I am issuing a challenge to myself for this week. Starting right after this post and ending next Monday morning, I am only going to allow myself to post images to my web site. If I have something to say, I better be able to say it visually. So either there will be a lot of interesting imagery or there will be no posts at all. Who knows? I will also be keeping a paper journal. I even bought a new 80 page spiral just for the occasion. I bet you it’s at least half full by next Monday. And finally, I will not be visiting my usual daily time-sinks, such as Metafilter and Google News (or any news sites).

These actions are going to serve two purposes: my addiction to posting the most boring and mundane details of my boring and mundane life may be broken, and I might be forced to do some thoughtful photography and graphic design. Additionally, I’ll be forced to use a pen and paper to get something off my chest, and maybe my crappy, crappy handwriting will improve.

I’d like to just unplug the network cable and disconnect from the online world entirely for a week, but it’s too tightly entwined with my personal life in a number of ways. It is no longer possible for me to just not be online for a week or more. That is what I get for convincing all my friends and family members they needed computers and the internet, and well, some business is just easier to deal with online as well.

Anyway, there’s my challenge to myself. Ought to be interesting … or very, very boring. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what comes of it! Maybe eventually I will get to take an actual unplug-from-the-network type vacation, or perhaps even a vacate-the-house type vacation, but right now, this is the best I can do: change a daily activity in a big way and challenge myself to deal with that daily activity in a new way.

Maybe I’ll regain some energy or even get some artwork done. Or maybe I’ll just lay around the house with my extra free time whining to the cats about my life. At any rate, I won’t be whining here, and I suspect — as this is shaping up to be the second sucky week in a row — it’d just be a week of non-stop whining anyway. I’ll spare us all the drama of a week like that.

So until next Monday morning, my lips — or rather my typing fingers — are sealed. The challenge is now on!

If there’s something you really need to say to me, the email address is on the sidebar of my web site.

Last night I noticed a little water under the kitchen sink after rinsing out a cup. Not a lot of water, and since the seal on the faucet fixture is anything but water-tight, and I’d been splashy with the cup rinsing, I figured that was probably the cause. I did make a note to check more thoroughly today.

I was getting ready to do the dishes, and I (wisely) decided to investigate the water-under-the-sink problem before filling both sinks with a whole bunch of water. It’s not the faucet seal being less than water-tight. It’s the garbage disposal.

Apparently one of the motor seals is broken, and any water going into that sink is now poring right out the bottom. This is the third time in my life I have experienced a disposal failure of this nature, but it’s the first time I don’t have a handy apartment repairman to call to fix it free of charge. Major bummer. Under-sink disposals are not cheap.

I have made another decision in my position of executive manager of the kitchen. We will not be replacing the disposal with another one. It will be removed and discarded. Instead, I want a new faucet set and new pipes under the sink. I’d even settle for just new pipes under the sink and the current faucet set resealed properly, which is what I will likely have to settle for getting, seeing as that’s the cheapest option.

Will I miss having a disposal in my sink? Maybe for a day. I really don’t like them, and since we reuse a good amount of our organic wastes, it doesn’t get much use anyway. It’s just one more thing sitting around waiting to break. I used mine, but I could live just as easily without it. Unfortunately, I can’t live with water running out of it every time I use the sink, so something will have to be done about this soon.

It’s safe to say I am upset, depressed, and aggravated. It’s like the perfectly crappy ending to what was a perfectly crappy week.

It’s also safe to say that Honey-Do list is finally getting officially made, and it’s all about the kitchen. I’m going to spend this week doing a thorough cleaning of every corner of the kitchen and organize everything in the cabinets and on the work surfaces. Next weekend, both the sink and oven problems are getting solved, and I don’t care if we have to go into debt to do it. So … this is going to be a perfectly crappy week too. Wonderful. I needed another perfectly crappy week.

Well, at least I am feeling better physically. Mentally, I am now quite gloomy and glum.

An example of the stupid stuff the sports commentators say:

One of the American women’s divers was about to dive, and the sports guy said “She broke the mold. Her father played football. Her uncle played football. She decided to take up diving!” Um, unless there is something going on in the world of university level American football that I haven’t heard about, girls really don’t really get to choose football. How many female football players on the university or pro level you know?

The invisible talking heads make me crazy. That’s not even a great example of the stupid, stupid things they say. It’s just the most recent.

In my capacity as executive kitchen manager and dietitian at Casa de Orb, I decided I would not go to the farmers market today. Lin had to work, and I do not have the strength of will or body to go all the way out there, schlep around in the already hot morning, haul a bunch of heavy goods around by myself, and then drive all the way home. And … I would have had to stop at an ATM and stop to get gas. Just not in me to be that productive today. It’s going to be an interesting week of meals, as the larder is almost bare of good foods, and we will have to go next week or we will starve. I refuse to buy meat at the HEB. I’m sure there’s nothing really wrong with the meats at the HEB, but once you have had free-range, grass-eating, non-drugged cow and pig, you don’t want to go back. It really does taste better, which it better, because it costs a whole lot more.

I did find the will to go to the craft store to get a skein of yarn and elastic I have been wanting to get for a couple of weeks. Priorities, right? Food … not so important. Craft supplies … important! Well, the stuff was on major sale, and the sale ended today. I couldn’t put it off any longer, and the yarn is for a project I’m knitting for someone else. Not that anyone in Texas is going to be needing knitted mitts anytime soon, but why procrastinate?

Time to go call Mom. She had a dentist appointment this week, and she’s feeling mopey. She goes back again on Wednesday for another. Which reminds me, I need to call my dentist and set up my next appointment. I keep putting it off, but it isn’t going to get better by itself. I only have a couple more appointments until my teeth are all in great shape. I’m just not looking forward to some of the work ahead. OK, it’s not the work so much as the shots required to do work at the front of the mouth. Those are going to suck.

Phelps won his seventh gold medal by one one-hundredth of an inch! It was insane!

The guy’s a machine. He’s a machine that consumes 12,000 calories a day. He burns a lot of them off, obviously, during training, but I am left wondering where the hell does he put it while he’s digesting it? Has anyone ever seen him with a bulging belly? These are the probing questions I’d like answered!

Also, I totally blame Phelps — personally — for sucking me into a period of Olympic addiction. We usually watch a little here and there, but not hours and hours over the course of every freaking day. But nooooo, not this time. We have to watch every night to see if Phelps wins another gold medal.

Go Phelps! Woot!!!

Every minute, about five gallons of water passed through the sinks, sprinklers, fountain and pool at Lance Armstrong’s house in June, making the retired professional cyclist Austin’s biggest water-using individual that month.

That’s water to the tune of 222,900 gallons for one month at a cost of $1,630.23.

When asked about it, Armstrong was shocked he had used that much on his 1.1 acre property. Shocked … because he has a management company that pays his bills for him. Must be nice to not only have enough money to have a management company manage your daily existence for you but also to have so much you don’t notice that management company is paying enormous bills in your name. Does he never ever look at his own bank statement?

What’s possibly even more disgusting than using an amount of water equivalent to 26 average Austin households — also equivalent to our entire yearly water usage (did I ever mention I suck at math?) the amount of water Lin and I would use in 150 years — is the fact he wasn’t even in Austin during the month of June. Yeah … must be nice to be wealthy.

If the above link doesn’t work for you and you really want to read about all the rich idiots on the west side of Austin using far too much water, here’s the link to the original story, which may require logging into the site.

I don’t know what has been up with me this week, but I have been utterly incapable of putting my butt in gear and getting anything done. I’d love to blame it on lack of sleep, but I’ve actually been getting about as much as I usually do, and I haven’t been doing anything at all to eat up any energy. It’s really not that hard to sit on the couch and watch athletes sweating!

I just got back from the store — finally. I couldn’t face walking around in there any longer than absolutely necessary to maintain the peace and order of the household for the weekend, so I bought just the very few things we had to have: coffee, creamer, milk, cookies, soup, and Dr Pepper. The quickest trip to the store ever, and I was dragging by the time I got back to the truck, which seemed to be parked somewhere in Canada. It’s Friday. The store was packed. I was lucky to find a parking space at all.

Dammit. I forgot trash bags. Oh well. We’ll just have to survive until Monday.

Now, even though I have drank so much coffee I am jittery, I am completely wiped out. My energy level is just not there — no energy at all physically or mentally. It sucks.

I’m going to go have one more cup of coffee — each cup gives me about 45 minutes of usefulness — and go mix up a small amount of spackle. I have to get the first spackle experiment started today, so it can dry. If it works, I’d like to proceed onward with my idea this weekend, provided I somehow find some energy.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. I have to — absolutely have to — go to the grocery store tomorrow. I also have to get caught up on the housework. I’m going to go lay down in a dark room right now, and in the morning, I will consume mass quantities of coffee. I will get everything done that must be done, and then I will drink more mass quantities of coffee.

Why? Because the thing I really want to do tomorrow is experiment with spackling powder. I’m not saying anything more than that. I leave your mind to speculate.

So tomorrow is going to be a busy day. I better get to bed! How unfortunate I am not sleepy at all. It figures. I’ll get all the stuff done I need to get done, and then I’ll be too tired to get to the thing I want to get done. Hopefully the coffee gods will smile on me and keep me going!

Anyway, I’m going to go lay down in a dark room. Not that I believe this will lead to sleep anytime soon, but I have to try.