May your tires flat, your chain suck, your brakes drag and your spokes break. May headwinds bedevil you and the fleas of a 1,000 camels infest your bike shorts if you remove anything from these boxes without permission of the rightful owner.

This curse was found on a 3×5 index card. It was written by my Spovely Louse when she discovered some of her stuff missing after one of my more egregious flings. In preparation for the coming plumb-ageddon, Anne and I worked all weekend turning the ‘pool room’ from its before state to its after. The ‘pool room’ is the semi-finished portion of our basement. We dubbed it that because it had been outfitted in rathskeller form, with knotty pine paneling, a finished ceiling and a functioning wet bar. When we bought the place we could easily imagine the pool table that once stood center stage in it.

That was then and this is now. In the intervening years, the ‘pool room’ suffered much deprivation. Its finished ceiling was torn up by another plumber, when we had all of the clean water lines replaced. He also disconnected the water supply to the wet bar. Now the only spirits served there is turpentine and paint thinner, neither very good for you.

The before pictures indicates just how congested we had allowed the basement to get. It was embarrassing worming through this crap, with two plumbers. The after picture gives a better view of the straight shot that the new sewer line will follow. It will follow the old one until just before the pillar. The old line turns left and then turns right again. The problem with following that path is that it crosses two internal walls. This is not really a show stopper, because they can tunnel underneath them without disturbing them. The problem is that in the far room there is an old 500 gallon oil tank. The current line runs underneath the tank. In the middle photo is a strip of black tape on the floor, it shows where the sewer line makes one of its two right-angle turns, beneath the floor. The plan that we discussed will have the new line continuing in a straight line out through the front wall. It will meet the old clay line five feet in front of the building line, squarely in the county’s court, that’s a lot of lines to deal with.

This weekend’s endeavor was not a true ‘fling’ that some people have made almost a lifestyle choice of, but rather an emergency intervention. A quarter of the stuff will be pitched on Tuesday. Another quarter was moved to the garage, the new, new trash heap. Most of it was boxed and shelved in the far corner of the basement, where it will be out-of-the-way during this project. I figure that I’m 60% of the way done with this grand ‘fling’. This is good news, because it leaves a lot less work for next weekend.

Needless to say, we are both pretty tired and sore from all of our exertions. We’ll have a week to recoup, before we go back at it. This whole endeavor has been weighing heavily on our minds. It has generated some strange dreams, although, Anne’s dreams are more school related. Speaking of Endeavor, Dan, Annie and Amanda watched it roll through downtown LA last night.