Stealth Anorexia, Yard Work and a Plague of Plumbing Problems

So, I was reading this article in Elle[1] about something they are calling Stealth Anorexia.  As I read the article (that title sucked me right in), it turns out there's a scientific term for it:  orthorexia.  See, anorexics know what they are doing is bad and try to hide it from people.  Orthorexics think they are the healthiest people on the planet and want to evangelize everyone.

What is it that they do?  They are frutarians and raw foodists, for the most part.  Some of them are also into colonics, but the one thing they have in common is a belief that subsisting on as few as possible calories will help you live longer.  A raw foods diet would be hard pressed to give you the  calories you need to not lose weight and feel pretty good.  They claim the diet produces euphoria.  They don't seem to notice that this is a common side effect of starvation.

It's probably worth pointing out that the raw foods crap has come up on a social mailing list, a backpacking mailing list and in an Elle article all within a couple of weeks.  I wonder why?  It must be the next hip and trendy thing.

Today was yard work day in Front Royal.  Two days ago, we bought a lawn tractor at Sears.[2]  It is not here yet, but we needed a few hand implements from Southern States, so we fetched those.  We raked, reseeded the lawn and built a rock edged bed for wildflowers.  We hauled the rocks in a wheelbarrow after collecting them from our massive rock pile[3].  Yes, we have a rock pile.  Really, it's all rocks.  I found that out when I decided to supplement the store-bought humus with some dug from the forested part of the property.  The trees, everything, is rooted around rocks.  There's gorgeous black dirt in there, but there's so many rocks that it's easier to grab it in handfuls than try to use a shovel.

Eventually, Tino wants to edge the whole driveway with rocks.  Obviously, the lawn tractor will be helpful for hauling the rocks from the pile to the driveway.  The little bed we built is fairly near the top of the driveway.  Oh, and one of the rocks was marble.  Actual pink marble.

In addition to the craziness with the water out here, the P-Trap in our kitchen in Reston decided to disintegrate late last week.  This should be a simple thing, but our drain lines are 1.5" copper, and you just can't buy the matching parts at Home Depot.  Well, you can, but they are crapper than what you're talking out...which fell apart.  Everything in that townhouse is commercially sourced, which is why it holds up as long as it does, but it makes it a bitch to replace with the right thing.

Oh, and the outside spigot that came with the brand new house in Front Royal?  Totally fucked up.  Because it was installed by a poorly trained monkey instead of a plumber, it took Tino hours to get that one out and get a new one in.

We are not lucky with plumbing, it would seem.