11.10.2009

Sarah making dinner.

Sarah came over tonight to make risotto. She made a recipe she got from her mother. Delicious.

We drank the 2^nd bottle of the wine Pris sent up a while back – the white. It was good. I think the red was the better of that batch, although this one was a hair sweet, and I have a sweet-tooth, so I liked that. I made a couple of little brown-sugar-and-brandy sauced apple tartlets. The Wedge had good apples this past week. I was pleased with how they came out.

Tapping Holes

This afternoon I went to Bauer Brothers salvage yard to buy a door-knob for my bedroom. I sorted through the bins of miscellany there to find what I wanted and headed back to the loading dock to find someone to quote me a price.

Some of the folks at Bauer Brothers seem to over-value door-knobs for some reason, so I was prepared for a bit of haggling. I walked up to the floor manager and asked how much.

“A million dollars,” he jested.

I laughed, and he came down quite a bit.

“Ten bucks.”

I thought that even ten was unreasonable, so I pointed to a knob and said that the threads on the little screw-hole that secures the knob to the spindle were stripped.

“I’ll have to tap this hole,” I bargained, “Give it to me for five bucks.”

“Seven-fifty,” replied the floor guy. He was standing in a group of workers on the dock, shooting the shit. Apparently no one was doing any real work just then.

I pointed at the other knob.

“Both of these holes are stripped. I’m going to have to tap two holes!” I insisted. “That’s worth $2.50 a hole. Five bucks.”

At that juncture an older guy stepped from behind a big bit of HVAC equipment and smirked.

“If you’re going to be tapping holes, it’s you should be paying us!” he quipped.

Everyone on the loading dock erupted into laughter. Per my usual, it took me several beats to get the joke.

Oh, yeah. Tapping holes. I ought to pay them. After a long, confused stare, I caught onto the warehouse humor and made some remark that I didn’t know they were in that line of business, that I thought I’d have to venture a little farther west on Broadway for that sort of thing, etc. etc.

The floor manager took pity on me at that point and called up to the cash register to tell them to sell me the thing for five bucks.

When I got home I tapped 5/16″ threads in the two knobs, as promised, and found a bit of scrap brass shaft from an old bathroom fixture that happened to be the right size. I put some threads on the shaft and cut a couple of small lengths of screw off of it.

Now I don’t have to open my bedroom door with a screwdriver anymore. It’s been months since I’ve had a knob on there.¹ It’s great.

I wonder, if I had been quicker to catch the jest, whether that would have raised or lowered the price.

¹I had to re-arranged some doors back around May when Adam / Joey / Wyatt moved in. The re-arranging involved pirating my bedroom door-knob for one of the doors on the first floor, and I hadn’t replaced it since.