howeird: (Default)
One of my challenges in life is, when I have several disparate things which need doing, my brain freezes trying to choose which to do first. And next. And next. And each step of the way there is usually a moment of "I don't really have to do that one yet".

Today was a series of getting over these blocks and putting milestones behind me. My usual rule is tackle the easiest first, because I am basically lazy.

But this time I was stymied by the easiest to do not being the easiest to plan. All I needed to do was mount a bracket somewhere in the kitchen and hang my 3-tiered mesh fruit basket from it. Sounds easy, until you look at the layout of my kitchen and find there is no clear answer to the question of "where?".

Second task first, then. Mount two fancy garden brackets on each of two posts on the porch, hang a hummingbird feeder from each one, and fill the feeders. Turns out the wood screws I'd gotten were not sharp enough to dig their own path, so I had to drill pilot holes first. I think altogether it took half an hour, part of that time being spent misremembering where I'd unpacked the hummingbird food mix.

Third task was by far the most daunting. Install two towels bars in the master bathroom. I cannot believe she only had the one by the shower, and used lame stick-on hooks on the back of the door and the back of the cabinet. The directions on the box were clear, they came with all the mounting hardware, and all it took was marking the bracket location with a pencil, drilling 3/16" holes, screwing the brackets on, sliding the rack mounts over those and screwing them down. Maybe an hour for the two, because placement for the second one was not intuitive.

Finally the first task, made simpler by taking the calendar an Thai hills tribes necklace off the wall and mounting the bracket where the latter had been, hanging the basket in front of where the former had been parked. Moved the calendar to the wall next to the porch/kitchen door, and moved the necklace to a wall in the livingroom on which the previous owner had slapped her collection of crosses.

Watched the Rose Bowl until it was clear Stanford was not going to run away with it, threw some laundry into the washer, and decided to go for the minus-first project, which should have been done last week: Put my "NOLA Art" on the wall.

Which meant taking down the necklace, moving it to the top of the piano for now, screwing in the tie rack, and hanging all the large beads which fit. Then moving the sofa about 2 feet to the left, which I should have done almost a month ago after the new thermostat was installed, screwing the second tie rack above that gap, and hanging the remaining large beads every other peg and all the small beads in sort of random places, trying not to have two of the same color together.

Watched enough of the sports reports to see that Stanford didn't come through.

Brunch today was a pastrami sandwich from Togo's I'd bought yesterday, had the leftover duck soup for a snack later, and most of a baked brie in pastry shell and a handful of leftover pigs n blankets for dinner. Dessert was some lactose-free chocolate ice cream which Breyers does so well I'll pay extra for it. Very very chocolaty, and the lack of lactose doesn't make any difference to the taste.

Domino tried to jump onto my lap during the soup phase, it smelled and sounded more appetizing than it was cat-friendly. All bones, not much meat. She likes the cartilages, though.

Time to print a January Hgl log sheet for the fridge. Looking at December, the numbers are way too high, I probably should go back to shooting up before meals. I suppose it would help if I always had dinner at about the same time.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Hand out calendars
(there are two kinds of people in the world - those who want to see all the photos right away and those who want to be surprised each month)
Maybe get my nails done
howeird: (Both Ends + Middle)
So my plan was to save up PTO time for London in August, I was planning on working Thursday and Friday. Monday was already claimed as a day off to make up for putting in for the day after I moved but working that day.

It was dead boring, nothing at all to do at work today so I followed boss' lead and made it my last work day of the year. We have 24-25 off and 31-1, so with just 2 more PTO days it's 24-1. 9 days.

I may take a train ride, I may drive down to Morro Bay and take another whale watching trip (the grey whales are in town, and I want to give them one of my calendars, which has a cover and one month of whale pix).

Also planned is re-do the shed. Pull out the shelves on the right side and back, probably install bike hooks.
While at work, Costco emailed that the calendars were done, so I went there after work. Since I was there, I also picked up the 4 things on my list, and though there were tons of people there were also tons of cashiers, none of the lines were more than 3 deep.

All the time I was there, parents were murdering their children. Stupid parents don't know enough to duct tape their mouths shut first, so the screams don't give them away. Some day I am going to call 911 and report child abuse in progress.

Home, started playing the Tivo of the 49ers game in progress. The absolute best way, skipped through the commercials (they kept playing the same 5), and a lot of the "last game at the stick" schtick. At about the 2 minute warning it was almost in sync with real time, so I was able to turn on KNBR radio and listen to the post-game, which was still going when I finally got tired of it at 11.

After that was over, I slapped return address labels on 30 calendar-sized envelopes and fired up my Excel address book. Sadly, removed an uncle and a brother-in-law (my aunt and older sister lost their husbands recently).

Fired up Word 365, which was HORRIBLE at trying to decide what kind of mailmerge I wanted. It has a nice feature called Address Block which will fill in everything for you, but they expect a 2nd address line, and I would have had to re-do my spreadsheet with several more column, which is a PITA and I won't.

Finally got it after six or seven tries, and then the stupid program wouldn't print from the tray with the label stock. It kept going to the default tray, even though it insisted it was using the rear tray. Had to load the label stock in the cartridge, and while it worked it was not quite centered, and I was lucky that bending the stock like that didn't peel and jam the printer.

Slapped address labels on the envelopes, counted them up. 19 domestic, 7 foreign (which will probably grow to 8 when I get a new address from a friend who moved from Germany to Sweden). USPS.com says the domestics are $2.75 apiece, which is 6 Forever stamps. I don't have that many. The Canada ones are $8.55 and all the rest are $12.75 which is a hoot because that's more than the calendars cost.

I have a few $2 and $1 stamps, but not nearly enough.

Plans for tomorrow:
See Frozen 3D at the Mountain View cinema. Mercado is not playing the 3D version. I may follow that with Hobbit 2 or I may do that for Jesus's post-solstice fantasy birthday celebration.
Empty the shed, etc.

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howard stateman

September 2022

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