Posts under ‘The Modern Condition’

It’s National Dental Hygienist Week, which happened to coincide with my regular checkup. After the usual digging and scraping came the standard question, “What flavor do you want today?  Orange, mint, or strawberry?”, none of which struck me as appealing. But I have discovered that she keeps other flavors “under the counter” – if you […]

Like a lot of people, we have one of those home phones that announces the caller id when the phone rings.  Like a lot of people, we get robocalls. “CANCER! SOCK!” “POLICE! BENIFF!” “UNASSIGNED!” “ZERO!” and so on. Today the phone rang and it called out “AWARENESS!”.  I have to admit I thought really hard […]

Springtime, and I go to the store to get a new air filter and spark plug for the old lawnmower.  As I’m heading out to the shed, CVH asks what I’m doing. “I need to gap the new spark plug for the lawn mower,” I said. She says, “Well, I don’t know nothing about gapping […]

Today I noticed that my dental floss has an expiration date stamped on the package.  I mean, really – if a Twinkie can last thirty years, why can’t my floss last two?

A while back, the paper towel people came up with a great idea: pick-a-size.  They started perforating their sheets at half size.  This, I felt, was a great boon to us paper towel users.  Almost always, unless the dog has made a mess on the floor, I only need half a sheet of paper towel.  […]

The new toilet finally arrived.  The ladies are pleased. And a nice thing is that it’s “chair height” – that extra inch and three-quarters is surprisingly comfortable. Especially at our age. A big plumber showed up and took out the old commode.  He picked it up and said, “This is the heaviest one I have […]

I gave up looking for my screwdriver bits and just bought a set at our neighborhood Harbor Freight (our neighborhood has all the conveniences, if nothing else). Today I got a call from Lowe’s that my new commode had arrived and that I should speak with someone at the service desk about picking it up.  […]

By now, “renovations” no longer seems to be the right word to use.  “Repair” is closer to the mark. We picked out our new toilet.  I was going to have a handyman buddy pick it up and install it with me (he works reasonable) until the Lowe’s salesman told me that they offer next day […]