Riding on the Metro

My boss called an all hands meeting yesterday. We were to report downtown to one of our buildings to meet. At first I thought I would just wake up early and drive there. But once I saw the directions from MapQuest, I changed my mind. Lots of streets were one way. I figured it would be near impossible to navigate during rush hour. So I took the train.


Prior to arriving at the train station, I dropped by my dad's house. Switched my manual transmission Nissan out for my automatic transmission Scion xB. Then I drove to the train station. I had a train card. Just had not used it in a long time. I had looked up the cost to take the train to the office and back. Now I needed to ensure I had enough money on my train card.


I slide the train card into the slot like I would a credit card. No response. Ended up asking a train stop employee for help. It seems I needed to way my train card in front of the machine. With money added on the card, I went through to the train. It was not that crowded even though it was rush hour. I read my Kindle for part of the way.


When I reached the stop closest to my company building, I got out and figured which exit from the station to take. I knew I was close to the company. I asked a guy with a security uniform if he knew where my company was. He thought it was right behind him. Nope. Wrong address. As I walked down the street, the guy called out to me. I had to go across the square to the other side. Mission accomplished.

Crushed Rock that Blocks

My brother and I continue to work on the yard at my dad's house. Got to spruce it up to sell. We hired a landscaping guy to do a lot of the work. But the last 10 percent is taking a while for us to do ourselves.


Previously we had revamped the mulch work. Had to lay down lots of weed preventing fabric. Covered it up with mulch. We did this in some of the smaller areas this weekend. One tough spot was the front corner of the yard because it was on a hill.


Next up we needed to address the white crushed rock around the shed. The rock looked good. However one of the shed doors would not open. Duh. We removed the white rock, dug down quite a bit, then put the rock back in at a lower height. Problem solved.


Still need to deal with the rear fence gate not opening due to the crushed rock. Then I hope we can move indoors to put some finishing touches in the rooms such as new light switch covers.

Weed Prevention

I woke up extra early on Sunday. My brother drove me to dad's house. He proceeded to go to church. I did a bit of clean up behind the back yard fence in the woods. The last yard contractors left a lot of trash back there. Then I got down to business.


The yard contractors put down mulch in the front and side of the house. Whatever they did was no good. Weed were growing up in the mulch at an alarming rate. We had to redo the work. I thought we could just spray some weed killer, roll out weed prevention fabric, and top it off with new mulch.


I had the fabric spread on about two thirds of the mulch when my brother came back. We proceeded to put mulch in the long garden in front of the house. I made sure I was the one to spread the mulch around the edges. Had to cover the excess fabric with mulch to make it look good. By the time we got to the big section, we were out of mulch.


Ran over to the local Lowes with the truck to get 22 extra bags of black strip wood mulch. We started on the big section. The combination of hard work, sun, and getting up early took its toll on me. I could not work any more. I reluctantly turned the job over to my brother. I had a bad feeling about it.


My brother proceeded to try to put the mulch around the edges. The mulch was falling over onto the sidewalk. At the end, I tried to take a broom to brush the mulch on top of the border back into the mulched areas. However this exposed the weed prevention fabric. It was a big fail. I knew this edging needed expertise, but I was just too tired to do it.


I decided to leave it as is, finish up watering the grass, and return the next weekend. There is no good lesson here other than it is tough work doing landscaping. And you need a certain expertise to get it done right. Even the professional guy were hired screwed it up.

Missing Flight

Little Kat took a vacation to visit his dad. He arranged to get time off from work. He also arranged to get his own plane tickets (with an assist from his dad). To save some money, he did not fly on our normal airline. He went with Spirit. To save even more, he flew to an airport 4 hours south of his dad's place.


Today Little Kat was supposed to fly home. He got to the airport one hour before departure. Little Kat missed his flight. The airline must have felt bad. They gave him a free ticket for the next day. But what was he supposed to do at night? Sleep in the terminal? I thought he should try to catch another flight today. Might require going to another airline and paying more money. But he needs to be home.


Guess the TSA has it right. You are supposed to arrive at least three hours before departure to make sure you can get through all the lines and board your plane with time to spare. Tough lesson to learn. Good luck on your flight back Little Kat. We will be waiting for you at the airport.

Curse of the Cheap Trash Bag

We have found the perfect kitchen trash bags. They are the Glad 13 gallon handle tie trash bags. They are very sturdy. They are also tall to perfectly fit in our trash can. I can stuff a lot of trash into them. The only drawback is that they are expensive and sometimes out of stock. I try to preserve them by using a different bag to double wrap the bag before putting them out for pickup.


Momoko recently bought a knock off brand of trash bag from Target. They were a disaster. First off them are thin and cheaply made. They are the wrong size. So if you put something heavy in the trash can, the bag falls down to the bottom. Then additional trash goes in the can and not the bag.


These cheap bags do not hold as much trash. So I am taking out the trash a lot more often. When I do take out the trash, these bags cannot hold the extra trash I normally top the bags off with. What a nightmare. And we had a ton of these cheap bags. No more. Momoko has to get the good Hefty kind, even if she needs to shop on Amazon or goes to multiple stores.

Hauling Junk Ourselves

I informed my boss that I was leaving work early on Friday. He told me to finish up my current task. So I punched it on the job and finished early. I had Momoko drive me to the local U-Haul rental office. I picked up the box truck that I had reserved. The air conditioning in it was ice cold.


My brother was off work when I brought the truck home. We drove it to my dad's house. Had to get the landscape guy to move his truck out of the way. First we attacked the sleeper sofa from the living room. It was tough because the sleeper kept sliding out until I secured it with rope.


Then we loaded the rest of the couches and some long construction debris. We finished up at dad's house by loading in chairs and other objects that were not long. They were put as far back in the truck as possible.


My brother called ahead and had Momoko and Kit Kat move the cars out of the driveway. I had spent the morning moving all the trash bags from behind the back fence to the driveway. My brother I and loaded them into the truck. The back door barely closed.


The next morning, we drove down to the county dump. Got there 10 minutes before opening. There was already a line of 10 to 15 cars ahead of us. We got sent to a single site. Trash bags got loaded into a dumpster. Most furniture and wood went into a pile. My bro ran the metal to the other pile.


I gassed up back near dad's. Picked up a bunch of items that we needed to transport to my house. There was a surprise when I turned the truck in. They charged me $1.29 a mile, versus the $1.00 that the rep quoted me when I reserved the truck. I was too tired to fight this injustice, but I won't be going back to that store.

Paint Job Sticker Shock

We just about got my dad's house cleaned out. Now it is time to fix it up to get it ready to sell. Landscape changes are coming along. Time to paint the walls. I had my real estate agent line up a painting company to give me a quote.


Showed the company rep what I needed done: all the walls on the main level, most ceilings on the mail level, and the whole basement rec room. Also want one side exterior wall painted, as well as the outdoor hand railing.


There were two rooms that had wallpaper. The estimator said they could not provide a firm fixed price for them based on the varying time it takes to remove wallpaper. The quote came it quick and high. Estimated $13,000+ for the job. Could be more based on the wallpaper situation.


Well I think it is clear we are not hiring this company. Tomorrow I meet with an estimator for another company. Good luck to us.