Another disappointing Super Bowl has come and gone. I sat through the majority of it this year with my television tray poised quietly over my chair, a plate of marinated deer steak, hard-as-a-rock butter peas and bread that quickly dried into toast awaiting my attention. I slowly ate all the steak and the bread as I watched the game, but opted to forego the butter peas. I must admit, it was my first experience, and likely my last, with butter peas. They reminded me of hard lima beans, and I dislike lima beans almost as much as I dislike the New England Patriots. In fact, there aren’t many things from Massachusetts that I can actually say I really like. Anything north of Virginia is questionable territory, in my book.

As you can probably guess, the game, much like the earlier AFC Championship game that I also endured, was quite the disappointment. I would have cheered for anyone who was playing against the Patriots, even if it was the Eagles.

It should be easy to imagine my malaise as the game turned sour for the birds, somewhere during the third quarter. I finally made the effort to turn it off. Unable, or at least unwilling, to let it go, I still checked the final score near the end but didn’t bother staying up for the post game show. I suppose such things are like car wrecks, everyone just has to crane their necks to get a peek.

It seems like football isn’t really the same game any more. The players hop from team to team and there really aren’t any franchise players that end up being the face men for the teams. In the 1970s when my favorite team, the Steelers, were on top of their game, I could name most of the players. Of course, they are also from Pennsylvania, but at least it isn’t Massachusetts. These days, I’m lucky if I recognize any of them outside of their uniforms. It would seem most of the interesting personalities have been replaced with diamonds and end-zone dances, hype over talent.

It could have something to do with the fact that I haven’t watched football all that regularly this year. In fact, I haven’t watched it all that regularly in several years.

Instead, most of my Sundays are spent with my family or at church services, both of which take priority over couch time. Sunday night was about the extent of my couch time over the weekend, but I had ample opportunities to visit with friends and enjoy the nice weather. It was one of those times when I just couldn’t seem to get myself motivated to take on any big projects.

Even so, before all the time went up in smoke like the Eagles’ Super Bowl bid, I took the opportunity to properly install the flue pipe in my living room. As I first put it together, I managed to get it all wrong.

Flue pipe should always be assembled from the bottom up, never from the top down, I now have learned through the time-tested trial-and-error method. Each joint should fit inside the one below, never the other way. The stove I acquired through my meager payment and a friend’s major generosity already had an elbow attached to the back, so I opted to take the easy route and build the pipe from the top down to the elbow, which was upside down.

Later, as I started burning ‘green,’ unseasoned wood, the creosote and moisture from the wood sometimes seeped through the cracks and ran down the outside of the pipe, making a smelly mess.

The smelly mess is what coats the inside of most people’s chimneys and can eventually lead to fires if not cleaned up.

As I took the pipes down, I got at least a hint of what was inside my chimney as a good-sized burst of black soot fell squarely on my head after I jiggled the pipe to make it come loose. I must have jiggled a little too much. Of course, playing with stove pipes is not a clean job. A friend gave me a few pieces of pipe that I took apart and used for the job, along with two of the three I already had in place. Since the pipe pieces cost quite a bit, it is more economical to reuse them than replace them.

When I switched it all around, replacing the old elbow in the process, I fixed it so all the pipes went one inside the other all the way down to the stove itself. That way, there is no possibility for the pipes to leak anything.

I finished off by re-installing my self-tapping stainless drill screws to hold the thing together.

I kind of thought of not telling anyone that I had put together the stove pipe wrong. After all, it seemed like such a simple task. But the truth is the truth. It just goes to show, there is something new to learn, even a simple task.

I was very glad that the recent bout of warm weather came along just in time. After that was done, I set about the long process of trying to get the mess out of my hair and off my skin so that I didn’t have the appearance of a chimney sweep, even if I was doing the work of one. It may take longer to lose the butter peas, which now lie like green stones near the edge of the field. Even the animals turned up their noses. I don’t blame them.

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