Category Archives: Life

Live from the basement…

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It’s only taken nine months to get this done, but I’m finally writing from the basement. It’s cool and is dark, and there are no annoying glares on the television screen. It’s possible that aside from cooking and sleeping and assorted other daily necessities, I may never leave again. That could be just because I’ve finally be reunited with my ratty old La-z-boy recliner. After collecting dust and dog hair for most of a year, I’m happy to say that it still fits like a glove… a fact that I proved by sleeping there for the better part of three hours after dinner last night.

I like to think there was something more exciting that basements and old furniture to this weekend, but unless you count yard work and early morning grocery shopping trips as excitement, that’s about as good as it gets. Now that the house is more or less how I want it (and I’ve made my peace with sticking around for a while), I suppose it’s getting to be about time to find something else to entertain myself with. Or I could just stick my nose in a book and continue ignoring whatever happens to be going on out there beyond the fence line. Yeah. It’s a pretty safe bet which one of those two things is going to happen.

TV Time…

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I had a good plan. No, seriously. I really did have a good plan. The 42 inch TV currently in the living room was going to the basement “media room”. This new venue should be more conducive to reducing glare and cutting my cooling bill this summer. Hiding in the basement when it’s a gagillion degrees in July and August just seems to make more sense than running the 18,000 BTU window unit flat out for weeks on end. Moving the TV was easy enough and I had a small TV packed away that would be more than sufficient for background noise when I happened to be in the kitchen or fiddling around upstairs. What I didn’t account for was that nice little TV having only a single set of old school standard component cable connections, so I can plug in the cable box or the DVD player, but not both at the same time. And forget plugging in anything fancy like Apple TV or XBox. Apparently, this TV has been in storage for a while. I didn’t even know they made flat panels without HDMI ports.

This leaves me in a bit of a dilema. I can leave things as they are, with the TV in the basement and nothing in the upstairs living room. I can plug in the baby TV in the living room and try using it as what’s basically a radio with moving pictures. Or I can bight the bullet and head over to Delaware this afternoon and try finding a new TV that doesn’t send me screaming to the poor house.

The part of me that loves shiny new toys really wants to put the 42 inch TV back in the living room and bring home a 50 inch screen for the basement. The part of me that just finished paying the bill for moving here really, really wants to avoid doing that. The compromise might have to be finding a no-frills (read: cheap) 32 inch model for the living room and letting things in the basement be for the time being. It can’t hurt to stop in at Best Buy and have a look, right? I mean, since I have to go to Petsmart and pick up dog food anyway, it only makes sense to look around a bit.

Finally…

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It’s probably not a surprise to anyone who knows me that March Madness doesn’t garner much more from me than the occasional “uh huh” when someone tries to bring it up in conversation. I know approximately as much about basketball as I know about partial physics. Actually that’s not true, I read a book about noteable physicists once, which I can’t say for basketball players. So it’s possible there is no topic I know less about than the fine points of college basketball. But still here I sit with the semi-finals playing in the living room.

Sigh. The trials and tribulations of being a semi-good son.

The rites of spring…

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It’s the time of year again. The neighborhood is full of whirring lawnmowers (except the house behind mine of course), the plants are blooming, and everyone seems more or less ready to get on with the warm weather. Being completely anal retentive, I’ve been planning for this moment for the last two months. The lawn equipment has had its oil changed, blades sharpened, and a supply of premium fuel laid on. Spring isn’t so much about enjoying nature as bringing it to heel after it’s months long free for all during the cold season.

Since it’s been nice enough to live with the windows open in the evening, I haven’t started fiddling with bringing the air conditioners back to life… that was until I started to “un-winterize” the a/c unit the cools the entire downstairs. When I wrapped things up for the winter, I was pretty confident that I had killed off the mold that had been growing inside the unit. Sadly, I was wrong. This wasn’t a new fight, of course. I had waged holy war on this mold almost since the day I moved in, kicked on the air, and wondered “what’s that God-awful smell?” But I thought I had finally struck on the right combination of vinegar, bleach, and random HVAC cleaning supplies from Home Depot to set things right. As I mentioned before, yeah, I was most definitely wrong.

To help set the stage, you need to know that this is the single biggest window-mounted air conditioner that I have every personally seen. It’s so large that it’s actually permanently bolted and caulked into the window. Sure, technically it’s a window unit, but it’s basically like having a central air condenser bolted directly to the window. Seriously. It’s big. If I had to bet, I’d guess it’s 300 pounds easy. And that’s really where the problem starts.

You see, every website on earth tells you that to properly clean mold out of a window air conditioner, the first thing to do is take the unit out of the window and remove the metal housing so you can access the interior spaces where the nastiness is building up. Since this beast is bolted to the house, something tells me these particular directions are not going to apply. Even if I could do any of that without demolishing the window itself, there’s not a chance that I could pull it off as a one man job, which brings us to my point… It’s time for yet another awkward conversation with the landlord about appliances and the need for regular preventative maintenance.

I foresee our talk going something like this:

Me: The air conditioner in the living room is full of mold.

Landlord: Did you clean it?

Me: *rolls eyes* Of course. The mold is inside the housing. It needs to be disassembled and cleaned properly.

Landlord: You can’t do that?

Me: No.

Landlord: That’s going to be expensive.

Me: Probably, but less expensive than me buying a new air conditioner for the living room and deducting it from next month’s rent.

Landlord: %$#*

Me: *smirk*

That conversation should be taking place any time now. It happens less and less often these days, but it’s one of those friendly reminders that living in someone else’s house still sucks.

Back in the day…

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The days are getting longer. The air is warming up. Another lifetime ago when I was a teacher, this was the time of year when I could start to smell summer vacation coming on. Sure, it was still two months off, but in my head those glorious two months of having absolutely nothing to do were right around the corner. My itch to get on with vacation was every bit as strong as any student’s might be. Even now, after I’ve spent three times longer being not a teacher than I spent in the classroom, I still feel the almost gravitational draw of summer vacation. When June rolls around and I’m still sitting in the office, it still comes as something of a shock to the system.

All things considered, summer is pretty much the only thing I miss about the teaching profession. Sure, a couple of the students turned out to be real people who I legitimately enjoy staing in touch with (Yes, you know who you are). But seriously, talk about a career path that someone was completely ill-suited for. Sheesh. What was I thinking? Still, summer vacation is a pretty big draw. The price you have to pay to get those two months off was just do damned high for me.

Looking out the window at a sun filled spring morning, makes me wish just for a minute that things were different… but then I remember the parents, administrators, standardized tests, certifications, low pay, general lack discipline, requirements to leave no child behind, and the unbridled hell that was “service learning” and I’m reasonably happy to be sitting here in my cube.

Bright points in an otherwise craptastic week…

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This week has sucked. There’s no nicer way to say it. I can think of plenty of more colorful ways to put it, but I won’t since you know we run a nice family establishment here. Right. The thing about craptastic weeks is that the smallest bit of good news can pretty much make your day. I mean when they bar is basically set at ground level, you even the most trivial of things can bring a momentary smile to your face. Personally, I’ll take all the small mercies that come my way.

I heard a rumor that the Tundra should actually be ready to come home tomorrow. That’s bit of good news #1. After three “should be finished” dates have come and gone, though, you won’t find this guy holding his breath. Strange as it sounds, getting back in the truck feels like at least something of a step back towards normal. I like normal. Bit of good news #2, showed up in my inbox just a few minutes ago. As you can see from the picture I conveniently attached, it’s the “Your iPad is ready to be picked up on Friday” message that I’ve been eagerly awaiting.

If anyone is interest, curious, or just plain bored on Friday morning, I’ll be doing the usual launch day live blogging posts. Doors open at 8AM, so I’m looking at a 6:00 line up time unless I start getting indications that lines are going to be longer than the usual Apple launch day lines. Unless something ridiculous happens, which almost seems guaranteed at this point, I should have my shiny new Precious by around 10:00. I haven’t done a launch day event at this location before, so it should be an adventure for everyone. If you find yourself in Delaware and wandering around aimlessly on Friday morning, feel free to stop by Christiana Mall with coffee, danish, or a board game.

Requiem for a friend…

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There is no equity in death. No words, no phrases, no comfort. There is only the awful reality following a dreamless sleep and momentary hope in waking that you’d find last night’s reality untrue. This morning the sun shines a litte less brightly and the wind blows with an extra chill. Anything written seems painfully inadequate to the moment and I can say simply that I’m thankful someone so kind and gentile touched my life. I’m a better person because of it. For my friends who have always made me feel like a member of family, my heart breaks with yours.

Staying put…

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If you’d have asked me back around June 19th what I’d be doing this Spring, I’d have give you one of two possible answers: 1) Finding a house to rent that didn’t break every third day or 2) Having successfully picked the all six numbers for the PowerBall jackpot, I am withdrawing from public life to a small, sparsely populated island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. As it turns out, neither one of those two things is going to be on my agenda for Spring 2012.

It’s not so much that I’ve made a conscious decision to stay put as much as I’ve slowly come to terms with house. After nine months it’s getting that lived in look that comes from finally having boxes unpacked. Cutting out the property manager from hell and dealing directly with the owner has gone a long way towards resolving the upkeep and maintenance issues that plagued the first month or two. The truth is, it’s taken the better part of a year, but I’m starting to feel settled. Just the idea of throwing everything back into boxes at this point and doing it all again so soon makes me a bit twitchy. Besides, I’d always hoped that the next move would be back into a house that Bank of America and I owned together and since that’s not going to happen in the next three months, sticking with the enemy I know seems like the next best option.

So yeah, if the first year was about settling in and getting my footing. This year is going to be all about fixing some of the things that have bugged me, but I didn’t want to tackle because I figured I’d be moving on before being there long enough for them to matter much. Now that I’ve made up my mind to stick around, it’s time to start hacking at those annoyances. In a few weeks when the weather finally turns for good that means a concerted effort to bring the yard into a better state than “eh, good enough for a rental.” If I’m going to be here for a while, it’s time to start putting my own stamp on the place – or at least as much of a stamp as one can place without spending much money. Once the outside is up to standard, maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally get around to turning the basement into something other than a place to store canned goods and cast off furniture.

Or I could just go ahead and get that PowerBall win. That would be fine too.

Scrambled…

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Ever have one of those days where you walk out of the office with your brains scrambled for no apparent reason? Yeah. Today was one of those days. Nothing bad happened, there were no rush jobs dropped on my head at the last minute, and I even got a months-long project wrapped up and off my desk for good. Still, I feel like my brain was wiped to a froth and then delicately poured back into my head. I have absolutely nothing witty or sarcastic to add to this statement of fact. Instead, I’m going to turn on the television and find something equally mindless to run in the background of the evening.