Kitchen inventory...more shelf space!

For something to do today, I inventoried my spices, getting rid of stuff that had passed its expiration date, or in the case of the lemon pepper, solidified in its container. Truth be told, I don't even remember where that lemon pepper came from. All I can say is that I can't think of anything I'd use it for. Well it's gone now, along with redundant chili power (consolidated) and some cayenne pepper so old it was in a metal can.

The lemon pepper wasn't the only oddity either. What on earth is anise for? Or caroway seed? Anyway, my spice shelf is no longer a disorganised mess.

New toothpaste

When I ran out of toothpaste a few days ago, I bought a slightly different variety than normal. Usually I get Crest mint gel paste. This time I picked up a tube of Crest Pro Health clean mint and I have to say, I don't like it. Not one bit. Not only does it have a different texture than I'm used to, it also (and most importantly) has a truly nasty aftertaste. It is so unpleasant that I may not use up the rest of the tube.

Kitchen Patrol

I've been working on my kitchen a bit lately. Today I scrubbed the majority of my cabinets. A little Murphy's Oil Soap, a rag, and some elbow grease, and I was rewarded (an hour or so later) with a bucket of surprisingly dirty water. Of course, this is only the second time since I moved in that such a thing has happened, so maybe it isn't so surprising. Maybe tomorrow (or Monday) I'll finish the scrubbing. Then I'll tackle the pulls.

The pulls are interesting. Not only are there fifty-three of them, more or less darkened with age, but they aren't solid brass. I tried polishing a couple of them, and while they cleaned up fairly well, it was soon apparent that their brass coating was more or less gone. Some of it came off as I was polishing, while the rest had eroded away from years of neglect and/or handling. I'm not sure what they are actually made of. All I can say for sure is that they aren't steel. Maybe aluminum or pewter.

I may be wrong about them not being solid brass. I went and looked again, and now I wonder if they weren't coated in varnish or something.

I think I'm going to try and polish all of them. I'll need to remove them to do a thorough job. Maybe Chris still has his Dremel laying around. That might do the trick. The only other matter is one of aesthetics: the pulls aren't always lined up as well as they might be. Part of that is due to the layout of the cabinets themselves, but part of it is the fault of whoever installed them. See the picture below for what I mean.

As you can see, the pulls on the doors of the lower cabinets aren't lined up with the drawers immediately above them. I'm wondering if I should put any effort into correcting that. They aren't very nice cabinets, and I'm not sure they're worth the effort.

Ye Olde Water Softener

Once again, my water softener is failing to fulfil its function in life. I took the venturi assembly apart again, and discovered that the gasket therein (the whole assembly having nine seperate parts) was disintegrating. Little pieces of it were caught in various screens and other places, basically gumming up the whole works.

I drove all the way to the other end of town, to the Sears store, only to learn that they carried no spares in the store. I was basically told to go home and order what I needed on-line. So I did.

The gasket couldn't be purchased individually. I had to but a kit that contains at least one other part of some kind. Total cost: $16.95, not including shipping and tax. The lowest shipping will take a week and was $8.99. Add on $1 in tax and the total bill came to $26.71. Oh well, it's still cheaper than calling the repairman.

2012

So there's this movie coming out next week, an end-of-the-world disaster flick based on the fact that the Mayan (or Aztec, maybe: I can't remember which and I'm too lazy to check) calendar ends in 2012. As a movie premise I suppose it's all right, and I can understand other people jumping on the bandwagon to make some bucks, but even that presupposes that there are people out there who take this whole "the world will end in 2012" crap seriously.

Sadly, that presupposition appears to be spot on. That baffles me. Or rather, it reaffirms my belief that most people are idiots. The fact that the Mayan calendar system ends in 2012 is an interesting tidbit, and is a reflection of Mayan religous beliefs, but that's all it is. And it makes sense for the Mayan calendar to end when it does, because it ends when the Mayans believed the world would end (no point in having it run any further if no one would be around to use it, right?) The Mayans no doubt sincere in their belief, but that doesn't mean they were right. After all, they also believed that cutting out someones heart and burning it nourished their gods.

It's actually kind of depressing that any modern person would fail to immediately dismiss the Mayan prediction as the superstious nonsense that it is. It's too bad my conscience won't let me become a con man. I could start an end times cult and get rich. One guy did it for decades, moving the 'end time' back every so often so it stayed in the near future. And his followers bought it!