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familiar song sound test
Sunday, March 23 2008
Today I worked on the part of the trans-floor woodstove pedestal duct that reaches above the floor, executes a 90 degree turn, and blows air out the back of the pedestal. The whole thing was built beneath an angled two-by-four (the "four" dimension parallel to the floor) whose sides I blocked with aluminum flashing material, my favorite form of sheet metal. Once these things were in place, I glued in pieces of that foam rubber material that goes beneath carpeting in the places where it wouldn't constrict the airflow. On the flashing, though, I painted on a thick coat of silicone caulk, which I texturized by tapping with my fingertips while wet. This gave it thousands of little points, which I hoped would do a good job of absorbing sound.
Just to see what sort of progress I was making in the sound-elimination department, at some point I switched on a clock radio in the guestroom downstairs, tuning it to WPDH (the local cock rock station) and turning up the volume fairly loud. Since I'm a middle-aged white guy, I'm very familiar with every song played on this station. These range from AC/DC to ZZ Top, and it's rare to hear anything much more contemporary than Nirvana.
I went upstairs and could hear the music faintly wafting through the vent, but I felt real vindication for my sound-deadening jihad when I'd have to pause and listen for awhile to know what song was playing. And then I'd smile and say to myself, "Oh that song! I can't believe there are stations out there still playing this stuff!"
Gretchen rolled in early this evening after a five hour drive back from Silver Spring, and among the things she brought were two huge bags of injera (Ethiopian flatbread, which is impossible to get in the Hudson Valley). One of these bags had gone bad, filling the car with an over-the-top sour smell. But the dogs love injera and couldn't care less if it's a little strong. As for the bag of good injera, Gretchen's father had made some sort of authentic-seeming wat (curry) for it, and so I was easily able to have myself a delicious Ethiopian dinner here in one of the least Ethiopian places on Earth.
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