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The dance of the rubber ring thing

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The dance of the rubber ring thing

04.07.04 (11:11 am) [edit]

Two men buying a bed was the comic high of the year in J de la F. The shop assistant blushed puce. We just made light of it and made jokes about trying out the one in the shop window. After a while she relaxed into the idea and got all eager about selling a bed to these two eccentric foreigners. We started “testing” the beds and before long the shop assistant was doing the same. “What about this one? Even better try that one”. It ended up with all three of us together on one bed, agreeing yes, this was the one.
We went to the desk to pay and were told that we had to pay extra for the legs. The assistant was clearly a bit embarrassed about this, and thought that €6 per leg was a bit steep. She finished by asking, “so, how many do you want?” Uh!

Before moving here I thought DIY was something that people who didn’t have the foresight to call somebody in did. This is a whole new world for me! About an hour away there’s a DIY mega store, a toy shop for grown-ups.
When I recently discovered that one of the toilet cisterns was leaking I decided to try and fix it myself. I took the whole thing apart and saw that the problem was a black rubber ring thing was letting water through. Off I went to the DIY store and bought everything that looked remotely similar to the rubber ring thing. Laden down I came home and chose one to try first. Fit rubber ring thing, attach tubes, fix cistern to toilet, flush, mop floor, take everything apart and repeat whole process with next rubber ring thing. The day wore on and I waded through the carrier bags of rubber ring things. Eventually I’d tried them all and in desperation went back to the original one…it worked!
My version of DIY may not be cost affective, but I got there in the end. Oh, and if anybody out there wants a selection of rubber ring things, I'm your man.

posted by: Robbo (reply)
post date: 04.07.04 (2:52 am)

Fark off

posted by: lynne (reply)
post date: 04.07.04 (8:19 am)

Haha. I do that same thing whenever I try to fix something. I go to the store and buy everything that kind of sort of looks like the part I need (which I never seem to remember to bring with me to the store) and then hope I got the right one :) Luckily, when I had a leaking toilet, I bought a kit that had one of all the rubber things so I was sure I had the right one.

posted by: fotocali (reply)
post date: 04.08.04 (5:34 pm)

No problems yet with my (year-and-a-half-owned) home (built 1980). Nothing plumbing, that is. Oh yes, the air conditioner died last summer (in our hundred-degree heat -- 37 C?) and was not replaced until AFTER my July 4th party which brought a houseful of sweating people. And I did have to have that huge tree (3x the height of my house) cut down (and I am now masculinely wood-chopping the chunks of it down into smaller pieces for next winter's fireplace). But nothing annoying I've had to do myself. Like a leaking toilet.

Though, more than ever before in my life, now (as a homeowner) I notice people in their yards digging, hammering, painting and such. Just yesterday as I was driving along I saw a man in his front yard feeding a plumber's snake down into his sewer-access to unclog whatever was probably making his personal sewage back up onto his bathroom floor. And I shuddered at the expense and hassle of it all.

Rubber ring things...?! hm..

posted by: SnowbirdArts (reply)
post date: 04.10.04 (11:01 am)

Home repair makes me cry. By the way, with regard to your being a book hoarder, I suspect Freud would conclude that you have a large library (or a very messy attic).

Linda

posted by: Andaloo (reply)
post date: 04.10.04 (11:18 am)

Reply to: SnowbirdArts
Bugger...rumbled again!

posted by: SnowbirdArts (reply)
post date: 04.10.04 (12:20 pm)

Reply to: Andaloo

When your previous message came through, the message server spaced it so as to read "Reply to SnowbirdArtsBugger". So I had to stop back here to make sure I had not somehow gotten on your short list by speculating about the state of your attic!

Linda