This is a placeholder for my OP, which I haven’t yet had time to write. Y’all carry on until I can tell my tale later today.
Oh, and blurf[sup]3[/sup].
1st in! Blurf to follow.
Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffienatin’. YAWN 'Tis 43 degrees Amurrkin out and rainy with a predicted high of 53 and rainy. ICK! At least I have no planned home visits and such today. Just get to dig my way out of a mountain of paperirk at irk.
BBBobbio we await the tale on pins and needles.
Now I must seek more caffiene and feed rumbly tummy. Then, alas, irk purtification must commence.
Happy Monday Y’all!
I had to make a trip down to the old homestead in NC this weekend. After several months of failed attempts to sell the joint, the bank is moving on the property with a deed in lieu of foreclosure. The rub, and nucleus of this tale, is their requirement that I clean the property up.
Waitadamnedminute, I paid through the nose to have the house cleaned after we moved, said I. Everything MUST go, they said. OK, there’s a broom, a couple rolls of packing tape, a bottle of 409, and a partial box of trash bags inside. Ought to take me 5 minutes… The bank countered with, “What about your garage and the barns?”
Oh, sh!t. I have 4 outbuildings. The first is an open air barn, and a farmer neighbor has 6 peanut bins and a derelict plow stored in it. Not my problem, that’s his to move.
A run-down shed and attached lean-to, full of old lumber and crap. Problem #1.
My garage where I parked cars was pretty clean. The attic, however, was packed full of crap and my biggest headache. Underneath the attic in the workshop, a couple old cabinets, a desk, a shelf unit, and the old paint and household chemicals. Not much of a problem there.
The woodshed was my last headache. There was a remnant pile of firewood inside that wasn’t stolen when one of my neighbors ran off with the cord of seasoned split oak I used to heat the house.
To shorten the tale a bit, I got help from old neighbor Doug, and is son-in-law wannabe, Craig. Two full loads of junk from the garage attic and the lean-to hauled in a 17 foot Uhaul. What is left is in the lean-to and shed, and it’s the scraps we couldn’t load before running out of daylight.
To get to the story within the story that is the real point of all this, there was a portable dishwasher in the house that the bank guy wanted gone. OK, whatever, I’ll dispose of it. I called a local church that has a running yard sale to support their charities, and one of the members came to pick it up. We loaded it up and tied it down, and I gave him a bit of good-natured razzing. That’s when the guy’s son asked, “Daddy, do you have your keys?”
“No. they’re in the truck. Why?”
“Cuz I locked the door. Where’s your cell phone?”
“In the truck.” Dad was getting steamed, but didn’t want to publicly blow his stack.
He asked me if I had a wire or coathanger. No, all that kind of stuff is in Maryland, I countered. He looked at his truck, and said, “If I could get my antenna off, I could use it to push the unlock button through the door seal.”
My wife always gives me hell for overthinking stuff and being overprepared. She revels in rubbing my nose in the stuff I bought to prepare for Hurricane Irene, when our actual damage was 90 minutes without power and one small tree limb down. I overprepared for this trip by bringing my toolbox. I said to the guy, “You’re in luck. I have a Crescent wrench.” That is an adjustable one for all you furriners in the crowd.
His antenna came off, and with about 5 minutes of fiddling and pulling on the door, the button was hit and he was back in his truck.
Thirty five years after I last marched in a troop, I’m still a Boy Scout. Be Prepared. Well, almost, I’m still sore 2 days later, and I haven’t got any Aleve to take.
And the moral of the story is: always carry a toolbox!
Meanwhile, blurf.
Phone post from the hospital. My sweetie has been taken back and I had some food.
Fingers crossed for a good operation.
Laterz!!
Prayers, good thoughts and appropriate/inappropriate apppendages crossed for FCD.
Good story BBBobbio! I take it all the [del]crap[/del] precious treasures have been removed from ye olde homesteade? I recently reorganized my toolbox and also ensured that OYKW had a toolbox with sufficient tools cause, :eek: I found out he didn’t even have a toolbox! :eek: He had some tools in a cabinet drawer in his kitchen but that ain’t the same. Everyone needs a proper toolbox. I thought he was raised better than that.
Sweetie has to leave early today (early for him) and I have to get the oil change done. Unfortunately, I paid too many bills and now we are short on cash until Friday. We will be fine on Friday since all the bills are paid but until then…ugh.
There will be enough for the oil change and my pills but not much more than that. I really need to stop getting excited when there’s enough to pay all the bills. Just because they can all be paid at the same time, doesn’t mean they should be.
I’m taking a personal day to wait for the AT&T repairman. We have intermittent internet connectivity all weekend. I was pissed yesterday, because we supposedly had an appointment from 8-12 am. Turns out the tech support guy from Saturday night did not set up the appointment, even when he said he did. Grr!
Truth be told, I definitely don’t mind staying home. 
ETA: forgot to mention - Good luck to FCD!
Good luck to FCD!
I’m working on preparing lunch. After I deliver it, it’s going to be naptime!!! 
Preparing him for what?
Winter Solstice? 
ETA: I KNEW that was going to happen!
And I’m glad I’m the one that did it!
So last night I discovered that my blender is broken. I have no idea what happened to it and nobody is admitting to breaking it, so I guess I’ll blame the blender gremlins. This was pretty disappointing, though, because I’d been planning on making rum balls and needed it to grind everything up.
Since I’ve got finals this week, I doubt I’ll have time to get a replacement and make them now. Which is a shame, since boozy cookies is exactly what I need. Ugh. I just need to remember how to breathe. I’ve been doing well all this quarter, so I shouldn’t be worried, and yet I am. Test anxiety can be so utterly illogical and stupid sometimes.
I’ll just save all the rum for Friday. Rum and cookies. Yesssssss…
:eek: No TOOLBOX?!? :eek: Just becuz y’all got Teh Ghey does not absolve him of the basic responsibilities of maintaining his man card. I’m sure that you getting him one and arranging the contents for him, his toolbox is now faaaaah-bu-luuuus.
Prayers and good vibes for FCD.
ETA: One more cleanout trip to go, most likely Thursday. It’s those scraps I mentioned, and various little stuff otherwise overlooked. Plus, I owe Old Fred across the road a pan of brownies…
Your weekend sounds rather exhausting, Bobbio.
I have several toolboxes and tools, but none are in order. :o
It’s around 34 degrees out, and road conditions on the installation I work on are amber. The parking lot was rather slippery.
We went out to dinner with some friends last night and met a guy one of our friends has dated a couple of times. He seemed very nice.
The dinner itself sucked because it’s a restaurant neither my husband nor I particularly care for and we’re sick of it. We told all of them the next time we go out for dinner, we are NOT, NOT, NOT going to Chevys.
Well, I must dig into my work. I’m all by my lonesome here until 3 January and I am overwhelmed with projects, reports and covering my co-worker’s stuff too.
Peeta - now’s a great excuse to buy yourself a proper, high end, multi function blender at a sale - you’ll be able to make those rum balls, then serve them with some yummy frozen rum drinks using the ice pulverized by the new proper, high end, multi function blender that you bought at a sale.
I have a tool box. It contains a hammer, an old (circa 1974) bulb handled racheting screw driver, and some duct tape. It might need a teensy bit of updating.
Blurf, but only once. I actually got 3 continuous hours of sleep last night.
When were you in my kitchen? I don’t even have a hammer. I had to “borrow” one for work for a project that turned out could be fixed with duct tape. (I do have duct tape.) It was a crappy hammer. I didn’t even know it was possible to *make *a crappy hammer.
So yeah, toolbox is on my wishlist. I’ll have to wait for a while because I don’t want just any toolbox, I want a *good *toolbox.
Appendages crossed for FCD.
it’s a cold morning when the kittencat is found in bed curled next to your back… under the quilt! (Jasmine is not often cuddly >^.^<)
oh yeah: gardeners have tool buckets. I could do with one of those bucket organisers this year
DH is out of surgery and his doc said it went well. I would hope so - he’s done a couple thousand of these and can probably do them in his sleep.
It’s definitely been a busy baby day at this hospital. They’ve played “Lullabye” three times in the past three hours.