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Happy holidays!

December 26th, 2023 at 01:06 am

 

I wrote a long post earlier today and when I hit submit it disappeared so I'll try to recreate it (and I'm doing it in my word processor this time just in case).

 

It's not quite time for the year-end wrap up post but figured I'd give some updates.

 

All is going pretty well. I'm finishing up my first full year of “semi-retirement”. I'm really not sure what else to call it. I went per diem in August 2022 meaning I no longer have a set schedule or required hours. Technically I am required to work 24 hours every 12 weeks but unless I consistently miss that mark, nobody will say anything. I've mostly worked 8 hrs/wk this year, some weeks 4, a couple of weeks 12, and several weeks zero. My plan for 2024 is to cut back to 4 hrs/wk. I just chose my January shifts yesterday so 16 hours scheduled for the month.

 

My wife is doing well and finally back in good health. Not 100% and never will be after 2 back surgeries and a lung surgery but her most recent labs had her inflammatory marker (C-reactive protein) normal for the first time since this began in early 2021. She has been crocheting up a storm, did quite well at a local craft fair in October, and has made numerous other sales, especially to our daughter's co-workers who keep ordering stuff from her.

 

Our daughter is enjoying her job and they love her. She's gradually taken on more responsibilities and helped them streamline workflow and improve processes.

 

My mom turned 93 in August. She's having more trouble with her back and an MRI in October showed a new herniated disc. She's had a couple more epidural injections since then but those really don't help. The only thing that helps a herniated disc, other than surgery, is time. It can take 4-6 months or more for those to heal. It's made it harder for her to manage and we finally increased her aide to 3 days a week and we are going over there more frequently to help out.

 

My ebay business is cruising along well. I have a running thread on the forums where I give monthly totals and periodic updates if anyone wants details. I enjoy going to the estate sales and finding treasures that I can flip for good profits. This year I had several of my all-time best sales so I must be on the right track.

 

Between my wife's health and my mom's, we didn't do any major traveling this year. We did try to do a number of day trips and earlier in the year a few overnight getaways. We have a trip planned to Riviera Maya in late February. I'm hoping things are stable here and that we are able to go as scheduled. It's a group of us going to celebrate a friend's 50th birthday.

 

Speaking of birthdays, my wife turned 60 last Sunday and we had a party for her the day before at a local distillery that we really like. The 3 of us along with 14 friends had a good time celebrating her.

 

The other thing we did this past week was sign up for new health insurance through the ACA. The premium will be about $1,000 less than we've been paying on COBRA though the out of pocket costs will be higher so that will be offset somewhat.

 

I'm looking forward to tallying up the year-end numbers for our portfolio, our spending, my ebay business, and everything else. At this point, I've got a pretty firm grasp on it all already but want to see the final numbers.

 

I guess that's all for now. I'll post again in January with a full 2023 wrap up.

New washer and dryer, water cooler, general updates

June 20th, 2023 at 10:00 pm

I'm not very good at this blogging thing.

 

Life is cruising along okay. Since my last post in February, my wife was in the hospital again in March for a flare up of the infection around her spine. She had surgery to remove the hardware put it last year in case that was the source of lingering infection. She then did 9 weeks of IV antibiotics (as well as having a drain in the abscess for 6 weeks) and is now on daily oral antibiotics for at least a year. She has been seen by her spine surgeon, 2 different cardiothoracic surgeons, a neurosurgeon, and her infectious disease doctor. Everyone agrees that surgery to get to the abscess isn't indicated. With the hardware out, they feel her body will resolve what remains. She's getting labs every couple of weeks and has a CT scheduled for August. The really good news is she feels terrific, the best she has since the whole back issue started in fall of 2021. She's not 100% yet but she's doing PT and getting back to the gym and overall feels pretty normal.

 

I continue to work per diem, mostly doing 8 hours a week in the form of 2 four-hour shifts, usually Saturday and Sunday mornings but occassionally a weekday shift. I like the weekends best because the pay is much higher.

 

I'm still actively selling on ebay. Year to date I've had sales of about $6,000 gross/$4,000 net which is ahead of my goal of $500/month net. I logged my 4th highest sale ever a couple of weeks ago selling an item for $477.77 that I bought a week earlier for $8. Back in March I had my 3rd highest sale at $499. I go to one or two estate sales nearly every week and really enjoy that.

 

We had a big household expense this week. Our dryer started making a weird noise a few days ago. I opened it up yesterday to see if it was a DIY project I wanted to tackle. I didn't definitely identify the issue but I think it is a problem with the drum rollers. Fixing those means fully disassembling the unit, taking off the belts, removing the drum, etc. I just don't want to work that hard on a 10-year-old dryer so I agreed it was time for a new one. Of course, DW figured we should buy a new washer while we're at it. That's just as old, or maybe older, has rust around the top of the tub, and sometimes doesn't drain right after a cycle. I've DIY'ed that one before to fix something else (door switch assembly) so it's about time. We headed to Lowe's today and bought a new set. All in with delivery and removal and hoses and such, it came to about $1,500. We went with the pretty basic ones, not the ones with all the fancy electronics and stuff. Those are supposed to come on Thursday. While we were there, we also bought a new water cooler. Ours is pretty old and the great feature of the new one is that it is bottom-loading. I don't have to carry and flip the bottle onto it anymore, which occasionally results in some water spilling around it. That was another $200.

 

Otherwise things are doing pretty well. My mom is still plugging along at almost 93. Slowly declining which is hard to watch and deal with but such is life. Our daughter just celebrated 1 year at her job. She's stressed a lot which has been aggravated by her therapist being on maternity leave the past few months. Thankfully she starts back in therapy in 2 weeks. I'm hoping that gets her back on track fairly quickly.

 

That's enough for now. I'll try and update more regularly. I just forget about doing it.

4 month update

November 24th, 2022 at 01:21 am

I realized the other day that I haven't posted for quite a while. Apparently it's been 4 months. Oops. Life has been rather crazy, both good and bad.

At the beginning of August, I switched to per diem status at work. That means I no longer have scheduled shifts (or guaranteed hours). I am able to look at the schedule, see open shifts, and pick them up when and where I want to. I've basically been working two 4-hour shifts a week since then. It's very nice. Four hours is easy even when the place is crazy. I only take 9-1 any day or 1-5 on weekdays. I don't take 1-5 on weekends or 5-9 on weekdays so I'm not there for closing. One of the things I really hated about the job was the stress and pressure to get done on time when we were swamped with patients so I just decided I'd never take those shifts again if possible.

Open shifts are predominantly on the weekends, which is fine with me. Saturday and Sunday don't hold any magic for us. I'm just as happy being off during the week when everyone else is working. The added benefit to taking weekend shifts is that the hourly rate is 10% higher and there is a incentive bonus on top of that since they have so much trouble filling those shifts. I end up making about 37% more per hour from weekend shifts.

My wife is doing fairly well with her recovery from her back surgery and lung surgery. Still not 100% but much better. However, she developed another problem that is probably related. I'm not sure how much I've talked about this in the past but my wife is a childhood cancer survivor. She had a tumor behind her left eye when she was four that was successfully treated with then-experimental radiation. It cured the cancer but damaged the surrounding tissue as well as her left eye, which eventually got removed when she was 20 (there's more to the story but not relevant here). Anyway, she developed an infection of the skin of the eye socket. It didn't fully respond to 2 or 3 rounds of oral antibiotics. Then she did 2 weeks of IV antibiotics which finally took care of the infection but the whole episode with the skin swelling and irritation resulted in a tear in the skin that can't heal. So on 12/7 she's having surgery to get a skin graft to fix that. The surgeon expects her to be in the hospital for about a week. I'm super worried about that going well so lots of stress here lately.

On the happy side, both DW and DD got new cars recently. My wife's 2011 Sienna was not aging well. The pain on the roof was very worn, some rust had started in a few spots, and the moulding around the windshield and a couple of other places was rotting away. She bought a 2019 Subaru Forester from Carmax 2 weeks ago and is very happy with it. DD had a 2010 Hyundai Accent. Not a ton of miles but also starting to have a series of issues - broken hood release, dying power window motor, issues with the stereo, etc. All fixable things but we didn't feel it was worth puttting $1-2,000 into a 13-year-old car. Plus we really liked the idea of her having some of the newer safety features. So she got herself a 2018 Hyundai Elantra from Carvana. It was pretty neat doing everything online and having them deliver the car to the house.

I'm still hard at work with ebay and have been doing very well. I'm enjoying going to the estate sales pretty much every week, the yard sales during the season, and getting stuff for free online that people are giving away. Year to date, I've grossed just over $12,000 with profit of just under $9,000 which I'm very happy with. My goal was to earn at least $500/month profit and I've actually averaged over $800.

I think that's the big stuff that's been going on lately.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and wonderful holidays.

New freezer - ugh

March 20th, 2022 at 01:44 am

DW went down to get the laundry on Thursday and the freezer was beeping which generally means we left the door open... except the door was closed. So the temp was too high for some reason. She opened it and things were still frozen but a couple of things weren't as solid as they should be. I told her to just crank up the temp setting and leave it be (I was at work).

Of course, that didn't solve the problem. We moved some stuff into the upstairs freezer and the little freezer in the bar fridge but we will end up having to trash a bunch of stuff ($$).

I went online today to shop for a new one. Found one I wanted at Lowe's but the website showed it wouldn't be available until September. Fortunately, I knew that the website isn't always accurate, so I took a ride over to their nearest store. They didn't have one but their system showed that another area store did. I went there and sure enough they had one in stock.

I bought it right away. I even signed up for Lowe's credit card because it saved me $100. The soonest they can deliver is Wednesday but we're fine without it until then.

Just $700 we weren't expecting to be spending plus the cost of replacing the food that we lost.

It's always something.

New bed, Chili, and ebay update

March 5th, 2022 at 09:07 pm

We did something today that we haven't done for 25 years - bought a new bed. DW has been wanting a new mattress for ages but I've put it off because I'm cheap and sleep just fine on the one we have. However since she hurt her back in October, she hasn't been able to sleep in bed. She just can't get comfortable and it doesn't give her enough support. She's been sleeping downstairs on the loveseat propped up with pillows. Not a good long term solution. We were hoping she'd be better by now but since she's not, it was time to go another route.

She did a bunch of research and decided on a hybrid memory foam/spring mattress. The main thing would be an adjustable base so she could raise the head of the bed rather than propping up on pillows. Honestly, I'll like that too as watching TV in bed or even doing stuff on my phone means propping up awkwardly which tends to hurt my neck.

We headed off to a local shop today. They were still running their Presidents Day sale. We tried several options and agreed on one and placed the order. It should be delivered on Tuesday. We got split twin XLs since we have a king bed but need to be able to adjust them independently so she can sleep propped up and I can sleep flat. Of course, that raised the price, but it's the only workable solution.

After lunch, I made a pot of chili as we were out. That will be dinner tonight and 5 containers went into the freezer.

Ebay has been busy. I'm up to 82 active listings. My 90-day sales total is $1,039. My current goal is to make at least $200/mo after expenses and YTD I'm already at $505 so I should have no trouble passing $600 before the end of March. I already have $21 in bids right now.

Although the primary goal is to clear out the basement and garage, I've also started going to estate sales, being very selective in what I buy to resell. Two weeks ago, I went to my first one and bought 6 items for $14. I've already sold 2 for $40. Thursday I went to one and spent $3 for one item which I sold last night for $25. Not a bad track record so far.

 

Update on settling my cousin's affairs

June 6th, 2021 at 03:05 am

I realized I haven't made a post since I arrived in Florida. I did leave a week ago Tuesday and arrived Wednesday evening. I had a nice drive down and even got to detour in North Carolina to visit my cousins who just moved there a couple weeks earlier from Connecticut. I got to see their new house and have dinner with them.

Since arriving, I've been working every day to clean out the house. I've taken out 7 or 8 bags of trash, about 6 bins of paper for recycling, and packed 10 cartons of documents to be shredded. I've also sold his tool chest, tool boxes, and most of the tools, a mini bike, and just tonight sold his floor jack on Marketplace. Oh and I've taken half a dozen boxes of stuff to the thrift shop along with 6 garbage bags of clothing plus several suits and some assorted loose items.

I think I'm pretty much done with the debulking. I've been through every drawer, cabinet, closet, and file. Although it's been time consuming, that was the relatively easy part as it didn't involve too much in the way of personal or sentimental stuff.

Now I'm getting to the harder part with the more personal items. A lot of that will end up being transported home with me. There are a bunch of things that need to either be sold or donated. I'm sure I'll do a mix of both. I'll need to decide what to do with furniture - sell or donate. I'll probably at least try to sell some of it and if I don't get any bites fairly quickly, I'll give it away. There is a large local thrift shop that will pick it up.

I'm not sure how long I'm staying. I finally got the death certificate on Friday and have an appointment with the lawyer on Monday to start the probate process. I'm not sure all that's involved with that or whether or not I need to physically be here to do anything.

There are 2 cars, one antique and one regular, that need to be sold. I've been doing some word of mouth advertising for the antique but if nothing comes of it in the next couple of days, I need to actually start listing that at a few sites. The regular car will be no problem as I'll probably go to Carmax, Carvana, and the dealership and take the highest offer. I don't want to get rid of the car until we're pretty much done as we may need it to get around if I drive home and fly back.

I guess that pretty much sums it up for now.

Beginning to deal with cousin's estate

May 23rd, 2021 at 08:03 pm

Now that the funeral is behind us, it's time to start dealing with everything needed to settle his estate. I'm expecting to leave for Florida Tuesday morning and get there Wednesday night (I'm driving).

Until I have death certificates, I can't address any of the financial stuff, so I'll start cleaning out the house, getting rid of trash, shredding unneeded papers, donating clothing and other items, etc. Once I have the certificates, I can start closing credit cards and bank accounts and getting assets transferred into my name. I will schedule a meeting with his attorney and give his financial advisor a call. I've already spoken to both of them. The advisor manages his retirement accounts and I'm the beneficiary so that stuff should be simple. No probate needed. Other stuff has to go through probate.

I got the first tiny piece of the inheritance - he had $85 cash in his wallet. Woo hoo.

Also in his wallet are two gift cards that they get as part of their HOA dues in his community. They are good at the clubhouse cafe (which has been closed for COVID) and at one local restaurant. I checked the balances and between the two of them, there's over $190 credit. I guess I know where I'll be eating regularly when I get down there.

I have a lot of work ahead of me and I'm sure some of it will be emotionally difficult, especially dealing with some of the more personal items, but I'll work my way through day by day. I'll be there by myself so I won't really have any distractions. I figure in the mornings, I'll start in the garage and crawlspace before the temperature heats up for the day. Once it's too warm, I'll focus on the inside stuff - clothing, kitchen, home office files, etc. The thrift shop where everything will be donated is just a few minutes away so I'm sure I'll be making multiple trips there. They will pick up but I'll save that for big items like furniture. I'm certainly capable of hauling bags of clothing and small household items over there myself, plus it will give me a reason to get out.

I suspect I'll be blogging more going forward so I'll update as I have new info.

General updates - home, family, work

May 5th, 2021 at 07:49 pm

Home: We haven't needed to do the plumbing repair I mentioned previously. Actually the pipe doesn't seem to be leaking anymore. I know sometimes when you first repair a pipe it takes a couple of days for everything to settle and there can still be a slight drip until it does. So far, so good.

However, we were waiting for a siding contractor to come out and repair a minor issue on the side of our garage. Well, that took a bit too long. Friday night there was a bad windstorm and it ripped about 1/3 of the siding off the wall. We were out of town but I was able to get a friend to come over, clean up the mess, and drive in a few nails to stabilize the remaining siding. Now we're waiting for the siding guy to come out and replace the whole wall.

The reason we were away last week is that we were in Florida visiting/helping my cousin who is dying. He is not doing well and will probably pass relatively soon. We got home care started to go along with hospice which I had set up when I was there in February. We came home on Sunday but we're already talking about having my wife go back down and stay there until the end whenever that may be. Once he dies, I'm going to take a leave of absence for a couple of months to clean out and sell the house and settle his affairs.

Work is going okay. The site where I work is closing at the end of the month and I will be moving to a new location. I'm not thrilled about that but it does have some advantages. The biggest one is that I'll be at a 2 provider site instead of working alone. That will be a nice change. And a lot of days, I'll end up seeing fewer patients. The new site is busier but not more than twice as busy as my current site. So for example, I might see 26 patients in a day while they see 42, meaning each provider sees about 21. And it's just nice to not be alone and actually be able to take a 10 minute break for lunch or dinner instead of having to squeeze something in between patients. I'll start at the new site on May 31.

Not too much else happening. A number of things are kind of in a holding pattern pending my cousin passing. Both personal plans and financial stuff (I'll be getting an inheritance when he dies).

So that's about it for now.

Small home repair, which will lead to much bigger one

April 21st, 2021 at 03:03 am

I was just reading another blog post about homes being money pits. I completely agree.

On Saturday, I was cleaning the drain in our bathroom sink, something I've done dozens of times. This time, when I was done and stepped away, I saw a stream of water coming from the drain pipe. A closer look revealed a small hole in the pipe. I grabbed a bucket and sopped up the water with a towel and put a call into our handyman. He said he could come on Monday.

He did come and fixed it, but his fix is less than perfect. There is now a very tiny bit of water leaking at the end of the pipe that he installed. There also seems to be a tiny bit coming from the cold water shutoff valve. The pipes are all quite old so I'm not surprised.

Bottom line is we're really going to need to have a plumber come out and replace everything going to and from that sink. Of course, when they built houses years ago they often didn't install shutoff valves or even access panels. Replacing the plumbing will mean cutting through the closet wall to access the pipes leading to the bathroom, turning off the water to the whole house, installing shutoff valves, then doing the actual plumbing work in the bathroom. I have no idea what that will all cost but I'm sure it won't be cheap. Yay.

Mid-March check in

March 13th, 2021 at 03:53 pm

We're almost halfway through the month so I thought I'd post a quick update.

Our federal tax refund arrived on Wednesday. $518, so not a huge amount but I'll take it. Our state refund is bigger - $3,000 - but that always takes longer.

We aren't eligible for stimulus money but our daughter is, so that's nice for her. She is also due federal and state refunds. She filed last week so should have that money soon.

I sold the JETS shares I bought after last March's crash. I made an 81% profit which was nice. I'm still holding the AAL I bought but will probably sell it this week. It's at its 52-week high and I want to trim our stock allocation anyway.

DW gets her 2nd vaccine on Tuesday. Once we're both fully vaccinated, we may consider returning to indoor dining. One nice thing is that we will no longer need to wear masks to visit my mom since she had both of her shots already.

My cousin with cancer is doing okay. Things seem stable at the moment. He is on hospice service now which is good since he lives alone and we're 1,200 miles away. We're glad to know someone is checking in on him regularly. He also just started getting Meals on Wheels. He's had a couple of them so far and says they're very good. He really isn't a cook so having those on hand for an easy, balanced, nutritious dinner is great.

I've got PTO coming up starting 3/20. We were supposed to be in Florida that week but the event got cancelled due to COVID. No big plans, though DW and I were talking about tearing up the carpet in our bedroom so we'll probably do that. I'm hoping the floor isn't in too bad of a shape when we do.

The siding on the wall of our garage is coming loose. I contacted a couple of contracters to come out and take a look. Both are backed up for weeks so hopefully it doesn't get worse before one of them is able to get to us.

Otherwise, we're plugging along. I was spending a lot of time playing with retirement calculators and figuring out where we stand. I've pretty much determined that once my cousin is gone and his estate is settled, I should be good to drop down to part time. Right now, I'm figuring on remaining full time through the end of 2022 and maybe transitioning at that point. We shall see how it all plays out. How the market performs is a factor, too.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Anything that can go wrong....

December 8th, 2020 at 08:21 pm

We're having one of those days here.

My wife started getting more serious about her sewing business a couple of months ago. She updated her website. We had a friend design a new logo. I then designed and we had printed business cards. I also printed hang tags to put on her items. She reconnected with a shop owner who is selling her items on consignment, and she has already sold a bunch of things. That's all good.

Today, my task was to update the hang tags with a different email address. In the process of doing so, I suddenly realized that on everything we had done so far, a word was misspelled. Ugh. Business cards. Hang tags. Some product labels. All wrong. Several people had reviewed those designs multiple times and somehow none of us had noticed the mistake until I caught it today.

So now my job is to fix it all. Our friend is going to fix the logo. Then I'll use that to fix the hang tags and we'll have to order new business cards. Fortunately, I printed the hang tags myself in small batches and we got the business cards online for about $20. So not a big financial loss but a huge pain in the butt.

Oh, and one more thing. My wife went to cut some fabric on her Cricut and apparently chose the wrong setting which resulted in the machine cutting through the cutting mat.

I hope you're all having a better day.

Hurricane aftermath

August 6th, 2020 at 12:49 am

Hurricane Isaias came through our area yesterday morning. Heavy rain and high winds. Other than a little water in the basement, we thought we had made out okay. And then around 12:30pm, after the rain had stopped and the sky was actually clearing, the power went out. It's now 7:40pm the next day, so 31 hours later, and the power is still out.

We were able to spend last night at home. Fortunately, it wasn't terribly hot so even without AC, it only got up to about 75 in the house.

Still no power this morning but DD and I both had to work so off we went. DW stayed home except for running out to get some breakfast since there wasn't really anything she could have at home.

When I got home, I picked up some lunch, and we were debating what to do. It was hot today so the temp in the house was up to about 85. We knew we wouldn't be able to stay in the house if the power didn't come back.

Once DD came home, we decided pretty soon after to book a hotel room and head out. There was no sign that the power would be back anytime soon and it was pretty oppressive in the house. DD is also in the middle of a big project that she needs internet access for.

So we're all settled in at the hotel. Lights, AC, Wifi, all the amenities we need. We ordered takeout for dinner. The hotel is right down the street from my office so I'll be at work in 5 minutes in the morning. And it's about the same distance from DD's work as from home so she's fine, too. I booked for 2 nights but can always extend it if necessary. Hopefully by Friday the power will be restored.

Update on storm damage

July 8th, 2020 at 01:17 am

So I posted that last night, an electric circuit tripped and wouldn't reset. I scheduled the electrician to come out this afternoon.

I checked the circuit this morning before I went to work and it still wouldn't reset. When I got home around 2pm, and the electrician was on his way, I tried one more time and sure enough it reset and everything worked.

When the tech came, I told him the story and my theory that during the storm, some moisture had somehow gotten into something, most likely one of the outside light fixtures. Once it dried up, everything worked again. He agreed with me and explained that there was really no way for him to trace where the problem had come from.

The "overkill" solution would be to take apart every connection on that circuit, check the wires, and rewrap and seal everything, but he did not recommend doing that. If this happens again, I should call them and at that point they would start tracing everything but if it was just a fluke from a severe storm, it might never give us any trouble again.

I'm okay with that. He charged nothing for coming out since he never got past our front step and a 5-minute conversation. So crisis averted, at least for now.

Storm damage - how much is this going to cost us?

July 7th, 2020 at 02:07 am

We had a violent tropical storm move through the area this afternoon. High winds, heavy rain, even some hail in the area. Our lights flickered a few times but never went out. We did get a bit of water in the basement, which isn't unusual, and it was pretty minor. We thought we had escaped the worst of it.

Then a short time ago, DD went into the family room, turned on the TV, and the power went out. It only affected the family room, half the living room, and part of the basement. I checked the circuit box and one circuit is tripped but I could not get it to reset.

It's a GFCI circuit so I'm thinking water must have found it's way into something on that circuit, like maybe one of the outside lights. I can't see anything obvious but something tripped that circuit.

I put a call into our electrician. I didn't see the need to pay for an emergency call tonight since the rest of the house is fine so they're coming out tomorrow afternoon.

Hopefully, they can trace and fix the cause and hopefully, it won't be anything major/expensive.

Tree removal - $2,400. Yay.

June 17th, 2020 at 08:58 pm

We've had a dead tree next to our driveway for months. I've been meaning to call our tree guy for that one. Then in the storm a couple of weeks ago, a large limb came off the big tree next to our garage. That's the 2nd time that has happened. It's time to get rid of that tree. And while they're at it, I'll have them prune the tree in front of our house.

Tree guy came today. Total damage is about $2,400. He's hoping they can come by the end of next week. Hopefully no big storms before then.

Little by little, we've taken out almost every tree on the property. Whoever plants all of the trees so close to houses clearly doesn't give any thought to what happens when those trees grow up.

If you have a newer property, the best advice I can give you is to tear out any tree that is close enough to hit the house if it falls in the future when it's 40 or 50 feet tall. Get rid of it while it's small and cheap. Also take out any tree where the roots could damage the concrete or the sewer line.

Stick to small shrubs and bushes and maybe ornamental sorts of trees that don't get that big and don't develop extensive root systems.

New garbage disposal

May 8th, 2020 at 06:41 pm

Our garbage disposal died a few weeks ago, sometime soon after quarantine began. I tried fixing it myself to no avail. I wasn't up to replacing it myself so we contacted our handyman. He installed the current one. Of course, due to COVID, he wasn't able to come out, nor did we want him to, but we wanted to get on his list for when things started loosening up.

So for however many weeks now, we just haven't had a working disposal, which honestly wasn't a huge deal. He reached out a few days ago and asked if he could come today and we said yes. He came this morning and installed it so we're up and running again. We made sure to wipe everything down before he arrived, wore masks while he was here, and wiped everything down again after he left.

Disposal itself was about $150 from Home Depot plus $65 for him to install it so $215 total.

News from Quarantine

April 25th, 2020 at 01:08 am

Well, there's not really much in the way of news but it's been 2 weeks since I posted so figured I'd check in.

Our daughter wasn't eligible for unemployment because her last job was with a non-profit and they don't pay into the system. The look back period ended 9/30/19 and she had only been at her current job about 2 months at that point and needed to have 20 weeks of work history.

There may be a silver lining, though. She got a call from her manager the other day and it sounds like they got money from the payroll protection program as she said they may be able to pay her for 8 weeks worth of income. She's waiting for confirmation and details.

I'm working same as always. Urgent care is still very slow. The hospital census has been gradually increasing but not to a point where they are overwhelmed and calling in more help. I'm hoping that remains the case and they won't need us. I really don't want to go work there.

DW is managing okay. She and her mah jong friends got set up with an online game platform so a couple of times a week they get together virtually and play. They use a 2nd device to Facetime so that they can all see and talk to each other. They'll probably keep using that system even after quarantine ends at least sometimes because it means nobody has to drive around. It will be great if we have bad weather or someone isn't feeling well but can still play without getting others sick.

We've become regular Zoom users, as I'm sure lots of you have. We've had meets with our bourbon club, our Disney friends, family members, and more. What a great resource to stay connected with everyone. I've used it a few times for work also for updates and meetings.

At work, we've been very grateful for some of the community support, mainly in the form of free food. We've gotten lunch from Five Guys and Mission BBQ, free smoothies from Smoothie King, and free donuts from Krispy Kreme among other things.

Financially speaking, the quarantine has really cut down our spending. Less gas, less dining out, less unplanned shopping, no outside entertainment - it's all added up to over $3,000 of reduced spending compared to the first 4 months of 2019.

I hope everyone is hanging in there. Stay safe.

Electric meter update

March 11th, 2020 at 01:51 am

We finally got an answer from the utility company today. They said that the meter was 99.7% accurate (I think that was the number). So apparently there's no refund coming our way and we've somehow managed to increase electricity usage 40-60% in the past year without changing anything we do or use in our home.

At least there was no cost to getting our meter replaced. I'm really curious to see how the bills are going forward. If the continue to show higher usage, I guess that will confirm the answer. If, however, it shows a significant drop in usage, I may reach out again to complain and question that analysis.

Electric meter update

February 3rd, 2020 at 05:45 pm

They came out today and replaced our electric meter. My wife said the tech told her that the meter did appear to be worn out internally so he thinks I may be right that it wasn't recording properly. He said it takes about 2 weeks for them to do the analysis and he gave us a number to call to get a report.

So now we just have to wait a couple of weeks and then see what they say. Hopefully, they'll confirm a discrepancy and we'll get some money back. I'll update when I know.

The moral of the story is that if something just doesn't seem right, don't be afraid to question it. And the other moral is to pay attention. Review bills. Look for discrepancies or unfamiliar charges and look into them when they occur.

Electric meter update

January 24th, 2020 at 09:36 pm

I called the utility company today and explained my concern with the sharply higher electricity usage compared to last year. The rep asked if we had any space heaters, electric fireplaces, etc. I said we do have a space heater but it's the same one we've had for years. I also explained that we recently got a new dishwasher which is more efficient than the one it replaced and that we've also installed several LED lights so our usage should be lower.

She set up an appointment for our meter to be replaced early next month. They will analyze the old meter and if they find a discrepancy, we'll be credited accordingly. If they find no issues, then our bill will remain as is. But there's no cost to having the meter replaced so we really have nothing to lose. I figure it's worth a shot.

I'll post an update when I have one.

Fixed the toilet - again

January 23rd, 2020 at 01:47 am

One of our toilets was taking forever to fill. It wasn't running. It wasn't leaking. It just was filling really slowly. My wife finally asked if I could fix it so a couple of weeks ago, I stopped at Home Depot and picked up a new fill valve assembly and installed it. Everything seemed fine. It was working properly and filling in a normal amount of time.

Then 2 days ago DW texts me at work and says the toilet is running and she opened the back and the water level was rising over the top of the drain tube. I talked her through a couple of things to try but nothing helped. The only thing I can figure is that the fill valve I installed was defective and had a leak somewhere so the water flow wasn't cutting off when the tank was full.

I had to work all day yesterday so couldn't do anything about it until today (which I'm sure our next water bill will reflect). I went and got another new fill valve assembly, took out the first one, and installed the new one. I also went and replaced the flapper while I was at it. It wasn't leaking but it was pretty old.

So far, everything seems fine, but that was true last time too. Hopefully it will continue to be okay. I just have to get back to Home Depot to return the first one.

Of course, in the process of doing all of this, I discovered that the water shut off valve to the toilet doesn't work. I had to turn off the main water supply to the house to fix the toilet. I got a plumber referral from a friend and will call them at some point to come install a new valve. That's a little beyond my DIY skill set.

Broken electric meter?

January 21st, 2020 at 08:00 pm

It recently occurred to me that there might be something wrong with our electric meter. The utility bill shows how much our electricity and gas usage is compared to the same month a year ago. The gas usage is sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but I've realized the electricity usage is always higher, sometimes 10 or 12% but sometimes 50 or 60% higher. This was actually happening last year but I attributed it to DD being back living at home and not away at college.

There's no way we can be using 60% more electricity than a year ago though. Nothing has changed in our house. It's been the same 3 people. The only new appliance we've gotten, and that was just a couple of months ago, was a dishwasher and the new one should be a lot more efficient than the 15-year-old one it replaced. Every other appliance is the same.

I'm going to call the utility company and see if they can send someone out to check our meter. We've had it for a long time so maybe it needs to be replaced.

Extra help at work; Free dinner out

January 19th, 2020 at 02:12 pm

They finally gave us extra help at work. We now have 2 providers for 4 hours per day on Monday, Friday, and weekends. It definitely helped yesterday as we saw 22 patients from 9-1 which I couldn't possibly have kept up with by myself. Now I just have to hope the volumes support adding a 2nd person on the remaining 3 days of the week since I work Tuesday and Thursday by myself.

We went out to dinner last night to a place we like. The restaurant sent out an email yesterday morning with a $10 off deal one day only. I'm guessing they thought business might be light due to bad weather, or maybe that was just a coincidence and they were going to send that offer anyway.

In addition to the $10 off, I had a $20 gift card that we got as a bonus for buying a $75 gift card last month. Finally, I hadn't yet used the $100 gift card my staff gave me as a holiday present. I think we ended up using about half of that card.

The storm didn't do much here. We got a dusting of snow and some sleet but it wasn't bad and the temp was back in the upper 30s this morning so nothing froze over night.

Sort of a DIY fail

January 12th, 2020 at 04:03 pm

This isn't entirely a fail, and it is in no way my fault, but I kind of feel like I wasted my money.

A year or so ago, we replaced the ceiling light fixture in our sitting room. We also put in dimmable LED bulbs. There was already a dimmer switch and I didn't change that.

We found that the lights were fine when at full brightness, but they flickered quite a lot when they were dimmmed, even going off momentarily and coming back on. I did some reading online and learned that older dimmer switches regulate the current differently and they aren't compatible with LED bulbs.

I went out yesterday and bought a new LED-commpatible dimmer switch and installed it today. It works okay but the lights still flicker. Not nearly as bad as they did. They don't actually go fully off and on like before. It's more of a constant minimal flicker which does seem to be a lot less annoying. We'll have to see how noticeable it is when it's dark outside and the fixture is the only light source.

I'm all in favor of switching to highly energy-efficient lighting but it does have some downsides and flickering is one of them. The LEDs I installed in our hallway flicker a lot too and those aren't on a dimmer. I've also found 3 fixtures in the house where LED bulbs wouldn't work at all and I had to stick with CFL or incandescent bulbs which was disappointing.

Staycation Day One

November 14th, 2019 at 02:22 am

It's actually been a long time since I took a staycation. I always mean to but it just hasn't happened for years. I had a bunch of PTO I had to use up or lose at the end of the year so I took some random days off. The way my schedule works, I only need to take off on a Thursday to get 5 days off in a row so that's what I did this week.

Today was day 1. Slept late. Like really late for me - 9:20, which was great because for some reason I was really exhausted yesterday. Did some cleaning around the house today including packing up a bag of clothes for Goodwill. DW and I went to Target for a few things and stopped at Goodwill on the way back to drop off the clothes and an old broken printer to recycle.

DD worked tonight so DW and I had a date night. We went to dinner at a place nearby that we've never tried but was on the 1,000 point list for Open Table. It was really nice, definitely a place we would go back to. Then we fired up Disney+. One of our goals with the new service is to catch up on the Marvel cinematic universe and see all the films we've missed. First up tonight was Captain Marvel. We enjoyed that.

No big plans for tomorrow except going to the gym at noon (DW has an appointment with her trainer). I have a number of things on my To Do list so we'll see where the day takes me.

Happy dishwasher update

October 29th, 2019 at 02:01 pm

The 2nd attempt at getting our dishwasher installed was yesterday afternoon. A different crew from a different company came out and they were amazing! They were friendly and understanding and professional and skilled. They were shocked that the other crew hadn't even made any attempt.

They pulled out the old dishwasher easily (the other guy said he might not be able to get it out) and proceeded to install the new one like it was nothing. They appreciated that we were educated and knew what we were talking about as I'm sure they encounter plenty of customers who think they know everything and don't really have a clue.

Once it was installed, they showed us the basic features and gave us some tips. They even answered a couple of questions we had about some other appliance issues. Of course, we now have their contact info and would happily use them again for future needs.

So we now have a shiny new installed and functioning dishwasher. We'll probably run the first load tonight.

Nothing is ever simple - appliance issue

October 23rd, 2019 at 06:33 pm

We bought a new dishwasher last week. They came yesterday to install it. The guy took half a step into the kitchen and said, "I can tell you right now it won't fit." We have a ceramic tile floor and there is a drop off at the end of the tiles to the floor where the dishwasher sits. It's been like that since we bought the house 25 years ago. This will be the 3rd dishwasher going into the exact same space. Previous installers thought the same thing and then proceeded to install it just fine.

Nope. This guy was convinced it wouldn't work and wasn't even willing to try. Back I went to the store today to complain. They said I had to contact the installation service directly as it's a third party.

I called them and the guy I spoke to actually seemed pretty good. He understood the issue and seemed surprised that the installer didn't even attempt to do the work. He said he'd seek out another installer and get back to me, which he did a short time later. He gave me his direct line if we need him and gave me the name of the new guy. We're just waiting for that guy to call and schedule to come out. Hopefully he can do it with no further issue. Otherwise I'm going to have to go to Lowe's again and have them refund what we paid for installation. I have a friend who has already said he'd be happy to install it if it comes to that. So still on hold at the moment to see what the final outcome will be.

Small DIY success

October 23rd, 2019 at 12:02 am

Okay, this one may sound lame but I still count it as a success.

We were in Lowe's last week buying a new dishwasher. As we were walking through the store, we passed the aisle with the 4-foot long workshop light fixtures like many people have in unfinished basements or garages. We have 3 in our basement. One barely works and one hasn't worked at all for ages. I just never bothered to do anything about it.

Ours have 48" fluorescent tubes. Now they are all LED which is nice. I took pictures of the 3 options and a couple days ago searched on Amazon. Of course, I was able to find similar fixtures that are even brighter and cheaper than Lowe's so I ordered two of them.

They arrived today and I installed them both easily since they were going exactly where the old ones were, even hanging on the very same hardware that was already there.

We now have 2 super bright fixtures. The laundry room has only had a single regular bulb since that fixture died and the other half of the basement was pretty much in the dark except for the rare occasion when that fixture actually decided to work. It looks great down there. DW is happy because she is in charge of laundry and I'm happy because I do a lot of stuff on the other side. Plus the extra pantry is down there so now we can find things without pulling out our cell phone flashlight. And all for just $60 (and I'll get 5% cashback from our Discover card).

Bought a dishwasher

October 16th, 2019 at 10:13 pm

We headed over to Lowe's today. We've bought several other appliances there. They seem to have a good combination of reasonable prices, nice selection, and helpful staff that isn't overly pushy. Today was no exception. A couple of people asked if we needed help while we were browsing and walked away when we said not yet. Once we had it narrowed down to 2 models, we went over and asked the one woman for help. She was very nice and answered a few questions we had.

Of course, we ended up with the more expensive of the 2 we were looking at but it did have a couple of features that we preferred. It has a recessed handle so we won't be constantly banging into it like we would have been with the other one. And the racks and gliders were clearly of better quality. It was also rated a few decibels lower on sound level.

We just have to wait for the installer to call and schedule installation. Hopefully that will happen within a few days. It will be nice to have a working dishwasher again.

Time for a new dishwasher

October 14th, 2019 at 01:45 am

Another chapter in "The Joys of Home Ownership". My wife informed me that the dishwasher has been making an awful noise lately and the other day was the worst it's been. We could: a) call out a repair person or b) buy a new one. Yes, I realize there is choice c) try to troubleshoot it ourselves to see if we can fix it. However, I'm opting for choice b.

We got our first dishwasher in 1995. We remember because we bought it when DW was pregnant and started having trouble reaching the sink to do dishes Smile. That one lasted almost 10 years and was replaced in late 2004. So the current one is actually 15 years old which is not so bad as appliances go.

I don't think it's worth paying for a service call plus any repair costs for a 15-year-old dishwasher. Plus, I've been self-managing gradual rusting of the one rack for the past few years, sanding it down and coating the edges. I even cut out a small section of the rack that was too badly damaged to save, so the whole thing is kind of ghetto at this point.

I've been browsing online and we'll probably hit a couple of stores on Wednesday and get a new one. It's not a huge expense as home repairs go and I can't complain about this one lasting as long as it did.


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