Happy Mini Split Morning

It’s Friday morning and we are having our new mini split HVAC system installed today. They didn’t give us a window for arrival so we were assuming sometime this morning. At 6:30am we got a “we’re on our way” text. Yikes, that’s super early!

At 7:45 a pick up truck parked in front of the house. There is one guy in it and he’s been sitting there for 15 minutes. Is he waiting for more people? Is he waiting for 8:00am? No, because it’s 8:01 right now. What’s he waiting for?

The cats, the cat food, and the litter boxes are closed up in Bellana’s room. Another truck just pulled up. I think we are just about good to go!

Lunch Break

Lunch break on a Wednesday. We’ve been talking about the desks in our new building today. March 13, 2020 was the last day at our desks in the Waltham building. Two months ago the Waltham building was sold. Now we have desks in another building but prior to this morning none of us had gone to check it out. One guy went today and reported back that none of our stuff from Waltham has made it to the new desks yet. Uh oh. The upside is that some of us might be getting new monitors out of the deal. I had two when we left. They were both old and less than good. This could work out for me.

Wait… didn’t I write something about not talking about work?

The AC folks have come and gone. The window for their arrival was between 7:00 and 11:00. They knocked on the door at 10:50. His first question was, would you like me to wear a mask? Yes, yes I would. Thanks. It was just a routine cleaning and the AC in the wall in the bedroom clearly benefitted from it because it’s working like crazy now. It’s actually cold in here. I haven’t spent much time in the rest of the house yet so I don’t have any news from that front yet.

The tech said the wall unit in the bedroom was pretty old. Huh? It was installed three years ago. How is that old? Was it sitting on some warehouse shelf for a decade before it was installed in our house? Worse… was it used?

My father is in the hospital again. Day two. My brother is with him. The idea is to move him back into a rehab so that he can get back to a point where he can take care of himself better than he can now… which he can’t. He asked to have some of his more common aches and pains looked at while he was in there. Good idea. No real news on any front yet. Hopefully he’ll be in a new rehab quickly and he can get back to working on getting better. I am scared and worried and stressed and wracked with guilt and I am just overwhelmed with it all… and I’m not the one in the hospital bed. I can’t even begin to imagine how he feels. I hate this. I want my dad to be better again.

So Covid is over, right? The world is opened up again, right? People are still getting sick and people are still dying, but it’s all over, right? I’m thinking about things that I can do that were put on hold. Vacations would be first on that list but we have two college kids now and we are out of money. I already had a haircut, but I need another one because my hair grows faster than light. I need to get my eyes checked. Jen has done that already but see the previous sentence regarding money. I may have to ride out my old glasses for a little while longer. There is a guitar and an amplifier that I’d like to trade in. It depends on how much I can get for each item, but if I can get a used ’68 Deluxe Reverb or a used Les Paul Junior in exchange, I might. I don’t know how that will go.

Okay, time to clean up my lunch and get back to work. The hope is we will be watching episode two of Loki by 6:00pm. Four hours or so from now. Fingers crossed.

Wish my dad good luck, okay? Thanks.

Stuff Going On

We made an appointment with an air conditioning maintenance company a few months ago as part of the still unshared cellar disaster story. They had to cancel the first appointment and today is the day they rescheduled too. They didn’t give us a window of time until early this morning. At 6:30 I was still in bed and Jen let me know the window was opening at 7:00. Yikes! It’s 7:30 and they aren’t here yet. Now I am just hoping that they don’t ring the doorbell while both Jen and I are in meetings. That would suck. Also, there’s an AC built into the bedroom wall. I am going to get kicked out of my bedroom/office for a while. That hasn’t happened in about a year.

I have a few short meetings today and it’s possible one might line up with the visit. I was thinking, I have mentioned things at work a couple of times recently and I think I am going to stop doing that. Like the cellar shit show, work should be exempt from the oversharing. Good.

There’s a new Loki today. Episode one was kind of a clip show but it did a great job of setting up the story. It was excellent. I am really interested to see where it goes. We need to figure out how we’re going to get everyone into the same room to watch it. There’s also the season finale of The Handmaids Tale. This show is so good it’s hard to explain. I haven’t a clue how they are going to wrap it up without having our hero just take a machine gun and go all Mikey Corleone on all of her enemies. We’ll see.

It’s 7:45. Still no sign of the AC folks. I’ve got my mask at the ready for whenever they get here.

Lunch Time Again

Coming to the end of another lunch break. It has only been half a work day since my last post, but it feels like it’s been a long day. You know how that is?

It’s 89 degrees outside here in the Tewksbury. The air conditioner is on in the next room, and my little USB fan is running on low about 12 inches away from me. That little fan has been a big hit. I’m loving the stupid thing, and last night when I talked to my brother he said he’s loving it too. It’s just a cheap plastic thing so it will likely burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp* any minute now. Until then…

At some point tonight the Bruins may know who their second round opponent will be. If the Islanders beat the Penguins they will advance to the second round where they will meet the Bruins. If the Penguins win, then they go to a game seven. I’m kind of rooting for that game seven.

It’s not quite time to start really getting excited for this**, but we are starting to get information on Harry’s High School Graduation. We have a date and time, we have parking passes (or we will once he brings them home from school today), and we know how many people can attend. It’s going to be weird in that we will likely follow all of the Covid rules, while the school likely won’t. I mean, come on Rob, haven’t you heard? The pandemic is over. Right. Sure.

Okay, this is just a quick post. Time to get back to work.

(*) You didn’t expect that Monty Python reference. (pause while we wait for the Spanish Inquisition punchline)

(**) It’s too early for me and Jen to get excited, but it’s not too early for Harry. Senioritis is in full effect.

HVAC

One week ago I gave the details on the very ugly HVAC situation in our cellar. It’s one of many ugly situations in our cellar, but for now it’s the one that’s being worked on.

They looked over the ducts in the cellar and said they needed to come back another day to actually fix things. Today is that day. They gave us an estimate and let’s just say I won’t be buying myself a guitar for my 50th birthday… and maybe not for 51-60 either. In the immortal words of Austin Powers, ouch, babie.

Jen sent me a message about an hour ago. They are there. They are working. They are loud. One them wasn’t wearing a mask. Insert very frustrated non-science denying sigh here.

This whole thing has me very nervous. Central air is one of the highlights of our house. I don’t want to de-evolve to a state where we have fans and air conditioners in the windows. I want to be snooty high society with my air conditioned house. I am also very happy that progress is being made as this has been weighing on me like you wouldn’t believe.

I just want it done and I also want it done right so that we never have to worry about it again. Specifically I want it done right so that I never have to worry about a 10 foot section of duct falling on my head again. Ouch, babie.