Tag: electrician

Random Thoughts

I am wrapping up my lunch break on this random Wednesday in March and I thought I’d jot down a couple of thoughts for posterity. Ready? Okay, let’s roll….

  • Want to know something that sucks? I brought two ounces of Planters Salted Peanuts with me for lunch today (14 grams of protein). I took a small handful (my gastric bypassed body can’t handle more than a small handful at a time without getting sick) and popped it into my maw. I chewed it up a little (again, part of the post-gastric bypass world means chewing the holy hell out of everything, which sounds silly and obvious [like, didn’t you chew the holy hell out of everything before surgery? I thought I did, but apparently not] but until you fail to chew something down enough you can’t really understand) and suddenly and without warning I had to sneeze. Know what’s gross? Sneezing with a mouthful of partially chewed up peanuts… that’s what’s gross. Worse? 20 seconds after you sneeze, when you think you’ve recovered and cleaned up the mess… you sneeze again. Ugh.
  • Elon Musk posted to his nazi social media site that he didn’t understand why people are out to get him. He said he sells things that are good and that he’s never hurt anyone. Never hurt anyone? Are you fucking kidding me, you fucking moron? This nazi fucker’s end can’t come soon enough. Deport his moronic ass to mars and be done with it.
  • We have a contractor coming tomorrow. We have two contractors coming Friday. March 2025 will go down in family history as the month of the contractors. We just can’t get away from them. Please please please let this be the end of it for a while.
  • We are one week and one day away from the start of the Boston Red Sox 2025 season. No matter what happens, they can’t be any more painful to watch than the Bruins were this year. Even if they come in dead last again it still won’t suck as badly as the B’s. I’m thinking about signing up for an online subscription to NESN (the New England Sports Network. The TV network that carries both the Red Sox and the Bruins). I think my days of being a radio-only Red Sox fan might be coming to an end. I haven’t decided one way or the other yet, but I think it’s going to happen… we’ll see.
  • I don’t want to buy a tenor saxophone. I don’t want to buy a tenor saxophone. Did I mention I don’t want to buy a tenor saxophone? Who am I kidding. I want to buy a tenor saxophone. Only if it’s a good one though. Aw, hell.

Okay. I have to get back to work now. This is all I have time for right now. I’ll probably write up some more brain droppings later. It’s one of those days, if you know what I mean.

Today is Insane

I’m stressing out, bro.

There are so many people here. A three man electrician team, our regular contractor, his drywall subcontractor, and a landscaper team with at least four people. Talk about a perfect storm. We knew the electricians and our regular contractor would be here. Everyone else is a surprise.

The old cellar lights with the big fluorescent tubes are gone. The last of the drop ceiling framing is gone, the last of the un-insulated cellar walls have been insulated. The front and back yards have been cleaned, including the litter that the wind and the squirrels put into the edge of the woods. Most of it at least. They didn’t do the best job there, but they did a good job everywhere else.

As we speak, the new cellar lighting is being installed and wired up, and the wall board that is going to be installed starting tomorrow is being loaded into the cellar.

From a Covid safety standpoint, everyone is masked and everyone is entering the house through the cellar bulkhead. The cellar is a big open space so everyone can stay as distanced as they need, and no one has to walk through the main floor to get in and out.

Still… It’s stressful. It’s also loud. Lots of banging and hammering and crashing and cacophony and super loud leaf blowers and all of that stuff. It’s making it difficult to work.

Oh yeah, speaking of work. Insert frustrated screaming here. Nothing too terrible, but lots and lots of little things that are piling up and making me want to hide my head under the covers.

So yeah… stressful as hell kinda Tuesday. I’m ready for bed.

Less Than One to Go

On February 3rd, two months and one day ago, I was told to lose 5% of my weight in preparation for the weight loss surgery. I weighed myself this morning. I have 0.4 pounds to go. I would do the math to figure out what percentage I am at with 0.4 pounds to go but then you could use that to figure out exactly how much I weighed on that first day and I don’t want to let you do that.

I just drank my morning protein shake and had my morning vitamins and supplemented it all with a fist full of Tylenol because holy shit my back is killing me. I don’t know that my back has ever hurt as much as it does at this moment. Oh my shit, my back hurts.

Today’s plan involves going to my parents and picking up my mother and taking her to a doctors appointment. We’re going to get the results of her last blood test and see how her cancer numbers look. They’ve been pretty much perfect for the last year-plus and I am very optimistic that those results will continue.

After that I will come home and find some demo happening in the cellar. First on the list is the grid that until recently held the drop ceiling. After that it’s the rest of the ugly paneling on the walls. Most of the paneling came down during the flood clean up last year. You might recall me bitching about the paneling in the dining room recently. Suffice to say that the paneling in the cellar is 100 times uglier. Tomorrow the electrician is coming to replace the existing fluorescent lights that don’t really work anymore. There used to be six banks of lights with two tubes each. Only two of them still work, (it’s not the bulbs, I replaced the bulbs and the lights stayed dead) and one of those two only works some times. It’s been good the last week because it knows its end is coming and it wants to stay alive, but more often than not it doesn’t work when I flip the switch. Replace ’em all!

On top of that there is something going on at work that I am not going to be around for and I am feeling pretty shitty about that. I feel like I am dropping the ball. I don’t think anyone else feels that I’m dropping the ball, but I do so that’s that. Hopefully it will be quiet today. Fingers crossed.

Did I mention my back was hurting?

0.4 pounds to go. Oh yeah, and the surgery happens one month from today. Yikes!

Kitchen Lights

The two electricians had to run out to pick up a part. I took the opportunity to see what they’ve done so far. We have a light over the kitchen sink again! Oh, it’s been so long! Happy, glorious day!

Looks like the dining room, the mud room, and the front porch (sorry, birds) are all done, I think. The kitchen has one more thing to finish and then I think we’re all set for today.

I’m not going to make it to my meeting, but that’s okay. I told my manager and he was cool with it. He’ll catch me up when I get back.

Now the next question is this: When they are done and all of this is wrapped up… do I go and get a haircut?

Not Double Booked

Turns out I was not double booked. The doctors appointment is in fact tomorrow and not today. The electricians are here and for the first time in ages the lights in the kitchen and the dining room are going to work correctly. If they are done by 10:30, or even if they just don’t turn off the internets, then I may be able to attend that work meeting. I’m on vacation though, so I’ll be all incognito like. Hi everyone, I’m not actually here. Ha! I’m so professionally funny.

The best part of all of this is that I have 24 hours left before I have to lose my head being afraid of another doctors appointment. Hooray and all that happy crappy*.

*That’s a Stephen King reference, from too many books to count. I think. Maybe he only used it in one book and I just read that book more than once. Who knows.

Another Early Morning

Another electrician coming in to give an estimate on fixing some dead lights and plugs and stuff. This is the second time we’ve done this and the second time the window of arrival opened at 7:00am. I have a day off today and here I am, up and dressed over an hour before I would on a work day. Yikes!

I might be double booked. Actually triple booked. Did the weight loss clinic reschedule tomorrow’s appointment for today? They might have. There was also a meeting at work that I was thinking about joining, despite today being a vacation day. I don’t know if I will be able to do all of it. We’ll see.

Back to waiting for the electrician to show…….

Almost Free

I am 11 minutes away from two days off. The Bruins pummeled the best team in hockey today. It was glorious. Boston 5, Colorado 1. I want to do some more guitar playing tonight but I also want to spend some time trying to figure out which circuit breakers power the kitchen and the dining room. I also want to find out if either of those breakers also control the living room because the living room has the router and if they are on separate breakers I can have my doctors appointment tomorrow (if it’s tomorrow and not Wednesday) and Jen can work without disruption. Fingers crossed on that puppy.

Eight minutes left now. I’m ready. Come to papa, vacation days.

Still Quiet

Lunch time post. There are a few more people here than there were the last time I posted. One other member of my group is here too but we don’t sit anywhere near each other. If we yell we can talk to each other, but we’re not being rude like that. I feel a lot more Covid-safe than I did the last two times I was here, and by no means did I feel Covid-unsafe before. Whatevs.

I have vacation time booked for the next two days. There are things going on that I want to take care of, but right now I am so looking forward to what amounts to a mid-week weekend. I have a doctors appointment but I don’t know when. They sent me Zoom meeting invites for both days. They are closed today for the holiday (Presidents Day) so I have to figure it out first thing tomorrow. We also have an electrician coming for another kitchen/dining room fix quote. I am really nervous that the doctors appointment was actually moved to tomorrow (I booked it for Wednesday and no one asked me to change it) and it’s going to happen while our power is off and internet is down. That would suck. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

The Bruins are celebrating Presidents day with an afternoon match up with the overpowering Colorado Avalanche. It’s halfway through the second period and the Bruins are up 2-0. The next couple of games are on the West coast. A win today could be a nice little treat considering I won’t be able to listen to the West games.

Okay, back at it. Three hours and three minutes to go.

Estimate: Filed

The electrician was here. He looked over what we were planning to do and gave us an estimate and had it all done before I had to punch into work. Perfect.

I’d just like to note that electricians charge WAY more than I thought they did, but that might be because the data I was basing my assumption on was probably 30 years old. Oh well.

Also, there were two guys. One did all of the talking. The other was wearing a neck gator. What is this, June 2020? How do you tell someone who is wearing a mask that his mask isn’t up to spec?

Wow, is it Early

I mentioned over the weekend that we were planning on trying to do a little electrical work in the dining room but once we opened things up it was more involved than we expected so we punted. There are a handful of other electrical things we want to do around the house as well so we put out a call for quotes from electricians. One is coming today and they said they’d be here between 7:00 and 9:00… 7:00am? Really? Most days I don’t wake up until after 7:00am. Okay, whatever. I got up at 5:30 and was dressed and ready to go by 6:30. The electrician said he’d text when he was on his way. It’s 6:56… no text yet. Oh well.

The sad thing is, I am going to do it again tomorrow. My company is back into in-the-office-once-a-week mode again like we were during the summer. I’ve decided that tomorrow is the day this week. I really don’t want to. I don’t want to run the Covid risk, I don’t want to spend a chunk of the day wearing a mask, I don’t want to find out how my back is going to feel when I walk from the parking lot to my desk, I don’t want to use the shitty little monitor on my desk when I have a massively gigantic monitor on my home desk. Mostly, and this cannot be overstated, I don’t want the friggin’ commute.

We have to do it though, it’s the law now, so tomorrow is going to be my first day back. I will have to get up a ton earlier than the work-from-home normal, though not quite as early as today. I can do it. It’s okay. I just don’t really want to.

It’ll be okay. I can hack it.