How To Build a Makeshift Shop Urinal

I don't think I have ever done a "how-to" blog post before. Why now? Well, I was taking pictures of it as I went along so I could play show & tell at work, but then when I was all finished I decided I may as well compile them all into a blog post. It just kind of turned into a "how-to" on its own.

Think of all those times when you're out in your garage or shop, right in the middle of a project, and you've got to pee. You don't want to have to go all the way into the house, especially when you're dirty. Maybe you live somewhere where you can't just step outside the door and pee lest someone calls the cops on you. Wouldn't it be cool if you didn't have to?

Well, here is my solution.

This is a "poor man's design" that uses a specialty funnel, a length of garden hose curled into a trap loop, and it's flushed by pouring water into it after you use it. Simple right? Of course, where you have the water routed after it's outside your shop is your business. Some folks bury a gallon can that they've cut full of holes, and run their hose into that. Some folks just let it go where it goes. As seldom as it's used it probably doesn't really matter much--more a matter of aesthetics.

Materials needed:

• (1) Hopkins FloTool Funnel, part number 10705 (about $6 at O'Reilly Auto Parts) 
• (1) Short length of cheap-quality 5/8" garden hose with the male end still attached. (I bought a "hose leader" at Home Depot for about $8.) If it's not the cheap quality variety it will be large around the outside to fit into the funnel. 
• (1) length of 3/4" schedule 40 (the thick stuff) PVC pipe (I bought a 2-foot piece at Home Depot for $1.64) long enough to go through your wall if your shop or garage has drywall installed. 
• (1) O-ring that fits snugly over the male end of your hose (see picture below) 
• Miscellaneous lengths of wood for your wall mounting (you probably already have) 
• Miscellaneous screws to attach (you probably already have) 
• Spray silicone or equivalent 

Points to ponder:

• First of all, as you can see from the pictures, my shop is sheet-rocked and insulated. If yours has no drywall or insulation you can skip installing the PVC pipe though the wall space as I did. Your project will be much easier!

• I have a long drill bit (I think it's about 16" long) that I use when I'm dealing with drilling through a wall space all the way to outdoors. If you don't have this sort of luxury, you will have to figure something else out. Again, if you're not sheet-rocked you can skip it anyway.

• Caution: If you just try to run a full-sized spade bit into the drywall and go all the way through it will not reach and will catch your insulation, turning all your wall insulation into a giant wad of cotton candy on the end of your drill bit. You'll have a real problem on your hands then!

• Measure carefully! Make sure you exercise your due diligence and investigate obstacles, distances, angles, and anything else that could be a problem when you decide where to put it and start drilling into your wall.

Let's get started. Here's how I did it.

Carefully drill into the drywall *only* (no farther into the wall!) with an extra-long (mine is about 12" long) small drill bit and stop. As soon as it penetrates the drywall unhook it from your drill and wiggle the drill bit all around the best you can to "clear" any insulation from its path. If you don't it will wind up on your drill bit and you'll never get it out!

Push it all the way into the hole until you feel it contact the outer wall and hook the drill motor back up to it and finish drilling through the outer wall. Now unhook the bit once again, leaving it still embedded in the wall. Go outside and check your work. Is it in the right place? If not, make whatever changes need to be made and do it again. Small holes are much easier to patch if they're in the wrong place than full-sized holes are!

Carefully drill through the drywall with a 1" spade bit, stopping as soon as it goes through:

See that insulation hiding there just waiting to grab your drill bit? Again, don't let that happen:

Go outside and do the same thing as inside: barely drill through and stop. After you clear the insulation out of the way with whatever tool you feel like using, feel free to put the spade bit back in and clean the hole out a little better, angling it as needed, and still drilling from each side.

Try fitting your piece of PVC pipe into the hole. Repeat the drilling with the spade bit as much as you need to if the hole isn't clear enough. You may be able to press your pipe into the hole from the inside, but I couldn't quite get it. I found it easier to push from the outside of the shop back in. That was because the drywall had enough "give" to it and allowed the pipe to break through any hole imperfections. Notice the angle of the pipe. That was my choice. I don't think angle matters really.

This is how much of the PVC section protruded through the outer wall before I trimmed it down to about 6 inches or so:

Identify the orifice for posterity:

Cut the male end off your hose section if you haven't already, and roll your O-ring over the threads, placing it just below the shoulder. It should be a snug fit. If not, use a smaller O-ring:

Carefully pop the screen out of the bottom of the funnel and feed the hose down into it. The O-ring will make a nice, snug "squeaker" of a fit as it goes down into the tapered funnel neck. Give it a good twist while you're pulling it and it will snug up easily. Sealing it isn't necessary because the O-ring and the taper of the funnel work together pretty well.

You should now have something that looks like this:

I made the wall mount out of a couple of scrap pieces of 5/4" cedar decking. I screwed the two pieces together into an "L" and screwed the whole thing to the wall. The odd dimensions are so it would align with wall studs. If you have to, go buy yourself a stud finder. You'll probably need it around the house eventually anyway, right?

Next, I found a piece of 2x3 and carved a section out of it with a jigsaw and wood rasp. This was just to provide clearance to help the funnel nestle in closer to the mount. That allowed me to attach it a little more securely than with just the little tab hole on top of the funnel. I'm pretty sure that one hole on the funnel was only provided my the manufacturer for hanging it up on the wall when you're not using it.

Here is that part installed:

A couple of screws later and the funnel is mounted! Both attaching points are nice and tight against wood, so there is no tendency for the screw to pull through the funnel plastic. It's a pretty solid mount:

Next, I fed the hose into the PVC. This can be a tricky part. I clamped a vice grip on the PVC so it wouldn't move while I was playing with it. I then had to put some spray silicone on the hose to get it to go all the way down through the PVC. Yes, it fit that snugly.

Another angle:

After looking at it and analyzing the hell out of it (like I do everything), I decided that I needed to raise the whole thing up. I just decided the top of the hose arc was a little lower than I thought it should be for a good siphon action when I "flush" it.

After raising it up a few inches, here is the finished product:

And here's how I flush it:

Epilogue: Sure, maybe any old can or jar will do in a pinch when you need something to piss in, but this is much better. It's got that homemade vibe and backwoods engineering thing going on!

A New Face!

I haven't posted anything in my blog in so long I had almost forgotten about it. I figured it's time. I'm going big on this post: I'm actually renaming the blog!

I don't think I ever really liked the name of the blog when I first created it. "Return to Solitude" just never really felt right. Just the fact that I thought about it almost every time I went into the blog to read or write a post tells me there was an unease with my choice. Somewhere in the background of my brain something festered. So, here we go.

No more somber-looking blog with a downer-sounding blog name. I'm going with something more...

Generic?!

Yup. From this day forth, I'm going with plain ol' "The Edgewood Years." New name, new look, and yet--the same old shit.

Doesn't that sound poetic?

Typical Buyer's Remorse

I'm not a good-enough writer to convey the anxiety that has washed over me so many times in the last couple of weeks.

When you put your mind in gear and start saving money it's a discipline. It's something you have to start paying attention to. You have to constantly be aware of it. It becomes a decision-making tool, challenging you to examine your financial priorities during your daily activities. "Do I really need that, or do I just want it?" You have to ask yourself those sorts of questions all the time. Every time you have a success talking yourself out of a purchase it's a small victory.

After a while it becomes almost like a collection. You start to treasure it and monitor it, and you do a little mental happy dance every time the 4th digit from the right clicks over a new number, knowing that your collection is getting bigger and more impressive. You might even become proud of your collection.

Then it backs off a notch, becoming more of a background thing--a kind of comfort zone or mental safety net. It adds a level of self-assurance to your life, knowing that anything short term can happen to you and you've got it covered.

Now it's all going away at once in the name of the home-buying process. While I'm beginning to get over it, I was a nervous wreck at first. What 60 year-old buys his first (well, it's my first solo...) home? Is that even smart? Given the interest rates these days, I'm going for it.

Force of Attraction

Have you ever seen someone that instantly commands your attention for some unexplained reason? Someone that makes you lock onto them, demanding all your willpower just to keep from staring?

It's a powerful thing, and it has happened to me several times over the years. What's odd is that every time it has happened I have failed to understand exactly what it was that caused my thoughts to come to a standstill. It was never some inordinately beautiful model that you only see in a magazine or anything like that. Every time it was a woman that you might see anywhere on any street or sidewalk, or in any store or office. Yet, each time there is something about them--something that held me. Who knows--maybe every time I've had that experience it was my soulmate!

For example, recently I was walking through the produce department at a local grocery store. It was a typical weekday late afternoon when people stop on the way home from work, so it was filled with shoppers. I wasn't there to "people-watch" though, I was there to buy things. Then a young lady walking into the area caught my eye. She commanded my attention for some reason unexplained. She was just your usual mixture of average-looking and nicely dressed, and she seemed indifferent to her surroundings. I couldn't help but look. There was something--some sort of force--that held me. What was it? Her glasses? Her hair? I watched her as she continued on, and when she rounded a corner and dropped out of sight I wondered to myself: what was that about? What just happened? I sighed and went about my business. I kept thinking about her though, as I wandered the store gathering the things I needed. Then, about 10 minutes later I saw her again in a different part of the store. It was the same thing as before, but the weird part was that I didn't see her directly--I saw her out of the corner of my eye. It was like her presence called to me and caused me to snap my head around. Again she had my undivided attention as I gazed on her. She didn't flaunt herself any any way, and I doubt anyone else gave her more than a passing glance as she went about her shopping. I ended up seeing her at least one more time before I left the store. As much as I would have liked to talk to her, she was probably half my age. Besides, what would I have told her--that she might be my soulmate? Haha, that would have gotten me blacklisted as a creepophile.

Still, there is that strange force of attraction that is hard to explain. When it happens to me I find myself drawn to her like there is a light shining on her and only I can see it.

Side note: This pondering reminded of an excellent article about soulmates here at BrainPickings.org. This is the kind of stuff that makes you think:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/02/the-science-of-soul-mates-xkcd/

~Blink~

I wish I could just ~blink~ myself like Jeannie (yes, that Jeannie). Where would I go?

I don't think it would be so much a matter of where I went, but when how often I ~blinked~!

I would blink myself into southern Utah and walk that long, straight road that goes south into Monument Valley while the sun is coming up. Then I would ~blink~ myself to Paris and sit in the morning sun at a sidewalk cafe and have coffee and breakfast. Then I might want to ~blink~ myself to the island of Socotra to wander among the Baobab and the Dragons Blood trees. Perhaps a ~blink~ to Moscow's Red Square before lunch. Did someone say lunch? I think I'll go to Sicily for pizza and beer! I might sit upon a rocky spire in the of Huangshan Mountains of China and take an afternoon nap...

Oh, the possibilities...

'Ello there!

In the spring of 2015 I joined a new web presence called Ello. I joined partly because it was new (and I love to try new things), and partly because none of my friends or family knew I was there. It was as if I was hiding in plain sight. I got to re-tell all my stale jokes if I chose to. I could stand and scream like a mime, attracting no attention. I went to Ello largely not knowing why I went, but had to anyway, probably much like a moth to a porch light. I didn't know anybody on Ello but I liked it because of that. I gave me a safety buffer of anonymity that was comforting. The funny thing was, it was mildly empty-feeling at the same time. I knew if made new friends I would likely never meet them.

I find myself wondering how often it happens that people find new friends on the Internet and something happens to either of them. The people they interact with never find out what happened to the missing--only that they went silent. They check back often and send them messages, but hear nothing. After a time, they stop checking and move on. That's the tragic side of Internet anonymity: if you don't make noise you don't exist. The same things about Ello's anonymity that I liked also tended to create a feeling of being disconnected. It was like I was a bug bouncing along the outside of a window--seeing what's inside but not able to enter. There's a strange feeling I get about it that I can't quite put my finger on. Like if I did find my way into the room I would find that I didn't belong anyway.

Ello didn't have a true direction when it started, but it essentially morphed into an artists' showcase. I'm not an artist and never will be, and though I do have talents, just posting things for no reason other than to play show and tell feels like I'm tooting my own horn and thumping my chest. That's not my style.

I did find Ello to be a whirlwind of sensory input and I loved that. Actually, I still pop in and look at things from time to time though I no longer am a member. It is full of things that spark my imagination and pull dusty memories to the surface of my mind. The array of daily Ello posts pleases me. They make me think, they make me wish, and they make me wonder. Ello shows me the world through others' eyes. And there are a lot of others' eyes!

Traits

People I admire are unafraid. They proudly wear unnaturally-colored hair, have tattoos, and let their imaginations run wild. They are positive, unpredictable, and they recycle because they want to. They are equally at home in the city or the country. They know what's going on behind my eyes, know what to say at the right time, and can make me laugh when I need it. They love music and might play a cello or an acoustic guitar. They appreciate simplicity and shun the "new and improved" hype. They may not have one of their own, but they love animals--all animals. They have many stories to tell, and know when to tell them and when not to. They are social, and yet they appreciate solitude. They are happy with themselves and will never ridicule someone else.

No, this is not a tall order for the perfect mate. This is just a list I started jotting down one time for fun. Some of these are traits I possess, and others I do not. These are just things I admire in people. I find myself sometimes jealous of other people, but then I tell myself I have things they do not have, know things they don't know, and have had a lifetime of different experiences than the ones they have had. It's all good.

Still... I do admire...