weekend recap, and a bonus rant about plumbing

On Friday night, just as I was leaving work, I got an invitation to join some of my co-workers for drinks. We went to Loreley on Rivington, where my friends were out back in the garden enjoying liters of German beer. I had two liters of Spaten Oktoberfest and soon I was loving life as much as they were. Around 10 PM everyone else had taken off, leaving me and one other guy to continue the evening's revelry. We stopped at a pizza place for something to help soak up the beer, then we went to a Bleecker Street bar where his friend was serving the drinks. A few more beers later, and I was just on the happy side of drunk. (As opposed to the 'blacked-out, how did I get home?' side of drunk.) We took the party to Taco Bell on Sixth Ave., a haunt I haven't visited since I moved out of the Village three years ago. After hours of drinking, a burrito seemed like a fantastic idea at 1 AM, and I didn't realize until the next morning what a terrible decision it really was. After our run for the border we walked down 4th St. to the East Side to get taxis home. On the way we ran into one of my old friends from college, his wife, and another friend of theirs. Only in New York does it make perfect sense that I'd run into a friend at 1:45 AM on a deserted East Village street.

I took it easy on Saturday morning, what with my hangover and all. I didn't have much time to sleep in, as the plumber showed up around 10 AM to start working on my bathroom sink.

[CUE RANT]

Last weekend, I noticed that I had some kind of (what seemed like a minor) clog in my bathroom sink. Whenever I ran the water in the bathroom, I'd hear a gurgling sound from my kitchen sink (the two rooms are adjacent and the sink pipes are connected). I didn't think much about it until last Tuesday night. I washed some dishes, then went into the bathroom and noticed that my bathroom sink had filled almost to the point of overflowing with dirty dishwater. I bailed it out, then called my super to let him know about the problem. He called me back on Wednesday afternoon to tell me that his plumber had been over there to look at the situation and that it would be fixed shortly. So imagine my surprise when I came home that night to find a huge mess in both the kitchen and the bathroom. Apparently the plumber had had to get under my kitchen sink, so all of the liquor and cleaning supplies I keep there were on the kitchen floor, along with a generous amount of filth. The bathroom was just as bad, and I didn't have a functioning bathroom sink either. At least my shower, toilet, and kitchen sink were still working. My super stopped by and said that he'd try to have the work finished on Thursday or Friday, and if nothing else, he'd get someone to clean up the kitchen. When I got home from rehearsal on Thursday night, nothing had changed. No cleanup or further repairs seem to have happened. By Friday night the work in the kitchen was done, so on Saturday morning I put all of my stuff back under the sink. The plumber worked in the bathroom on Saturday and again on Sunday, and by Sunday afternoon I had a new cabinet and sink in my bathroom, but it was still not connected. The last thing I heard was that the plumbing supply store in my neighborhood was closed on Monday, so the plumber would get the supplies on Tuesday, though he didn't say exactly when he'd finish the job.

In addition to all of that mishegoss, on Saturday night I managed to lock myself out of the apartment while I was making dinner. My super had flipped the switch on the apartment door that sets the knob to locked, and I'm not used to that. I took out the trash, and just as the door closed I realized I didn't have my keys. I did have my phone, so I called my super and he was kind enough to come right over and let me back in. Actually, as the plumber had his spare key to my apartment, the super had to jimmy the lock with a piece of metal. In the meantime, James had arrived for dinner and football, and he made many, many jokes about my ineptitude. We were able to save the chili I'd left on the stove, and Michigan beat Minnesota, so it turned out to be a good night after all.

The rant part of this is that all I had was a damn clog in the pipes, and now I'm getting a new sink?! I don't really see how a clogged pipe leads to a completely new sink, and while I'm waiting for workmen and supplies to finish the job, I'm brushing my teeth and washing my face in my kitchen. I wish I'd taken pictures of the mess; it was quite spectacular.

[END RANT]

I watched football for a while on Sunday afternoon, then I had an early dinner and went to the Javits Center for Kol Nidre service for the start of Yom Kippur. It's supposed to be a 25-hour fast (from sundown to one hour after sundown the next day), but since I'd had to eat dinner at 4:30 on Sunday and I waited until 8 PM to eat dinner tonight, it ended up being about a 28-hour fast. Tonight's dinner was a three-egg omelet with green onions, Cheddar cheese and cilantro, hash browns with mushrooms, turkey bacon, and toast. Mmm, breakfast for dinner.