Fridge Cleaning Failure

Friday is trash day in our county. The kids were assigned the task of cleaning out the fridges before Friday. It was 10:00pm Thursday night. Momoko asked if the kids did their jobs. Nope. I told them to get busy.

I went downstairs to do some work. When I came upstairs, I saw our new trash can with its lid propped open. Little Kat was tossing items from the fridge into the trash can. This is the way our last trash can got broken.

I bought an expensive new trash can to replace the broken one. We saved the old broken trash can so the kids could use it to dispose of fridge items. Were the using it? No. Lazy kids. Won't start the work. Won't do it right.

So I had to chew out the kids and tell them to stop cutting corners. The problem is that these lackeys don't keep enough money in their savings to replace a trash can if they break it. Might be time to make them put down a deposit. Then they might do the right thing if their money is at stake.

Busy Monday

Yesterday I packed my car with large branches I needed to take to the landfill today. My plan was to go to bed early so I could visit the dump first thing in the morning. Unfortunately we watched The Witches of East End late last night.

The alarm woke me up early today. I drove through rush hour traffic with a car weighed down by wood. I made it to the dump right about the time they opened. No charge to dumping the branches since I came in a car instead of a truck.

On the way back from the dump, I picked up some breakfast. Then I went to my dad's house to work. Called up my handyman to see if he could start work on fixing a couple issues at my dad's house. He was at another site in the morning. I thought he would swing by at lunch.

My handyman got delayed. I skipped lunch waiting for him. He knocked out a couple indoor issues quickly. He startled my dad, who just woke up from a nap. Then my handyman and his brother spent a long time power washing the stairs and porch I want them to paint.

I came home late. Unpacked. Cleaned up my car. Then I went to work on the yard work left over from the weekend. Filled up a couple more trash cans full of branches that the county will come and pick up from my house. A man's work is never done.

Home Repairs

I telecommute from home for work. It is very flexible. So when my brother said he was worried about my dad, I started working in my dad's basement a couple days a week. I do have to fight rush hour traffic. But it is worth it. My dad says he is lonely when my brother goes to work. Dad used to talk with mom in the mornings. Now that mom is gone, he does not know what to do.

At my dad's house, I noticed some problems and weird things going on. I frequently have to walk out the back door of the house. The stairs leading up to the half-level door in the back are in disrepair. The paint is all messed up. Some of the wood looks like it may be in the early stages of rot. They don't use those stairs that much. But my uncle built those stairs long ago. We got to keep those stairs.

My brother also empties a bucket of water in the utility room daily. It is the condensation from the air conditioner. Normally that is supposed to be routed to a drain. But the tube leading to the drain is all clogged up. My mom used to use a neighbor as a general contractor for issues like this. But that neighbor moved away and they are left helpless.

I called my handyman and asked him to come by dad's house to give us an estimate on the repairs. My handyman asked if we lived by the main road in our town. I told him we were off in another subdivision to the east. Surprisingly my handyman knew exactly where I was talking about. Turns out he grew up in the area and went to the local high school. He also is staying nearby at his own mom's house because his mom has health issues. Huh. Small world.

Trip to the Dentist

Contuing from my previous post, I was up early. Got on the road early to beat the rush hour traffic. I ended up close to my dad's house. Pulled into the Burger King parking lot for some breakfast around 7am. Found the doors to the store locked. They were supposed to open at 7:00.

I decided to kill some type and fill up the gas tank. Then I returned to Burger King and got a croissant. Read the newspaper I brought along. Then I drove to my friend's house. I got the GPS out of the trunk and read the rest of the paper.

My friend and her mom came out. I tried to enter the dentist address in my GPS. It did not recognize the location. I ended up using my friend's GPS. We got to the dentist's office in time. Unfortunately we waited an extra hour and a half in the waiting room past the original appointment.

There were a lot of people in the waiting room, even early in the morning. The actual procedure took two hours. That included waking up from the anesthesia. Doc said the procedure went well. A technician escorted my friend down to my car. She was still a bit unsteady.

I had called my boss and said I was going to be to work later than I had thought. From the dentist I drove straight to CVS where they called in some prescriptions. The pain killer was wearing off and my friend needed some drugs. She was very anxious as her mom went into CVS.

My friend and mom wanted to buy me some lunch. I declined because I needed to get to work. So I dropped them off at their place and headed back home to do work. Good thing there was some leftover pizza at home for me to munch on.

Wisdom Teeth Removal

A friend from school needed to get her wisdom teeth pulled. Unfortunately she is the only licensed driver in her family. So she asked me to transport her to and from the dentist. I made sure I worked some extra hours the night before because I'd be taking the morning off for this drive.

The night before I tried to go to bed early. However Momoko and Kit Kat were watching an interesting movie on Netflix (Safety Not Guaranteed). Then they started another good movie around midnight (Odd Thomas). I had to pull myself away to get some sleep.

In the middle of the night or early morning, Momoko came to bed. That was just a slight disturbance which was fine. Then she played iPad games for a while. The light woke me up since I went to sleep a bit early. I figured I was up so I might as well get out of bed.

This was going to be a long day. I could tell.

Grocery Store Stories

Kit Kat and I went grocery shopping Saturday night. I was filling in for Little Kat who is on vacation at his grandparents' house. Kit Kat and I loaded up the cart with goods for the week. Then we went to check out.

As Kit Kat is loading up the conveyor belt, some guy walks past me and puts a divider bar at the end of our groceries. Then he starts loading up the belt too. I told the guy we were not done loading our groceries, so he needed to back up.

The guy looks at our basket, then looks at me, and does nothing. I repeat that he needs to back the hell up. He got perturbed that I rasised my voice at me. He asked me who I was. I told him my name. I guess what I should have told him was that I was the guy who was first in line.

The guy continued to irritate me as he asked questions and made various accusations. After a while I stopped talking to him as I could not understand everything he was saying even when I asked him to repeat himself. He had a strong accent. The guy ended up laughing but stayed far back away from us.

Whatever I did got the rude guy out of the way. The guy did piss me off. Not sure if he was just a jerk or someone whose customs did not include the normal way of doing business at American grocery stores. I checked with Kit Kat afterwards. She thought that the guy was just a jerk.

Sonner or later this dude is going to piss off the wrong person. I imagine at that point he will get a painful lesson via a beat down. We were lucky it did not come to that Saturday night. But if the guy did more than just mouthing off, I imagine things could have escalated quickly.

Finishing Touches

Momoko got the walls of her study painted mint green. Then our handyman came and mounted her new TV on the wall. It was time to get cable connected to the TV. I called our cable provider. They said they don't run cable through walls for customers any more. They said they would only come and connect the TV to a wall socket that a contractor installed for us.

WTF? Anybody can connect a TV to a cable socket. Fail. I asked my handyman if he could run the cable for us. He told me he was busy as usual in the summer, but if I bought the materials, he could fit us in right away. Momoko and I measured the distance from the cable boxes on the side of the house, up through the attic, and then down to Momoko's TV. It was about 50 feet.

Momoko and I went to the store. We picked up 100 feet of cable. Didn't want it to be too short and cause the whole project to get cancelled. Then I bought some connectors, a wall socket, and a splitter. I had to go to work today. Momoko stayed home to await the handyman to arrive. They came in the afternoon and knocked it out.

It is official. Momoko has cable TV in her new personal room. I ordered a DVD player online. It arrives in two days. Her study is turning into the man cave we thought it would be. To finish things off, Kit Kat and I carried Momoko's new chaise lounge chair upstairs. Becuase of its weight and weird size, we had a tough time getting upstairs and through the door to Momoko's study. That chair is never leaving that room.

Going to the Landfill

Last night I loaded up my pickup truck with the tree branches that were too big for the weekly curbside pickup. Although these were from a branch that fell off a tree in the back yard, they felt like a tree all by themselves. The tree these fell off of was probably 100+ feet high.

I had chopped up the branch into 6 to 8 foot sections. I used the wheel barrel to cart the branches to the truck. This morning I drove the truck to my dad's house. I work there usually on Wednesdays. Had trouble parking my truck in front of my dad's house. They live on a street with an incline. The tree branches were so heavy I had trouble keeping the truck from going backwards.

At lunch time I talked me my dad some and watched the news with him. Then I headed to the county landfill. Never been there before. I used to go to the landfill when we lived in our last house. It was closer to us. This one is far away. Luckily it is not that far from dad.

I used the GPS to get to the landfill. Once inside the entrace, I drove down a long road. Finally I found the weigh station. I got out and confirmed that I needed to get weighed. Normally they charge people with trucks to dump there. The guy gave me a break and let me dump my tree branches for free.

I was glad to be rid of the branches. I don't like driving too long with heavy weights in the back of the truck. The truck felt like it could accelerate easier once I had dump the heavy branches out. I sped home to get back to work for the day.

Vanity Details

My handyman is coming tomorrow to rennovate Momoko's study to turn it into her man cave. Or you could say she will be getting her personal woman cave. One item she needed me to buy was a new vanity. Momoko chose a few. Today we narrowed it down to one, mainly due to size.

The manufacturer had a lot of disclaimers regarding delivery of the vanity. Apparently their delivery company wants you to sign a receipt which states in small print that everything arrived in good condition. Guess I will have to be very careful when signing that receipt. I am allowed to write additional info on the receipt (such as the box was damaged, or the delivery guy did not give me time to check out the contents).

I was pleased with the price on the vanity. It cost a little over $200. However I found an online coupon for 10% off. If this thing arrives in good condition, this will have been a nice value. The shipping was free of charge.

Passing the Test

I have been largely out of the stock market for a while. By out I mean I have not been actively trading stocks. I have made money in the market before. However almost all of my speculative high risk investments have lost me money. So much so that I decided I had better retire from losing money in risky stocks.

The other day I spied on a stock that had fallen in the past. I was somewhat interested in it. After the fall is rose back up a bit. I figured I was too late to get in on that rise. Then the stock tanked even lower. This seemed like a steal. I usually talk my stock moves over with Momoko. But she was not around. I sweated it a bit.

In the end, I decided to pass on this "opportunity". We got a lot of big items to buy. That was one of the reasons I figured I could used some extra stock profits right now. However this is also the worst time to be losing money in the markets. The best course of action would be to forget about this speculative stock - at least for now.

Maybe I will do some value investing. That means invest is some solid stocks that have little downside. Sure they will not make me rich. But they may turn a little bit of profit. I guess I can take that. Just means we might not be buying any new cars for a few years. Oh well.

Timber

We have been having some serious storms come through the area. It might be the effect of hurricane season. Normally I just run around the yard and pick up the sticks that fell off the trees. That is quite a taxing job.

Last week I found that a big branch had fallen down in our back yard. Branch does not do this justice. It was as big as a tree by itself. I broke out the hand saw and cut off six garbage cans of small limbs. That was just the start.

There is a weekly yard clippings pickup. I think our taxes pay for it. They emptied my six garbage cans. I am sure I will have six more cans for them next week. Some branches were too big for the pickup. These things are huge - maybe eight inches in diameter.

I need to make a run to the dump. Got to load up the truck with all the huge branches. I have not been to my county's dump yet. Last time I went, I lived in a different county and went to a different dump. I think they charge by the ton if I haul it with my truck. Got to be a lot chepaer than paying someone else to haul off these branches.

TV Check

Momoko is going to get her own personal man cave. In her case, we should call it the woman cave. One thing she wants is a TV mounted on the wall. She thought a TV the same size as the ones in the kids' rooms would be good. We purchased a 32 inch Samsung TV for her about a week ago.

Since then we have finished clearing out her study to turn it into a man cave. I have been trying to get in touch with my handyman. He is going to get rid of the wallpaper and chair molding in her room. Then he is going to paint it in a mint green color that Momoko chose.

For now I wanted to make sure the TV was operational. I got 30 days to return it to the store for a refund. So I brought the TV over to the cable feed in the basement where Little Kat plays XBox. Yep. TV works fine. Had to adjust the video settings to maximize screen usage with cable. But it looked good.

Next I decided to bring the TV into my own study. Luckily I have a cable feed in there as well. Now I can work on my computer and watch TV at the same time.Well at least I have this setup until the handyman can come and work on Momoko's room. Who knows? Maybe I will buy a TV for myself too.

Fridge Cleaning Tips

I have access to a fridge where I keep my sodas for work. The thing initially stank. Some old contents were left in there way too long. It was time to fix this nasty smell.

I started by tossing out all the old stuff. Then I used paper towels and 409 to wipe down the entire inside of the fridge. Someone added an Arm & Hammer baking soda box. That was a good start.

Just read up on some more techniques to keep the fridge smelling better"
1. Put activated charcoal from a fish store in an old sock in there
2. Put vanilla extract on cotton balls, and place them in a shallow dish in there
3. Try the same method as #2, substituting orange extract for the vanilla
4. Crumple brown paper bags in the bins for two days and throw the bags out

I'd say it was time to try some of all of these extra tricks in getting this fridge smelling better.

Wireless Woes

We used to use our wireless router in the config it came from the factory. Default SSID and no security or password. The kids thought people were stealing our bandwidth. So we setup a secure protocol and added a password. The kids swore it made out Internet faster.

This past week the router seemed to be reset to original factory state. That's a problem because all our printers were configured to work with the new security. I lived with it for a bit. Set up one of the printers to work with the factory default wireless state.

Momoko said she could not print to any of her printers. It was time to fix the problem. I set the router back up with a different name, with security, and our password. Could not connect to any printers. Rebooted my computer. Setup that one printer to work with the new settings. I could print.

Momoko's printers were harder. I had to reset the security to use an older security protocol. Also had to reset the SSID to use all capital letters. Momoko could now print to two printers. Kit Kat could not print to any. I had her set up our newest printer. When she tried a test print, the printer went crazy and kept printing out weird text until it ran out of paper.

I had Kit Kat install the printer drivers from the DVD that came with the printer. Now she can print and scan. That's an upgrade. Momoko cannot print to her personal laser printer. That's okay by me. We have a family laser printer that is better. She can print to that one. Let's hope the router does not get reset back to factory defaults again.

Sink Trouble

I came home from work yesterday to hear that there was trouble with our kitchen sink. The pipe leading down to the drain got disconnected from the garbage disposal. I built a makeshift prop to keep the pipe connected. But we need this fixed.

Momoko tried to schedule a plumber. For some reason they would not come out unless I authorized them to do so. Might be time for a new plumber. I searched my records and found that this plumber repaired the pipe late last year. Might be a warranty situation.

Kit Kat bought us a bunch of meats and rolls for sandwiches since we do not want to create dishes by cooking anything. Good thing because I had a meeting scheduled for lunch today. The meeting was supposed to be late in the afternoon. However World Cup finals trump lunch it seems. I grabbed an early sandwich and went to my meeting.

After my meeting I went upstairs. Something strange was going on out in the living room. Apparently Kit Kat had lost a gerbil. I came in the room, and a little gerbil ran from underneath one couch to another. The gerbil was not too bad. She ran to Kit Kat who scooped her up. These kids are always losing the gerbils...