Notes from 1705 - Notes from 1705

My humble fix for a sweaty toilet

We used to have an on demand water heater located in the same area as our toilet. It had a massive 5 inch vent with a standing pilot light. You could sit on the toilet and use the heater as a sonic periscope, listening to all the sounds in the neighborhood. We finally replaced that beast, as it was finicky, made it difficult (if not impossible) to get just a small stream of hot water, and we finally had an area to place a full size electric water heater.

One of the downsides to this, we discovered, was that there was no longer a constant flow of air flowing past the toilet tank. This meant that the cold water coming into the toilet condensed on the outside of the porcelain tank, causing large droplets of water to fall all around the toilet, creating issues with the wood floor of the bathroom (long story). So I decided to fix this problem.

My solution was to line the inside of the toilet tank with half inch thick neoprene foam, held in place with 3M VHB adhesive strips. I covered the bottom of the tank, cutting around all the vital bits, and lined the wall, going up a half inch above the water level. Problem solved.

Nostalgic November

A story requested by the fantastic crew of Hemisperic Views @HemisphericViews on micro.blog.

As I get older, there are many things that trigger a feeling of nostalgia. There are many past moments that are triggered by sights, sounds, smells, objects. But the one item that is most appropriate for Nostalgic November is my collection of Doc Savage paperbacks - a collection that was started on a rainy November afternoon, while visiting relatives in California.

I was always a voracious reader, and on this particular rainy November day, I had run out of reading material on this trip - I had not expected to be stuck in a house all during my stay at Grandma’s. My dad suggested we head to the store to check out the paperbacks - I think he had run out of stuff to read, as well. When we got to the paperback section (remember spinning racks of paperbacks?), he grabbed a thin paperback with a large bronze man on the cover and said: “Here, I think you might like this!” There were two different books about this character, so I got both - and my ten year old self got hooked.

Doc Savage was a hero in the “pulps” of the 30’s and 40’s - some claim he was the first “superman” of either the pulps or comics. He had a “Fortress of Solitude” before Superman, his first name was Clark - you get the idea. 181 stories were originally published, and I had gotten hooked on the reprints done by Bantam, starting in the 1960’s. They were at the low 50’s in the reprints when I started collecting, and when I got back home, I spent the next few years scouring the used book stores for all the earlier ones I could find, and buying the new ones when they were released. I had an almost complete collection before other teenage pursuits (ahem) took priority over collecting books.

For some reason, I never got rid of those books. I got rid of everything else (a few times over), but never those books. Years later, I decided to complete my collection, and read the stories that I had never read. Every time I reach for a book, or look at my collection on the bookshelf - every time - I am reminded of that rainy California day with my dad, and the start of an adventure in reading, collecting, and enjoying the stories of Doc Savage and his aides.

The books that started it all: