I got one from Bea the other day, attached to a thin gift wrapped in brown paper. The outside of the card is your average run-of-the-mill thank you card (thankfully glitter-free), but it’s the inside of the card that made me laugh:
 

 
The gift was a pack of targets for the shootin’ range. Got a good laugh out of me, and I’m looking forward to going shooting again, it’s been a while.

And out of respect to Pistolette who screens not only her name, but her husband’s and children’s names too, I removed the reference to her daughter at the bottom of the card. What I can’t include unfortunately is the sound of Bea imitating Pistolette’s daughter when she said “You know, like Beeeeeeeeeeeee!”

On the upside (as if the other parts were a downside), I finally got to see the new Eureka episode. Sweet.

I took some photos of the house, and need to review them before posting them. So, for the meantime, here’s the picture of me balancing on the fence and hopefully committing mosquito genocide yesterday morning:

Bea’s been busy on and off with rollerderby things today, so I called in Jason as a trusty set of hands – in exchange he got some cash, a ticket to the derby game, a cold beer, a shower to save a trip back to Jefferson, and a handful of levels of Dr. Mario.

A list of, but not limited to, things accomplished today:

• Installed and painted missing board in fence
• Installed and painted an additional 6′ of fence
• Spread anti-mosquito pellets and sprayed insecticide on the jungle next door
• Finished installing baseboards
• Patched a hole up by the ceiling
• Cleaned! Organized!
• Re-installed lights on back porch
• Moved and did a prelim cleaning of the old clawfoot tub
• Installed on the wall old iron bars for a window as a pot rack
• Rounded up weeds
• Cut hole in a baseboard for the dryer vent
• Dog-escape-proofed the back fence (mostly for the neighbor’s small dogs)
• Cleaned the trim of the ceiling of the back porch (DIRTY!)
• Kicked ass
• Took names
• Drank beer (ongoing)

Bea took what should be an awesome picture of me balanced on the top of the fence spraying down the neighbor’s yard, but apparently didn’t send it to me to show you here. Maybe tomorrow.

There’s more cleanup/organizing/etc for tomorrow and some painting, but overall things are looking much better.

And the only thing I wanted to do today – to watch the new episode of Eureka (with Whil Wheaton) – didn’t happen and probably won’t. It’s ready to go, but Bea’d probably yell at me for it.

 
I can’t believe that was a year ago. Time flies.

Turns out, his company is no longer a subsidiary of Dial One – I can let my little dinky back-up switch go for that. All perceived grievances are now annulled.

While he was here, I had him look at the front unit that had frozen up the other night. I was right, it had frozen up. He opened up the unit in the attic and showed me the cause – absolutely filthy cooling coils from years upon years of neglect.

At this point, I’m looking at either spending ~$600 to have them cleaned ( this actually involves removing the coils, and they may not survive ), leaving it be until it dies a horrible screeching death, or dropping a few grand on a new unit.

*sigh*

So, for those of you who are looking into buying a house, or may at some point in the future, please, PLEASE, save yourself a lot of hassle and money and have an actual A/C guy be a part of your inspections.

And to boot, one of my 20A breakers keeps flipping. Unfortunately, it’s the circuit the fridge lives on. I went and got a new one and replaced it, but it just keeps flipping. Maybe a 30A will do the trick – I wouldn’t imagine it’d do harm, but then again, I don’t really know these things.

Any other NOLA homeowners have an electrician they can recommend?

Of course, that guy’s age is measured in months, not years or decades, and that seems to be the road we’re on.

Not that I mean that Bea and I are currently on that road, but a lot of our friends are. And that is far from a bad thing. I’ll say this about others as I’m sure they’ll say it about me: it really is great to see your friends mature. And getting the opportunity to see their kids grow up? Even better.

It’s so comforting to see good people create more good people – it gives me hope.

I decided that even though it was about 85° in the front, I’d still sleep upstairs – the ceiling fan still worked perfectly fine, and I didn’t have a problem “roughing it” without A/C. We are in the middle of storm season after all, so there’s not telling when I might have to do it again, sans-fan. A little toughening up / mental prep won’t hurt.

Bea chose to sleep downstairs on the couch, in the splendor of conditioned air.

I got a little better of an air filter and installed it and also left a message on the A/C guys’ voice mail. He was supposed to come replace a redundant overflow-type switch about 8 months ago, so I’m wondering if he hates me or just is kind of a dick.

Anyone have an A/C guy?

• Truck needs an oil change/transmission fluid/pretty much every fluid change.
• One of the big 5-drawer tool chests is pretty banged up. Waiting ’till above is done to return. Hopefully tomorrow.
• 4 trips to Lowe’s today, got almost all I needed through process of elimination. Then lost a piece.
• There’s a mosquito loose somewhere in my office
• Looks like tomorrow will also be oppressively hot.
• Running out of things to write about for NaBloPoMo

I know I know, first world problems.

Sing it, Front:

There are in my opinion two final hurdles, presented in the order that I think they should be completed. The first is the trim and baseboards. They need to be painted THEN installed (we went with high gloss paint – very thick and runny). The setback is that I just am not a fan of painting, and this process takes up a lot of room. I guess if I just set it up tomorrow, we can knock the painting out tomorrow night and install them Wednesday. Then comes the install, and I guess I’m just overly paranoid about cutting sections too short.

The second part is organizing. The back room is a mess, but compared to what we inherited, it’s a goddamn neatfreaks paradise.

A mere glimpse of what we inherited (you should click through the set):

 
Now (without picture prep tidying):

 
So, it would appear that Sears is having a pretty rad sale. I want to put in a workbench against the section of wall between the washer/dryer/sink and the bikes – supported by drawers/toolchests on the edges and a wall brace or two in the middle. Anyways, I got two sets. I was on the fence as to whether I should get a second 7 drawer, but I figured it’s the same as buying the 5 drawer at full price and getting the 7 for free, and we’d still probably put it to good use.

I can go pick them up tomorrow, so I reckon I’ll do that and just stick them somewhere else ’till they’re ready to go in. I’m really looking forward to not only getting my tools good and organized, but finding and filling in the gaps.

Hooray for organization.