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shannon_aThis morning I got up around 6am and got dressed to go walk the golf course, but saw it was pouring rain. Ironically, I then went to take a shower instead.
Much of the morning was spent on the endless task of cutting up cardboard boxes. I've been doing it out in the garage, which I am still trying to clear so that the car that might be named Felice can get in. I opened up the door while I worked, and enjoyed the cool winds and rain outside.
I also built my computer desk and got my computer set up. Yay! A work area. Except the light in the office doesn't work.
My dad came over around noon, and I finished up cutting boxes and bagging packaging material to throw out.
We then got out for drive #2 in the car that might be named Apollo. This time I headed westward, through Eleele and Hanapepe out to Salt Pond Beach. This is along the highway again, and it's still one lane each direction with lots of ups, downs, and curves. I was pretty tense going down the hill on Papalina Road, but at the stoplight to the highway I tried to loosen up, and once I got out to the highway I was still tense, but not so much. Even the continuing rain didn't bug me much, but that's because it was much more steady, so I could just turn the wipers on. Beyond that, there were only a few times when I felt I was wandering a bit.
There's a Refuse Transfer Station out on the road to Salt Pond. You take your trash and dump it in. No fee! That's apparently because we pay $6 a month for this core refuse infrastructure in our property taxes, but it's still pretty amazing after years in California.
Just beyond is a recycling station which has individual containers for a whole bunch of different stuff. My dad and I mostly dumped corrugated cardboard, with just a little mixed paper (in different bins). Yes, it's unfortunate not to have curbside recycling, which Kauai is apparently working on longterm, but again it's pretty accessible.
More generally, I felt sort of empowered after years of having troubles getting rid of stuff in Berkeley, but that was only partly the ease of getting rid of trash and a wide variety of recycling; it was also having a car that very well might be called Julie, and so having a lot of ability to get stuff around and to places.
We stopped by Ace Hardware on the way home to try and pick up some stuff to repair damage done by the renters and curiously never reported by them. One problem was the light in my office, which was due at least in part to the light switch part of the light/fan switch being broken off (!?). The other problem was a mirror which had fallen, broken, and left a mysterious gaping hole in the wall. We were able to get a switch, but not a mirror, because we were out in Eleele, which is certainly not the center of island life.
I did have to park at the refuse station, the recycling center, and the Ace hardware, which continues to be the other stressor in my driving experiences, but none of them were challenging, because I never parked between two cars. Still, it was more good practice in the car that's not named Darla, but that might give you a hint as to why we think Julie is a cool name.
When my dad and I got back to my house, sans cardboard and refuse, we first looked at the light situation in my office.
We really don't know what someone did to the fan/light. The light switch was, as noted, missing the light part of the switch, the fan's pull chain for the lights doesn't work, and the bulbs were partially pulled off their bases.
After coming to the conclusion that the fan was on the circuit breaker marked "smoke alarms" (and gosh it's nice to have my circuit breakers inside the house after nineteen years not), my dad opened up the switch, then asked me if I wanted to do the work under his direction, and I happily said yes. So we made our best guesses at the slightly differently colored wires on the old and new switch, and then I moved the wires from power, fan, light, and ground on the one switch to the other. My dad, with lots of experience on this sort of thing, got it right the first time on his guess of which wires were the same and which not. Afterward, the fan worked from the new switch, but still not the light.
We then disassembled the bottom of the fan and came to the conclusion that the pullchain switch was broken. It looked just like the one I replaced in our Berkeley bathroom a few weeks ago, the only electrical work I'd previously done (and that twice over 19 years, but only after I'd seen my dad do it once). But my dad correctly noted that we didn't really need the pullchain, since it was controlled by a light switch. So he'll bring some electrical tools another day to rewire the fan without the pullchain, but for now I don't have light in my office still.
We next moved upstairs to work on the TV mount, and again he supervised and gave instructions while I worked. Poof! We now have a 55" TV mounted on our wall! Kimberly and I later watched an episode of Star Trek: Discovery on the screen, and it looked great.
Meanwhile, I went out for a walk before dinner, looping around the small group of businesses in Kalaheo, and identifying things of note like the couple of restaurants (including a tasty cafe that Kimberly and I ate at once years ago when she was more mobile, a cheap Pizza Hut, and a Hawaiian mixed plates buffet), the vet, and a local dentist. Sadly, the local community center, which I think Kimberly and I were both interested in learning about is closed until April for gym roof repair. Which seems like a pretty long time for a facility that community members might have been depending on. (But we'll see what it really is down the road.)
After dinner I collapsed on the couch, but spent a lot of time messing with Wayfair, looking for a stand that could go under our TV and hold things like a power strip, a DVD player, a Tivo, and a Playstation. I'm not entirely sure how long all of that will be relevant, but we'll be using them at least this year.
And then we placed a $3,500 order (about a third of that shipping) for a bed, two nightstands, a dresser, a coffee table, two end tables, and that TV stand. That's almost all of our remaining critical stuff (and some of it is unfortunately going to take quite a while to arrive). I still need a chair for my office, and we'll need to decide if any rooms need more lighting. But most other things can wait. Mind you, we still have some rooms that will certainly need furniture, like the family room that we need to fully decide what to do with, and we need bookcases, probably built in. To date, we've only spent about a third of the money we budgeted to refurnish, but with costs for cleaning up the old house going so high we may wait a bit, until we sell, for things that aren't high priority.
(We'll also fill the house a bit more when our shipping container arrives, which is supposed to be somewhere between the 10th and 20th. There's not a lot of furniture there, but there's a rocking chair and some of the supplies for Kimberly's office, such as her art desk and easel and an office chair, so we'll stock the house a little bit more, and of course get lots of dishes, clothes, books, and games. Most of which will sit around until we can afford those built-in bookshelves.)
And that was pretty much it for the evening. I could be assembling chairs or cutting apart boxes or opening our mailings this evening, but I opted not. Because we've been working hard for not just four days, but weeks and weeks (and months and months) preceding that.
Unfortunately, Kimberly revealed she'd been having some medical concerns to me tonight. Hopefully nothing in her surgery has gone wrong, but we should try and get her in to see someone ASAP, which is tricky because she just signed up with a PCP yesterday, and has her first appointment weeks and weeks away.
And as for tomorrow? I've talked about swimming to my dad. I wish we could have swum at Salt Pond today, because it was bright and warm and clear while it had been raining at home all dad. Certainly, I'd like to get some more driving in with my dad at my side. We both agree that I need to drive on my own sometime, but that it's good to ease me into it while he's there with another set of eyes, plus some experience and knowledge of the island. (He's helping me learn to drive for the second time!)
Apparently the day wasn't as quiet as I thought.
Much of the morning was spent on the endless task of cutting up cardboard boxes. I've been doing it out in the garage, which I am still trying to clear so that the car that might be named Felice can get in. I opened up the door while I worked, and enjoyed the cool winds and rain outside.
I also built my computer desk and got my computer set up. Yay! A work area. Except the light in the office doesn't work.
My dad came over around noon, and I finished up cutting boxes and bagging packaging material to throw out.
We then got out for drive #2 in the car that might be named Apollo. This time I headed westward, through Eleele and Hanapepe out to Salt Pond Beach. This is along the highway again, and it's still one lane each direction with lots of ups, downs, and curves. I was pretty tense going down the hill on Papalina Road, but at the stoplight to the highway I tried to loosen up, and once I got out to the highway I was still tense, but not so much. Even the continuing rain didn't bug me much, but that's because it was much more steady, so I could just turn the wipers on. Beyond that, there were only a few times when I felt I was wandering a bit.
There's a Refuse Transfer Station out on the road to Salt Pond. You take your trash and dump it in. No fee! That's apparently because we pay $6 a month for this core refuse infrastructure in our property taxes, but it's still pretty amazing after years in California.
Just beyond is a recycling station which has individual containers for a whole bunch of different stuff. My dad and I mostly dumped corrugated cardboard, with just a little mixed paper (in different bins). Yes, it's unfortunate not to have curbside recycling, which Kauai is apparently working on longterm, but again it's pretty accessible.
More generally, I felt sort of empowered after years of having troubles getting rid of stuff in Berkeley, but that was only partly the ease of getting rid of trash and a wide variety of recycling; it was also having a car that very well might be called Julie, and so having a lot of ability to get stuff around and to places.
We stopped by Ace Hardware on the way home to try and pick up some stuff to repair damage done by the renters and curiously never reported by them. One problem was the light in my office, which was due at least in part to the light switch part of the light/fan switch being broken off (!?). The other problem was a mirror which had fallen, broken, and left a mysterious gaping hole in the wall. We were able to get a switch, but not a mirror, because we were out in Eleele, which is certainly not the center of island life.
I did have to park at the refuse station, the recycling center, and the Ace hardware, which continues to be the other stressor in my driving experiences, but none of them were challenging, because I never parked between two cars. Still, it was more good practice in the car that's not named Darla, but that might give you a hint as to why we think Julie is a cool name.
When my dad and I got back to my house, sans cardboard and refuse, we first looked at the light situation in my office.
We really don't know what someone did to the fan/light. The light switch was, as noted, missing the light part of the switch, the fan's pull chain for the lights doesn't work, and the bulbs were partially pulled off their bases.
After coming to the conclusion that the fan was on the circuit breaker marked "smoke alarms" (and gosh it's nice to have my circuit breakers inside the house after nineteen years not), my dad opened up the switch, then asked me if I wanted to do the work under his direction, and I happily said yes. So we made our best guesses at the slightly differently colored wires on the old and new switch, and then I moved the wires from power, fan, light, and ground on the one switch to the other. My dad, with lots of experience on this sort of thing, got it right the first time on his guess of which wires were the same and which not. Afterward, the fan worked from the new switch, but still not the light.
We then disassembled the bottom of the fan and came to the conclusion that the pullchain switch was broken. It looked just like the one I replaced in our Berkeley bathroom a few weeks ago, the only electrical work I'd previously done (and that twice over 19 years, but only after I'd seen my dad do it once). But my dad correctly noted that we didn't really need the pullchain, since it was controlled by a light switch. So he'll bring some electrical tools another day to rewire the fan without the pullchain, but for now I don't have light in my office still.
We next moved upstairs to work on the TV mount, and again he supervised and gave instructions while I worked. Poof! We now have a 55" TV mounted on our wall! Kimberly and I later watched an episode of Star Trek: Discovery on the screen, and it looked great.
Meanwhile, I went out for a walk before dinner, looping around the small group of businesses in Kalaheo, and identifying things of note like the couple of restaurants (including a tasty cafe that Kimberly and I ate at once years ago when she was more mobile, a cheap Pizza Hut, and a Hawaiian mixed plates buffet), the vet, and a local dentist. Sadly, the local community center, which I think Kimberly and I were both interested in learning about is closed until April for gym roof repair. Which seems like a pretty long time for a facility that community members might have been depending on. (But we'll see what it really is down the road.)
After dinner I collapsed on the couch, but spent a lot of time messing with Wayfair, looking for a stand that could go under our TV and hold things like a power strip, a DVD player, a Tivo, and a Playstation. I'm not entirely sure how long all of that will be relevant, but we'll be using them at least this year.
And then we placed a $3,500 order (about a third of that shipping) for a bed, two nightstands, a dresser, a coffee table, two end tables, and that TV stand. That's almost all of our remaining critical stuff (and some of it is unfortunately going to take quite a while to arrive). I still need a chair for my office, and we'll need to decide if any rooms need more lighting. But most other things can wait. Mind you, we still have some rooms that will certainly need furniture, like the family room that we need to fully decide what to do with, and we need bookcases, probably built in. To date, we've only spent about a third of the money we budgeted to refurnish, but with costs for cleaning up the old house going so high we may wait a bit, until we sell, for things that aren't high priority.
(We'll also fill the house a bit more when our shipping container arrives, which is supposed to be somewhere between the 10th and 20th. There's not a lot of furniture there, but there's a rocking chair and some of the supplies for Kimberly's office, such as her art desk and easel and an office chair, so we'll stock the house a little bit more, and of course get lots of dishes, clothes, books, and games. Most of which will sit around until we can afford those built-in bookshelves.)
And that was pretty much it for the evening. I could be assembling chairs or cutting apart boxes or opening our mailings this evening, but I opted not. Because we've been working hard for not just four days, but weeks and weeks (and months and months) preceding that.
Unfortunately, Kimberly revealed she'd been having some medical concerns to me tonight. Hopefully nothing in her surgery has gone wrong, but we should try and get her in to see someone ASAP, which is tricky because she just signed up with a PCP yesterday, and has her first appointment weeks and weeks away.
And as for tomorrow? I've talked about swimming to my dad. I wish we could have swum at Salt Pond today, because it was bright and warm and clear while it had been raining at home all dad. Certainly, I'd like to get some more driving in with my dad at my side. We both agree that I need to drive on my own sometime, but that it's good to ease me into it while he's there with another set of eyes, plus some experience and knowledge of the island. (He's helping me learn to drive for the second time!)
Apparently the day wasn't as quiet as I thought.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-05 03:26 pm (UTC)