Category Archives: Life

Dust in the Wind

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Living out in the boonies as we do, there are a lot things I take outside for disposal. Banana peels, orange peels, refrigerator science experiments, they all get recycled in the great outdoors.

Another item I take outside is the dustpan contents. I sweep fairly often due to the dog hair. (Not often enough, from the looks of the dog hair I can see right now; thus no photo with this blog entry.) There’s always a noticeable amount of dust and dog hair that I sweep up.

One of these days, I might even learn to check the wind direction before I take the dustpan outside. That would definitely be helpful information. Because as often as not, I open the door, step out on the front porch and the wind blows the dustpan contents right into my face and back into the house.

Pa-toui!

Fortunately, summer is about to arrive, with the wind out of the south. It should be safe for me to go out the front door and have that wind at my back. In the winter, I should go out the back door, to avoid the north wind.

Figuring it out is only part of it. I can’t seem to remember actually to account for the wind when I sweep. Maybe I’m trainable and maybe I’m not.

Pa-toui!

Refrigerator Woes

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The refrigerator woes continued. I related Part 1 to you in Law of Nature, when the refrigerator first started breaking down.

We bought a new refrigerator and it was delivered two days later. The delivery people called to tell us they were on their way and they arrived earlier than scheduled. They removed the old refrigerator and installed the new one. They said to wait 12 hours before putting anything inside.

We waited. We waited six hours and the refrigerator hadn’t started cooling down yet. Went to bed, got up the next morning and it was just as warm in the refrigerator as out. Five hours later, still hadn’t started to cool down. Hubby called Lowe’s and they sent out another new refrigerator that same day, in the afternoon.

Tupperware canister on top of a refrigerator

Old Yeller

It was installed by the time I got home from work and had already cooling. That’s more like it!

Even though we waited to put anything inside, we put some things on it: the requisite yellow Tupperware canister, with cookies for hubby.

Life is good.

Law of Nature

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It’s a law of nature at our house that any appliance breakdown will happen on a holiday weekend. Fortunately, we’re not under the black cloud that ensures that this happens every holiday weekend, but still . . . .

Thursday it seemed that maybe our refrigerator was not feeling so well. By Friday, that was a confirmed diagnosis and its condition steadily worsened. And, of course, it was a holiday weekend.

Also, anytime one of our dogs gets bitten by a rattlesnake, it will be on a weekend when just walking into the emergency vet clinic costs enough to . . . well, buy a new refrigerator! Sometimes two or three refrigerators, even. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the emergency vet clinic is there. None of our dogs died from the rattlesnake bites. But couldn’t that happen during the week, early in the morning so we could go to our regular vet? Or even better, is there a way to prevent rattlesnake bites altogether, other than moving into a downtown condo, that is? But I digress; back to my refrigerator woes.

Over three days, I spent a noticeable amount of time on the Internet, shopping for a refrigerator much like the one we have: white, top freezer, with a freezer light, no automatic ice maker, no water dispenser, 21-22 cubic feet. How hard can it be? (That’s the clue that it’s always harder than I thought it should be.)

It was hard. As it turns out, those types of refrigerators are still made. The problem is navigating retailers’ web sites to figure out which models have which features. Some web sites have photos of the interior of the refrigerator and the freezer. Nice. Some have photos of just the refrigerator part. Some have photos of only the outside and an abbreviated list of features! Really? They want me to decide on a refrigerator just based on the outside of the doors and a brief summary? I don’t think so.

The sticking point turned out to be the freezer light. Our current freezer has one. Therefore, I think our next one should have one. This is not a default feature. Some freezers have them; some don’t. Then there was the automatic ice maker or water dispenser. I could easily find a top freezer model with a freezer light as long as I paid for the other features that I don’t want.

This wore me out. Besides my online research, I made some phone calls (a hearkening back to the olden days) and I even drove to three — count them three — retailers to look at floor models.

I’m looping back now to the point about it being a holiday weekend. This is a special holiday weekend when it comes to appliances. In Texas, if you buy an Energy Star appliance during the Memorial Day weekend, the purchase is tax-free. That means that everyone who is affected by the holiday-weekend-appliance-breakdown curse is out and about.

Finally I decided on a refrigerator. I took a friend’s advice and bought a bottom-freezer model. With a freezer light. And an automatic ice maker, which we will ignore. (Can’t have everything. Or in this case, can’t have only what I want.) I got lucky about the delivery schedule, considering that I bought the refrigerator on the last day of the three-day holiday weekend and everyone else got on the delivery schedule before me. I didn’t get the “next day” delivery time slot, but one day after that.

That will give me time to discard the science experiments growing in my refrigerator, which this time around aren’t my fault. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

School’s Out

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Every year I get the same idea at this time of year. Here’s my post from May 27, 2011 on my old blog.

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It’s the end of May. School is out and summer is here. That’s what makes me feel like a kid again. Even though I haven’t been in school for decades, I still get that giddy school’s out feeling. Summer!

Time! Time to read books, visit friends, watch movies, write letters, write short stories, sleep in, cook new dishes, go to the swimming pool.

I have as much time now as I did then — the hours in the day are the same — but I don’t have the same schedule. It’s a slight shock to look around me each end of May, after I have that giddy feeling and think about running out of the building, throwing my hands up in the air and kicking up my heels. The shock is the realization that the building I would run out of is not a school, it’s a business. Instead of textbooks to toss in the air, I have reams and reams of system documentation.

I don’t get the summer off anymore, I have to go to work each weekday. Still, I wonder how it would feel to run out the doors, leaping in joy again. I would probably scare the squirrels.

Fire Drill

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Monday afternoon, we had a fire drill at work. The first clues were the siren and the intercom announcement “Attention. Attention. An emergency has been reported.”

We calmly filed out of our offices into the hallway. That’s where the gridlock begins. Out in the hallway is where everyone is, heading for the stairwells (two of them). In my years at my agency, I’ve been housed in three buildings and on various floors on each of those buildings. Now I am on the 5th floor. And that means that when we leave our office for a fire drill, we get in line for the stairs. And we wait. And wait. I’m sure we’d all be moving faster in a real emergency, but that still leaves me on the 5th floor.

After my first 5th-floor fire drill, I started planning alternate evacuation routes, all having to do with the tiny window in my cubicle. First on my list was one of those fold-out rope ladders. After my second fire drill, my idea was to buy some sheets and tie them together, for the climb down.

But Monday, while we were in our assigned meeting place a safe distance away from the building, I noticed there is a tree under my window. It’s a small tree — now — but I wonder how long it would take it to grow to the 5th-floor level with a hefty dose of Miracle Grow.

Window looking out onto the Texas Capitol building

Too small?

I even have a back-up plan to my back-up plan. I’ll throw all my technical manuals out the window, creating a mound that I can use to scamper down. Although, throwing that many manuals out the window may take quite a while. If I start before there is an emergency, someone will find them and return them to me. That would be a never-ending effort to get the mound built up to the right height just at the right time. Okay, that plan is out.

Now, all I need is to figure out how to get a work order submitted to widen the 50-year-old window in my cubicle. It sure wasn’t made for an evacuation route.