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Friday, November 15, 2013

winter's coming

ugh.

$1300 in fuel oil, and two trips by the furnace guy, and we still have an intermittent someplace in the furnace startup sequence.  something is failing, but we have to either wait it out, or start schlepping in parts... $200 here, $800 there.  neither the serviceman or I are parts slingers, so I check the stat when I get up and when I get home.

Cheryl's car has started to sputter, so it's time for Techron in both our tanks.  I sloshed some in my sister's car last time I was in the hometown.

we have leaves 2 to 6 inches thick in the back yard, and we hope to beat rain Saturday morning and get them taken care of.

laid in my winter kerosene for the Ham Cave, so that can stay warm.  I have redone the cable entry so there is a PVC wiring box and that ought to cut down wind infiltration.  get my internal common ground bar hooked up this weekend, and should be tweaked up enough to see if my antenna does anything useful besides receiving.

got two weeks to get all the pictures hung in DeBasement, and we should be about ready in case this is our year for Thanksgiving company.  I have to work 6am-2pm, so there won't be anything really special cooked, unless we get into the ham.  our Thanksgiving will be on the Saturday otherwise.  emergency backup plan is probably pizza.

still adjusting to a new Win8 laptop in the Ham Cave, and it periodically does stupid things like jump out of this edit to Lord knows where.  I suspect I won't ever adjust, Cheryl has the same issues with her Win7 laptop.

and that's going to have to be in, from here, for now...

Friday, November 1, 2013

got a new contract, so I'm moving up

... well, sorta.  the contract we rejected is basically the one our union accepted, so the money in savings can be spent on what we should have done while we were waiting for a contract.

so the fuel oil guys will come Friday or Monday for our winter fill.  the Ham Cave computer is going out of support on the last big piece, Windows XP, so it was laptop time (price-sensitive purchase, of course.)

have fed the neighborhood ghouls their yearly allotment of free candy.

the cats just killed a red cactus.

and other than that, there is nothing of significance going on around here.  things we have to catch up on, but that's happening in little bits.