Marcia gets even more bionic tomorrow early, with a full (left) hip replacement. They’ll have her on her feet in the afternoon, walking around and doing stuff on Tuesday, and presuming everything goes dory and hunky, home on Tuesday evening. Wow! We expect wonders from Dr. King and the great staff at AAMC. Wish us luck.
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I’m glad to note that DoD has reported no casualties in the last week.
To give you just a sense of what it’s been like, here’s the email I sent to my group at $FIRM early on Thursday morning:
Subject: Not going to be in office today Multiple appliance fails. Hot water heater wasn't making hot water, assumed pilot light fail. No, no, a partial containment fail instead, with leaking to carpets, yay! But most of the water went to the sump, and left the building appropriately. Cleaned up some water until time to feed and walk the dog. Heading out to do that, the garage door opener played up, badly. Repeat of winter problems that we tolerated until they went away. Need a working garage door opener. Bought one and installed it last night. Went downstairs late to check on sump, because of flickering lights indicative of sump still running ... odd since I shut off the water on the water heater. Hmmm, heat from the pit, and continuous humming. Sump pump lunched itself yesterday. Okay, that I can deal with today, since things are dry and there's no rain in the forecast .... Sigh. The overnight thunderstorm had me downstairs and bailing for about an hour, and checking the pit through the rest of the night, with occasional bails. Next, I'm going to go get a new sump pump and install it, then rest a bit while waiting for the plumber to get here to see what's next with the water heater. Text me if you need me for something, I'll check email a few times today.
The good news is that we now have working hot water, and non-cold water showers (yay). Yes, cold water is way better than NO water, but … First World Problems. The story I’m going to be sticking with is that the house got jealous that Marcia is getting upgraded next week (hip replacement), and decided to jump into the game.
ALL of the plumbing/HVAC companies are busy, busy, busy – this was the first “hot” week of summer, and the AC business is booming. Our regular folks (a smaller firm) couldn’t get us on the schedule until next week. So I turned to Angie’s List, and got onto Jiffy Plumbing in Hyattsville. They sent around one of their mechanics, Bawla, yesterday afternoon to check the system and give us a quote. He did, we got two others which didn’t please us as much, and scheduled for today. He arrived today within the scheduled window, installed a State Water Heater, and we’re very happy.
Oh, yeah, and it was a good thing that I purchased and installed that new sump pump on Thursday morning. On Thursday afternoon, we got the better part of an inch of rain in about an hour, and that pump survived its trial by fire … err, water.
I just picked up a lay-flat USB3 SATA docking station from Plugable Tech. Works like a champ in my cabinet configuration. See …
Lay-flat SATA toaster
This let me move my in-system SATA front-load slot over to the other system for whole-disk backups of the Windows system, and to play with other OS loads in a less impactful way. I like it a lot, and it works just fine.
Not exactly “the town”, eh? In my case, it was the shutters on the second story front of the house that I painted red. And by “red”, I mean Classic Burgundy, a Benjamin Moore color. Six windows, twelve shutters, 6 hours total time on Saturday spent alternately crouching on, and stretching up from the porch roof. Didn’t fall, #FTW!
Shutters, faded, “Before”
Shutters, shiny, rich, “after”
Today: shopping, started the laundry, cleaning, mowing. We went out for an early supper at Mi Hacienda.
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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:
Instead of running off when I approached her in the back yard, Lexi decided to deploy her Massive Cute Attack. It works, too …
Lexi Massive Cute Attack
For me, this was just another a warm, chore-filled weekend. When does Winter start?
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Our condolences to the family and friends of these fallen warriors:
Months, that is. The year, it flies by too quickly. We’re approaching the heat and humidity of the year, sadly. The upside of the unpleasant months is fresh veggies out of the garden. Soon, soon:
Garden – Late May 2014
Things are going well … I cleaned house yesterday. No, really. With a car wash mitt and a few buckets of soapy water, I cleaned everything I could reach on the front of the house. Doing it that way was a pain in the ass, and frankly exhausting, but the method did a much more consistent job of cleaning than using a pressure washer to draw pictures in the dirt and oxidized paint. Originally I was just after the trim and gutters (off-white and white) to spruce things up. But it became quickly clear that everything needed attention. I’m very happy with the results. After I finished that up, I weeded out the garden beds.
Today, shopping, laundry, restructuring the garage entrance to the shed, and mowing. Of the four tasks, only the third is mildly interesting. The shed floor is about 14″ up from the level of the garage, and when we moved in, it was configured as one 14″ step. I move assorted wheeled equipment in and out of there, and it made sense to me early on to construct a short, steep ramp there. It was bolted to the ledger, and I used tapcon screws to attach the ramp to the concrete floor. Sturdy. In addition, at the shed back door, leading to the back yard, there is a concrete step.)
The problem with the ramp is that it is (errr, was) adjacent to Marcia’s driver-side door, which means the ramp has been rarely, but painfully in the way for her. A few years ago, I built a portable ramp, and started moving some gear in and out through the back as well. Eventually (this year), I figured that I could use that ramp when needed on the garage side as well. So today I deconstructed the 11 year old ramp, and re-used the materials to make a single step there, splitting the 14″ difference. That step will support the portable ramp as necessary, and Marcia now has more/better maneuvering room when entering and exiting her car.
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Our condolences to the family and friends of Pfc. Jacob H. Wykstra, 21, of Thornton, Colorado, who died on May 28, in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained as a result of an aircraft accident.
Yep. Sixteen wonderful years I’ve been married to Marcia. To celebrate, she worked on a t-shirt quilt for a customer, while I … went to work. But this evening, on the way home …
Got my gal some roses
She seems to like them. She also got a sewing thing accessory as a pressie, while I’ve got a set of E. E. “Doc” Smith paperbacks headed my way. We’re so romantical. We’ll go out to supper to complete our celebration one of these days.
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Marcia got a FitBit thing a while back, and she likes it very much. It helps her keep track of a lot of the things she needs to. Since I’ve been trying to do better on that front, like this (this evening):
Burned a kilocalorie
I could also do better at keeping track of such things, as well as managing my portion control through better records keeping. But I chose a different bit of gear: a Jawbone UP24. I executed the purchase through Amazon, which saved a few bucks, and I have had very few problems puzzling out how to make the App interface operate. I’ll report further on the product, the app, and how/if it’s helping me with any of my goals at some ill-defined later date.
First, a correction (fixed already) – I had the umlaut in the wrong place in Zoë Keating’s name last week. Sigh. I wouldn’t have these problems if I’d listened to more metal when I was growing up.
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The house in Kensington, California, where I spent my first four years, was sold last year. Zillow has pictures … and at least one of the stirs some memories.
The living room on Norwood
Note the cabinets flanking the demarcation between living room and dining room. Note the glass front doors on the right cabinet. Note the LACK of glass front doors on the left cabinet. Yeah … that was me. Sometime between three and four, I was running hell bent for leather through the house. There was a sofa there, and a rug. I tried to corner around the sofa and lost all traction. Head first into the glass cabinet doors I went. I can report with some authority that scalp slices do in fact make one bleed like an actual stuck pig. The scars are with me to this day, as the glass is not with the house, also to this day. Thanks to my mom for bringing this memory back to the top of my brain (right near the scars, one suspects).
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I killed myself yesterday in the yard – all of the front beds are now weeded and mulched. In the evening we went over to supper with Linda and Mike. Yummy, yummy lamb, veggies, potatoes, and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Excellent company, and excellent victuals. Then we played Ticket to Ride, in which I eked out a two point win with the longest train. Not sitting on the Loser’s Couch last night, Mr. Wheaton!
Today was shopping for food, then shopping for paint. It’s time to clean, lightly sand, and paint the trim, front and back. Sadly, the local Sherwin Williams store, which is the local listed seller of Duron paint (an off-white for the porch and window trim), had a singularly unhelpful person who told me they couldn’t help me with the paint, even though I had the color codes. So screw that. I chiseled out a paint chip from one of the posts. Then I headed over to Will’s Home Decorating in Beltsville, where they still had a can of the original Benjamin Moore Classic Burgundy color which is the second trim color. They also matched and mixed me a gallon of the color I need to replace the Duron brand. Guess who’s getting my continuing business, eh?
The rest of the day? A write-off, frankly. I burned through most of my energy yesterday, and I’ll do another round of stuff tomorrow, so breaking in the middle seems like a good idea.
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Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Marcia and I have a number of people in our families who served in our nation’s armed services. It’s good to take the time to reflect on their service, and remember their stories, and their sacrifices.
Our condolences to the family and friends of Spec. Adrian M. Perkins, 19, of Pine Valley, California, who died on May 17, in Amman, Jordan, from a non-combat related injury.
Productively, my weekend was full of remote work for $OFFICE, and yardwork. I did a fair bit of lawn work, and installed the pepper seedlings that Rich sent down from Michigan with Marcia. They were pretty droopy, the plants nearly drowned (I think) in the deluge of Friday, with no drainage in their holding tray. Good thing I transplanted today, eh?
Sadly, the news that Zoë Keating’s guy has cancer landed in my twitter feed this evening. Sending Jeff, Zoë, and the CelloKid all the good vibes I can lay hands on. I’m a huge fan of Zoë’s work, and y’all should be, too.
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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:
Yes, yes, I called my mom. Thanks for checking, Internet. Also for Mother’s Day, Lexi had me wash Marcia’s car. Marcia was effusive in her thankage. All you other Mothers out there, you be happy, too, mmm-kay?
Me, I’m headed back to work tomorrow after a few days off. Nice and relaxing. (Work, I mean. Time off is exhausting!)
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Our condolences to the family and friends of Pfc. Daniela Rojas, 19, of Los Angeles, California, who died May 3, in Homburg, Germany, due to a non-combat related illness.
