Scribbled Musings

We had a problem in our guest bathroom that when the kid would take a bath, there would be water dripping downstairs right under the tub. The problem here, we realized, was that the kid was spending as much time close to the spout and drain, and his jumping had disengaged the overflow drain connection to the tub. The water was going around and over the overflow drain pipe connection directly from the spout, right at the overflow drain cover.

Overflow drains are designed to expect water entry from the bottom when you fill the tub. There was no rubber seal, a remnant of the original install, and this failure caused some mold to form on the drywall. Also, the previous tile install for the shower walls had zero waterproofing and was directly stuck onto drywall, which, as a consequence of the water seepage, meant there was no structural integrity to the walls, and there was a spot whereupon putting weight on the wall while cleaning the tub, the wall caved in.

I was on Team “remove the tub” to remove a point of failure and possibly make it easy for elders just to use a walk-in shower but was overruled by the other two parties in the house, stating dog baths will be easier to do here.

Fast forward 45 days after that bath was remodeled, with tile replacing the LVP floor, some large format wall tiles with proper waterproofing, and a tub, the same problem resurfaced. The kid takes a bath, and it starts dripping in the kitchen.

Remodels are fun—it’s time to break the wall again.

There was a gas leak near the elementary school next door, which led to a road closure blocking a main thoroughfare to the area. This, along with next week being fall break here, meant that not enough kids showed up for the soccer practice at the fields.

Instead of individual practice, it was a scrimmage game, kids vs. adults - everyone who showed up at the field, with 4 goals at the corners of a diamond, with the adults defending the goals. The incentive for the kids was that if they scored, the adults at that goal had to do 2 pushups each.

Our goal’s goalie was the mom of one of the kids who made a stop when her own kid hit a shot. She responded with an indignant scream of “How dare you, Mom!”.

Changing a tire with an impact driver »»»» Changing a tire with the tools in the trunk.

One of our cars caught a nail during the storm on Thursday, and a neighbor saw me set up the jack and getting started, and he was like I’m not going to let you struggle like that and got his toolset out to the car —less than 5 minutes to get the donut on.

Listening to a bunch of contemporary Piano based musical pieces around the sub 5 minute mark, after Succession’s series final, landed in my discovering Sofiane Pamart

London, Sahara and Medellin are my favorites. Kiddo’s are Ocean, London and Medellin.

classical.music.apple.com/us/album/…

One of the main reasons I’ve continued to follow so much of Chennai’s happenings over the last 15 years was the written Tanglish I could consume. This, despite never having lived in the cool parts of Madras that the Chennai Twitteratti seems to have experienced in the 80s/90s.

While I nominally can read தமிழ், ( no thanks to Keyes High School’s Veeraswami Kindergarten’s Tamil slant allowing them to be one of the few places in Hyderabad that formally taught you in தமிழ் for all those children of immigrants from Tamil Nadu settled in the Padma Rao Nagar - West Marredpally Areas of Rail Nilayam centered Secunderabad), I do not think in it anymore, it’s that much of a hop to understand it as naturally as the extra effort in reading it takes away from the probability of understanding it quickly.

This new feature at an operating system level, as path-breaking and progressive as it may be, and despite me making an additional effort to read more தமிழ், it makes me feel I’ll understand it that much less in the future.

Just in time for my family to have moved to Chennai.

Demo’d one bathroom that the good son managed to get water damage in thinking we have the spare. Just before we had family visit, we discovered the second one was also waterlogged due to a bad caulk job and 90s builders tiling without waterproofing in the bathroom as if it was all a backsplash.

Fun times ahead.

( Micro.blog iOS app put this in draft and never published it )