New Year's Eve 2013

Today is New Year’s Eve 2013.  I’m going to try to write my usual New Year’s Eve blog post. This is usually a retrospective look at what my year has been like.  Today, I’m starting a little early because I’m trying out my new Dragon Naturally Speaking software which types what I’m saying.  I think this software is smarter than I am.  I can see it’s going to take a little bit of work to figure out how to use it easily.

Okay. Today is a really gorgeous day outside, if a little bit cold. Anyway it’s cold for me since I’m a Texas girl.  I’m on vacation right now, sort of.  I’m taking these two weeks over the Holidays off, but I’ve been going in to work to sign out test results.  It takes about an hour out of my day which isn’t too bad.  Other than that, I’ve been puttering around the house doing small chores and basically doing whatever I want.  Still, I was hoping to get some yard work done in these two weeks and I haven’t been able to because I really don’t like the cold.  I think that I would’ve been happier with this stay-cation if I had been a little more productive during it.  I did manage to do a lot of reading and other things that I just wanted to do, but I hate to say it . . . it feels a little bit like I’ve wasted this time. Which it shouldn’t, because it’s a vacation after all.  I suppose I need to stop feeling guilty.  

I do want to do my annual retrospective of the year, and I am going to try doing it with this software program because it’s kind of fun to play with.  It’s really an incredibly smart program. And its spelling is a whole lot better than mine is.  I’ll be really interested to see how it handles anime-related spelling, when I use this to write my anime blog.  *Laughing*  I just trained it to use the word 'anime'.  It really is a pretty smart program.  I may have a hard time doing my retrospective because I’m having so much fun playing with this program.

This is been a long and hard year for me.  The biggest thing probably is that my health has been an issue, which is a little ironic considering that I started off the year decided to pay more attention to my health.  Good news first: I ended up 18 pounds lighter than I started the year which is great.  And my diet is a whole lot better than it was at the start of the year.  I’m eating things like fruit and yogurt and I’m not eating fast food, or not very much.  I’m also not drinking Coke.  So from that perspective I’m in pretty good shape.  The bad news: I did end up getting TB this year, although luckily just latent TB.   I’m currently slightly less than halfway through the treatment for that.  I also had four bad colds this year, but I haven’t had any since I began the TB treatment which was in September.  So I have to say that although my health has been an issue, it’s basically looking pretty good right now.

The other part of this year that’s been hard for me is all the work that has had to be done on my house.  Beginning in September I had foundation repair done which was pretty expensive and extensive, followed by repair to my plumbing in the slab (ditto on the expensive/extensive), and now I need interior work done on the house to repair the damage done by the foundation issues. Yes, this all started in September and I still need to get the interior work done. It’s been a long and depressing Fall.

On top of the house and health issues, I also ran for office in my national organization and didn’t win. It’s actually the first election with them that I’ve run in and NOT won. That kind of hurt my feelings, although it’s silly because my opponent deserved to win just as much as I did.  It kind of felt like typical of how my luck has run this year though.

In all fairness, there have been good things about 2013 also. Even though both my parents had bad enough health issues this last summer that we thought we would lose my mother, both of them are doing incredibly well right now. That’s something that I’m amazingly grateful for.  I’m just so grateful for having been able to spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with my parents when last August I wasn’t sure I would be able to spend any more holidays with them at all.  Also my current state of health is a pretty good thing.  And I did get to take a 10 day vacation to Japan in May with my friend. That trip created some memories that I’ll be remembering fondly for a long time.

So basically, I’m really glad to be getting out of 2013. This year has had some really high and really low emotional swings and has been an expensive year.  Overall it’s been pretty good to me, since I have a stable job which I enjoy, I like the people I work with, and most importantly, my family is all well and mostly thriving.  Plus, now I'm fairly healthy myself and I can afford the house work.  Still, I’m ready to leave 2013 and start a new year.  Time to move on.

Pictures are of Zoe acting more like a cow than a cat.  She does love her cat grass.  And also of the little budgie.  He still shows up at my feeder randomly, so I guess he’s surviving so far.  

Hmmmm.  Last thing:  I should make some resolutions.  Okay, keep being healthy, including start exercising again, which I quit right before Thanksgiving.  Also . . . get the house work finished, and spend some time on keeping the place up, including doing some basic yardwork - like replacing the shrubbery killed by the repair people.  Lastly:  I failed miserably to get my finances under control (one of my 2013 resolutions).  Partly that was the house.  Plus when you lose 20 pounds, your clothes no longer fit, so I had to update my wardrobe.  So my third resolution again this year will be to take a stab at controlling the spending.  

I guess that's pretty much it.  Oh!  I quit using the speaking software about 2 paragraphs back.  Not too shabby.   

Ice storm

That's the big news around here this week of course.  The ice storm.  I'm posting some pictures of ice-covered trees and the poor doves, who are congregated around my bird feeders and all puffed out from the cold.  Interestingly, some of the mourning doves have a definite pink tinge to their breasts and above their beaks.  You can kind of see it in the picture below.  And there's one white-winged dove out there too (pictured walking by himself). 

The ice storm came in Thursday evening.  I was driving home from a dinner with a speaker when it was beginning and the bridges were already starting to freeze.  I stayed home Friday, which is unusual for me.  I have an all-wheel-drive Subaru, so I usually go to work, but I just wasn't ready to face it Friday.  So I worked from home (thank you remote access!) and took pictures of icy things.

Unfortunately yesterday I had to get out in it.  I had committed to interview medical school applicants on Saturday and the applicants got here.  So I left my house about 3 hours before I had to be there, and it took me about an hour to get into work.  I really thought I was going to die at one point though.  

About 5 other cars and I were inching our way across the Trinity River over a five lane bridge that was horrific.  Refrozen into slippery 4 inch deep ruts that threw your car around besides the basic slipping.  We were probably all going less than 5 mph, maybe 2-3 mph, but we were inching our way across.  I looked up into my rear view mirror and there's a semi barreling down on us, doing at least 50 mph.  I thought, well that's it.  Nowhere to go.  No way to get there even if there was.  No way was he going to be able to stop.  I didn't even get an adrenaline surge, maybe because I thought it was inevitable and there was nothing to do.  

The semi moron (well total moron, but driving a semi) whipped into the nonexistent left hand lane and flew past us all.  Really I had forgotten about that lane because it was iced over so badly, nobody was even trying to drive in it.  If there had been anyone in that lane, or if he hadn't controlled it on that ice, none of us probably would have escaped being involved in the wreck.  That was by far my scariest moment of the day, going in.

Coming back had some nerve-wracking moments, but nothing like that one.  It also took me longer (almost 1 1/2 hours) because my way home usually involves some long, high ramps.  I went alternate routes in order to miss those, and then secondary alternate routes from my alternate routes when the alternate routes were blocked off as impassible (long steep hills).  I was just glad to finally get home.  Even if my garage door opener was frozen and I had to get out and open it by hand.  

This morning I fell on the ice going to get my mail.  Not serious.  Bruised knees probably.  Have I mentioned that I'm not that fond of ice?  The good news is that even though the sun hasn't shown itself since last Wednesday some time, it's slightly above freezing now.  A lot of this stuff is melting.  I have a small rainstorm coming off my roof.  Of course it will freeze back up tonight, but any little thaw makes the roads somewhat more passable for tomorrow.  

And the cat kids and I are staying in and staying warm today, although Zoe would like a chance at the dove congregation, as you can see.  And I have every faucet in my house dripping for the duration.  I'll shoot myself if I have any frozen and broken pipes.


In other news, my big laptop has blue screened 4 times in the last day, despite everything I've done to try to fix it, so it's packed up to go back to Fry's for some work.  I pulled my receipt on it.  I bought it in July 2011, with a 3 year service/warranty contract.  Must have been psychic.  So I'm on the Internet on my small travel laptop today.

I suppose that's it for today.  I'll save other news for the next post.  Later.

Slab leak repair

Little did I realize that I was being prophetic when my last thought on the last blog post was that it was probably going to be a long week.  It was a loooooong week. 

The pictures show some stages of the work they did, including the trail in the front door and into that bedroom.  They covered the wood and tile floor, so that they could take all the old cement and dirt out that they dug out, and then they put it down again when they got ready to put all the dirt back and re-cement.  I had 5 gallon buckets of dirt lined up along my driveway all week waiting to go back into that hole in the bedroom floor.  I didn't take any pictures when it was a deep hole.  And I didn't take any pictures of the holes outside.  So this is just the inside hole when it had been filled back in, getting ready to cement it, and then the new cement in the hole.  In both those pictures you can see the carpet and carpet pad pulled back out of the way.

They actually finished repairing the leaky pipes on Tuesday evening, so we all thought they would be through on Wednesday after the City inspected it.  But due to some sort of snafu (with nobody claiming responsibility), the City inspector never showed up on Wednesday!  So they rescheduled and he showed up about noon on Thursday.  That means they didn't get everything filled back in and fixed on Thursday and had to come back on Friday and finish.   Not only did I take Monday off work, I didn't get in to work until between 9:00 - 10:00 am every morning the rest of the week, due to having to wait and let the workers in to the house every morning.  Considering I usually get to work at 6:00 am, it was a badly disrupted week.   And that doesn't even count that the cats had to be shut in the master bedroom all week with food and a cat box.  

I suppose I should be counting my blessings.  They in fact did NOT have to destroy my bathroom floor to reach that back leak.  They also didn't break any post-tension cables in my foundation when they jack-hammered through.  The piece of rebar you see in the picture, they just placed in there to help hold the new cement.  The post-tension cable runs below it and perpendicular to it.  However, they did go "overtime" though, taking longer to get done than the estimate they supplied me with.  So of course "overtime" is billed at an hourly rate and the grand total was significantly more than the estimate.  Funny how that always happens, isn't it?  No, no, of course I'm not cynical when it comes to anything construction-related.  Just because I've NEVER seen a construction-type job done on schedule, doesn't make me cynical.  

*sigh*  Just the way the world works, I guess.  Now I'm down to the last stage - getting the damage to the walls and ceilings caused by the foundation issues repaired.  I'm kind of hoping I can be finished with this by the end of the year.

The last week or so I've begun seeing birds other than the sparrows and doves at my feeders.   The weather took a cold turn, so I guess it's time.  The juncos are back.  Thursday morning when I was here waiting on the plumbing guys, there was a small blue-gray parakeet (budgie) out there!  I haven't seen him since, but he must have escaped from someone, or they decided they didn't want him and let him go.  Poor thing.  It's pretty cold for him, and it's not like he's camouflaged, or used to fending for himself in the wild, so I don't suppose he stands much chance out there.

We're supposed to have freezing precipitation tonight and tomorrow morning.  I'm hoping we run true to form.  Usually when they forecast it like this, it doesn't happen.  It comes when we're not expecting it.  So I'm hoping since they forecast it, it won't really happen.  I had such a broken up week last week, I'd kind of like to get to work tomorrow.    I pulled all my aloe vera up against the house and covered them.  It's supposed to freeze every night until around Wednesday, so I hope they stay warm enough in this protected area.  I know the doves have been hanging out in this area, all puffed up against the cold.

Looks like I didn't knock on wood quite fast enough about the INH.  I've begun having some abdominal pain, which is most likely due to that drug.  Luckily it's not too severe.  Kind of like an ulcer pain, it feels best right after I've eaten, which is a problem since, besides watching my food intake these days, INH is supposed to be taken on an empty stomach.  Too bad about that.  It's going to be taken with food.  And I'm going to have to find a happy medium between keeping my belly full of food and feeling unacceptable pain.   

Anyway, that's it for this post.  Later.

Jack hammer headache

Actually, I don't have a jack hammer headache yet, but it's probably just a matter of time.  Today I'm at home since they began work to repair my slab plumbing leaks.  They're currently jack-hammering through the slab foundation in the front bedroom to reach one leak and attempting to reach the second leak by digging under the house from the outside.  I'm praying they can reach it that way and not have to jack-hammer through the bathroom floor in the back of the house in the master bathroom too.  If they do have to go through that bathroom floor, I'll have to move the cats to the garage.  They are currently hiding in the closet back there.

This is a messy, disruptive, NOISY process.  I was going to see that they got started and then go into work.  But since they don't know yet whether I'll need to move the cats to the garage, I decided to take the day off and stay here, both to monitor and reassure the cats and to follow the worker's progress - and move the cats if necessary. 

It's hard to watch someone tear up your house though.

The picture in this post is the two gigantic, ancient cottonwoods at Capital Reef National Park.  I'm seriously wishing I were there. 

There's now a hole in my bedroom floor, about 2 1/2 feet in diameter and 4+ feet deep, going through the foundation and into the soil underneath. He says he's gotten TO the pipe now, just needs to clear around it to be able to cut the bad section out and replace it with a new section.   Don't know how the outside work is progressing.   

Just a minor time lapse here.  I started this this morning, and it's quitting time.  The guys have left for the day.  They say they have about 2 - 4 hours digging time left in both holes, outside and inside before they can make the repairs.  They're still not 100% sure they won't have to go through my bathroom floor and foundation to reach the leak there, but it doesn't look like it right now.   And they still have to dig to the leak in my front yard and repair that.  Then once everything's repaired, the City of Arlington has to come out and inspect it before they can fill in all the holes and repair the foundation hole.  So probably at least two more days work.  *sigh*   When they're finally done, I'll be able to get all the damage to the house fixed. That's what I'm really looking forward to.

The cats are out of hiding now, but I've had them shut in the master bedroom/bathroom all day.  I've been working from home, ignoring the work guys here as much as possible.  Tomorrow I'm going to get them started and go into work, leaving the cats shut up again.  Now that I know what to expect of the work I don't feel so uncomfortable doing that.  Plus they should be done jack hammering. 

Anyway I'm guessing it's going to be a long week.  I'll be glad when it's done. 

Cracks & Calories

Here I am, wide awake at 5:00 am on a Sunday.  That's not particularly unusual for me.  The problem is that today that's 4:00 am since last night was Fall Back.  Maybe I'll take a nap this afternoon.

I thought I'd post a couple pictures of some of the foundation-related cracks in my house.   This is the ceiling in my master bathroom.  Not only is the ceiling cracked, but it goes down that corner and cracks the grout at the top of the shower stall.  And in the second picture you can kind of see that the cracks extend across the whole bathroom ceiling.  The third picture is the corner of the window in the sun room.  It's hard to wait 2 - 3 months for the house to finish settling to get them repaired.  Considering that the slab leak repairs will probably cause more damage needing repair, it's probably just as well to wait and have everything repaired together though.  I currently have a two page list of everything that needs to be repaired.  Now I just need to decide whether to have the repairs done in December or wait until after the holidays.  I'm leaning toward December, but we'll see.

I gave up on those little pine trees I was growing.  I have SUCH a brown thumb.  No matter what I've tried, they continue to seem to be dying.  Give them more water, give them less water, re-pot them (twice!).  The needles keep turning yellow, then brown and that's spreading up the little trees.   So this week I put them outside.  They're pine trees, so they should be able to live outside, and I figured if they're going to live at all, their chances are better out in the elements, than under my tender loving care.   Poor things.  It it weren't for cacti and wandering jews, I suspect I couldn't grow any plants at all.    

I did plant the three remaining peach tree seedlings out into the yard.  The oldest one was looking pretty bad, so we'll see if being planted in the ground will allow it to survive.  The other two seem happy enough.  I won't believe in their overall survival until they leaf out next Spring though.  I haven't replaced any of the shrubbery that died from the foundation work yet.  I figured I'd wait until the slab leak guys finish digging up the place and then replace everything that needs it.  

I haven't been able to go nine months without drinking alcohol.  *laughing*  I sound like an alcoholic, but I'm not.  I'm not even much of a drinker - basically never drink at home - but when I'm out socially, I do like an occasional drink.  So since I've been lucky enough to have zero side effects from the INH (TB drug) I'm taking, I have had three drinks now since the first week in September.  Two half glasses of wine and one beer.  I'm counting on my liver to be able to handle that much alcohol along with the INH, but I'm not going to push it much more than that.  After November, I won't be traveling for work much for several months, so I won't be in those social occasions where I most like to have a drink.    

I am traveling the next two weeks though.  A BOD meeting in Washington DC next week, then I'm going to give a talk in Florida the following week.  Then the third week in November is when they're coming to fix my slab leaks.  Then Thanksgiving.  I think November is going to fly past even faster than the rest of the year has.  Which is scary, considering how fast the rest of the year has passed.

Besides the usual cohort of sparrows, I have a flock of 12 mourning doves under my bird feeders this morning.  I hung a second feeder out there because they were going through one feeder so fast.  The sparrows and doves are the only birds I'm seeing out there lately. And only the mourning doves - no white-winged doves.

I destroyed my diet yesterday by going out to eat with a friend.  It was worth it though.  I'll have to be extra good today to make up for some of those calories.  I'm really not very strict on this diet.  I don't pay much attention to what I eat except I've pretty much stopped eating any fast food, and don't drink cokes except very rarely.  Plus I began eating yogurt and fruit.  Other than that I just watch portion sizes and keep track of overall calories.  In June when I got serious about it, I set my calorie limit to 1400 per day.  In the month of June I averaged 1404 calories per day.  In July, I averaged 1356/day.  In August it was 1303/day.  September - 1233/day and October 1188/day.  So I've been steadily decreasing my calorie intake just by keeping track.

I have this cool little app on my phone called FatSecret Calorie Counter that lets me keep track easily of calorie intake and expenditure.  I need to stop decreasing my overall calories soon though or I won't be taking in enough to keep someone my size healthy.   


I guess that's about it for today.

Shopping

I really should get rid of my Internet connection.  Except that I would be lost without it.  So why am I saying that?  I have been shopping almost non-stop for the last month and much of it has been online shopping.  

Partly my shopping has been because I've been depressed about various things (house issues and health issues).  When I'm depressed, nothing cheers me up like spending money.  Unfortunately, that's especially true if my depression is related to money issues!  So that's partly it, but the other part of it is that I'm doing a good job losing weight.  I'm now 20 pounds lighter than my peak weight!  That's wonderful and I'm enjoying my new weight, but the downside is that literally NONE of my clothes fit me.  Pants fall off unless I cinch them up with a belt, and then they and my tops look like I'm wearing bags.  I've gone shopping at the stores, but  often cannot find styles I like.  So I'm doing a lot of my shopping online.

If I were restricting it to clothes shopping, this rationalization would work better.   Truthfully, I'm just shopping.  On top of that, this time of year is when I usually do my Christmas shopping.  I get more than 10 catalogs a day in the mail, and I shop for Christmas presents.  This year the family decided to only gift the grand-kids, so that shopping outlet is not available to me.  When I hit a shopping mood like this, it doesn't matter very much who I'm buying for, as long as I'm buying stuff.  

Yup, they call that an addiction.  I'm going to need to work on reining it in a bit.  At least until my credit cards stop smoking. 

I'm beginning to get irritated with my newspaper delivery.  I've had to call 4 of the last 5 Sundays because my papers weren't delivered.  Looks like today is going to be the same again.  Considering what I pay for delivery, that's unacceptable.  And irritating.  I try to give him the benefit of the doubt and wait as long as I can, but if I don't call it in by 9:00 am, I don't get today's paper delivered.  Ah!  Just got them.  8:20 am.  He's pushing it.

I scheduled the plumbers to come and fix my leaks.  They'll be here the week before Thanksgiving, and expect it to take 3 - 4 days to complete.  So that will be my November expensive project.  They'll need to go through the floor in my guest bedroom to repair one leak.  That'll involve pulling the carpet back.  I talked them into trying to get to the leak under the master bathroom shower from the outside.  They said they would try that first, so I don't know whether I'll have to replace the bathroom tiles or not.  The third leak is not under the house, so they'll simply have to dig up my front lawn and shrubbery (again) to get to that one.  Then my December expensive project will be to have someone put my house back together.  Repair and repaint all the cracks, re-stretch the carpet and re-tile the bathroom if necessary.   Hopefully that will then be the last of the house-disruptive work I'll have to have done.  I hope anything I do in the future will be cosmetic and intentional.

I went to Lowe's yesterday and they no longer carry the grout they used when they put in my bathroom floor last year.  So if I do have to have that floor repaired I'm going to have to try to match the grout they used.  That'll be a pain.  Do you know how many different colors of off-white/beige there are?

I guess that's all for today.

Plumbers

The plumbers are here today to find my leaks.  Not to fix them.  That's the next plumbing appointment.  Today they're here to figure out how many there are and to locate them.  I'm finding out two things.  One, I'm not very patient, waiting to hear the bad news, and the longer they're here the more anxious I get.  And two, I should have thought more about drinking all that coffee this morning.  I didn't consider that my water would be off for the duration of this process, and my teeth are beginning to float.

So far what I know is that I have three sewer line leaks.  Those alone are going to run me about $5000.00 to repair, and will involve losing about 4 tiles out of the master bath floor for one of them.  The other two they can go through the floor under carpeting.  Luckily, no damage to my wood floors is planned so far.  

Right now they're working on the water lines.  The guys who did my plumbing checks said I have both water and sewer line leaks, so I imagine they'll find more leaks to fix.   Can you say, sucky inspection?  Oh.  I've said that before, haven't I?

The picture today is of the wandering jew I'm growing.  This is the plant that I started when I picked up two ragged pieces of it off the floor of Lowe's and put them in dirt when I got home.  As you can see it's an easy plant to grow.  This one is getting out of hand though.  I think I'll probably take off these long runners and pot them in another pot.  Maybe hang them outside to grow.  

OMG.  NO water line leaks in the house!!!!  Apparently I had slow seeps in two of my toilets that caused the meter to register like water line leaks.  The plumbers replaced the washers in the toilet cutoffs and there are now no more leak indications in the house.  They did say that somewhere in my sprinkler system it's leaking a bit, but I can get sprinkler system people to come and find that sometime.  When the sprinkler system is shut off, the house shows no leaks at all now.

So they're gone now and after all that, it's still going to cost me roughly $5000.00 to fix the sewer leaks and it's going to be disruptive in my house.  But it's not worse than that and it could have been.  I'll just add replacing those four bathroom tiles to the home repairs that need to be done to repair the foundation-caused cracks.  I have tiles left from having that floor put in a year ago.  I'll just have to match the grout. 

And along the way today I learned how and where to shut off the water to my house should I ever need to, and how and where to shut off the water to my sprinkler system.  And I got leaking toilet washers replaced for free.  Or anyway, thrown in with the fee for locating the leaks. So not too bad of a day, all told.

I'm getting kind of used to spending thousands of dollars for work on this house every month now.   Maybe I should just continue on after I get the crack-etc work done and tackle a project each month.  Like new windows. And new blinds for the windows.  And sprinkler system repair. I'm sure I can find other projects too.

Anyway, that's it for today.  I'll let you know how the actual plumbing repairs go. 

Finally - October and new car pictures

I have to say, I'm glad to start a new month.  I just feel like things are going to look up now.

I finally took some pictures of the new car, so here it is.  This car is so fun to drive.  Although the car really doesn't like how I drive in heavy traffic.  I'm ending up talking to this car much more than I talked to my other cars, mostly reassuring it when it fusses at me (gives me collision warnings). "yes, I see that car", "yes, yes, I'll signal when I change lanes"  "Oh come on, I'm not that close!"  etc, etc.  I could turn the cameras off, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun.  And actually, the warnings are not because of the distance between me and the other car, they're because of the difference in our speeds.  So if I'm accelerating toward the car ahead of me in preparation for changing lanes to go around it, the warnings go off.  Or if another car crosses the road ahead of me, the warnings go off.  So it's mostly the difference in speed between us rather than the distance between us that sets it off.  The car is also very responsive and has lots of bells and whistles (which of course I don't play with while I'm driving).  It's just overall a pleasure to drive.

One thing has already looked up.  I thought I was going to have to call an electrician at the house, on top of everything else.  I went to put some drinks in the frig in the garage on Wednesday and it was dead!  As in, dark and hot.  And smelled like a dead refrigerator. I'm glad I really didn't have any food in there to speak of. I think for the most part it doesn't hurt beverages to get hot and then cold again.

Anyway, I figure the foundation guys probably did this. After investigating, it turns out it's not the frig, it's that circuit that is blown.  I tried flipping all my breakers, and nothing made it come back. So I plugged the frig into the house with an extension cord. Luckily the door into the garage mostly closed over the cord. I say the foundation guys did it because they had been using the outlet outside my front door the first day they were there. Then the second day they had their extension cord running through the bedroom window and told me that the outlet by the front door didn't work. I also noticed that day that the boxes next to the garage frig were pulled out, so they must have tried using that outlet in the garage when the one out front failed, before they went through the bedroom window to an outlet. In their defense, they may not have realized that frig was running before that circuit blew, and they did tell me the one in front was out.  I certainly never thought to check the frig. I just pushed those boxes back in place. So it was down from September 17th until October 3rd. 

Anyway, I was telling the frig story at work on Thursday and one of my friends asked if I had pushed all those GFCI buttons on the outlets in the house.  I looked at her with a completely blank expression, and she said, "you know, the red buttons on the outlets. In my house the circuits are linked funny, so when one blows in the garage, I push the red button on the outlet in my guest bathroom to reset it."  I'll be damned. I never even thought about what those red buttons are for. So when I got home I went looking, and sure enough, the outlet that the frig was plugged into in the garage has one of those GFCI buttons! I pushed it, and everything is back to working normally. I owe my friend so big time. She saved me from paying for a electrician service call and looking like a fool. So not having to call an electrician is a serious mark in the positive column for the month.  

And another positive:  I got an email from the head guy at the foundation company to call him regarding the plumbing check results.  I figured he wanted to tell me that I should fix the leaks or they could cause future foundation problems, or that their company wasn't liable for them.  So when I called him, I started out assuring him that I would get the leaks fixed, etc, etc.  He said, "all that's fine, but not why I wanted you to call."  He told me that most plumbing companies in this area charge $300 per foot of tunneling if they have to tunnel to fix leaks.  He said if they have to tunnel to fix my leaks, to call him.  He and his guys would come and do the tunneling for $150 per foot.  I was really amazed.  It's not like these guys are not busy and just need extra work.  And they didn't have to offer this at all.  So I appreciate the offer and will take him up on it if I need to.  Yes, $150/foot is expensive, but it's half what the plumbers will charge me.  

So a few things are moving my way.  Now if they can find the leaks easily this coming week and it doesn't cost me a fortune to have them fixed, I'll know my luck has finally turned.

Isn't September done yet!?

*sigh*  The rest of September has continued to be as bad luck for me as the first part was, so I'm happy to note there's only two days left in this month, counting today.  For this post I threw in more pictures of my continued close encounter with the sorghum.  I wonder when in this progression sorghum is usually harvested?  Anyway, where to start with the bad luck stories . . . 

Maybe with some good news.  My foundation has been repaired.  It took them 3 and half days to dig 23 holes, place 23 piers and lift the house.  Considering the amount of work it took, I'm pleased to report that you almost can't tell I had it done.  The guys were great, replacing the shrubbery and even filling in the hole in the patio (replacing the patio concrete) that they jack-hammered through in one place.  I left to attend a meeting when the place looked like a war zone, so I was very pleased when I got back.  I'm still gonna lose about 5 holly shrubs I think that aren't recovering from being uprooted for 3.5 days, but overall it looks good.  In the first post picture you can see the three holly's in the front of the house that probably won't survive, the ones with the brownish look.  The internal cracks in the house are another story.  Two of them closed up, but my master bathroom had large cracks come up across the whole ceiling when they lifted the house.  I'll have to get all that repaired, but they told me to wait a couple months before repairing any cracks.

That's the good news.  The continuing bad luck is that the post-foundation-work plumbing checks sucked, big time.  I have leaks in my sewer lines and water lines and probably in my sprinkler system.  Yup.  I figure it's a combination of foundation work and existing problems because I've always thought the water bills were too high in this house.  I just had nothing to compare them to.  Can you say "really sucky inspection" when I bought this place?   Anyway, I have plumbers coming out in another week and a half to locate all the leaks and then tell me what it's going to cost me to have them all repaired.  If I'm living right, they'll be able to do the repairs from the outside.  If my September luck spills over into October, they'll have to go through the foundation in the house to repair them.  Either way, it'll cost me roughly $600 just for them to find the leaks,so I'm not even going to guess what the repair cost will be.

On the medical front my bad luck is somewhat continuing too.  I had to get a measles-mumps-rubella shot because my blood work came up that I wasn't immune to one of them (can't remember which).  This last week I had a reaction to the shot.  I had a full body measles-like rash and joints so stiff and painful that I had trouble getting up and down.  Luckily it only lasted two days and then went away.  But early this month I began having excruciating pain in my right knee, but only at night.  It was waking me up every night, but during the day it didn't bother me.  It seemed to be starting to go away, but after the shot-reaction, the right knee pain is back in full force.  And it's bad enough at night that the knee is sore all day now, with some minor swelling. I suppose I'm going to have to find a new primary care physician and make an appointment.  I was hoping it would clear up on it's own.

Good news on the medical front, the new dentist is great.  I had an appointment with the guy recommended by my old dentist, and I like him and the hygienist who worked on me.  Other good news medically, I'm not having any side-effects at all from the TB drug *knocks on wood*. 

So that's been my September.  See why I'm ready for it to be over.  I'm hoping for better luck next month.  This last picture is Zoe.  She likes to sleep between the two quilts on my bed, so this cat-sized lump is her.  It's kind of a metaphor for what I wish I could have done this last month - hide from everything.   If I'm searching for a silver lining though, at least when all this is done I shouldn't have to worry about any more major house issues.  *knocks on wood again*  



   

Bad luck month

You know the old saying about if it weren't for bad luck you'd have no luck at all?  Usually I ignore that saying because as a general rule I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet.  September has NOT followed my general rule!  Seriously not.  

It started on Labor Day as I was doing general house cleaning, and began noticing many more cracks inside this house in places that hadn't shown cracks before.  So I bit the bullet and called two foundation companies to come and check the place out that first week of September.  I found out that the left front corner of the house is four inches lower than the center and the left rear corner is two inches lower.  The bottom line is that it's going to cost me $8000.00 to fix my foundation.  On a house I've lived in just over a year.  Can you say, bad inspection? *sigh*  What can you do?  It has to be fixed.  So that foundation work will start Monday. 

I've already mentioned that I bought a car the last Saturday in August.  A really cool car that's a blast to drive, by the way.  But anyway, on September 4th, (car not two weeks old yet) I took a rock to the windshield, which proceeded to form a crack about a foot and a half across the windshield.  *sobbing quietly*  My new car!!!!    Luckily my insurance covered it, but I had to order the new windshield from the dealership because the car is so new (2014), nobody had the windshield for it.  The windshield was replaced yesterday, so the car is like new again.

Okay, saving probably the worst for last -  my TB test came back positive.  Yes, positive.  I had them repeat it to confirm.  I'm not sick, I have no symptoms, my chest x-ray is clear, but because I've always had negative TB tests before, they say I'm a "new converter" and I have a latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI).  So somewhere along the way between last November and this August, I picked up TB.  Luckily, LTBI is not infectious.  You can't give TB to anyone with it (thank God, since I've been around my not-so-well parents).  Not so luckily, a small percentage of people with LTBI convert to having active TB.  So Monday I will begin the treatment for it.  The treatment for LTBI is not mandatory because some people never convert.  But the treatment does lessen the chance of ever converting, so I figure it's worth it, even if the drug is pretty liver toxic.  I just can't drink while I'm on the drug.  Which I will be daily for the next NINE MONTHS.  

It's more of a pain in the ass than anything else, but it also freaks me out a bit to think I have TB bacteria in me, latent or not.  I have NO idea where I picked it up, but if I were a betting person, I'd lay my money on the county hospital where I sign out test results.   

So those are the big three reasons why I'm saying September has been an unlucky month for me.  Along the way I also got letters from both my dentist and my primary care physician informing me that they are retiring and I'll need to find someone else.   So a few other minor bad luck inconveniences also hit this month.  I'm thinking I'll be really glad to get out of September.

The pictures are of the apparently thriving sorghum plant by my back patio, with Zoe checking it out in the first picture.   I've never been up close and personal with a sorghum before, so I figured I'd share the pictures.

One of these days I will take pictures of the new car and post them.

Raining!

It's raining!  What a surprise.  They were calling for a chance of rain today, but they do that all the time and it rarely actually rains.  So I wasn't expecting it this morning.  They're still only calling for a 40% chance, even though I've got a continuous light rain where I am.   It's not a hard rain, just drippy enough to get everything wet.  I'm delighted to see it, but I imagine there are a lot of unhappy people to have their day off, Labor Day, spoiled by rain today.

For me it's okay.  I have no outdoor plans and would rather have the rain.

I've been doing house chores this weekend, kind of like Labor Day Spring Cleaning.  I've been working on thoroughly sweeping and mopping all the hardwood flooring, which is really pretty when it's freshly done.  Plus I've been dusting, vacuuming, etc.  Yesterday I went through my closet and pulled out everything I haven't worn since I moved into this house, and put most of it aside to give to Goodwill.  I also pulled out a lot of the things that I can't wear any more due to my weight loss.  I'm about 13 pounds lighter than I was in January, and am continuing to drop weight, thanks to my change in diet and exercise.  After the Japan wake-up call I've been motivated to stick with the diet changes.  

Did I mention the Japan wake-up call?  My cholesterol was 20 points lower than it usually runs after 9 days in Japan, eating essentially only fish, vegetables, rice and miso soup.  Plus I had dropped a couple pounds while there which was no doubt due to the increased exercise as much as the diet changes.  So I'm not eating the same stuff I ate in Japan, but I'm eating significantly less than I was and I'm eating fruit (which in itself is something of a miracle because fruit has never been high on my list of favorite foods).  Basically eating less processed food and eating MUCH less fast food.  And I'm exercising three times a week.  It's working, because as I mentioned, I'm continuing to slowly drop weight.  I'll have to see how my cholesterol does the next time I give a pint of blood. 

13 pounds isn't a lot, but it's made enough difference in my waist and hips that a lot of my work slacks slide off me without a belt to hold them up.  Some of my current work slacks I have to just give up.  Even with a belt I'm lapping more than an inch of material.  So I have been doing a little work-clothes shopping this week while I've been off.   

I think I'm going to need to have foundation work done on this house, which is kind of depressing.  Especially since I just bought an expensive car.  Since I've been home all week, I've noticed some cracks I don't remember seeing.  I'll call around and get some estimates this coming week.   Damn.  Usually when I get depressing news it makes me want to go shopping, but considering this is likely to be expensive depressing news, I think I'll skip shopping today.

Which gives me plenty of time to do household chores and puttering.  I'm considering tackling straightening up the garage a little.  The rain today broke those nasty 100+ temperatures, so I can actually stand to be in the garage to more than a few minutes.  I could feasibly clean it up some.  Maybe.  Don't know if I'm quite that motivated.

I couldn't decide which pictures to use today, so went back to some of the several million from Japan that I haven't posted.  The first pic is of a small garden shrine inside one of the restaurants where we ate on Miyajima.  Then there's a picture of the turtles attempting to sun (no sun present) at Toji Temple and the ducks chilling at the Unknown Soldier Buddha temple.  

That's about it for today. 

Cat bracelets

We survived it!  The cat-kids and I survived their vet visits for teeth cleaning this last week. Poor babies.  Addy had 4 teeth extracted that were beyond saving.  Zoe had 2 extractions and some gun resections.  It's my fault their teeth were so bad.  It's been over 10 years since I've had any work done on them.  They just get so traumatized by vet visits that I don't like to take them in unless they're obviously sick.  Still, the constant mouth infections is probably one of the things that adds to their overall health issues, including the kidney function issues.  So there's really no excuse.

As expected, the three of us were traumatized by the process.   All day while they were there I kept remembering my old cat Eber, who went in for a minor "routine" bladder surgery, and ended up with heart failure and fluid on her lungs.  She was sick for over a month, and survived but lost half her body weight doing it.  Eber was younger when that happened than both my cats are now, so I kept thinking about it all day while they were at the vet.  I was so glad to get the call that all was well and I could come at get them around 6:30 pm.  You can imagine, I was there at 6:15, doing the paperwork to get them released.

The cats were more traumatized than I was.  It's taken them about 2 1/2 days to get back to eating and drinking normally.  When we get up in the morning, they hide from me instead of following me out to be fed.  So It'll take a while to completely return to normal.  I figure just about the time they relax again, I'll need to take them back for a check-up.   The vet wants to see them in four weeks to see how they're doing.  Damn it!  *sigh*  Can't be helped.  

The pictures of the cat-kids today show you their "bracelets".  The vet place doesn't shave just a patch on their forearms to put the IV in, they shave around a section of the forearm.  So it looks like Addy and Zoe are wearing bracelets until the fur grows back in.  Maybe by then they'll have forgiven me.  Maybe not.

I'm still working on figuring out all the bells and whistles on the new car.    I need to take a picture of it and show off what it's like.  It's such a deep navy blue that it looks black.  I'm working on getting my vanity license plates transferred to it.  I already put regular plates on the old Outback to get it ready to go to my sister.  One thing the new car has is an electronic parking brake.  Well, come to think of it, EVERYTHING in that car is electronic.  But the parking brake thing could be an issue, because if you have the parking brake on and the electrical system dies (battery dies), you can't move the car.  Wheels are locked.   So just about the only major thing the sales guy showed me was how to climb half under the car and attach this long wrench tool to release the electronic barking brake should I ever need to.  I hope I don't ever have to because you have to turn it 300 times.  

Besides the navigation system, the car has satellite radio, which they give you free for the first month, then start billing you if you decide you want to keep it.  It's a nice hook, because you can really get used to it in a month.  I read some of the new car's owner's manual yesterday to start figuring things out.  You can control the radio/phone/sound system from the steering wheel, which is kind of cool.  No reaching for the radio.  Changing volume, changing stations, changing mode (FM/AM/Satellite/i-pod) - all on the steering wheel.  As is my cell phone, which I can now answer when it rings by hitting a button on the steering wheel.  Spoiled much?

Oh, did I mention it has a sun roof?  

It might be easier to list the things the car doesn't have/do.  

Anyway, I've been out this morning, thinning out the mint around my patio again and dead-heading my roses.  It's supposed to be another 100+ degree scorcher today, so I wanted to do a few things early. Then I can essentially relax the rest of the long weekend.  Yay!

That's it for today.


 

Not corn!

I looked out in my back yard the other day and discovered that the two plants growing in my garden are most definitely not corn.  As you can see in this picture, they're sorghum!  I suppose the fact that they weren't growing tall should have clued me, but to me the small corn and sorghum plants are indistinguishable.  I've seen sorghum in fields all my life, but had no idea what it is and what it's used for.  So of course I had to look it up.  It's a type of grass raised for its grain which is used in the US mostly as fodder for livestock, and it's put in things like birdseed.  So I learned something new.

Things have gotten a little less crazy busy in the last week.  I'm mostly caught up at work from being gone.  This coming week I took a vacation week just to do projects around the house finally - a stay-cation.  I'm not taking my usual 3-week August trip, simply because I've been traveling or gone from work a fair amount anyway this summer.  So I decided not to go this year.  Plus my sister who often goes with me is mad at me currently and my friend who goes, can't this year.  I could have gone by myself, as I have many times in the past, but I decided I'd been gone enough for one summer.  

My mint plants have been flowering for the last month or so.  The blossoms are pretty, and pretty unique as you can see.  And the honeybees just love them, so I have a fair number of honeybees out there in the back most of the time these days.    

The birds are figuring out I've re-filled the feeders and are starting to come back, but I haven't yet seen the flock of sparrows who were here.  Mostly I've seen house finches, the cardinal pair and the doves.  

I should mention that I bought a new car yesterday.  A pretty, midnight blue 2014 Subaru Outback with all the bells and whistles.  It's going to take me a while to learn to drive it I think.  Everything's electronic.  Push button ignition (no key!), electronic parking break, back-up cameras for seeing behind you when you're going in reverse, navigation system,  cell phone synced by bluetooth, etc, etc.  It also has forward cameras, which if you leave them on while you're driving, will brake the car before you can if they see an obstruction ahead of you, and will also beep to warn you if you change lanes without signalling (figuring you're falling asleep at the wheel). You can also set the cruise control to drive a specific distance from the car ahead of you, so if that car speeds up, so will yours and if that car stops, so will yours.  Won't be long before cars are driving themselves.


So far I'm driving with all those things turned OFF, although I have tried out the navigation system.  We don't agree with the best route sometimes, so it politely recalculates the route if I go where it didn't intend me to.  It's a pretty nice car, and handles like a dream, so so far I'm pretty pleased.  I promised my sister I'd sell her the 2008 Outback, so that one will go to her whenever she wants to come and get it.

That's about all for today.  I thought I'd end this with a picture of Zoe enjoying both the sunlight and the air-conditioning from the house.   Or maybe she's guarding the door.     

Later.

Sunflower

I'm so behind on posting on this blog.  Busy, busy.  But I'll come back to that.  First of all the pictures on this post are a daily progression.  For the fun of it, I took pictures of the opening sunflower every day.  So day 1 was the first picture in the last post, and then this first picture of this post is day 2, and the rest of the pictures progress through to day 8.  Kind of fun.

The bad news is though that the sunflowers never went to seed.  We had some miserably hot temperatures, including a week in the 100s.  No matter how much water I gave it, the flowers themselves drooped and drooped after these pictures were taken.   The plant is still alive, but none of the blooms lived long enough to go to seed.

The corn plants are doing well.  They're almost waist high on me now, and happily thriving, although I don't see anything resembling ears on them.

Let's see.  I was gone for a week to a convention, which went well.  I almost didn't go because my Mom's been very sick.  Luckily, she turned around and began the long road to recovery just as the convention was starting, so I went to it.  I managed to get in all the schmoozing I was planning on.  The election's not until September, so I'll know October 1st if the schmoozing was helpful.   Then I was home for a week.

This last week I was out in east Texas with my parents and sister and brother-in-law.  My Dad was scheduled to have a pacemaker placed on the same day that Mom was scheduled to be released from the hospital.   I figured my sister and her husband could use some help.  They've been handling the load of both my parent's illnesses since they live out by them.  The pacemaker placement and subsequent recovery has gone like a charm, but Mom's release didn't go smoothly.  She passed out the day after her release and ended up back in the hospital for two and a half more days while they adjusted her medications and ran a billion tests to rule out any other causes.  Looks like it ended up being a drug-related incident.  

Don't ask me why they would send her home with three new medications she hadn't ever taken before, but at least one of them didn't work for her.   Anyway, she's now back home again and doing well this time, gaining strength and adjusting to home life after a month and half in the hospital post aortic valve replacement.   Nothing like having both parents with heart-related issues.  But I'm delighted to say, both seem to be well on the road to recovery now.     

I did spend all week in east Texas, although I had originally planned to spend 3 days.  Luckily my pet sitter is awesome and adjusted her schedule to keep the cat kids covered.  My cat kids are not too happy about me being gone two full weeks so close together, but they seem to be forgiving me.  That'll last until I drag them to the vet to have their teeth cleaned at the end of the month.  No doubt they won't be quite so quick to forgive me for that. 


I'm fighting new car fever.  I want to buy a new car.  Doesn't help that I got the title to my current car in the mail.  Paid off!  Yay!  I'm ready for that new one now.

I refilled the bird feeders, but the birds haven't realized it yet.  The feeders were both completely empty when I got back yesterday, so the birds have been eating elsewhere.  Usually it takes them a day or so to find the full feeders again.  I haven't seen the little rat since before I left to go to the convention, so maybe he's found other food sources, or been found by the cats that roam the neighborhood.  

The last sunflower picture is foggy because it was so humid that day that when I walked out of my air-conditioned house I couldn't keep the camera lens from fogging over.  Oh, well.  You can sort of see it.    

That's it for today.  More later.