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Busier Than Expected

So, this past week ended up being quite busy. 

I booked a hotel in Rochester, NY for the family.  Candice will be going to a lampwork convention, while I entertain the kids around the town.  We'll be going there after spending a week and a half at the lake house in South Carolina on our annual trip there.  I still need to book the single night hotels for going there and coming home, but summer vacation plans are essentially made.

On Tuesday, I helped out at the book fair at Gabe's school because there wasn't enough volunteers (outside Candice, who helps every year), so we got Candice's aunt to watch the kids and were both there.

I took down the tape in Donna's new bedroom, and re-taped so we could paint the trim.  I also installed the new outlet and light switch cover plates.  Hopefully, we get the trim painted soon and I'll move Donna's dressers in the new room and set up the bed for her.  (Then we'll start on Meg's room.)

Gabe has been overfeeding the fish for a while, and we hadn't noticed.  They all died recently and I finally noticed, but there was dead fish scum over everything in the tank, so I completely cleaned the tank out and bought all new stuff for the new tank.  We've got tester Mollies and Platties in the tank now to see how they survive.  If they're doing fine after a week, we'll get a few more fish.

(The fish are not in this picture)

This weekend, I had planned to clean the garage because of the family of mice we disposed of, but it was too chilly Saturday, and I figure it'll take at least both days to do, so I put it off (though I did pull out the freezer to check behind/under it and found nothing).  If it's nice this Saturday, I'll at least get the area where Candice parks and the two pantry like cabinets cleaned out.

On Sunday, it was a little warmer, so I started work on the ventilation project for Candice's lampwork studio.  I got a gable mounted fan that puts out about 1650 cfm that is super quiet.  I bypassed the thermostat that controls it (because I need it to work regardless of the temperature, not just when it's warmer than 60 degrees), and installed an outlet plug and a light switch (so she doesn't have to unplug it when she stops using it).  I cut a hole in a piece of plywood and mounted the fan onto it.  Now I have to finish making the "box" (the reverse side plywood and cross support "beams"), add duct work to it, and voila, I don't have to worry about her dying of poisonous gases while she's doing her art.

I mailed off the reply to the IRS for Grandma today.  They claimed that the sale of the old house and her social security weren't claimed, yet the filed tax forms clearly show the exact numbers they claim weren't on there, so I copied them, circled the figures, wrote a response, and sent the package back.  Hopefully that will be the last of that.

I'll be going later today to renew my license plates for my car.

Sunday, I'll be donating platelets at Bonfils.  that is if I remember the appointment.  Candice and I haven't been very good about remembering the blood donation appointments since we started getting perpetually sick in November.

That's all for this entry.  Thanks for reading.

Slight Change of Plans

So, we've caught and disposed of 8 mice (in 6 traps) and then suddenly we stopped hearing any more or catching any more, so we think the great garage mouse crisis of 2013 is over.  So, we're looking up the best way to clean up the mouse droppings, etc. and find out from the CDC that we need to wait at least a week before sweeping them up, etc. to reduce the chance of getting the Hantavirus.

So our plans have changed.  No massive cleaning of the garage this weekend.  But I still did some cleaning of my workbench area and now it is at least minimally operational if I come up with a project that I want to work on which involved my work area.

 My scroll saws and peg board area

The radial arm saw area

My toolbox area still needs lots of work

Maybe tomorrow we'll finish the green paint in Donna's room so I can tape it for trim paint for next weekend and we can get Donna moved in soon.

Thanks for reading.

Unheard of...

Well, Donna's bedroom hit a snag in getting it painted, due to a cloud of sickness rolling through the workers (Candice and myself).  Candice had the flu and also caught the bad persistent cough I had/have.  Mine hasn't fully gone away, but I'm not contageous anymore.  Mine also resulted in slightly separated ribs near the bottom of both sides of the rib cage, but mostly on my left side.  Hopefully, we're fine enough to finish painting this weekend.  We'll see.

I also found when I was cleaning the garage to park my car in it (see previous blog post), that there were a lot of mouse dropping in it.  given how freaking cold it has been lately, that didn't strike me too much until Candice found a dead one in the laundry room, too.  Now, I'm wondering if they aren't also in (or more likely arrived in) the '53 Mercury.  Anyway, I bought a few things to aid in pest control and will buy more soon.  I also need to get a move on and clean BETTER in the garage to prevent an infestation from occurring.  If we don't paint this weekend, I'll hopefully get this (and taking down the remaining Christmas decorations) done.  If the temperatures don't plummet again, that is...

Also, I just found out why no one EVER responds to stuff I post on Facebook.  Apparently, my default "who can see anything I post" setting was set to "Family" instead of "Friends."  I have been "unheard" since the beginning of September!  So many of you have likely missed a few of my blog posts between September and now (though, admittedly, that's not necessarily a big number - my bad - hopefully I will be better about that in the future). 

Feel free to go back and read them if you're so inclined.  and thanks for reading this one!

Inches to Spare

Since Sunday, I've been sick with a terrible cough and fever.  If I moved at all or allowed cold to touch my chest, it would start another batch of horrible, violent coughs.  I went to the doctor yesterday, and she said it wasn't pneumonia, and probably wasn't the flu or bronchitis (though she swore it was the flu until the flu test came back negative).  It's probably just a virus.  The cough has given me a tremendous chest pain, and I think strained a muscle in my back.  Anyway, I've been fever free for 24+ hours now, so I'll be going back to work tomorrow.

Phases one and two of operation clean the garage are complete.

Phase one also happened to be phase one of get Candice's art studio moved.  She's now set up with a make-shift workshop in the basement, so she doesn't have to contend with extreme temperature changes.  Phase two of the art studio will be to ventilate it better, but for now, it works, and I think she's really happy about it.  Phase three involves adding electrical circuits to the basement, that will wait until my dad comes out or I save enough to have an electrician come out and do it.  I don't feel comfortable enough messing with the circuit box.  Phase four of course, is to put up walls, etc., but that comes much further down the road after we start finishing the basement.

Phase two was move the radial arm saw and other big items around so I can park my car inside again.  Granted, due to the ginormous '53 Mercury being parked in what was previously my spot, I now have to park in the workshop area, which means moving my car out to do anything and to move the recycling in and out of the garage, but I can now do that, so NO MORE FREEZING WHILE GETTING SNOW AND ICE OFF MY WINDSHIELDS WITH A SCRAPER AT HOME!

I also had mere inches to spare with the new arrangement of stuff, but that will become easier with time as I find better places to put things, etc.

 

Anyway, that's all for this entry.  Thanks for reading.

Megi's Gone Walkabout

So, It's been a couple of months since I provided an update to what's going on in my little world.  We'll start with the main topic I started this blog about:  writing.

I've decided to put a serious effort into writing and publishing using Kindle Direct Publishing.  I'm focusing more on books of short stories than a single novel.  I plan to group them by genre, and will have one horror, one crime/mystery, one sci-fi, and one drama when all is said and done.  I've also got a lot of cool story ideas, including writing a story with a zombie as the protagonist.  Now, I just have to take the time and write the stories.

I also started a Twitter account for my author personna (@TAllanBishop), since apparently that's what people should do.  I think I have two whole tweets so far...

Now on to what has been going on. 

We experienced a quarantine for Whooping cough in our house.  That precipitated Candice and I opening one of our Christmas presents a month early to fill the dead time with the Wii U.

I got to experience an entire day of jury duty for a case involving sexual assault of a minor and 2nd degree kidnapping before finally becoming a peremptory challenge by the defense at 5:30 at night.  I think it would be really neat to sit on a jury, just not a four day trial on that kind of a case.

We got a companion for Ginger:  Bailey.  Bailey is a Basenji/mid-sized terrier mix.  And the day after we rescued him, he cut open his paw pretty bad (he could have bled to death from it had we not gotten him to the doctor right away).  He then proceeded to tear up three cones designed to prevent him from chewing at his bandages and then proceeded to constantly chew his bandages.  We gave up and removed the bandages and he mostly left the stitches alone.

Bailey has been a calming influence on Ginger.  She's less inclined to jump on people and she seems happier now that she has a friend that is around all the time.  We think Bailey had a bad incident with a car, because of a bad scar on his rear leg that he was treated for prior to his adoption and the fact that any moving vehicle scares the bejeezus out of him.  Still ones not so much so.  He's pretty well behaved except that the "fences" we put up to keep him out of or in a room are considered optional by him.  Because he's so well behaved, we think he used to have an owner, but somehow became "homeless" for a while and that's when he had his accident.

We (and the vet) think he cut his paw on the metal edging that separates different landscapings in the back yard.  I'll be taking it out soon to make sure we don't have a repeat performance.

We refinanced the house down from a 4.625% fixed rate to a 3.25% fixed rate and lowered our monthly house payment by about $400 per month.  We refinanced without any cost to us.  Donna's day care bill just got lowered by $10 per week since she's fully potty trained now.  I also plan to switch our cell phones soon to a combined monthly data usage one which will lower our monthly phone bill by about $30 per month.  That's going to help tremendously with living within our budget and getting the bills paid off.

Christmas Eve, Megi began to walk without holding on to anything!  Christmas Day, she actually started doing it as her primary means of getting around, and she rarely crawls anymore.  In fact, she spends hours just walking around because she can and it is fascinating to her.  She's gone walkabout.

Gabe has been home from school for the holidays.  He really copes better when he has school than when he's home for the entire day.  It'll be better for him and Candice when he starts back to school tomorrow.

Donna stumbled in on Santa while he was setting up all the stuff.  He had to disappear in a hurry.  fortunately, he returned later after she went to sleep and finished with everything.

In the next few weeks, I'll be buying the pieces to set up ventillation in the basement to move Candice's glass studio down there.  Once that is done, the next step is to rearrange stuff in the garage so I can park in it again (moving my car out whenever I need to actually "do" stuff in the workshop.

We've finally moved on to painting the next room in the series.  Donna's new room will be green (her favorite color) with a pink highlight wall.  Once we get it painted, we'll move her in and start work on Megi's new room.  When we finish that, we'll start on finishing touches to the rooms and the bathrooms.

Well, that's all for this update.  Thanks for reading.