low_delta

The bathroom remodel has started. Finally.

We have two bathrooms, but the second one is tiny. It's like a half bath, because you can hardly see the tiny closet of a shower stall. There's no vanity - just a sink, toilet and floor for you to place your things. And no place to store them, so I have all my things in a box. When I go in to take my shower in the morning, I grab the box and my towels from the laundry room. Box goes on the toilet seat, and clean clothes, dirty clothes and towels go on the floor. I've got to put some hooks up, at least.

And it's going to be like this for about a month and a half. They gave us a tentative schedule. Demolition is two days, rough plumbing one, rough electrical one day, then insulation one day. All this has to be done by next Tuesday, because that's the day that our town's inspector works. *rolls eyes*

Some of this stuff is custom. After the walls are done, and the floor is done, they set the vanity in place, and then they can do the final measurements for the granite top. And that can take up to two weeks. Same situation for the glass shower doors, but it won't take that long.

Last weekend I replaced the kithen sink. Got it mostly done. At the end of the day, there was one drain pipe that leaked, and the diswasher discharage wasn't connected.

Monday was the St. Andrew's whisky tasting. That went well. A lot of people said it was our best one yet. I wasn't a presenter, I just mostly picked the whiskies.

So Tuesday I finished the sink. Mostly. I didn't get a hose clamp on the diswasher discharge, and Cindy didn't trust that it would hold.

Wednesday was CoPA. I was tempted to skip it, since I'm so busy, but I missed last month. I kinda volunteered to help out a bit. Actually, I volunteered to help out with a particular thing if they implemented it, and (unsurprisingly), they took me on to help out in a broader area. But that's okay. It probably won't take up a whole lot of my time. We'll see.

So Thursday I put the hose clamp on the discharge so we could use the dishwasher.

Scotch whisky group on Saturday night. Had too much to drive so had to stay the night, and got almost no sleep, but I didn't feel too bad the next day. Just a little slow, like always. I took a nap in the late morning, and I feel like I got about three hours of sleep in total.

Gaming last night. I feel like I don't have time for gaming, but I don't want to miss too much of it. We just started playing Star Wars, so I want to get in on that at the same time as everyone else, to learn it as they do. And of course gaming ran late. I was falling asleep at the table. I didn't get to bed until 11:30 or so.

Monday night was the whisky-making presentation. It went well, though, in the words of my dad, we weren't polished. We kept it short but sweet.

Tuesday, my back was killing me. It started giving me a little grief when we got rid of our mattress in favor of Cyn's mom's queen-sized one. It was more worn out than we expected, and my back started bugging me just a little. But I'm not sure if those are related. When we got our fancy new mattress, my back went south. It's had its ups and downs, but Tuesday was really painful. Yesterday was a little better, and today better still. I made an appointment with an adjustor, for saturday morning.

I'm enjoying this "new" monitor, for its size and resolution, but the color and highlight brightness are off. I edited the photos from Saturday's photowalk, and the rest of the ones from the wedding, but I felt like I was flying blind. I had to trust the sliders and histograms. I couldn't adjust the color at all, and had to do the brightness on faith. So I ordered a brand new 27" monitor. Should be pretty sweet.

Last night one of the managers at work took a bunch of us out to eat. Ate at Sprecher's Pub. Good food.

My car has been noisy for a while. I first thought it was the tires. Maybe out of balance, or something. It kept getting louder (and sounded less like out-of-balance tires). My dad rode with me not long ago and said it was a bad wheel bearing. And that bearing failure was catastrophic and could get someone killed. So I made an appointment and took it in today. I was told it's the tires. And that I should get an alignment to correct the odd wear pattern. (This shop didn't have the equipment to do my car.) I'm glad it wasn't the bearing, since that's an expensive fix, but this is a trickier problem to solve.

I had a lengthy to-do list, and got a few things done Tuesday night. Didn't do anything from it last night or tonight. Should clean the house tomorrow night. Should also go grocery shopping, and we're going to visit gallery night. We'll see what happens.

Well, mostly.

Last night, I had time to run to the hardware store and pick up an o-ring for the other faucet. Don't ask me why I didn't get an extra one while I was there. I didn't have time to install it. Tonight, I was excited to put it in, and be done with it. If you recall, I had a medium and a large o-ring, and the medium one fit, with me leaning on the handle with one hand. So I got another one just like it. It didn't fit. I got Cyn to help. She turned the wrench, while I leaned on the handle (what little of it there was) with as much of my body as I could manage. I couldn't understand it, since it was the same size o-ring as the other. Back to the hardware store I went. The guy found one that was smaller. Back home, where it was almost completely dark. It still didn't fit. Even with Cyn's help. I was starting to get upset.

Later in the evening... I was emptying my pockets, and discovered that when I left the store, I had put the o-ring in a different pocket than I'd thought. There it was. It was even still shiny! I went out in the dark, and tried it, and... it still didn't fit. Since I had reached the end of my rope, I had a little time to hang and ponder. I put some grease on it, and it popped right in. I turned the water back on, and nothing leaked.

Success!

Except for the part where I destroyed the handle trying to get it off before I realized I only had to swap out the o-ring.

I got my new glasses yesterday. I hate them. It's my second pair of progressive lenses (bifocals without lines). I had a lot of trouble adjusting to the first pair because, well, that's quite a change. This one is only a little better. There's so much variation in the way they make lenses these days. My first pair had some trick where they make the field of vision wider. This is the "normal" kind, where you have to look pretty much straight through the middle of the lenses for things to be in focus - for that distance. Nobody told me that about progressive lenses.

The next time I have to get new glasses, I think I'm either going to get bifocals or the surgery.

A while back, we got a new front door, with a new lock in it. I finally got new locks for the other two doors, so they'd match. I'd asked the door guy to replace those as well, when he did the door, so they all matched, but he didn't. Later, I asked him if he'd get me new locks to match, but he said I could have locks rekeyed. I didn't know you could do that.

Last night, we went to the park for a free concert. Copper Box was playing. I'm beginning to like these guys. They do a mix - rockish, countryish, zydeco, polka, all kinds of stuff. Even an Irish folk tune with accordion. A guy sings and plays accordion, keyboards, trumpet and sousaphone. His wife sings occasionally, and plays guitar and saxophones. The bassist also did an electric ukelele solo, and there's a drummer. The only downside was that we went with friends, and they like to talk. So I spent the whole time talking with Dennis, while trying to listen to the show. My mom came over to say hi. She was sitting near us, but behind some people, where I didn't see her.

Funny, there were no bugs out. It was a little on the chilly side, but we were down by the river. I wonder if they sprayed the area or something. We went for a walk at Lion's Den, the other day, and the mosquitos were pretty bad. We've had a lot of rain this year.

I'm trying to round up whisky for the next St Andrew's tasting. I need to run down to Binny's to pick most of it up, and order the rest from the UK.

As I came to consciousness, with the radio alarm blaring, I heard a background noise. I thought it was either something up with our sump pump, or heavy equipment tearing up the neighbor's yard. A glance outside told me that it was our pump. With the snow melting, and all the rain, our sump pump was working overtime to remove the water from under the house, and it got stuck on. It took me a little over half an hour to replace it, and I still made it to work on time.

It was last replaced in March of 2007. With all this water, it had been running quite a lot of the time, so I had been checking it quite a lot of the time. I don't think I would have checked it this morning, so its particular noisy mode of failure was lucky for us!

I got my new computer. I had to pick it up on the way home from work, but it wasn't done, so I had to go back. I had to go out to the Highland Games, since my dad won an award (Celtic Person of the Year). But I was late, so missed the awarding of the award.

I took along a flask of Scotch that was half Talisker, half Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban. My dad guessed both distilleries.

So.. computer.

How long has it been since computers stopped coming with Outlook Express? Now I need to figure out how to get my ISP mail.

There are only two USB ports on the front of the box here are only two USB ports on the back of the box, and they're taken up by the mouse and keyboard. There are no alternate ways to plug in the mouse or keyboard, so my old ones are trash. I didn't think I'd had the mouse for very long. The new mouse seems decent, but I want an "ergonomic" keyboard.

Maybe Monday, I can see if I can get my data from the old hard drive.

Antivirus. I bought Trend Micro. Not impressed at the moment. My mom had Kaspersky, and I found it a little annoying at times, but I think I prefer it over Trend. I've had Norton forever, and thought I'd try something different. There's just very little to see on the Trend. No details to control, like when it updates and runs scans. Maybe I'll like it better after a time.

So now I've played around a little. Now I have to get some files on this thing. And start replenishing my favorites/bookmarks.

This new machine doesn't sound like a jet engine when it starts up.

I was using Photoshop CS2. I wanted to upgrade to the latest version, and buy it so I was legit. I knew it would be expensive - I expected around $400. Turns out it was double what I expected. That's a good bit more than the computer cost.

We had our roof redone. The guy who did it was... not entirely on the ball. He was usually good, but a few times he didn't come through. Like, he disappeared for two weeks after we told him we'd go ahead with the job. I was just about ready to call someone else, when he finally called back. I wish he'd waited one more day, and then I would have had another quote in hand.

The final product was good. The roof looks good, and he cleaned up the place reasonably well. I paid him immediately, but the next night it rained, and I discovered they didn't reattach one of the downspouts to the gutter. It washed several inches of soil off my garden underneath it. I called him the next morning, and he said he'd be over. Then it rained again in the afternoon. It wasn't fixed when I got home, so I called him again. He said he was in Mequon and he'd stop on the way back to town. He didn't. Didn't come friday or monday either. Monday night it rained again. No real damage from the soil washing away, but I had to put more topsoil down.

So tonight I fixed it myself. I plan on billing him. I've got to create an invoice-looking thing. I'll say my time is worth $25 an hour, time spent was 45 minutes, and I'll add $3.75 for topsoil.

I've also got the sign he put in our front yard, advertising his company. He didn't pick it up by this morning, so I put it in the garage. I'll give it back to him if he pays me. If he doesn't, I'll drive around and find a run-down, abandoned building, and stick it in the ground there.

I hate these glasses. It's the second day with my bifocals (progressive). I'm starting to get used to seeing with them*, but I'm also starting to feel headachey, which is exactly what I was hoping to avoid by getting new glasses. Also, I can't get them adjusted right. This morning, they were too tight over my ears. I could feel the blood rushing back into the skin, when I took them off. I went back for an adjustment, and now they just sit heavy on my head.

Not happy.

* I think that means I'm okay with the blurry parts.