WC Soccer

There's a World Cup going on...USA, Italy and Ireland not included. So unless your a major soccer fan, it's under the radar round these parts. SoulSlam is not interested in the least.

The Recycling Dopes

So in my burg, we do curbside recycling. They gave each home two (2) barrels; a small blue barrel for co-mingled (plastic/aluminum/glass) and a bigger yellow can for cardboard and paper. Which the DPW dopes proceeded to break in short order (handles cracked off, split bottoms, etc). When this program was started 10 or so years ago it was ostensibly to keep our carting fees from garbage disposal company down. So recycle away!

I also remember the d-bag that actually started this (he's low on my list of humans) said you can recycle "any plastic". As a matter of fact, these cans are a treasure trove of recycling info, including the line that any plastic 1-7 can be inserted for recycling. Times change though.

Apparently, the town pays $10 a ton for recycling. Unless there's contaminents, then it's $175 a ton. Big jump. I have zero doubt that people are putting things in there they absolutely should not, so I get it. But now, they are basically capping the recyclables to plastics 1-2 (Plastic #1: Polyethylene Terephthalate PET ...Plastic #2: High Density Polyethylene HDPE). Wow. What the hell are we doing with numbers 3-7?

Apparently they want it thrown in garbage.

So the cartage fees will inevitably go up. Any schoolkid will tell you that.

What we have are people running things that have zero vision and clue.

THE NEW YORK METS

Awful. That's the best word to describe this mess.

Constructed wrong. Even Paul Loduca thinks so.

Worst situational hitting I've ever seen. Re: Adrian Gonzalez (bye bye) double in top of 7th inning on Saturday vs. NYY and the Asdrubel Cabrera "bunt" last Wednesday. Two exhibits in a massive shit museum.

Hurt. All the time. Cespedes? Really? This guy has the quads of a 90 year old man apparently. Syndergaard? The king of the finger injury. It is mind-boggling.

Who's to blame: Us, the fans. You, me, all of us.

This ownership (The Wilpons) and front office management (Sandy Alderson) think they can bamboozle loyal Mets fans with their bargain-bin signings and cheap-ass ways. Because enough of us show up time and time again to allow them to turn the dollars of profit. Everybody was positive giddy after 12 games of the season. But this is not the NFL. You play 162 in this man's game. Right now, the Mets stand at 28-34. Probably won't end up in last place because the Triple A Miami Marlins plan on that this season. But now they go on a 10 game road trip to Atlanta, Arizona and Colorado. Coming home 3-7 on that is probably optimistic, you'd do backflips if the could go 5-5. In any case, they have a long way to go before they are in the plus column after this roadtrip.

So what do you do? They waived Gonzalez. They will most likely jettison Reyes within two weeks. You can start looking to trade off players, but the problem is, "who wants them?" You could easily deal deGrom and Syndergaard, but at that point you should plan on a lot of empty ballpark games. Those guys aren't free agents for another couple of years so that's best done in off-season. Familia (who just went on DL) is an FA after this season and will bring you back a young A-level player, nothing more. Gsellman could probably net you something decent. Other than that, nothing is viable. Bruce has a 3 year deal (Thanks Sandy), so nobody is touching that the way he's hitting. Cabrera? Maybe a team that needs a veteran utility guy. You're not trading Nimmo, Rosario or Conforto. So you have what they always seem to have: a team nobody wants. Including me.

Mr. Fixit

SoulSlam has a lot of praise for youtube. If you have an issue with something mechanically, you can generally find a video so you can attempt a DIY fix. That happened this weekend with washing machine.

Before I left house Friday AM, I wanted to wash the bath mat from the downstairs bath (it's actually a shower). Open up front door and there's water sitting in tub. OK, maybe one of the Sons of SoulSlam grabbed something before we were ready. Happens. I guess. So I turn it on and away I go.

Come home in afternoon, dress for the gym and go downstairs. Notice that said item is still in washer. Open door and...can't open door. It's in locked mode. What? Turn on and I have an error code! I HATE ERROR CODES!!!

So, I unplug and plug in again, and washer at least now lets me open door. And I pull out a drenched bath mat...still lots of water in this machine. OK, must not be draining. So for the next two hours, I pull out hoses, run rinse cycles, try everything I can at time...but no. We try to call service dept. where we purchased but it's Friday and they are gone for weekend. Will have to wait for Monday.I ended up going to GYM at 6:30PM.

Now, as I'm aging, I get more and more ansty with broken shit. Add to that the fact that two teenage sons and four people who go to the gym every day are going to make some soiled clothes. So a few days without a washer could be an issue. So Saturday AM, while at the GYM (I was deadlifting), I decide to start looking at some youtube videos. Drain motor didn't seem to be making any strange noises. I watch one video in particular, and it inspires me to try. So I go home and start taking off the covers. Which is a task on a full-size washer. Anyway, with covers off I locate cointrap and bladder house by drain pump. I do some recon in this area...seemed like door to cointrap might be stuck? Not sure. Anyway, I replace the covers in reverse and cross my fingers.

Washer fixed! The rest of the day was a breeze.

Early Green

After giving blood yesterday (legally, at a blood center); SoulSlam returned home a little after 6:30PM. Figured I'd vacuum the pool (again). What did he find?

It was somewhat green on the bottom. Now, the water temp has risen quite a bit in a week. as we've had some sunshine and mild evenings. But I have never, and I mean never seen it get green in a couple of days this early in the season. So vacuum I did, then chemicalized the b-jesus out of the water. Added copious amounts of PH! Then some shock (not too much to start). Left filter running all night. Went outside at 6am, walked back to clear skimmer basket and...broke the skimmer door. To be fair, the little plastic pins were getting futzy anyway.

HOLIDAY WEEKEND DOINGS:

Replace thermostat on Tahoe. Time to sell or get rid of, depending on outcome of mechanical work

Pool maintenance

Sunday Memorial Day Parade past the House of SoulSlam...should take 10-15 minutes

Watch some baseball (all on TV, Mets out of town)

Maybe go see Deadpool 2

Have a great one!

Pool 2018

So this year, SoulSlam didn't open the P-O-O-L until a week or so ago. Traditionally I have the cover off in late April, but it was about 40 degrees here in late April.

Here's the pool timeline:

Cover came off after pumping water off it for the sixth time on Sunday 5/13

Filter assembled the evening of Monday 5/14, along with adding water to the necessary levels. BTW, I was attacked by mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds and had a puffy face for my efforts

The "thunderstorm to end all spring thunderstorms occurred in Tuesday 5/15. Power out for the next 30 hours. So other hings take precedence for a few

Filling pool recommences on Friday 5/18. During which one the guys working for my contractor shuts off water valve to my hose, so that kind of slowed things down

Saturday 5/19. Enough water in pool to start running filter. Water is pretty murky and green now. Added some PH

Sunday 5/20. 10AM. Water is sufficiently clear to see what's doing. Every whirlybird off the trees now resides in the bottom of my pool

Start cleaning off bottom of pool with trusty leaf rake. Fill a nice sized garbage can with leaves and whirlybirds. Vacuum begins, stopped 4x to clear basket in filter. All told I spent ~ 3 hours cleaning pool.

So now it looks pretty good. Still another vacuuming required. Gotta drop the ladder. But YSSS jumped in yesterday and said whhoooo!

SUMMER OFFICIALLY BEGINS!

Power Outage 2018

So we had a big thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. Lots of wind, rain, etc. The stuff that makes up a May thunderstorm...and we lost power. By all accounts it happened at 4:45 PM EDT. And right now, almost a full 23 hours later, we are still w/o power. You can imagine the happiness.

So what is going on? We had a massive power outage with Hurricane Sandy in October-November 2012. Afterwards, the promises of "we'll do what we can to upgrade the infrastructure and system" began. Which was absolute BS. In March 2018, a severe Nor'easter came through and lots and lots of people lost power (we did not). More of the same language from the power companies. Now, in mid-May, we get a storm and the power is gone again. And we are supposed to "be patient".

FYI - the estimate is it will be on by 11:30 PM on Thursday. That's 32 hours from now. Un-fucking-real.