The Odd Sock: Today's walk report: 102818

Stuff from last weekend, this weekend and what was stuffed in the middle.

Last Sunday, October 21.
It wasn't too inspiring photo-wise hence the delay.

Bees seem to enjoy the water that seeps through cracks in the garden fountain.

Our usual male Calypte anna hanging out near the salvias.

Here he is fly catching...

Taking off to catch more flies. He needs no honey.

The in between weekends stuff was another venture in home improvement. This time replacing the kitchen faucet. I only bring it up because it was a big deal and a lot of hard work for both me and my girl, Docken. It was a serious pain in the ass and it put a huge damper on the ability and will to go walking. Now that weather isn't so severe we should be weekday walking too. Anyway, this originally started out with what seemed to be a simple faucet leak fix on a Moen kitchen faucet that was installed a mere 6 years ago. The faucet was "new in the box" but it could have been siting in that box for 20-something years for all I know. It came with the house. It wasn't a simple fix. Short answer: Moen uses a faucet valve cartridge which, in this case, was impossible to remove in order to install a replacement. In fact, before you buy a Moen or any other faucet that might use something like this cartridge, I recommend you look up some YouTube videos of people trying to remove and replace them.

Plan "B" was replace the entire faucet but not so fast... There was a center horseshoe brace bolted down under the sink that, despite four treatments of Liquid Wrench, another lubricant or two and a soaking in CLR, wasn't gonna let us remove a rusted nut on the bolt.

This is what it looked like before the treatment with CLR. You may also notice there's not much room there for trying to put torque on that nut. Nevertheless, the handle to the socket wrench we were using was actually bowing under the stress of trying to budge that nut. So, the metal horseshoe and the 1/2" deep plastic one under it needed to be manhandled until it was busted up sufficiently to pull it up through the hole topside-- enough to hacksaw some off to get the whole thing up and out. Doc gets credit for that idea. I get credit for the manhandling under the sink although her counter-struggle above the sink, holding the faucet in place was a bitch too.

Now, if I haven't gone off on a serious enough of a tangent by writing about our kitchen faucet woes, hold on...

Hanging out under the kitchen sink reminded me of a dream I had in 2010. It was such a bizarre and vivid dream that I ended up illustrating it for my Facebook account at the time. You see, Will Ferrell had showed up one day under my kitchen sink. There he sat, in the lotus position.

He explained to me that he had invented a device that permitted one to travel through space by either accelerating or shrinking time (sorry, it was complicated, I can't remember which). Through some sort of wacky malfunction, or was it fate, he ended up under my kitchen sink. For some reason he trusted me and he wanted to share with me the wonders of traveling through space by manipulating time. The device itself was a modified Victrola. I don't remember the brand.

Here's Will visiting the San Francisco Bay area...

Here he is again in Venice, Italy...

Today's walk. Sunday the 28th of October.

Leptotes marina on a Baja fairy duster seedpod.

Male rufous hummingbird on Nolina nelsonii.

Variegated meadowhawk dragonfly.

Red-tailed hawk.

Here's another red-tailed hawk. I believe the bird that was chasing it was a Northern Mockingbird. Red-tailed hawks are frequently chased off by smaller birds. Basically, I think, they don't care and don't feel like expending the energy to rip them to pieces using their formidable, large sharp talons.