Today was our 52nd 100+°F day this summer and apparently also the straw the broke the camel’s back. When I got home today my A/C was not on and the house was at 89°F. No amount of fiddling with the thermostat or the breakers has produced an improvement in the situation. I submitted a help ticket with Fox Service and called Strand Bros. and I suppose we’ll see who gets back to me first. If you ask me, six years isn’t very long for a system like that to go before failing but since it seems to me like it could just be a relay or something so I suppose I should withhold judgment. It is very hot though and I’m feeling cranky so I think I’m going to indulge myself and call it a piece of shit.
It’s not like it’s the most efficient thing in the world and if it were to be irrevocably dead it wouldn’t be so bad to get it replaced with something that didn’t use so much electricity. It’s probably not though. I think it might be dinner time. Dinner time somewhere with working A/C. Which would be just about when someone from a repair company would call me and say, “I can be there in five minutes, are you home?” I best be quick about it and then.
Category Archives: Complaining
Too Hot
Brown
I’ve finished painting the living room. No pictures today since it’s still kind of a mess but the back wall is all brown now. I still think the brown is a little too red but it mostly looks off when it’s night and the kitchen light is on so maybe it’s just that there’s a little more red in the fluorescent output that’s messing with me. It looks ok. I’ve been thinking about some curtains for the living room windows too. A big, flat TV will have problems with glare coming off the windows that it is facing and curtains would help tie the colors together. I saw some nice ones at Crate and Barrel and at Z Gallerie.
Z Gallerie also had some pillows with nice fabric but they’re square and I think I’d prefer some of the cylindrical pillows. I think they’re called bolster pillows but you get the idea. I think I’m going to have a look at Etsy and see if anyone in town makes pillows and would do a commissioned lot.
This week I also got my annual nastygram from the home owners association. As per the unpublished quota bylaw, some insignificant horticultural transgression of mine triggered the release of the hounds and a three page letter informing me that I had weeds growing in my driveway expansion grooves and that if I was insufficiently speedy in remedying the condition or if that or another issue like it appears again in six months I’ll get fined $75 and be further threatened. I love my house but being beholden to this idiotic cadre of petty tyrants is galling. It makes writing the dues check in December a bitter pill to swallow knowing that the only real benefit I get from my $330 is my annual correspondence and the sight of the human whales beached in the outdoor public urinal pool down the street. My friends have offered several suggestions for how best to strike back at my suburban oppressors but instead I pulled weeds and mowed like a good little sheep. 
Finally, I went shopping yesterday. I don’t really care for the proliferation of exaggerated embroidery and paint on Men’s shirts these days. Some of my friends can pull that look off but I think I just look silly in it. Too bad for me. I also wandered into the home store at Macy’s thinking they might have some pillows and they had a few but nothing like what I wanted. I did see a nice bed set that was on sale. It came with curtains and decorative pillows and all kinds of other good stuff. I’d need to break down and get the bedroom furniture and a new mattress though and I’m not sure where that’s going to fit into the finances with the chairs and the TV. I probably ought to buy the bed instead of the TV since I spend 6-8 hours a day on the bed and don’t watch much TV anymore but that would be the smart thing to do and since when have I ever done that?
For shame
The old blog-o-thinger has been down for a week while I unhaX0red it. The picture gallery is still not functional (curse you stupid gallery software) but the wordpress is all updated now so I figured it would be ok to put it all back online. Not too much to say other than that. The garden has been suffering in the post-hail, apocalyptic heat weather. One of the hills of acorn squashes is dead. The infected edamame are giving up, the corn isn’t growing. A pretty discouraging year all around but there is a silver lining. Lunch today was pasta and yellow squash with the marinara being made with tomato and basil from the garden and the one yellow squash coming from there as well. It was pretty good too.
Anyway, I’ll get the gallery fixed but the upkeep concerns me. I don’t really need administration as a hobby. I have enough hobbies already.
Disappointed
Yeah, thanks for the hail. That’s super. What’s that? Vegetable garden? No, don’t worry about that, go on ahead and just put that ice anywhere kthxbai.
le sigh
So there’s this old woodworking adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” That’s super. I did all my maths and then did them again and decided that the rabbet in the back of the bookshelves to accept the back sheet of plywood should be 3/8″ X 1/4″. That would allow the plywood to be recessed into the case by 1/8″ and fit snugly to make sure the case was square and did not rack. So I set up my saw with the dado cutter to do 1/4″ wide cut, 3/8″ deep and ran the pieces through. Oops. That should have been 3/8″ wide and 1/4″ deep. See illustration. I think I know what I’m going to do to fix this without buying new plywood but man, what a pain in the ass. I would propose an amendment to the rule to be “Measure twice, cut once, don’t be a dumbass” but I think that last part is supposed to be understood.
A:Reality B:Design