has promised to reprise his dead-on impression of Carol Channing in 'Hello Dolly'.

If you're worried about the wagers, shut up. You'll be the best golfer there. I know, high praise, indeed.

While there still are past due details to be worked out - Lar's planning the thing after all - every respondent other than Ern has pledged to do his darndest to make this the first ever KGA Road Event where no one goes home in an ambulance or in tears. We just have to continue to work with Ern.

Come visit your Mom on Thursday the 20th, and we'll have you back, mostly safe, as close to sane as you are now, and hopefully tear-free at the airport on Sunday.

Your former fellow dirtmonger

Lyle