A Bad Hair Day

It was a balmy 22 degrees this morning but the wind had died down so it felt like a heat wave. And with a high of 50 degrees, I was peeling layers off as the day progressed.

After devotions this morning, our group leader was reading some of the task list.  A couple of the women, including Deb, were moving some items out of a store room right by where we were gathered.  One of the items on the list was removing a snake from the Thibodeaux Conference Building.  When Deb overheard this, she turned pale.  A snake?  We’ve already kayaked in shark-infested waters ... now we have to deal with a snake?

She was much relieved to hear that it was an audio snake for the sound system, not a real live snake.  We got some laughs out of that one.

Since it was warmer today we could get some of the outdoor trim done for the air conditioners we installed.  I set about looking in to a new task: why the hand dryer in the men’s bathroom didn’t work.  Someone had obviously looked at it before and then gave up, instead wiring an extension cord into the dryer and running the cord along the floor to the only outlet that worked: the one for the water heater.  So now the guys can have dry hands, but no hot water.  It has been this way for a while.

It took a few hours and lots of crawling around in attics and pulling cover plates to access the wiring underneath, but I finally tracked the problem to a short circuit behind a drinking fountain.  I disconnected the drinking fountain and got everything else working.  Now the guys can have hot water AND dry hands, but the water they drink may not be all that cold.  That will be a project for another day.

When I was installing a power outlet for an air conditioner in the kitchen pantry yesterday, I was a bit concerned that I may not be doing things according to local codes.  Everything was perfectly safe, it was just a little different than some of the other wiring already in the building.

I need not have worried.  One junction box I had to work in today looked like some sort of electrical bad-hair day, with wires sticking out everywhere.  And I had to figure out which two wires in this mess I had to connect together.  If local codes dictate that all these wires have to fit in the box with a cover on it, then this was wired either by an electrician that wasn’t aware of local codes, or even that boxes require covers, or it was wired by volunteers from out of state who all put their own brand of different into the mix.

The women did a fair amount of cleaning.  A prior group that camped here had not cleaned out the drink coolers properly, so they spent some time cleaning these.

I’m not sure a camp like this could survive without all this volunteer labor.