mdlbear | Done last week (20150419Su

Productive week. Very. Also a very bad week. Let me explain.

On the productive side, we -- mostly I, actually -- did some final clearing-out and organizing in the garage, and Kat and Glenn got their piles of stuff out. The maypole's cross-section went from a square with rounded corners to an actual circle, and it looks remarkably Polish now. Colleen got her catheter and bag, so we have a greatly-reduced laundry and garbage load. A lot of the framing in the addition has been done, and the garage portion is a couple of feet bigger than I expected it to be. It was also a pretty productive week at work.

On the bad side, I got into a fender-bender -- my own stupid fault -- so we don't have the Honda right now. And I could have used it yesterday. And Colleen's new prosthetic bladder means that she can't take baths. Which means no walk-in tub. And a screw vibrated loose on the router, which could have been drasticaly bad but wasn't. And my back was hurting for much of the week.

On the in side (where every silver lining has a cloud around it), not getting a walk-in tub means saving tens of thousands on the upstairs remodeling. And it's practically impossible to be depressed while wielding a jointer plane. Found that out last night.

Links in the notes as usual.

0419Su
* up 5:35; W=207.8; Shower, laundry
~ -9-_8_ish go with Glenn to get _breakfast and_ haircuts
Luna Cafe; Rudy's.
* Some puttering in the garage. If I can get rid of the metal shelves in front of the
brickwork, I can replace them with the book boxes (which of course haven't held books
for decades; I originally built them when I moved into E. Palo Alto for grad school.)
* maypole: last router+drawknife pass for the 4th corner, plus 8 drawknife passes to
round them off some more. Took the old spacers off; need shorter ones now ~.3/8".
* Chaos and Rabbit loaded up their stuff -- two van-loads; the second is sitting on the
street until next Saturday. Rabbit decided to put it in the apartment instead of
renting a storage unit -- they actually have quite a bit of room. Whew.
* Moved the metal shelves, and put the boxes up in their place. Moved the Christmas
stuff into the narrow storage space that had been partly blocked by the shelves.
& helped Glenn rig an access point in the front window for the party. Used Rainbow-N,
replacing it in the Great Room with a 5-port hub.
* 15min: Last-minute organizing in the garage. New spacers for the jig.
-> there's about a quarter-inch of sag in the pole blank. That'll require another
complete pass, pretty much. Grump. But it'll give me a 3-inch pole, which is about
what I wanted, and the next pass won't have to be as thorough as it would otherwise
have had to be.

0420Mo
* up 6:45; W=210; laundry
* 8am Builders here bright and early for demolition.
* Moderately productive at work, though probably not as much as I need to be.
% 8:45 sleepy

0421Tu
* up 6ish; W=208.2; dishes
* 11am Colleen UNW
-> she has a bag now. Unfortunately, she's not supposed to take baths (or go
swimming, or use hot tubs, etc.)
-> so no walk-in tub. On the good side, this saves a lot of both money and time.
* Got into a fender-bender -- my own damned fault. Less visibility than I expected
pulling out past a lane full of stopped cars. On the good side, it was literally
across the street from a body shop, I have collision coverage, and I was able to drive
Colleen's scooter home.
% Feeling totally stupid, especially since it was a trip that, as it turned out,
wasn't nececessary (as I would have known if I'd stayed home a few more minutes),
AND since I wouldn't have been there if I hadn't missed a couple of turns in the
first place. IDIOT bear. N. points out that this is only the second time I've been
at fault in over 40 years, but that doesn't really help.
: N and the kids have declared it St. Murphy's Day.
* Bath, on N's prescription
: The upstairs washer doesn't seem to have power. I suspect a breaker.

0422We
* up 5:35; W=208.2
* Yup. breakers for washer and tub -- possibly they were both on at once?
: ... and the workers cut the phone wire, around 11am; nobody bothered checking with
them or telling me until 3:30. By which time they had gone home, and I had to
schedule a tech. Well, the contractors will pay for it, and the phone tech will
damned well install a demarc this time.
: ... and the switch on Colleen's lift chair is broken - it only goes up.
-> swapped it for the red one, with E's help, after grumping at her for not doing
anything about the fact that the internet went down. So now of course she's upset
at me for grumping at her, and I don't blame her for that at all.
% fortunately, I can do a lot without a net connection. E.g., editing to.do. When I
need it, I can tether.
@ The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison - NYTimes.com
" QOTD: Colleen: It's been one of those days. All week. All month. All year. "
* Music night: Last Buffalo (J's request), Waltzing With Bears (G on chorus the second
time through), Lock-Keeper (my request); G sang a couple of her kipples.

0423Th
* up 5:40ish; W=209.2; laundry
* phone tech coming between 9 and 1, which means I'll have to work from home using my
cell phone as a net connection. Not pleased.
-> tech actually came a little early; done before 10. Demarc installed.
* productive day at work, but tiring.
* Ordered Emmy's new futon frame. Very unsatisfactory shopping experience. I don't
trust them. Linked from Amazon, but sold by olejo.com. Crappy website, flaky
checkout. Gave me a "duplicate transaction" error (I had to submit a second time
after mistyping my CVV2) but placed the order anyway, but left the thing in my cart.

0424Fr
* up 5:35; W=208.2; laundry
@ K & M RAINBOW MUSIC STAND RAINBOW KC couldn't resist. Was looking because
the one I ordered, which looked superficially like the one I've misplaced, clearly
wasn't the same. Turns out that my old one was a K&M Heavy Duty stand; there's
also the Ruka, which is essentially the same as the HD only made of aluminum.
% Reasonably productive at work, but I turned out to be emotionally fragile when I got
home. Bit of a melt-down.
: Colleen went to bed around 8 because until she gets an adjustment made (Tuesday)
that's the only position she's really comfortable in.
* Full second pass at the maypole. The last pass will probably be slower because it
will be helical. And complete, rather than just three or four runs along what's left
of the corners. Though that's actually about half of it by now.
& Found my misplaced K&M music stand -- it was in one of Plink's gig bags -- the
repurposed baseball bag. Of course. It's about 3" shorter than the one I bought from
Musician's Friend, but a pound or so heavier. It never hurts to have music stands.

0425Sa
* up 6ish; W=207.4; Shower, laundry
Curio's w=10.0, which is *wonderful*
: System Pavers apparently went ahead and submitted a credit application to Wells Fargo,
after having been explicitly told not to (and after not contacting us after the
initial credit application, with a different bank, was rejected). The Redmond office
phone system blew me off; looked them up on the website and read them the riot act. I
actually like this development, because the lack of authorization makes it an
unambiguous breach of contract on their part.
-> They have, apparently, been badgering N about it. She has repeatedly told them to
contact me, and they never have.
% 1ish Back pain persisting; took methocarbamol
~ ~8ish~ _2ish_ Rabbit coming for the second van-load
: Another -peeve- _hatred_ - companies that display multiple phone numbers, some of
which don't work (e.g. System Pavers), companies that display two sets of business
hours on the same web page (Olejo), companies that have multiple subsidiaries and
can't be bothered to figure out which one you contacted when they call or email back
(Experian, Olejo, et. al.) There is a *REASON* why Amazon is taking over the retail
world, and that reason is CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.
* maypole: Helical pass about 1/3 done now, and generating prodigious quantities of
sawdust. The result is looking distinctly Polish, but still in need of polish.
* maypole: 5:12: helical pass done, plus a vertical scrub pass in short pieces that did
away with most of the rings. Realized only late in the process that I should have
been wearing ear protection, so I've probably taken a decade off my hearing, and there
was some damage to the router (the screw that holds the spindle lock worked itself
loose -- could have been B A D).
* maypole: 5:50: went looking for my planes; didn't find them. That's ok; it's clear
that the correct tool for cleanup will be a spokeshave.
: Colleen ordered pizza. The kids still haven't brought the van back, so no way we
could go out even if I had the energy for it. Which I don't.
@ Bits from Debian - Debian 8.0 Jessie has been released!
* maypole: 8:40: Actually, the jointer plane did a great job on most of it; the worst
gouges and the sag in the middle yielded to the drawknife. Fun! It's difficult to be
depressed while wielding a jointer plane. Because, flow. The jack plane would
have been better, but it's gone missing.
@ Orchestral Musicians Bring Whales To Surface – This Will Take Your Breath Away
@ Watch the notes come to life in this animation of the Bolero fun!