things falling apart

this weekend's arctic cold meant bad news for the pipes in our primary bathroom, which froze saturday night, requiring the maintenance man to spend three full hours hanging out in our place trying to unfreeze them (and knocking a couple holes in the wall in the process). we had been obediently letting our faucets drip, as recommended by the landlord, but apparently they weren't dripping enough. that's what zero-degree weather will do for you. fortunately, virago noticed the problem early enough that our pipes didn't burst, as happened to one of our downstairs neighbors.

then, in a follow-up, our wireless router apparently died in the middle of the night last night. i don't think it froze to death, but the timing was suspicious. it probably died of old age—the thing was running wireless B, which made it positively ancient by networking standards. this forced an unplanned trip to best buy, but i turned that to my advantage by also grabbing a new joypad and some atari games to feed my craving for classic video games. playing metroid or super mario bros using the Z, X, and ctrl keys is not an ergonomic experience.

still, lest i be accused of technological ageism, not everything old needs to be replaced. i recently dusted off the old bread machine, which has to be 15 years old and hasn't been used regularly in 10, and started using it again. after all this time, it still works like a charm, and i suspect we're already becoming spoiled by the ready availability of fresh homemade honey-wheat-oatmeal bread. (the recipe calls for bread flour; i just replace a cup of that with wheat and add a bit more salt to make sure it rises.) ¶