Ever since I went fishing for my $150 retainer in a dumpster filled with the breakfasts of a thousand children, sour milk baking in the springtime sun, I've been rather desensitized to gross stuff. Dissections, cow farms, and the like are unpleasant but not insurmountable.

That all was awhile ago...but today, I was reminded of how nasty the world can get this afternoon, changing out a 16-year-old garbage disposal. Nearly two decades worth of food scraps and pink/black slime mold in every possible nook and hose, releasing black effluent and the smells of staleness everywhere.

On top of that, the old disposal was so...old, that it broke free of its mounting assembly, requiring the use of a hammer, two extra screwdrivers, and copious amounts of WD-40 to perform an extraction never intended by the original manufacturer.

Then there was the puzzle of how to remove the snap ring, the ghetto wiring (ask me about using a hammer on a power cord), and having to hacksaw through various yuck-infested pipes to get things to fit...

I've lived more in these past three hours than I have since the beginning of summer vacation.