The house we live in is 5 years old. In that time we have had to contend with approximately 13,783 incidents of clogged toilets. The 1.6 gallon “low flow” toilets that are mandatory today in new construction are, to quote Josh Ritter utterly out of context, a ghost of a trace of a pale imitation of the toilets of the past. After the latest flood in the powder room on Friday night (when I attempted to turn off the water, which had not been turned on all the way after the last deluge, and only managed to turn it on full force), we had a new one installed on Saturday. Although we were offered a bootleg 3 gallon version, probably smuggled in from Canada, we rejected that and chose a pressure assisted version which does not need to use a tank full of water, utilizing air pressure instead. The one drawback is the noise level that approximates that of a jet engine. Not a toilet you’d want to use during potty training unless you wished to scar the poor child for life.

Books: The Fall Guy by Carol Lea Benjamin. A somewhat plodding mystery that had an engaging pseudo-bad guy and a good recipe for homemade dog food. Roxy has not been eating her regular food so I tried her on a variation of the recipe – cooked ground beef (from burgers that had been in the freezer for a little too long), brown rice, and grated carrots. What are the odds she’ll go back to Science Diet now?

Movie: The Matrix, Revolutions. Apocalyptic end-of-everything-in-the-known-universe battle scenes. Incomprehensible plot. Characters with no depth or understandable purpose. And then there are the sweaters they all wear that are ripped and worn in precisely the same way, as if the costumer got a bulk discount on them from Good Will. Not a good use of 129 minutes of my life.