The five-hundred pound gorilla in the room...

I am not going to write about that. Too much mud in the water. I would just be stirring it up since I have no unique insights nor have I been breathlessly following every pundit and new shred of evidence.

Nope. I am going to wait this one out. I have people working on it and I (mostly) trust them.

Recreational Plumbing

I have a leak beneath the faucet in our newly remodeled bathroom.

I turned off the valve and the leak continued, so it is not on the fixture side of the valve.

I felt the threaded joint between the 1/2" nipple and the valve and it does not seem to be coming from there.

By the process of elimination I deduced that I have a flaw in the 1/4 valve. I purchased a replacement this morning and as soon as I feel motivated I will replace the valve and see if good things happen. That will probably happen AFTER Mrs ERJ takes her shower. Dumping the water pressure as she is stepping into the shower is likely not make me popular.

Power outages and emergency lighting

Mrs ERJ was talking with her sister on the phone last night. My S-i-L expressed a concern about power-outages. S-i-L eyesight isn't the greatest even in good light, so she was fretting about being able to find a flashlight and even being able to find and manipulate the on-off button.

Source.  14 hours of light (each) on three AA batteries.

Mrs ERJ mentioned that we have a "Pull open to turn on" lantern in every bedroom.

Roasting a chicken

The plan is to roast a chicken today. Mrs ERJ told me that we have a lid for the dutch-oven in the pantry...I went looking and she was right. I think her sense of aesthetics were offended when I used a cast-iron skillet as a lid.

Having messed around with meat birds, the heavier birds are almost always male and have a better meat-to-bone ratio. The birds at the grocery store varied between 4.7 pounds (dressed) to 5.9 pounds. Since they are all slaughtered at the same age, that means that the 5.9 pound carcass came from a boy bird.