Our TV, after years of service, rolled over, emitted a puff of smoke, and croaked before our eyes. This led to purchasing a new TV and, honoring the American tradition that bigger is better no matter what the subject or circumstance, we decided to buy a TV that would not fit into our current entertainment unit. So, being ridiculously handy to have around at times, I decided to alter our current unit from TV holder to TV stand.
After removing the front doors, taking out the drawers, and dragging the whole thing into the garage, this is what I started with:
The next step involved sawing that sucker in half using my trusty jigsaw.
Then I took the top half, flipped it over and beat the sides out of it using a rubber mallet, leaving me an upside table of sorts.
I followed that up with cutting the remaining crap off with a hacksaw, leaving me with a few scattered pieces of wood.
Having successfully extracted the very top from the rest of the top half, I slapped it on to the bottom half and secured it using some hinges from the now useless front doors. This stroke of absolute genius later allowed me to easily connect all of the wires to the various electronic components.
Only a few short hours after starting the project, I added some finishing touches, loaded it up with stuff and VIOLA!!! The shortening of my entertainment unit. Hehe, that sounds dirty.
Yesterday was the worst day in the history of days. I’m not exaggerating like I usually do, this time I really mean it. Worst day ever. It started with a loss of electricity right as I was starting to work and had just told a client I would “get right on that”. I was such a shortsighted fool.
I could have used the company laptop with my 3G card while the power was out, but it’s battery life is about 30 minutes on a good day and I had depleted that installing a firewall at the end of the previous work day. So I sat there as the 100 degree temperature outside made it’s way inside at an alarming pace and person after person called me on my phone which was almost out of battery as well.
Did I mention it was a perfectly clear day? I can see the power going out during a storm, which it would do that exact thing later in the day, but when it is clear out? Come on.My calls to the power company were met with indifference and estimates of “looks like it will be a while”. Swell.
So 4 hours later the power comes back on and I begin working feverishly. Just as the room is starting to cool down, out goes the power again. Still perfectly clear out. This time, phone and laptop fully charged, I am able to continue working. Just as the heat inside reaches roughly 1000 degrees, and the laptop battery warns me one last time that it is about to cease all operations, the power comes back on.
I continue working and slowly cooling down. Then comes the storms. Then goes the power. Again. Five crazy hot hours later at midnight, well after I had abandoned using the ice tray from the freezer and a flattened cardboard box as a makeshift air conditioner and gone to bed in a giant pile of sweat, the power comes back on. It’s been on ever since, but I am still nervous it may go out and never come back on. Each time I turn a light switch off, I jump and then realize that the power hasn’t gone off, it’s just me turning off the switch.
If there is such a thing a Post Electrical Outage Stress Disorder, I am pretty sure I have a giant case of it.
I have recently made a discovery that has changed the way I live my life. I’ve always had the problem of running out of bread at the worst times, or having too much and having to throw it out as it turns various shades of green before I can consume it all. I would either go days without a sandwich until someone stopped by the grocery store, or I would overstock and watch my hard earned money turn into mold as I crammed sandwich after sandwich down my gullet in a race against time and nature. And then one day Karen brought home bread, even though I had a full loaf already. And then something amazing happened. She said, “Why don’t you just freeze this one until you need it?”
And there it was. So simple, yet so profound. Freeze the bread. Thaw it out when I need it. OH….. MY…… GAWD! How did I not know of this process before? And it’s not just brilliant in theory, it actually works in practice. I now have the ability to have a near endless supply of fresh bread, limited only by my imagination and freezer space. What a wonderful world I live in. A wonderful, bread filled world.
It snowed today for the third time this season. Another unusual thing that is happening this year is that I am doing my own taxes. Last year, I went to HR Block, sat in a chair by a lady’s desk and watched her open a program that told her what numbers to enter and where exactly to find them in order to enter them. Then she charged me $300. I swear I am not kidding. What a racket they have going on there. I looked at her business card when it was all over with and she wasn’t even a CPA. Her card basically had her name, then underneath was the sentence “Can Type for Exorbitant Fees.”.
So I made the decision, quite easily I might add, to get my own program for 30 bucks and type in the numbers when prompted all by myself and, in the process, save $270. I opted for TurboTax, because it sounded super fast. Turbo!!! It’s right there in the name for crying out loud. And so I typed in numbers when prompted and now I am ready to file my taxes. And it didn’t cost me $300 plus a trip into town. It didn’t even take that long, although to be honest I thought it would be a little faster because of the Turbo part, but still it was over rather quickly. Now I can spend the money I save on useless crap like a tiny stand for my iPhone that makes it look like a miniature iMac. How freaking awesome is that?
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