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.