Tag: Family

Feels Like Friday

It feels like Friday.

It’s not Friday.

It’s Thursday.

But it still feels like Friday.

I spent the time I thought I would be waiting for the furnace installation to start to move my desk back to our bedroom and give Harry his room back. My chair is still there. So is the little clock I bought. I need to find a new home for that puppy.

I didn’t do it because there is a heater in our bedroom. I did it because I had a handful of meetings over the next couple of days that I need to be contributing too. The bedroom happens to be about as far away from the furnace as you can get and still be in the house. I did not do it for the heat. I did it for the quiet. Also, because spending my days in my kids’ room felt wrong. When the Covid scare required me to quarantine myself it was one thing. That was almost two months ago. It was time to go back to my own room.

Who would have thought that I would have so much influence? Last night I logged into facebook for the first time in a month, just long enough to tell people I was taking a break. After about five minutes I was gone again. I will re-evaluate on November 27, 2021 but it’s looking like I might want to make this final.

Then, thanks mostly to my crusade, Zuckerberg changed the name? Jen just told me that Zuckie is changing the name from facebook to Meta. Ugh. You’re so meta, markie. I told her that he should have renamed the company Metal. That would have been so much cooler. So much… cleaner.

I guess Zuck just couldn’t deal with my exit. Sorry, hoodie man. Start treating nazis like bad guys and maybe I’ll come back. Get on that, bro. Cleaning out the nazi filth would be so meta, bro. It would be pretty metal too.

More Furnace Fail

I went down stairs and opened the doors and turned on the lights and took some pics for a before and after blog post. As I was wrapping up they called and said they couldn’t come today. Oh… okay. So they will try again tomorrow, and for today they will try to bring over some space heaters.

I guess I can post the before pictures now. Insert the sound of a very frustrated sigh here.

Insert a second, more frustrated sounding sigh of frustration here.

9:41 PM

Jen just asked me for the time. 9:41PM. I’m at my desk in the bedroom working on something on my computer (and writing a post about it). Jen has already gone to bed, but she’s still awake and baby talking to the cat. It’s pretty freakin’ adorable.

The Bruins lost to Florida. It was a nightmare of a day at work today. I did manage to close all three of my exercise rings but I am super wired from the zany day and just patiently wait to crash. The cat is now laying down on my side of the bed. She may have actually fallen asleep there.

New furnace folks are coming tomorrow. I have meetings in the morning. How much do you want to bet they don’t show up until I am in the middle of a meeting.

All in all it was a pretty crappy day, but Jen is being hysterically funny right now and the cat is being hysterically funny (she just whacked herself in the face with her own tail and got really pissed off). Like i said… it’s a really fantastic day.

Light

The cellar has (had) six fluorescent light banks in the ceiling. Right now, exactly one is still functional. Fortunately it is near the washer and dryer so there hasn’t really been an issue.

Still, I wanted to be able to see on the other (much larger) side of the cellar if for some reason something is happening over there. Maybe I can find a use for that area other than storing stuff. I don’t know. I was hoping we’d be able to have the whole place redone, complete with new overhead lights. For the near future at least, that ain’t happening.

So Jen and I talked about getting a couple of floor lamps and sticking them down stairs. I put them together this morning before work and set them up with internet connected light bulbs so we can turn the lights on from upstairs and have everything lit up nicely before we go down stairs.

Now all we have to do is clean up all the shit left over from when we had the ducts worked on. Then maybe I can do something with the space. Maybe a new music room? Probably not. Who knows. I’m just glad I can see again.

Oh, for Fuck’s Sake

Okay, I’ve had enough of this shit. The universe is just kicking our ass over and over again. Right when we think we’re in the clear… Blamo.

We had a new water heater installed one month and two days ago. To celebrate the monthiversary, the furnace died.

Well… it didn’t die, per se. We had someone come in to give it a tune up and found that it’s leaking exhaust into the house through the ducts. Oh good. The tune up guys shut off the power to it and shut off the gas line to it and put a scary red tagger on it that says, NO!

So let’s recap. Leak in the cellar floods everything and ruins almost everything we had stored down there. Then the duct fell off the ceiling. Then the water header flooded everything again. Now the furnace is no longer usable.

Yeah. Hip Hip Hooray.

The good news, it’s not winter yet so we’ll be fine. Also, venting exhaust into the house is bad so that’s not happening anymore and that’s pretty awesome. The new furnace is coming on Thursday. That is really awesome. The new furnace is going to be much more energy efficient than the huge, ancient beast we’ve been using since we moved in here 11 years ago. Given all of that, this is absolutely worth it. I’m just tired of things going wrong.

In the end, I will look back on this kick in the balls as a good thing. I’m already pretty close to seeing it that way. Jen ordered a space heater to keep in her office. I will likely move my desk back to our bedroom, where there is a separate heater installed in the wall already, a smidge earlier than I had planned. Maybe not. It’s in the 50’s out right now. I might just put a sweater on and deal.

Everything is all right.

Indoors is Still Scary

I took my mother to a doctor’s appointment today. It went well, thank you.

Based on the massive traffic I struggled through getting home I would say that pesky pandemic is over. If that’s the case, why was I freaking out so while hanging out at the hospital?

I was cool as a cucumber on the outside, but a basket case of Covid worry on the inside.

I am so ready for this bullshit to end. Get the damn vaccine.

Facebook Fights Dirty

As we enter the fifth week of the Facebook boycott, Facebook starts fighting really dirty. Low blow, bro. Right below the belt.

Last night I got an email telling me I had 102 notifications waiting for me. One Hundred and Two. It’s not the first you-have-notifications email they’ve sent, but the last one was after only a few days away. Those bastards saved them up and threw them at me all at once. Assholes!

Okay. Wednesday is the one month mark of this fun little romp of social media defiance. When I left I didn’t think about it, I just did it. I didn’t leave one of those stupid I’m-taking-a-break posts, I just went away (and bitched about it here, over and over and over and over again). Maybe on Wednesday I’ll log in, clear the notifications, make sure there isn’t anything important, and then leave one of those stupid I’m-taking-a-break posts. Then I’ll go away again. Maybe forever. Who knows.

I’m working a half day today. My mother needs a ride to a doctor’s appointment so I am leaving early to take her. I haven’t been over to see my parents in a couple of weeks so it’s time for a visit as well. I’ll be masking up and hittin’ the road around lunch time.

Our house has been a battle ground for a long time now. Two opposing forces fighting to dominate the terrain.

Alexa

Siri

Both are stationed in strategic places throughout the house. Both are able to control the lights and some other things. Both play tunes. It’s been clear for months now that the house cannot sustain both forces. One needs to eliminate the other. In the end, there can be only one.

We bought an amazon echo before Apple’s Home app was really a thing. After having everything in the house routed through the echo for a while, I got all hot and bothered over Apple HomePod Minis and when we got one for the bedroom Jen set up everything through Home as well.

I have slowly but surely found myself using the echo less and less. I can get to Siri through my watch so when I need something I just hold down the digital crown for a tick and ask for it. The only thing the echo is really doing these days is working as an alarm clock in the bedroom. Siri can do that too, but echo somehow handles it a little better. Also, the echo we have in the bedroom is one that shows the time. The HomePod doesn’t do that. It’s a small edge for the echo but a noteworthy one.

Over the last couple of days Jen has been making a conscious choice to start using Siri instead of Alexa. It is clear that finally the war for control of our house is coming to an end. Siri will be victorious. Long live the winner of the personal digital assistant wars.

Now if we could just get Google to let Apple run our Nest thermonstat.

Okay. Time to go to work. Happy Monday, everyone.

ADDENDUM: I got another Facebook email. It’s 106 notifications now. Ugh.

Litter Box Blues

To celebrate Ms Patches’ 11th adoptaversary we bought her a swanky present. A shiny new litter box. Her first litter box was a fully enclosed box. A few months ago we wanted to move her from the back door entrance way to the old bathroom but her litter box wouldn’t fit. We bought a new one that wasn’t an enclosed box, just your normal every day standard cat box. Today we realized that after all that time in the closed up box she had… well… apparently… taught herself to piss sideways. In the old box she would pee on the inside walls. In the replacement box she would still try to pee on the inside walls except there were no inside walls. She was standing inside the litter box and somehow missing. Not all the time, but some of the time.

So we bought her a new enclosed box and moved it back to the back door entrance way. We’re sorry kitty. We’re sorry for moving you in the first place and we’re sorry for moving you back. She’s one confused cat today. Again, sorry kitty. She can take solace in the fact that I cleaned up the mess in the old bathroom so she won’t have to do it herself. You’ve got that going for you, Missy.

Okay, that’s enough cat biology talk for today (assuming she actually uses the new litter box and doesn’t start shitting in the shower again like she did that one time).

Now we can concentrate on the important stuff. Stuff like Jen making breakfast for dinner tonight, and a certain Boston based baseball team’s playoff game.