Here at the Compound, in the soggy land of endless wet, our water comes from a well.\u00a0 And in between that well and my alimentary canal is a large capacity sediment filter with a nominal 25-micron rating.\u00a0 And when they say nominal, they mean that\u2019s a make-believe number your supposed to take with a grain of salt (which would also pass right through it).<\/p>\n
This filter comes with a filter life rating of six months.\u00a0 Now in as much as I\u2019m an engineer who has a very intimate relationship with filters from reverse osmosis pore size that can restrict the passage of atom sized particles up to bag filters that stop more or less nothing, I feel qualified and even privileged to insert my own factor onto this rating.\u00a0 And the factor I used turns out to be twelve.\u00a0 It was about six years ago that I installed the last edition of this handy household protective device.<\/p>\n
I know, I know, I\u2019m a monster.\u00a0 I\u2019m endangering my plumbing, my heating system, the well pump and the very fabric of space-time in the general vicinity of the Compound.\u00a0 Fine, guilty as charged.\u00a0 But look at it from my point of view.\u00a0 I\u2019m terminally lazy and keeping track of all the stuff I\u2019m supposed to care about is just too much.\u00a0 My system of maintenance is called the catastrophic failure panic method or CFPM for short.\u00a0 Under this nifty protocol I more or less let things run on their own until catastrophic failure or the fear thereof concentrates my attention on some terrifying effect, like flood, fire or downed power lines crackling and buzzing like a giant nest of angry hornets.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t claim that this lifestyle choice doesn\u2019t have some difficulties.\u00a0 It\u2019s definitely expensive in the long run.\u00a0 But it goes hand in hand with my belief that I live a charmed existence.\u00a0 Somehow, I\u2019ve managed to sidestep the consequences of my negligence and laziness pretty much entirely.\u00a0 Sure, I have to pay a lot of money to fix the things I neglect but not worrying about all the things I should be taking care of and concentrating on the things that interest me has meant that life is a wonderful adventure with just enough excitement (or fear) to keep it interesting.<\/p>\n
Take this filter thing as an example.\u00a0 I remember about three years ago Camera Girl said to me that the clear plastic filter housing looked really gross.\u00a0 Now gross is her layman\u2019s term for filled with silt and rust.\u00a0 And she may have thought that I ignored her warning.\u00a0 But she couldn\u2019t have been more wrong.\u00a0 Her words were recorded and analyzed by my subconscious and became a part of the enormous algorithm that is my brain\u2019s response to the great big wide wonderful world that I imagine surrounds me.<\/p>\n
And at precisely the right time I remembered that filter and so about a week ago I looked at that filter and was repulsed at how gross it looked and some other part of my brain measured the pressure drop that the water system was experiencing coming from the well to my faucet (well indirectly, actually I was noting the lower flow rates I\u2019ve been seeing lately).\u00a0 And my fear of catastrophically destroying the well pump triggered CFPM action and I bought the new filter and installed it today.<\/p>\n
The system works!<\/p>\n
You might think, \u201cWhat the hell is wrong with this guy?\u201d\u00a0 Many laymen confuse the CFPM with complete imbecility.\u00a0 But there\u2019s nothing complete about it all.\u00a0 After all I brush my teeth every day and that\u2019s annoying so I definitely have my limits.\u00a0 But this whole thing has made me think I should change my factor from twelve to two.\u00a0 After all, an annual event would tie it into the celestial cycle and trigger my interest in all things occult.\u00a0 Just as the Druids sacrificed captives at the Autumnal Equinox (okay maybe I made that up) so I could celebrate the changing of the filter as a sacrifice to the great gods of pressure drop; Moody, Fanning, Darcy and Reynolds.<\/p>\n
Well, it\u2019s been a taxing day.\u00a0 I \u2018m going to go relax before tackling the last episode of \u201cThe Terminal List.\u201d\u00a0 Camera Girl\u2019s initial reservations about the show have evaporated due to her love of cinematic blood-thirsty violence.\u00a0 But this brush with disaster has made me more thoughtful.\u00a0 Maybe I should take a look at that gage on the propane tanks.\u00a0 I\u2019d hate to run out of fuel for the generator this winter.\u00a0 Ahhh, there\u2019s plenty of time.\u00a0 I\u2019ll just make a mental note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here at the Compound, in the soggy land of endless wet, our water comes from a well.\u00a0 And in between that well and my alimentary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3366,818,1263],"tags":[3341,157,1267],"class_list":["post-20393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-life-in-dunwich","category-ocf","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-dunwich","tag-ocf","tag-photogs-corner"],"yoast_head":"\n