And It's Still Going

 I left off last time with preparing to set up my new TV.  In theory, a short job.  In practice . . . .
The first thing to do was screw on the legs.  That would have been a fast job, except for the cheap-ass screws that tended to wallow out every time I put torque on them.  I sampled four Phillips screwdrivers before I found one with a profile that would work.
I also had a moral dilemma when I removed the packing.  There were some plastic spacers with an interesting design.

Bob totally would have kept those to add to his "things with interesting shapes" stash.  I held them.  I waffled.  I am trying so hard to get stuff moved out of this house.  I finally grit my teeth and tossed them - but it bothers me.  OTOH - I did cut out the large side of cardboard from the box, because I actually use sheets of cardboard for various projects.

Legs finally on, old TV pulled down (temporarily stashed in Bob's room because I don't know if the dump will accept it), new TV put into place.  Powered it up.  Tried to play YouTube.  Which played just fine - but with commercials.  YouTube is the one service where I pay for the premium, because it's the main thing that I watch.  I couldn't convince it that I had premium.  It took a three way conversation between my TV, my phone, and my laptop before it would finally let me sign in.

Then I hooked up my sound bar, and it was another hassle to get the TV to talk to it.

But it's all done, and in place, and after all that - well, honestly, except for not having those four vertical lines down the screen, it's not any different from my old TV.

Then I turned my attention to the toilet and replaced the flapper valve.  No problem - except that I noticed that apparently when we plunged the toilet (did I mention that when the kids got here Monday and used the toilet it overflowed???), we jiggled it a bit and now it was leaking from where the tank screws into the base.  There's a screw inside the tank that needs to be tightened.  An easy fix - except the it involves using a wrench to hold the nut under the base while simultaneously reaching into the bottom of the tank to tighten the screw.  As I am not an octopus, this was rather awkward.
I tightened it as much as possible, but there is still a very slow leak (that has possibly been happening for awhile but I just blamed the cats).  I need to make or buy a new gasket.  Until then - it's a slow drip, and I just have a towel under it.

Meanwhile, I had some cleaning to do.  When the kids came through on Monday, Rob was supposed to go through the gun safes and tag any that he thought he might want.  In the year after Bob died, he had come and taken some of them, but then that got put on the back burner.  The problem is that like the jeep, they're deteriorating.  More slowly - they're inside, but they still need care.  My friend Rik has a license, and he wants to sell them for me.  Every time I've mentioned this to Rob he has said he'll look at them "next visit."  The visits are maybe twice a year, and they always have other stuff they want to do.  So I had put my foot down and said "this visit."  Except that after going to Zeke's orientation, and lunch, and thrifting, and getting the TV, they just wanted to go home and Rob said he would look on Friday when they came to pick Zeke up.

I also wanted to show Amanda some of the better antiques.  She loves antiquing but has always refused to look at my stuff because she thinks it's creepy (because she'll inherit it someday).  But she was going to do it this time.  That meant I had some serious cleaning to do.

I'm rather embarrassed that I only live in a small part of the house.  I rarely even go into the living room.  Sometimes I run the vacuum down the middle of everything.  Dusting?  To quote Dracula, when the workmen first took the coffins to Carfax, they described it as "being so dusty that you could have laid on it without a'hurting of your bones."  No to mention the generous layer of cat hair over everything (apparently, unlike me, the cats do use the living room. ) So most of Thursday was spent deep cleaning.

I work Friday mornings, and they were due to pick up Zeke around noon, so the plan was to go to lunch and then to my place to look at the guns and antiques.  They called around 11:30 and said they were heading out soon.  I said I was training someone, so might not be able to join them for lunch (my thought being that I would just meet them at the house).  At 12:00 we were finished with the diets, and my co-workers said they would clean up and feed the animals so I could take off.  I called the kids - and they said that Zeke was tired and just wanted to go home so they skipped lunch and were already out of town.

I didn't express it, but I was pissed.

I did find one fun thing while I was cleaning up.  I have no idea where these tickets came from, but it sounds like my grandfather's sense of humor.

That did give me Friday afternoon free, which was good because a month ago I offered to give a talk on wool breeds and characteristics for the Weaver's Guild meeting on Saturday morning, and with everything else going on I hadn't gotten my notes written or my handouts made.  It was all very basic and I had it in my head; I just had to write it out.

Then came the seduction of Chat.  I *knew* that somewhere in my fiber library I had a diagram of the crimp structure of various classifications of sheep.  I couldn't find it, and Google was no help.  So I asked "Eric."  I described what I wanted, and 30 seconds later I had my chart.  But then, without being asked, he added a table of the characteristics of each category - which I had been planning to do.  So, in less than a minute, I had my handout.

In this case, it was OK.  I already had the knowledge; it pretty much said exactly what I was going to say, and it just saved me the typing.  But I can see the ongoing problem now of student or work reports being composed and handed in,without ever going through a human brain.

The talk went well Saturday, except for the problem that I always have with these meetings (which is why I only go to a few a year).  The part that I like is the show-and-tell, where people bring in their projects and talk about them.  And sometimes there is a mini-program, and I like those.  But those are preceded by a long-drawn-out business meeting where people go off on tangents, and it drags out for at least two hours before it gets to the fun part.  And being as I live west of Tallahassee, and the meetings are held on the east side, giving that 20 minute talk took almost 5 hours out of my day.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to see if I can build a puppet of Rocky from Project Hail Mary for the Infinity Con in a month.  

I've noticed that RiverSong's skin condition is starting to act up again, so I need to give her a series of baths.  Bathing a cat - such fun.

I still need to resew and repair my swing.

So nothing bad, nothing disastrous, mostly annoying/time consuming  stuff.  I just wish it would quit for a few days.

Except that I've been trying to ignore the dull toothache that's developing.  I'm afraid that it's the tooth next to the empty socket where I'm still waiting on the bone graft to take.  Having gotten up once in the morning and spit out a tooth for no reason, I'm a little paranoid.  So there will be a trip to the dentist on Tuesday.

Stay tuned.