After a Long and Unproductive Saturday

Price Pfister spout o-rings - 2 ea., o-ring, metric size 128, in buna-n or viton (most any material will do in this service)

After a long and unproductive Saturday of looking for Price Pfister kitchen faucet repair parts: calling, internet searching, and driving; I called it quits. I was many miles from home. The big box stores are a wonderful place, so much to choose from; but the several I visited yielded no part. They are good generalists as an institution but lousy on the specifics. I got exceptional service from a local auto parts store trying to match to parts they had in inventory, but alas, it did not work.

What I needed were two o-rings. O-rings that sealed the swiveling spout to the rest of the fixture. I considered replacing the entire faucet, which would have been a better use of my time but as my time was free and my sense stingy clung to me, I did not. So the day was gone and I went home.

The following week I measured the o-rings when I was close to my calipers and steel rule, educated myself in the use and variety of o-rings, and went to a local industrial supply house. They had a minimum transaction charge, which was less than I might have paid had I been able to mail order, but was well above what they would charged for the parts. I made a contribution to the till and enough for a coke to cover their trouble and left happy and in less than five minutes.

The fit was fabulous. Back at the job I was finished within minutes of my arrival. On another day my advise on a paying job would have been “Buy a new faucet.”

Consciousness is an Exquisite Liar

Consciousness is an exquisite liar. “I am real, the essences and the bloom of substance, all the florid details and the concrete unchanging substance and truths of the world come universe.”, and then behind the curtain - the curtain is discovered, the curtain so pervasive, so innocuous, so dead plain, so ever present it is invisible and opaque except... can  be seen an alien world so weird, so bizarre it begs credibility. Consciousness is slyly cunning, telling us what we want to hear, reassuring our confidence, not out of malice, or greed, or consideration of our being but out of plain steely economy. But, what is the ebb and flow of the minutia out which all things are.