Cooling Little Kat's Room

In preparation for hosting his friend at our house this summer, Little Kat moved his bedroom down into my study in the basement. It was a much bigger space than his old bedroom upstairs. I moved my study into that small bedroom. The only apparent problem is that now this basement room is really hot with all of Little Kat's electronics.

I asked my handyman if he could install a window unit air conditioner in Little Kat's new room. He said that was not possible because the back of the unit has to be exposed to the outside. Little Kat's new room is completely underground. However my handyman thought we could use a portable A/C unit. We actually have an extra one we keep in the dining room.

Today my handyman came to our house with his son to work on this portable A/C project. He cut a hole in Little Kat's closet wall. He ran a flexible duct through the wall, along the ceiling of the utility room, and out the back of the house. There was already an old unused exhaust hole in the back of our house from an old bathroom that could be widened and reused.

Now the remaining task is to have our handyman install an electrical outlet in Little Kat's closet to power the A/C. We currently have a long extension cord connecting the A/C to an outlet in Little Kat's room. Eventually we will need a new door for Little Kat's closet so that the door can be closed but the cool air can blow through into his room.

Communications Course Disaster

Little Kat took a communications course at college this semester. Momoko and I helped him with writing his speeches. They each needed a lot of revisions to get acceptable. They turned out okay. This class required a group project. This was Little Kat's downfall.

Apparently Little Kat's group froze him out of the group at first. Then bad grades were given to the group. Little Kat made it sound like he provided evidence of this to the teacher. What he failed to mention was the the teacher responded to him, and Little Kat effectively did nothing.

We almost were going to fight the teacher on the group project grades in this class. Momoko and I did our due diligence. We eventually found the information from the teacher. Little Kat had some excuses as to why he did not see the emails. We only found out about them late. Little Kat had to take the hit in his grade.

Attack on Titan

It has been a long time since Momoko and I first watched an episode of the anime series Attack on Titan. I think we might have only watched the first episode of season 1. The main character's mom's legs were broken as a house fell down on her. Then a titan ate her. Our initial reaction was no thank you.

One of the Tiktok content creators that I follow has been an Attack on Titan super fan. She cosplays assorted characters from the anime series. She seems genuinely excited about the series, especially the later seasons, the most recent of which came out last year.

I saw the series on my brother's Hulu account. So Momoko and I gave the thing another try. Momoko was bored during episode 1. But the series picked up in subsequent episodes. We binge watched around 15 episodes this weekend. We are still chugging along in season 1.

Car Purchase Failure

Kit Kat, her boyfriend, and I took up trip up North on a lead for a new 2022 Hyundai Accent. My car was in the shop. So I drove Little Kat's car. Halfway to the dealership, we shopped at Dunkin Doughnuts for breakfast. It seemed like the dining room was closed. They set it up for us and we dined in.

When we got to the dealership, we found it small. The wind kept banging on the large windows behind the sales guy's desk. We were dismayed to find they did not have the car. It was scheduled to arrive sometime this month.

The sales guy tried to get Kit Kat to put a $500 deposit on a car that would arrive in the future. I reviewed the numbers. The top line was much higher than MSRP. I pressed them on this discrepancy. They confessed that there was about $1400 of markup built into that price. It was for add ons.

I said that since they have not taken delivery, they could skip any add-ons and remove that garbage fee. They said they would not do that. They tried to argue that CarMax sells used cars for more than them. Kit Kat got them to agree to a special low financing, and argued with them about a new college graduate discount.

Even with assorted incentives, they were still $500 over MSRP. I told the sales guy we needed to talk privately amongst ourselves. We went out to Little Kat's car. The sales guy came to the car and said there was another customer on the phone wanted to put a deposit on the car. I told him we still needed time to talk.

The salesman returned to our car again and said the manager needed to know immediately whether we would put a deposit on the car. I told him I would answer for Kit Kat. And the answer was no. We were not even sure if they were getting the trim we wanted. Too much shifty stuff going on. When pressed, the sales guy told us the deposit was non-refundable. Fail.

Calculus Troubles

Little Kat got a 73% on his Calculus quiz. I asked him some questions about the material. He did not have very good answers. So I worked with him on Chapter 3 that he needed to go through. Little Kat would read the sections and try to answer the questions. Then I would make sure he understand everything.

Little Kat had a midterm exam. He did fine on the Chapter 3 material. But he bombed all the Chapter 1 and 2 questions, resulting in a failing grade. I also noticed that Little Kat was taking a long time going through the reading in the current Chapter 4. He also had trouble doing the homework.

The deadline for the first couple sections of Chapter 4 came up. Little Kat was not going to be able to complete his homework on time. We had to get together and read through the sections, trying to understand the sometimes confusing textbook. On the last day before his assignment was due, he had to spend all day working. I was on call just in case he could not finish an assignment.

Now we are preparing to get back on track. Some other classes had a lot of work due at the beginning of the week. This is putting us behind again on math. We will need to catch up and try to get ahead before the next homework deadline and quiz. So our current plan is to do math together whenever Little Kat has the time.

Weed Prevention

There is a rectangle outside our front door that I cover in mulch. However it has been overtaken by weeds. Previously I had put down multiple layers of black cloth to prevent the weeds from growing. This seemed to have no effect. The weeds grew right through. It was time for some more serious blockage.

I pulled up the black cloth. Many weeds and grass were growing thick in it. I decided to repurpose this black strip to lay over the trench that formed behind my back fence on my property. Water runs down a path, and the ground gets washed away. I previously tried to fill the trench with gravel. The gravel all washed away.

This time I put down the used black cloth with weeds growing in it. Underneath the cloth I put some more gravel, and covered the gravel with soil. Then I used metal spikes to tie down the cloth so it would not wash away.

Back in the front, I put down long pieces of plywood. Then I covered that with some leftover vapor barrier from Little Kat's new vinyl floor install. I mainly chose it because it was black and would mask the color of the plywood. I put some mulch on top of the wood and barrier. The wood is a bit warped. I hope the weight and water will put it down straight.

Vacation is all I ever Wanted

This morning Momoko and I picked our belongings. We waited for Kit Kat to wake up. I quizzed her on her recent trip with her boyfriend. She gave me a pretty detailed synopsis, even though she had just purchased some chicken from Door Dash. After that, Momoko and I took off on our vacation. She said she heard a buzzing in the back seat. So I rolled the back window down hoping the bug would exit.

I knew the first couple legs for our trip. There was light traffic on the highway by our house. It turned out to be some huge trucks stopped on the side of the road with a person standing in one lane flagging people to slow down. I started getting hungry. I figured we could eat 30 minutes into our trip. At most I thought it would be an hour. When we hit a big city, I tried to decide on a restaurant with Momoko. No decisions were made and we passed the big city.

I decided to make a command decision and stop at the first fast food restaurant in the next big city. There were some cops stopping somebody on the highway. It made all traffic slow down. Upon coming into the next city, I pulled over into Popeye's. I ordered a spicy chicken sandwich. Momoko ordered a shrimp tackle box. My food took 5 minutes to cook. I scarfed it down, but it was really spicy.

Then we proceeded on the highway. They closed a 5 lane highway down to just a single lane. There were dudes holding signs on the highway for us to slow down. Traffic was going nowhere. We finally made it past the construction. Momoko used Google Maps to direct us on the last leg of the journey. We entered the parking lot of the hotel. It was crowded. Some guy was going the wrong way down an aisle. He signaled me and told me the road was one way. I concurred, but said he was going the wrong way. He pointed to a sign that contradicted what I said. I told him I was following the big arrow on the concrete below us that pointed against him.

Inside the hotel, they tried to give me the keys to an 18th floor condo. I told them I reserved a room that was in the hotel on floor 5 or lower. They told me somebody had upgraded me without informing me. I told them I would like to be downgraded back down to the room I reserved. They found me one such room. It was hot. But we opened the screen door to cool it off. We tried to go to a restaurant we liked. But they were only open for carryout. We went to another restaurant we knew. They asked us to be patient. I got a cold lasagna. They heated it up more for me. Momoko got a big pizza.

At night we called Little Kat to check up on his college. The main point of our call was quizzed Little Kat on functions, graphs, limits, and continuity. Little Kat did not seem to grasp the basics of limits in Calculus. We need him to study this topic. The rest of Calculus will build upon it.