Hot weather

I spent the last couple of days at our lake house, trying to get it ready to sell. Mostly I mowed. I also did a little pruning. With 100-degree weather, I completely soaked my t-shirt every time I went outside.

The good thing is that I lost the extra five pounds I put on in Chile.

We were originally planning to build a bathroom in the garage. I tore a side off a closet a few years ago to make space for it, and Rebecca built a provisional shower in there, which was only used once or twice. Raccoons fell through the ceiling, so I had screwed up scraps of plywood as a temporary ceiling.

I took the shower apart this time and started rebuilding the ceiling.  I got about 2/3 of the ceiling covered with sheetrock, and left the plywood over the remaining part. Next time I go, I'll finish it and rebuild and insulate and/or panel the walls. (If the buyers want a bathroom there, they can take it apart again.)

The a/c hasn't worked well for a while, so I went into the attic yesterday morning to check on it. Sigh... raccoons again. They love flex-ducts, and had torn up two of them, so most of the air blows into the attic. Another big project for next time. (Plus cleaning accumulated raccoon poop out of the attic.)

So I spent the rest of yesterday morning patching a hole they had torn into the north soffit. The repair looks ugly, but with a little caulk and paint it will be okay. If we keep having trouble, I'll take off the gutters and replace the soffit and fascia on that side of the house like I did on the south side.

I also met with a realtor. He said that, realistically, we can't ask anywhere near what we wanted for the place. It looks like we can probably get out of it what we have in it, but that's it. I just want to be rid of it. It's depressing to think of how much money I've sunk into mortgage payments over the years for a place I don't use.

*****

On a completely unrelated note, as I was leaving Duncanville this morning, I noticed that my odometer read "111111". So I stopped and took a picture. Someday I may upload it and share it with the world.

*****

The new goat had her kid the other day. Apparently she was still huge, so they thought she was carrying twins. A neighbor who is a vet cut her open and discovered that the bloating was gas from an infection. So she's on antibiotics, and apparently doing fine now. The kid is also fine, although they had to supplement his mother's milk the first few days because of her ailment. I can't wait to see him.

All three surviving baby bunnies have their eyes open and are doing well.

*****

I missed the July 8 deadline to submit my name to interpret for another fingerprint course in Chile. Bummer. I did put in for a September conference in Dublin, though. And rumor has it there will be a fingerprint course in Costa Rica in August, but they haven't posted it yet. I'll probably apply again for the big three-week program in Virginia that I did last September when that comes up.

I'd like to get assigned with more experienced interpreters, but so far I've been paired with people who haven't done any more than I have. Most of them had stronger Spanish, but were weaker at the process of interpretation. The interpreter who worked with me in Chile made a lot of mistakes, some of them major. I found myself jumping in to correct him several times each session. But he's totally clueless about it. "Often wrong but seldom in doubt."

The guy who ran the training knows some Spanish and heard a lot of the mistakes himself. He has spoken with the woman who coordinates our travel assignments, and she's supposed to call me today to talk about it. I hate to dime my fellow interpreter out, but we don't currently have a Quality Control program for interpreting, and he'll just keep getting assignments until someone speaks up.

Back from Chile

To the drama capital of the world.

While I was gone...

...my supervisor got into some kind of trouble and will be transferred to a different unit. A former colleague who has been supervisor of the Asian group will become our boss.

...several of my colleagues were told to sign up for the August Quality Control workshop (they hadn't been allowed to do it previously because of potential schedule conflicts), as a result of our supervisor being told it was compulsory.

...I found a barrage of e-mails from my supervisor telling me to do things I had taken care of before my trip to Chile. She even booked me a flight to the QC workshop. (I hadn't thought to CC her on my itinerary.)

...Rebecca and the kids bought half a dozen chicks, which raises the chicken count to somewhere around 30?

...their lop-eared bunny had a litter of babies. They hadn't realized she was pregnant. One died Sunday afternoon while we were over there.

...they bought a pregnant goat.

...my cats pooped seven times downstairs in the family room.

...my schedule got changed so I'm working six nights this week, which will make for a nice paycheck (I get holiday pay for the 4th).

*****

Chile was great. My flight on the way down got cancelled due to mechanical problems, so AA put us up in a local Hilton, gave us vouchers for meals, and rebooked us for the next night. Kind of a wasted day. We got to Santiago early Sunday morning. One of my colleagues had the misfortune of getting caught with a forgotten banana in his pack by the agricultural inspectors in Customs, so he had to pay a fine of $200.

(If you ever go to Chile, go ahead and mark "Yes" to the question about bringing in ag products. If nothing else, you can point out your cotton clothing. That way, if they discover any fruit, they'll just take it away.)

The little bit of sightseeing I did was on that same Sunday. We checked into the hotel, and immediately took off for a visit to the zoo with some colleagues. The zoo is on the slopes of Cerro San Cristóbal. There is a cablecar that takes you to the top, where there is an enormous statue of the Virgin, a couple of chapels, some tourist shops, and a spectacular view when the smog is thin.

We ate lunch at a nice seafood place, then visited a museum by Plaza de Armas. There was a Father's Day event going on in the plaza, hosted by a Peruvian radio program. It was odd to watch a Mexican song being performed for Peruvians in Chile...

I'll post more about this later. My session at the library computer is due to expire.

Tim

A Change of Pace

I took the office van up to the Frisco office yesterday with a few of my tools in the back, plus screws and polyurethane glue, to do a furniture repair.

The conference table that needed repair stands on two legs, each a big slab of particle board. The truly stupid thing is that these legs were only secured with three 1.25" screws to the 2 x 6 particle-board beam that runs under the length of the table. Talk about bad engineering! The screws had pulled out when the table was moved, and the leg also separated from the table top. So I had to flip the table (with help, because it's massive), disassemble the loose leg, and reassemble it, using 3" screws and polyurethane glue for reinforcement.

But of course, my drill battery was about dead, and I had forgotten to load the spare battery and the charger, so I went to Home Depot to see what I could do. A twin-pack of regular batteries is $59, no charger included. Two newfangled lithium batteries with a charger (they require a special one) would have been $120. And a drill with two lithium batteries and a charger was $99. So I bought it, and now own three cordless drills, four chargers, and four batteries... Sounds like the Department of Redundancy Department.

(This morning I discovered that I have a 10% off coupon for Home Depot in my briefcase. Too bad I didn't think to check yesterday...)

When I got back to the Frisco office, I discovered that the new batteries were completely dead. I put one in the charger and went to hang a cork board in another room. By the time that was over, the battery had enough juice to finish the table. I found someone to help me turn the table over and put the glass back on, I packed up all my tools... and then found out that there was a table with the same problem in the next room.

So I rebuilt that one. Twice. It separated from the table top when we flipped it the first time. I hadn't used extra screws to attach down the plate that goes on top of the leg and screws into the table top. Four 3" screws and fresh glue left it more securely fastened, and then the table held together. (I wish I had done that on the first table.)

The office van's inspection sticker was dated 4/2009, so I took it to a local auto dealer where the office has an account and got it inspected. They took me to McDonald's in their courtesy vehicle, since I had worked through lunch, and I sat and ate my double cheeseburgers and drank lemonade and read the May issue of Touchstone. The music in McD's was loud and unpleasant. After about an hour, a driver came to pick me up. I got back to the Dallas office just before 5:00.

*****

Monday nights is church softball. I slipped twice in last week's game, so I went to Academy Sports to look at cleats. They had a few brands that go up to size 14. The first and only pair I tried was on clearance for $9.94. It had metal cleats, so I had to spend an additional $6.99 for plastic replacement cleats. But $17 for a pair of cleats that will probably last the rest of my life (as little as I play) is not a bad deal.

By the time I got to the park, it was almost game time. I took a drill with me to the field and changed the cleats in the stands as the game before ours finished. Then I put the drill under the dugout bench with my regular tennis shoes during our game.

The cleats made a big difference in security on the sandy infield. Unfortunately, they didn't miraculously turn me into a hitter. I grounded out both times I was up. And we lost again, albeit only by two runs this time.

The Power is Back

Friday evening there were Oncor trucks in my neighborhood when I got home. However, my power was still out, so I drove to Home Depot and picked up a 100' extension cord (14-gauge). My neighbor let me plug into her outdoor outlet. I had to add my old 50' cord to reach the fridge. The fridge was quiet and sounded a little funny, so I suspect that the long cords caused some loss of voltage. But the compressor did run, and the fridge cooled.

I ate a spinach and seafood salad and finished reading Wintersmith and The Parsifal Mosaic by candlelight. Both books were good, as was the salad.

At some point in the night, I woke to see my alarm clock flashing. Apparently the power came on shortly after I went to bed.

Saturday morning I drove up past Addison to finish up a tiling job. It was a stupid situation that I could have avoided. The shower in this bathroom leaked, so they tore it out and repaired the plumbing, then reinstalled it. In the process of remodeling, they also replaced the sink cabinet with one that has a slightly smaller footprint, leaving a small gap to the tile in front of it. I had filled in the missing tiles around the shower, but left the cabinet gap alone thinking that we would cover it with baseboard and shoe mold when the time comes to do the trim. But the client wasn't happy, so Saturday I went back and cut little strips of tile and filled in the gap. It doesn't look all that great; the tiles were cut around the old cabinet, so the patch job doesn't match the grout lines of the rest of the floor. But I didn't feel like proposing that I tear out those three tiles and cut new ones to fit more precisely. If she doesn't like it, we can still cover most of it with baseboards and shoe mold...

My tile client referred me to a neighbor who wanted an estimate on baseboards. A smoker. Yuck. I measured 125 feet of baseboards in the downstairs of her condo. She had already torn out the old 2 1/4" baseboards, and wants to put in 3 1/2" or wider trim. I wrote up my estimate, and we agreed that we might do it later this summer. I hope it's while she's away, so I don't have to deal with the smoke.

I was supposed to work for two other ladies in that complex on Saturday. One had a commitment and left just as I arrived. (Just as well. She's draining to be around.) The other only needed her doors rekeyed, so I took the cylinders out of her locks when I first arrived, then went back over to reinstall them when I was done with the tiling and the estimate, only to find she hadn't gone to Home Depot yet! So I watched the SciFi channel in her living room and waited...

It took all of fifteen minutes to reinstall the two cylinders and a doorknob. I charged for an hour's work and drove home, not particularly happy about one hour's wages for almost five hours and 64 miles. But that's the way it goes sometimes.

*****

With regard to the impact of the power outage: it did interesting things to the  ice cream, and the lowest bin in my fridge door had an inch of water from the melting bag of ice, but I don't think I lost anything. All the important food was at least cool, even if it thawed a little around the edges. The milk didn't sour. So it could have been a lot worse. Apparently many people were still without power through Saturday, with temperatures in the upper 90s.

Today I'm going up to our agency's Frisco office to fix a broken conference table. I'll take an agency van. Otherwise I have to go through the complications of requesting mileage reimbursement, and that would be awkward, since it's not one of my regular duties.

It's unusual for my two jobs to coincide.

My power is still out

 Sounds like an analogy for my life, doesn't it?

We had a string of storms blow through DFW on Wednesday evening. They were lovely. Green clouds scudding across the sky. Lightning everywhere. Strong winds that blew up dust storms from construction areas before the rain came. I heard a tornado warning for Dallas and Collin counties on the radio on my way to church, and the Irving storm sirens were blasting as I drove down Roy Orr.

As I drove home later that night after Bible study, the power was off in most of Grand Prairie. Duncanville was in similar condition. The traffic light by the high school was working, but the next three or four to the south were out. Temporary stop signs were up between the lanes. By the time I saw the first ones, I was only 20 feet from them.

My van does not have anti-lock brakes. I skidded a good 50 feet. Just kept going and going and going. I finally came to a stop on the other side of the intersection.

Power was off in most of my neighborhood, including my house. And I had stopped at Kroger on the way home... I stuffed everything into the fridge and freezer and went to bed with the windows open, because the house was stuffy.

Three more storms blew through during the night. After the first, the storm sirens went off just as things got calm and quiet. (I guess they were to let us know we'd had a storm, in case anyone was unclear on the issue.) All three storms woke me with lightning and loud thunder, but there were no more sirens.

Yesterday morning the power was still off. I came to work, then left early for a dentist appointment in the afternoon. I was aghast at being billed over $700 for literally 15 minutes of the dentist's time! He put resin fillings on three lower front teeth with slightly exposed roots, where apparently some earlier fillings had fallen off. Didn't even use anesthetic. Just ground them down a little, dabbed on the epoxy, dried it, smoothed it.

I went home and found that my power was still off. I called Oncor, and got a message saying that they were aware of the outage and were working on it and a whole bunch more.

I had a small job to finish, installing an interesting double ceiling fan in a kitchen, so I left at 6:00 in the evening to do that. My clients did have power, fortunately. Their kitchen has a dropped ceiling with a recessed box in it that used to contain fluorescent lights. The plan was to install this double fan up inside the box so the fans and light hang just below the box opening:

I had to add a piece of wood across the top middle of the box, which required some carpentry and sheetrock work, and reroute an electric cable to the "pancake" electrical box that I installed on the new wood. This provided something secure to hang the fan from. I had done most of that work on Tuesday, so last night I finished smoothing and texturing the inside of the box, and hung the fan.

With the four-inch downrod, the fans ended up inside the box with no room for the blades. When I tried the longer downrod, I thought it might hang too low, but it had about five inches of clearance to the ceiling, which seemed about right. So I used the 12-inch downrod. I can (barely) walk under the fan blades, but wouldn't want to do it while they're running. The light kit comes down to the middle of my face. Fortunately, the clients (a missionary family with five boys) are short.

Here is an attempt to show what I've been talking about. The gray area is the recessed box in the ceiling, out of which the fan hangs. Sorry, I couldn't find a photo that included the light kit or the longer downrod. The light kit goes in the middle, between the fans.

There is a risk of the whole thing turning and viciously attacking the kitchen cabinets, so I recommended that they anchor it with fishing line (inside the recess) to prevent any unwanted rotation.

Anyway, when I got home, my power was still not on, even though one of my next-door neighbors had electricity. So I went to Kroger and bought a couple of bags of ice and put one in the freezer, one in the fridge.

Then I sat and read Robert Ludlum and Terry Pratchett by candlelight and remembered what it was like growing up in the jungle. (Most of our books seemed to have wax stains on the pages when I was a kid. My sister Martha once caught her mosquito net on fire reading in bed.)

Power was still off this morning. I thought about asking my neighbor to let me run a long extension cord to my kitchen. But the milk I poured on my cereal was still cool, and the ice in the bags in the refrigerator was nearly all still ice, so I decided to wait and see how things are this evening.