phones, doors and toilets

In thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of order: the more disordered something is, the more entropy it has. (For example, a cup of water with ice has less entropy than after the ice has melted). According to the laws of thermodynamics, entropy must grow at all times (unless you invest energy and organize stuff).
As any household, the Sharon mansion follows the rules of Physics. It's a natural behaviour. Things just tend follow the rules and fall apart ;)
In order to lower entropy, someone needs to do something (i.e, put energy in the system). And that someone follows a list.
The list of things-to-do-around-the-house includes many things, from trivial to complicated, from extremely urgent (like fixing leaks in toilets) to not urgent (like organizing closets). Frankly - it includes many things that most people would hire a professional to do. But the "balabayit" in the Sharon mansion would hear of no such thing. You probably remember Ron's post from a couple of weeks ago. If there's a professional out there that can fix it, aba can probably do it better.
That's one of the reasons we spent our saturday doing creative stuff around the house.

1. very urgent: fix the leaky toilets.
buy: 2 toilet mechanisms (go to Ace, get 2 boxes, check that all the parts exist, drive home, realize that one main part is missing, go back to the store)
manpower: Oddi.
method: hug the toilet until it's fixed.
result: flush!!



2. very urgent: fix the phone lines.
buy: nothing. everyone has a bunch of communication wires and a welder lying around just in case, no?
manpower: Oddi.
method: improvise something, weld some wires together, it should be working now.
results: all the phones are alive!! hurray!

3. not so urgent, but as long as we work on the phone/electricity cupboard, we might as well do it: close the gap above the cupboard, and repaint the doors.
buy: yacht varnish. find anything else you need in the tool shed and storage spaces - some wood, white paint, brushes, saw, sander, sand paper...
method: take measures, cut the wood, refine the size, refine the size again, and again, paint 2 layers. sand the cupboard doors and repaint them with yacht varnish.
results: the doors face direct sunlight most of the day, resulting in some areas that are very faded and destroyed. sanding did a lot of good. the cover part is finished, but needs to be installed. we will paint the doors some other time.


4. not urgent... but long over due:
remember we "got" Oddi and Dalia a new grill for xmas? it finally arrived (well, someone actually finally went over and bought one). it needed some assembly, we will report on how good the BBQ is after we test it.


Maybe we managed to decrease entropy slightly. but every little bit helps!