Writing Wrongs

Totally forgot about Mavericks surf completion this morning until it showed up at work during my CNN break. But there were no waves showing on the live streaming, just a bunch of surfers and boats bobbing on a fairly flay sea. Only one surfer had scored any points. The usual suspects and I went to lunch (Round Table's pizza buffet) and when we got back I was busy doing actual work until about 4. Looked again and now it was almost over, they were showing reruns of 40-foot waves being ridden, and five or six surfers had scored, one of them 3 times, and one of his was a 10.

Stayed till almost 6, finishing up some work for Automation Guy, who said that since I did the work, I could do the demo again, at Monday's team meeting. Okay, he's right, I give good demo.

Headed for Lowe's, where I discovered I had forgotten the discount coupon, so instead of buying a lot of stuff I needed, I only bought wild bird seed and an American flag with a flagpole kit. The house has an empty flag pole holder. Will go back tomorrow with the coupon and buy two garden hoses, some hose hardware, and maybe a couple of indoor plants.

Home, put the flag pole together, attached the USA flag, attached an almost-as-big Thai flag below it, and set it aside until tomorrow because flags should be posted in daylight.

Filled the bird feeder, took down the empty hummingbird feeder and hung the seed feeder in its place. Tapped on the full hummer feeder to burp it, and the bubbles meant maybe there had been some activity.

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Two surprises this morning at the mailbox. Mine and most of the mailboxes on the block had their doors open. And in the park's mail tube was my rent/utilities bill. This is the first month electric and gas was billed, and it was a hefty $ 68 each. And the larger garbage can cost me more, but only about $7 for twice the capacity. Everything else was the same. Yesterday the mortgage deduction hit the checking account, but it was the same as last month, which means they haven't processed the new insurance yet. It should go up by $5 a month when that is done.

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Watched an episode of Shark Tank. One of the applicants was a total fake, snake oil salesman. Everyone saw right through him immediately.

Dinner made me late. I decided to heat up the frozen Marie Calendar lasagna in the oven. Took an hour. Cut the fungus off a piece of swiss cheese, sliced it up and added it to the top of the container and 10 more minutes. Tried to cut it into squares, but it was a hot mess and I ended up using a pancake flipper to slap the goop onto a plate. Tasted great but looked like a disaster.

The chocolate fudge ice cream was nice too.

This morning's Hgl was 89, and I was feeling a bit squirrelly, and puzzled because I'd made a snack at 11 pm of a grilled cheese sandwich. And I had three pieces of chocolate from the night stand while I was reading in bed. Same insulin as usual. Weird.

Plans for tomorrow:
Nothing time-related
Lowe's, stuff for the house.
Looking forward to LJ and FB reports on Conflikt. Decided to skip it because the venue sucks and last year I had very little fun because my favorite performers decided to make it a relaxacon and didn't do much singing. Will be at Consonance for my major league filk fix.

Wet streets locally again this morning. Script writer made some changes, so I had stuff to test. UPS tracking said recliner was out for delivery, they usually show up around 3-5 pm, so I went home at 1 planning on working from home till it arrived, because it's 100lbs and would be a lot easier if the driver hauled it on his dolly up the stairs and onto the landing.

But when I got home the box was at the foot of the side stairs, which are too narrow to get it inside, so I had to get my dolly and roll the thing all the way down the driveway, out onto the street, to the opposite side of the house and up the front steps, and into the livingroom.

Got the box open and they had broken one of the four widgets at the bottom of the legs. Not crucial, but not good for the carpet.

Put it together, which is dead easy. The foot rest needs to be kicked back into place, so something probably also got bent slightly. Not enough to send it back but enough to complain to overstock.com. Domino was sitting across the top of it before I could even try it out. It's the guest chair.

The box was too big for recycle, so I chopped it up and set it outside.

Did some more work from home, got volunteered to give a demo of it Monday.

Caught up on online stuff, watched an episode of Restaurant Stakeout which was a little bit different than most, because the main issue wasn't the staff, it was the space, and the boss' penny pinching. He fixed it by doubling the staff and totally remodeling the place.

Watched the news, got bored and here I am. I think I'll boost the head of the bed and do some reading.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Put together that demo
Starbucks? I have a free drink coming and it's been a while.

is what they call Tuesday in Hebrew. Their week starts on Sunday.

Work was work. I spent the day playing with some new SNMP scripts from automation. They all worked, except they didn't. If I plugged in the right parameters, it would give me the right answers. But the final step was missing - it doesn't harvest the answers from the mass of extraneous data, which means human eyes need to watch the process, which means it's not automated. I'll work with the programmer to get that fixed.

Lunchtime was going to be Togo's but I forgot to "do it first" before leaving work, and Carl's Jr was the nearest rest room.

Straight home after work, answered some email, printed a return label for yet another too-small set of jeans.

Also put my Sharks' jacket, white walking shoes and a kitchen towel into the washer. They washed fine but the shoes pummeling the dryer kept making it stop, so those will have to air dry. The jacket is making a lot of noise. Strange.

Later that same day: It wasn't the jacket. Previous owner had installed a bracket holding a solid cake of softener, and the shoes had jarred that cake loose. Sounds much quieter now.

Watched two more episodes of Breaking Bad season 1. I think I've had enough. Maybe one more episode but I may hit the "stop" button before it's over. It drags a lot, and I really don't like any of the characters. At all.

TV dinner again. Swedish meatballs.

Mancini's called, the bed will be delivered between 3-7 pm. I'll leave work at lunchtime, drop off the return at UPS on my way home and work from home. Have to lock Domino in the bathroom when they arrive. It shouldn't take more than half an hour. I thought about having them put the old bed in the 3rd BR, but it's too small a space for a queen sized bed. Some day maybe a futon.

So those are plans for tomorrow. :-)

Got my short but time-consuming to-do list done. Slept in until 9, though it took several tries. Woke up about every 20 minutes between then and 7.

Unpacked the two boxes of Video cassettes and DVDs, and found one more box to unpack, it was labeled "Mom's albums" so I thought it was part of the stash of snapshots in a box I don't intend to open. But it turned out to be a set of photo albums which belonged on the big black rack with the LPs, 78s and such.

The flattened boxes more than filled the back seat, had to put a couple in the front seat and three in the trunk. Totally forgot the one on the driveway which the movers had bleached. I had not flattened it yet, and it was all closed with plastic tape, which is a no-no for recycling. I'll get it later.

Had the cardboard recycling dumpsters to myself, so it went quickly.

Back to the house, packed the trunk with the old ugly kitchen curtains and livingroom shades, and the short roll of Astroturf which used to go under the two litterboxes. Took those to Goodwill.

Stopped at OSH and bought a pair of garden hose nozzles (there are three hoses at the house, only one had a working nozzle) and an aerator/sprayer for the kitchen faucet. Previous owner had a Pur unit on there which did the aeration, but I hate those things.

Between my left knee acting up again (thanks to all the box hauling) and my right elbow still ouch-ing, decided t was time to try the massage place next to the nails place. Good call. Standard price scheme, and DDG northern Chinese woman who spoke reasonably good English, and walked on my back with her hands. There was actually a pair of rails for back walking, but she knelt next to me and pushed, hard. Good solid job, I shall return.

Stopped off at Target for bath rugs, parking was insane - full of vultures in the main garage, but plenty of spaces in the second garage which is the same distance to the doors. Go figure. Got to the entrance, the line for the cash registers went from the last register all the way to the other end of the store. There was one young man in the long empty corridor perpendicular to the registers, directing people to the next available register. It was even more insane than the parking, so I returned my cart and left.

Home, went online, ordered a pair of bath rugs at target.com, but when I tried to check out it gave me a 404 error. Tried three times, FAIL. Probably will try Penny's later.

Watched football games for the rest of the evening. Stated with a bowl of popcorn, graduated to Marie Calendar beef dinner. Thin mint ice cream FTW.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Watch what will probably be the last game played at Candlestick park, which should have been torn down in 1989 after the quake. Laugh at the phony nostalgia stories.

Woke up before 7, was in the bathroom when the two alarms went off, which is one perk of living in a house, no wall-share neighbors to hear your alarm going off. Got to the DMV at 8:30, found parking and made my way past the long line of people without appointments to the line for people with. 3 people ahead of me. 8:45 had the form filled out and was assigned a number, and told that contrary to what the web site says, yes, I can get a new license with my current address for a mere $26, and yes, I can also get a free senior citizen ID card. 5 minutes later I was being helped by a trainee and two veterans on either side of her. She was way too bright to be working at the DMV - she understood stuff the first time, is a native speaker of American English, and did not blame the slow computer for anything. After collecting my $26 she gave me a receipt, a temporary license and another receipt for the ID card and sent me to the line behind me. This was apparently the line for people with appointments because after the three people ahead of me were shot, they pulled me in ahead of abut a dozen others for my photo & signature. So not only do I get a new license with the right address, I get a photo which was not taken in 2000.

I was out of there by 9:10. Meanwhile the no-appointment line had reached around the building, in the 45° chill.

Which meant I was at work on time, because the DMV is only 1.5 miles away.

Not much to do at work, so I socialized. It was a good chance to chat with team mates who also had little actual work to do.

One cute thing, the media program we use for playing video over the lab network, VLC (videolan - it's free and you should get it) has a taskbar logo which is now sporting a Santa hat. My back wall neighbor has been receiving tons of toys from amazon, I figured she would get a kick out of it - she did.

My weakly report was pretty sparse this week.

Home, gave Domino her chew treats, relaxed until it was time to go to uke class. I'd put a load of bedding in the dryer this morning, took that out and started the load of shirts.

Uke class was not very productive, even though only 2 of us showed up and he gave us each a lot of personal attention. Problem is he goes at his pace, not ours, so while he's playing the entire song in the book, I'm still trying to figure out how to play a G. He showed a finger pick routine which could work, with practice, but he didn't allow time to practice. One thing I did learn is my fingers are too wide for many chords. Or rather, to play them the way they are shown in the book. With practice I think I can play tunes which have C, A, A minor and F. Are there any?

Stopped off at Safeway on the way home, mostly for TV dinners and ice cream. Also got a long thing sourdough baguette which I'll slice up to eat with the goat brie I bought the other day.

Dinner was a Healthy Choice Asian steam bowl. Not going to stay on my list, that series.

Spent some time on Amtrak.com looking for a trip to take during NY's holiday. We get eve & 1st off, and I'll take Monday too for a 5-day weekend. Denver looked do-able. Grand Canyon did not - fares are sky-high on the Texas Eagle. And there's a bus bridge, which defeats the purpose of taking the train. Santa Barbara and even San Diego are possibles, if I don't mind arriving at SAN at 1 am. Also looked at Reno, but it is too !@#$%^&* cold. Did not look north, been there, done that too many times. Vancouver BC might be nice but that's a 2-day ride.

Got email from PG&E that they were billing me twice, once for December and once through January 8. I emailed the old apartment asking if this meant my apartment had been rented. They took their time replying, but said yes, I don't owe any more rent. So I went online with PG&E and had the gas & electric shut off, and updated my address. And emailed Allstate to cancel the insurance. Got an out of office reply, will shoot some email to the assistant.

Anyhow, typical that the apartment people didn't tell me on their own.

And it saves me about $3k. Which was part of the point of this whole exercise. So now I have officially lowered my rent by $1k/mo. Yay!

Plans for tomorrow:
Visit the mobile home park office, say hi,  and request a larger garbage bin
Unpack the 3rd BR.
Fill the car with cardboard and take it to the recycle center
Replace the kitchen light fixture
Call Fuzzy about fixing the second set of lights in the bathroom and the nearby dead outlet in the bedroom. They may be related. And ask about replacing the sink. And whether it is feasible to remove the second sink and install a walk-in shower. It may not be possible structurally. And a ramp to the side door.
Watch a bowl game, if there is one.

Morning project - re-imaged all four Squeezeboxes to UE. Another day of Waiting at work, the feared all-hands meeting was not attended by nearly all hands. I think vacations account for some, but not most. It was better than expected, for once they talked engineering instead of marketingpseak, except for one bozoid salesperson in the back of the room asking inane questions. He sounded like a plant. But there were no slides to show, just two execs talking off the cuff, and doing a fine job of it.

Though the room was set up for snacks, none appeared.

I was hugely pissed off, because the big exec started the meeting by praising the vast amounts of Christmas decorations. He's from Massachusetts, where they actually do have snowmen and mostly Christian staff. Note to exec: quantity is not always commendable.

Went for Pho with Automation Guy, the meeting spanned lunchtime. Grrrr.

Spent the rest of the day reading the specs, and having the most amusing mini-dreams when I dozed off for a few seconds at a time.

Stopped at 7-11 for cash, thinking I might get a massage after the manicure, but I ended up waiting a bit more than an hour for my nails to be done (did not know they were appointment-only, but they had one opening at 7 which turned out to be 7:20). Sassy Nails. New place not far from work, friendlier and more organized than Michelle's. It will be my new regular place.

Next stop, Costco, which I thought was open till 10, but turns out it closes at 8:30, so I had 15 minutes to go to all four corners of the store collecting stuff on my list. Could not find the loperamide or booze-filled dark chocolate bottle-ettes, forgot the string cheese, but got everything else. $140.

Home, 9 pm, fed myself a thing of cream of chicken soup which has been the in fridge for about a year. Domino liked the bits of chicken. Watched the finale of The Voice, which for a change picked the only winner possible, as they had narrowed it down to two mediocre singers and a ringer. First week when I heard her, I knew it had to be her. Not really fair because she was a well-established pro before she entered the contest.

Lady Gaga and Christina Aguilara did a duet, which showed that Gaga is flashy with a decent voice, Christina is a diva with some flash.

In local news, the house is getting there. This weekend will feature another cardboard recycling run, and if it doesn't rain I'll empty the shed. pull out most of the shelves, and stack things back in to make much better use of the space. The shelves are too deep and prevent the inward-opening door from opening all the way. Have to get inside and close the door to do any work in there, which is rude because there's no light. Or I don't remember one.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
1-on-1
Massage?

Morning, threw all the crap off of the left-hand bathroom sink counter into one of the cabinets. Transferred all my morning routine stuff from the right sink to the left sink. Backstory - the lights above the right sink don't work. Shifted the space heater to the right side, nearer the shower.

Took down the unsprung livingroom shades and replaced them with new ones. Now I have shades which can be pulled all the way down or all the way up. 

Printed out the RMA labels for the defective webcam and put those and the cam into the trunk of the car. Moved the car way up so the rear door was easily accessed.

Bullet biting time: Sorted all the boxes into piles on the kitchen floor (they had been against the wall, across the floor, etc.). One wardrobe, piles of dishpack, medium, glasspack, small. Carried the file boxes from the floor in the office to the laundry room.

Took about an hour and part of my left knee to load all the kitchen boxes largest-first onto the rear seat. Tossed the file boxes into the trunk. All of this closing the house door behind me with each armload, because Domino wanted out.

Took a short break to watch a wee bit of the Army-Navy game.

Drove to the recycle center, spent 20 minutes unloading the boxes into a couple of big recycle dumpsters.

Next stop, Petco, got a case of Fancy Feast. Took a peek into the (closed) Humane Society branch, no sign of Kaan, I'm sure he was adopted quickly. In the same center is my CU, deposited a refund check from the movers. Stopped in at Great Clips, then Safeway for a can of Rot Guard.

Looked for drawers at Pep Boys, but they didn't have what I was looking for.

Off to Target, found the drawers I was looking for, and changed check-out lines 4 times before finding one with only 2 people ahead of me with only moderate amounts of purchases. Still took 15 minutes. I messaged Janice I would be late for our 3:30.

I was about 7 minutes late, thanks to Target being on a 45mph road a straight shot to the freeway. We caught up as usual, the last time this year because she has Commitments™. Her alarm clock was an Asian woman who joined us for just enough time to say hi, as they went off to a party. Very special, because Janice makes it a point to not introduce me to her single female friends if she can help it.

Home, noticed the white board was crooked, fixed that. Moved my calendar to the kitchen. Took down the ugly brown kitchen curtains and replaced them with white ones with blue trim. Much nicer.

Watched some high school championship football while having calamari rings, fish sticks and mixed veggies for dinner.

Repositioned the lime tree so it didn't block the webcam.

Spent way too much time troubleshooting the 4 internet radios. I think Logitech's server was down this morning, but I also wasn't seeing local wi-fi connections. Things came up when I rebooted the router.

Popped about 200 air-filled shipping filler cells from both my sister and Amazon, and flattened those boxes.

Installed a curtain rod and hung a curtain in the guest bedroom, also moved the toilet maintenance gear from the livingroom there. Master bedroom already has its set.

Domino still yowls if she loses track of where I am. Very annoying.

On the bright side, she has found several places to curl up.

 And she sits on my lap, the arm of the recliner, the top of the recliner more than ever.

My final project for the day was hanging the Star Trek transporter. Found a good place for it by the front door.


Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep in (again)
Fold and put away T-shirts
Set up the electronic keyboard on its stand in the office
Play it by ear. Maybe see a movie. Maybe watch football

9 am appointment for car's 5k mile/6 month free checkup. Got there 15 minutes early but spent 5 minutes parked in line along the curb, another 5 in the driveway, finally got to a service person. Pretty quick once there, signed up for the shuttle at 9:05 to take me to work. A shuttle load was just leaving. Another one had left before I arrived.

Waited and waited, finally both drivers showed up at 10:10, I was on my way in 5 minutes, and at work by 10:30. Expected to be there an hour earlier, worst case. Bottom line is two things: Lack of staff, lack of communications with both the drivers and the customers. An hour is too long to wait for a ride.

Work was the usual, with a 90-minute boss' boss' group meeting stretching into past 2 hours, with two or three conversations going at once. It's not that hard to run a meeting. Shouldn't be, at least. And some people need to learn manners.

Car was done at 4:30, Automation Guy gave me a ride at 5. No line this time, I was out of there in 5 minutes.

Home by way of the cheap gas station, the car took more than 10 gallons.

Turned on the football game, nice to see Denver lose at home. They almost made a comeback, but blew the onsode kick and were out of time anyway.

OCD set in, and I mounted all the webcams which needed more than just tape. Set up a cam by the side door/litterbox but had to mount it sideways. I need to find a better location.

Made a lot of progress on kitchen unpacking, the Box I Was Dreading is now unpacked and flattened. Also the small box with all the containers of tea. One more large box, which has the cast iron skillet and has been about half unpacked. One more box of dishes, and then the kitchen unpacking is done.

Got the dolly out and moved the two sets of drawers with the tools into the office closet where they should have been in the first place, because I needed a drill for the webcam mount in the piano room. Once that was done, I was able to take the round tall table (probably originally a telephone table) and put the lime tree on it, and moved it closer to the windows and over the heating duct.

While I was watching football, Domino parked herself on the carpet a few feet away. I threw one of her round beds there, and she is now in it, watching TV without me.

Had a low Hgl when I got home, had a Klondike bar and popped some Orville in the built-in microwave. It did a great job. Cooked my TV dinner in there too, also turned out well. I guess not having a rotating plate doesn't really matter. I may move mine to the shed, 'cause I need the counter space.

Plans for tomorrow:

Furnace guy is expected between 10 and 2. I'll WFH till he's done installing the new thermostat
Work
Uke lesson. Maybe. I skipped last week because the move drained me.

This morning I was still very sore, so I filled up the tub and had a soak instead of my usual shower. The tub in this place is deep and wide and only a wee bit too short. But the depth makes up for that. I threw in some bubble bath and achieved significant bubblefication. There is enough room around the tub for Domino to circumnavigate, so she did, many times. Between the tub filled with me and the bubbles, she was mystified. I had never taken a bath before in her presence, I don't think.

My plan to get to the Los Gatos JCC by 2 was almost thwarted by the cliff-hanger ending of the Ravens game. But the network cut to commercials and the 49ers game with 4 seconds left on the clock and the final touchdown under review.

I got inside the JCC just as the director was giving his pre-show blurb. Not exactly on time, but not so late as to be forbidden entry. I would have made it before he started if there had not been security theater at the front door. Non-members had to show ID, and have their names written in the log. So if you want to do something bad, become a member. It's always the quiet ones.

The show was a reading of Tevye and His Daughters, three chapters from it. It was billed, I think, as a staged reading but there wasn't any staging to speak of. I went because I knew two of the cast, and had met the director at a pizza party while he was playing Tevye in local production of Fiddler.

They did a good job. The cast was well chosen, one man was double-cast as the tailor and the student, and he did such a good job putting on an accent and changing his personality for the latter that I didn't recognize him.

There was a talkback session afterwards, and I was very impressed by the eldest cast member, who had taken a very small part, but is obviously an experienced actress. Her bio in the program hints at that.

Janice was stuck at Mame which ran long as I knew it would. Over-choreographed shows do that. So no coffee chat.

Home, watched the wrap-ups of the football games, and most of the Saints game with bouts of unpacking. Was able to break down two livingroom boxes, and two or three kitchen boxes. My main motivation in the kitchen was to find the large glass roasting pan so I could make the duck I'd bought and defrosted yesterday. This included also finding the wood block with the kitchen knives.

According to the instructions on the duck wrapper it needed about 3 hours at 350°. I had cored & sectioned an apple, and sliced up two oranges and cut a third into 9ths. Stuffed the duck with most of the apple and some of the orange sections and covered it with orange slices toothpicked in place.

While it was cooking I watched football and set up the webcams. The layout here is very different, so except for the cam on the home theater speaker, they all went to different places. I'm not getting a signal from the last one, but I suspect that one is a knock-off, it has never worked well. I may go online and order a replacement. Also found a copy of the right Sony manual and re-adjusted the receiver to the best of the 15 surround sound choices. Finally am hearing the subwoofer. And crowd noise from the football comes from all directions.

Also installed one of my three under-cabinet kitchen lights.

Also need to replace the thermostat with an electronic one. The manual one is broken - it has long ago lost its "current temp" indicator, and the markings on the thing are so small that a tiny change can result in 5° difference. I've installed those before, it's not hard.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Shop for a thermostat and a replacement for the kitchen track lighting fixture. USPS sent me a Lowe's coupon.
Home, football 

Intrepid reader susandennis says I have not posted here in 5 days. Well, I posted on Monday, so 4 days. Three if I want to knitpick that I started writing this on Friday.

My usual routine is to end the day with a journal post. But all the packing and prep for moving left me zonked and cross-eyed so I slept instead. Also had some sleepless nights because my OCD brain would keep making lists of things which needed to be done, and re-ordering them and re-re-ordering them.

And then there's Domino. With the disappearance of her arch-enemy Kaan, (Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!) she has taken to sleeping on top of me. Literally. As soon as I pull the covers over me, she climbs up onto me, and if I am lucky she assumes the Sphinx position, which means her 8 lbs is evenly distributed and I can breathe, but I dare not roll over. If I am not so lucky she does Isis, and her 8 lbs are concentrated on her pointy little front paws. Ouch! Last night was the luckiest, she curled up at the foot of the bed across the way from where my feet are. As the night progressed she snuck closer and closer to my head.

So, updatery:
Monday, worked a full day, went to the new place and got the garbage can off the street and onto the driveway. Did some measuring. Back to the apartment and packed till I dropped. Had a bad feeling someone had stolen my lime tree from the driveway 'cause I didn't remember seeing it.

Tuesday, worked a full day, apartment, put all my network required things in the care (2 Tivos, a cable modem, a router, my main PC with kbd/mouse, a power strip and some coax and my portable HDTV). went to the house and staged all that, one Tivo in the livingroom, one in the bedroom, the PC, modem and router in the office. Confirmed that the lie tree was still there. Collected the mail. Back to the apartment and packed till I dropped. Fitful sleep, because in the mail was a note from the CU saying I needed to send the payments by check, but I'd already signed up for auto-pay, so WTF?

Wednesday, up at 6 to be at the house by 7:30 because Comcast said be there before the 8-10 service window just in case. Idjits. Comcast guy showed up at 9:45. Grrr. Took him an hour and a second cable guy to get poer to all the outlets because whoever installed the satellite dish for the previous owner mucked things up. And then it took 4 reboots to get the modem to latch on, but once that was done it was all good. To work, then to the apartment and panic packed till I dropped, took a nap at 7:30, up at 9:30 and panic packed some more until I ran out of boxes and it was clear that the bathroom and some of the office was going to be done by the movers.

Thursday, up at 6 to be awake for the movers at 8, which is good because they showed up at 7:50. Lead guy was Israeli, three other were Hispanic. They rented a truck from Enterprise. They worked quickly, but the first thing they took outside was the recliner. It was also the last thing they loaded. I could have sat out there but it was cold COLD. Like 30F. By the time we were done at the apt it was a toasty 35. I moved around a lot to keep out of the way, there was noplace to sit - they took all of those first. :=(

One of the workers spent half an hour artfully cutting apart a couple of dishpack cartons to make a cardboard suit for the piano, totally not needed. Moving blankets would have been enough.

At the house, the piano was one of the first things in. I had removed all the removable pieces except the key guard, which got it down to where two guys could lift it, but they had no idea how to move a piano up steps (the last movers had a piano sled, piece of cake). They somehow managed to not drop it or hurt themselves.

They were done in less time than the estimate, but made up for the savings by charging me $350 for materials which at U-haul would have been less than half that. But they worked hard and quickly so I gave them all nice tips.

The realtor was supposed to show up around 2 to haul away the big TV which had been left behind, I waited till 4:30 when I ran out of things I wanted to unpack, but she was a no-show. Drove to Chef Lee's for dinner, their House Special Wor Wonton Soup used to be a staple of mine when I worked near there. It is still good, but the wontons were too thick, there was not much pork and there was broccoli.

I can't remember the rest of the evening. I think I crashed at 7:30, woke up at 9-ish, did some unpacking and had two separate low blood glucose episodes. Boring because I hadn't hooked up the TVs yet. I think I did both of them in my stupor. I know when I woke up this morning (Friday) they both worked. Oh yeah, I went to the apt and filled the cooler with the stuff in the freezer and hauled it home and tossed it into the freezer.

So that brings us to today. Woke up at 7, Junk King was due between 9 and 10 to haul away the rusty old shed. I couldn't remember the combination to the lock I'd put on, so I found my tools and snapped off the hasp. Emptied the contents and put them in the big shed. I don't know whose idea it was to put shelves all around the big shed, but a near-future project is to empty the shed, take out most of the shelves and repack it. They arrived at a little after 9.

They also were happy to haul away the TV.

Got to work almost on time, there was a doc to review and the specs for the next product to start reading (almost 400 pages, highly technical, not much fun but I have to do it because otherwise I won't know what I'm testing). Lunch at Sizzler, steak & lobster was on special, the lobster was meager but good, the steak I should have sent back, it was overdone and tough. They usually do better on both counts.

Did my weekly report to wrap up the day, then went to the house, got the mail, grabbed the cooler and went back to the apt. Filled to cooler with the stuff from the fridge. Left behind some stuff which will end of life before I get to eating it, but left a mostly empty fridge. Took down the shower curtain in the small bathroom and packed it into the trunk of the car. Checked the keys, put them in my coat pocket. Checked the mailbox and was elated to see a plain brown envelope from the DMV with this inside:



Forgot to grab the lazy Susans. I didn't think they would fit in the new place, but found a cabinet where they will. Must go back for those tomorrow or Sunday, when I do a final mail check.

Shopping - the movers had broken one of the torchiere lamp shades and bulb, I discovered just before I was going to plug it in. :-( Lowes only has expensive glass shades, Target had none but they had the right bulb. OSH had something which may work for $4. Also bought another lamp at Target for the 3rd bedroom. And they had a tool which looked like it could remove the track light which is burned out (it couldn't). Also bought three under-counter lamps for the kitchen to replace the ones which had been removed.

Back to the house, vegged in front of the TV after setting the receiver for the best kind of surround sound (I had printed the cogent pages from the user's guide online). Dinner was falafel, with humus and tahina in a wheat pita, seltzer to drink. Domino kept staring at me, I gave her a couple of small pieces of falafel which she ate, but when I gave her a bigger piece she left it on the carpet and went back to staring at me.

Gave her some kitty crack, made myself a chocolate soda. I need to make a food run, I'm out of TV dinners and ice cream.

Before and after dinner I got out the dolly and moved dozens of very heavy boxes out of the office which should have gone into the 3rd bedroom with all the bookcases. My fault, I labeled them for where they came from instead of where they were going to. Also had to move the desk back from the wall, and find all the pieces I needed. To make life more interesting, all the top power outlets are controlled by the room's light switch. I need to either tape that thing up or re-wire it. Not a huge problem because the UPS will handle all the power from one outlet.

Found the subwoofer which is also the terminal for all the PC speakers, it was at the bottom of a box the movers had packed. Ran out of steam just before midnight, have all day Saturday (except for a talk at 3 on 3D printing at the local library, which has a 3D printer for public use). I don't think it will take more than an hour to get the computer up and running (I'm typing this on my laptop).

Plans for tomorrow:
Get the PC set up
Make the kitchen usable (unpack some boxes)
Take the boxes of assorted ziplock and garbage bags out of the tall kitchen garbage container, take the container out onto the driveway and hose it down (something I did not have the resources for previously) and set up all the garbage cans with bags, and throw stuff away.
Take a stab at putting away the stuff in the bathroom. I have traded a single large under-sink storage cabinet for two smaller ones. His and hers.
Maybe see "Frozen"