Steakhouse Super Fail

Momoko did a marathon shopping spree at Sam's Club with her mom and dad. So she was tired at dinnertime. I proposed we eat out at places I liked such as the all you can eat Chinese place, or maybe Roy Rogers. Momoko decided we should go to the local steakhouse.


The steakhouse used to be an Outback. But they moved out and another chain moved in. Initially they were similar to Outback. They had some reasonable prices. First thing we noticed was that they changed the menu. Everything was pricier. At least I had a coupon.


Momoko ordered a steak salad. Everyone else's food arrived. Momoko's was missing. She ate dinner rolls. Pretty much everyone finished their meals. Still no sign of Momoko's salad. When it eventually came a half hour later, she asked them to wrap it up to go.


Momoko's dad complained about this and a host of other problems. A manager said she would take care of it. They did not charge us for the salad. And they gave us an additional 25% off. Still not sure if we are going to return there. Bad service is a no-no in my book. No excuse really. Because although we were a large party, the restaurant was almost empty.


Might be time to return to the Outback.

Working While Sick

I have been sick for almost two weeks. I am getting better. Last week, I could not even work. Had to take the whole week off. The rain has not stopped while I was sick. Thus the grass is growing like crazy. When the grass gets tall, it is doubly hard to mow. You got to stop frequently to dump the grass catching bag.


Yesterday I decided I needed to step up and do some mowing. At lunch I went outside with the best intentions. I was barely able to get the front yard done. Only did a little weed trimming. Had to take several breaks as I just could not keep going. I was near the breaking point when I was done.


Since I was sweating profusely, I needed to take a shower. But I was beat. Almost too tired to even shower. I decided to take a really quick shower before I passed out. The hard part was that I could not go to sleep. Needed to get back to my job. At least the house was cool. I grabbed an A&W soda and got back to the computer.


Next up, I need to tackle the back yard. It is even bigger than the front yard. And it needs a lot more weed trimming work. Might have to break that task down into multiple days. We shall see.

Calling in the Professionals

I had been having a fever for around four days. There were headaches that got worse at night. I could not sleep. It was a mess. Could not work. It was time to see a doctor. Turns out my primary care physician was not in. None of the other doctors at his location would pick me up to see me. Damn.


As a last resort, I made the trek to my medical company's urgent care facility. It is quite a drive. At least they have doctors there that could see me. I checked in at the front desk. They seemed unsure where to send me. They guessed. When I arrived at the section they guided me to, I was told to report to urgent care on the other side of the hospital.


I checked in and got a band placed around my wrist. This gave me flashbacks of when I came here with heart problems. A nurse checked me over and gave me a mask to wear since I was exhibiting flu-life symptoms. After that I read my Kindle app on the iPad that I brought. It helped the time pass quicker.


Eventually a nurse came and led me to a doctor. She asked me a lot of questions and listened to my chest as I breathed deeply. The diagnosis was pink eye in both eyes, plus a really bad cold. What? This felt more potent than a common cold. Luckily the drugs the doctor prescribed were all available at the pharmacy inside the facility.


I was in and out in record time. The last time I was there, I ended up staying overnight. Let's see if these prescriptions do any better. Moral of the story is to visit the doctor as soon as there is any sign of sickness.

Stress Induced Sickness

Momoko recently got sick. The doctor diagnosed her with bronchitis and pneumonia. I was staying healthy for a while. The came the evil Friday. I had to get up really early to attend a meeting across town. While I was there, my mechanic kept trying to get in touch with me about Kit Kat's car problems.


At lunch the team wanted to eat together, but I had to pass because I needed to go to my dad's house to do some work. Then when I got home, my new team at work scheduled a long training session. During the session my handyman wanted to come over to work on my new gas stove install. I just did not have the time for him.


All these events and more wore down on me. Then I got sick. I had a fever all weekend. Decided to take the following Monday off. I was burning up throughout the night so hot that I kept running to the bathroom to splash cold water on my head, face, and neck. I drank lots of fluids. Still have a fever and headache.


If this continues any further, might be time to seek professional help.

Trapped

I have some faux concrete edging around the garden in the front yard. It separates the lawn from the garden nicely. The problem is that the ends keep falling off when I cut the grass. The lawn mower bumps the edging, and the ends are not as secure.


At my dad's house, I found these long stakes I thought could help me out. They look like huge nails. I figured I could drive these down into the ends of the edging to keep it in place. When I brought it home, I went to the carport shed to get some new end squares for the edging.


I found the end squares in the shed. When I pulled them out, something fell to the ground. My spider senses were tingling. The thing that fell turned out to be a piece of mulch. But up on the shelf where I grabbed the end square, I saw a mouse turn around and high tail it back behind the edging.


Initially I thought I could grab the mouse with something. But why go through all that effort? We used to have tons of mice in our old backyard shed. The best exterminator was the cheap mouse traps. I actually had a bunch in the closet.


I got some gloves on, set the trap, put a piece of Kraft cheese on it, and waited. I did not want any of the family to get their fingers caught in the mousetrap. So I texted everyone a warning to be careful in the carport shed. I also made a big sign and put it on the front of the shed.


This morning I found that the trap had worked. I wrapped up the mouse and stuck him in a garbage bag I was taking out to the trash can. Then I set another trap in case there is a family of mice living in the shed. Got to be thorough.

Surprise Package

I have my own mail slot in the house. If someone else gets the mail, they stick my items in the slot. This weekend I found a box in there. Boxes are not strange. I order a lot of stuff from Amazon. However this box looked like a laser printer toner cartridge.


Normally I keep a backup toner cartridge around for each of our laser printers. We have not changed our toner for months. So it was strange that I got a package for a laser toner cartridge. I told Momoko about this oddity.


Momoko informed me that Little Kat recently changed the toner cartridge in our main laser printer. More strangeness. I questioned Little Kat. He said he went into my supplies, got my backup cartridge, and installed it.


Little Kat put the old empty cartridge in my now empty new box. Then he placed the thing on my mail pile. WTF? Little Kat is authorized to get supplies from my closet. But he is supposed to inform me so that we can keep the closet stocked.


Glad I figured out the mystery. Otherwise I might have put the box in my supply cabinet, thinking we had an extra bonus cartridge. That would have been unfortunate when we ran out of toner to find we had an empty cartridge as backup.

Woodpile Relocation

Momoko said she saw bees coming out of the wood stack we have in our carport. So I told her to solve the problem. That meant take down the logs, find the nest, and exterminate it. Momoko said she did not want to get stung. Nobody does. So she tried to get someone to remove the bees.


Turns out many people will remove honey bees for free. Momoko spent a lot of time trying to identify the type of bees we had. This was going nowhere. I told her to just hire an exterminator. I would even pay for them.


The bee expert came. He said these were harmless bees. He though they would be gone after the season ended, so he advised we did not exterminate them. Sounded good to me. The guy recommended we move the wood away from the house because of other pests that might decided to move from the pile to the house.


Our wood was contained in a large apparatus constructed from lumber and plywood. It was deep enough to hold a single log, and tall and wide enough to hold many of them. We only stacked it half full so we could reach the top. I had the other half of the wood stashed under my workbench behind the shed.


I took on the task to relocate the wood. First I cut our apparatus in half vertically. It was tough to reach the 2x4 board in the back corner. But I did it. Then I took to top half of the apparatus I just sawed off, turned it over, and moved it to the new location. I proceeded to fill that "half" with firewood.


Next I got my brother and Little Kat to assist with carrying the bottom half of the apparatus to the new location. The bottom had 4x4 risers that made the whole thing heavy. I finished by stacking the rest of the wood in this bottom half. Now we got two halves side by side, almost filled to the brim with firewood.


For now I have a small tarp covering the top of the wood. But I want to secure it all from moisture and bugs. So I ordered a huge tarp to wrap everything up.