Dear Rachel Maddow

Dear Rachel Maddow, by Adrienne Kisner

I like everything this novel is about. A bright kid who loves journalism is failing school, due to dyslexia, a terrible home situation, and a deep depression due to her brother's death. She writes to Rachel Maddow for a school assignment, and keeps on writing, though not sending, letters about her life. Writing to her hero and thinking about what she loves inspires Brynn to change her life and the world for the better.

The plot and all the other characters are a bit predictable, though. The bad guys are all bad, cartoonishly so, and they all hate Brynn and attack her with all their power and privilege. The good guys all like Brynn and support her. The only character who doesn't fit neatly into either box is Brynn's ex-girlfriend, and the most surprising thing about her storyline is, why doesn't Brynn realize, the first time someone sends incriminating photos from her account, who would know her password?

sewer woes

(This was a comment, but I decided to share it with all of you.)

Yay old houses! And also sewers.

I thought the issue with my old sewer line was that it does not slope as steeply down to the city sewer as modern code requires. Also, because our soil has a lot of bentonite clay, which expands when it gets wet, my sewer line has developed some kinks. These problems mean that stuff does not get rinsed down the line as briskly as it ought to be. A "will need fixing someday" problem.

However! I just remodeled the kitchen and bathrooms and discovered a new (very old) problem by taking a bath, which I hadn't been able to do here before, and noticing water leaking through the basement wall.

Many decades ago this house added a bathroom, which required a new foundation wall a foot or two outside the old foundation wall. The old sewer clean-out, which is outside the old foundation wall but inside the new foundation wall, did not get removed or sealed off. So when you dump a large quantity of water, like a bathtub full, down the drain, and there is stuff in the sewer line, it backs up through the top of the old clean-out valve and seeps into the basement.

Fixing the problem would start with cutting a hole in the old foundation wall. I opted for the plumber's other suggestion: avoiding the problem by getting my sewer line snaked every year. I just hope this works.