Journal Entry: February 3, 2009

Yesterday I got home from work and wedged myself under the kitchen sink to try to fix our garbage disposal. We’d disconnected it as part of our wiring project over the weekend, and then discovered that the power wiring wasn’t labeled (it’s usually color-coded for the hot wire and the neutral wire, and on an electric motor hooking it up wrong causes the motor to spin backward, which almost always causes problems and can often cause the motor to burn up).

Umm…so, anyway, physics lesson aside, I had left the garbage disposal disconnected and after two days (and all the dishes of a horde of visiting family), that was already becoming a problem by the middle of the day on Monday, so, as I said, I crawled into the tiny space under the kitchen sink and got to work.

It wasn’t as difficult a task as I’d expected, because the disposal had a small removable panel on the bottom of it to give access to the wiring connections. Unfortunately, it took me some trial and error before I found that panel, but within about forty minutes I had it dismantled, traced the wiring to the wall, connected it up, and then closed everything up and got out of the cabinet. We’ve run the disposal several times since then, and it seems to be working fine.

Pretty much right after that I headed up to Home Depot to pick up some painting supplies for T– and a single piece of plywood to act as a temporary countertop on our new island until Matt can come back down and make something more professional-looking.

I got home from Home Depot a little after 7:00, and T– had dinner waiting for me. I ate real quick, then we installed the countertop (with much measuring and then nudging, and then measuring again, and then cursing, and then nudging some more), glued and nailed it down, put the doors back on the wall-mount cabinets, and called it quits for the night.

That was sometime between 8:30 and 9:00, and I logged into WoW to take care of some chores while we watched Chuck and Heroes.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.