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human hands and the gorgeousness of nature
Wednesday, April 23 2008
In the Honda Civic hatchback there is a plate beneath the back bench that covers two access portals into the top of the gas tank. Through one of these portals, the engine draws the gasoline (the tiny electric fuel pump is actually inside the tank - so I have to believe it doesn't use brushes or any technology that could cause a spark). Through the other, the car monitors the fuel level using a float-operated rheostat and a separate low-fuel sensor. Opening these portals up, I was finally able to siphon out the last five gallons of gasoline from the tank. Once it was empty, I unstrapped it from the bottom of the car and set it aside. Then I harvested the muffler and intermediate pipe, both of which I'd installed brand new a little over a month ago. Gretchen and I will be be picking up a 1998 Honda Civic hatchback in New Jersey on Sunday ($2600 on Ebay), and if anything is badly rusted on it, my experience with Honda Civics tells me it will be the muffler and intermediate pipe.
Now that the hatchback is open all the time, cats like to climb in and take naps in the bare spots they find on the cluttered carpeting. I've found Clarence in there, but it's mostly the province of the two striped cats, Marie (aka "the Baby") and Julius (aka "Stripey").
Left: Julius (aka "Stripey") and right: Marie (aka "the Baby") in the gutted inside of the Honda Civic hatchback.
Sylvia (left) and the Baby.
The Baby hisses at Sylvia. (Sylvia is such a wallflower that she is rarely photographed.)
Just because I'm obsessed with dissecting a dead car doesn't mean I'm totally neglecting the other business of operating a house, and so:
Something about springtime seems to highlight the flaws and decay of manmade structures. The frosts of winter heave new cracks into stonework and masonry while burdening roofs and gutters with small temporary glaciers. March comes, the snow melts, and there in the mud you finally get to see all the ugly things you lost in the snow over the past four months. Then come April showers (which have been absent this year), suddenly expanding all the dry winter woodwork with a dramatic infusion of humidity. Wood cracks, doors jam, and insects start coming in the house and dying. Then a week of 75 degree days comes and women start wearing sundresses and out come the leaves and flowers and you realize that nothing made by human hands will ever measure up to the gorgeousness of nature.
With these thoughts in mind, I've been trying to correct a perennial problem with the door from the dining room that opens onto the east deck. It's a door that I installed back in April of 2003, a replacement for a window that had once been there. (I'd also had to make a connecting piece of deck.) But something about the interaction between the roof's drainage and the deck has resulted in continual problems for this door and things near it. For awhile there was a leak into Gretchen's basement library, which I had to install gutters and caulking to fix. But a persistent leak in that gutter has caused low-grade troubles with the door to continue.
So today I replaced the south end of that gutter with a fresh new piece, this time being careful to fully fill the seams of the mating gutter pieces with gutter sealant. Owing to the unusual aggressiveness of the midges, it was miserable work. It's hard to swat midges when your hands are covered with gutter sealant (and you're trying to keep them clean so you won't contaminate the gutter seals with things like smushed midges).
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