Random Weekend

This past weekend was quite random. After taking my 2 hour post work Friday nap I got up and running just in time to catch a ride to the Rusty Rudder. The lake action is usually stronger on Friday's as that crowd is typically done and done come Saturday nights. The crowd was surprisingly week and I attribute it to the pre-season game for the Panthers that were in town. That was fine as a couple of us hung on the porch; I drank $1.50 beer and got a free ride out of it. Low key with cheap beer. Works for me. During the time there I received a call from a 919 (Raleigh-Durham area) but don't know the number. It was definitely female and had it been on a voice message I would have enjoyed it for many nights to come. Apparently someone wanted to enjoy the rest of the evening (the call came in around 12:15) with me and was at a bar down town. I have no clue what the name was but they claim to know me from a bar downtown we have been frequenting on Thursday night the past couple months. I was told in some very descript terms what they wanted to do, they wanted to know where I was and why I wasn't at the bar I had met them. I had excused myself about 30 seconds into the call. While standing on the side deck I still couldn't figure out who it was and wasn't going to ask again. I laughed heartily, told them if they wanted me they needed to come to the lake and let it go. Having taken a long nap I was up around 2:30 after getting dropped off at home. I decided I would find out who this was as I suspected it to be a prank via a friend of a friend’s phone from someone who knew where I headed out too periodically. At 2:40 they answered and went back into the same dialogue questioning my manliness as I hadn’t come downtown to meet them. They asked for my address and I told them simply to get in a cab, come to my exit, and I would guide them from that point. I went to bed and didn’t get a call but I also haven’t figured out who it was either. Inquiring minds want to know as it was a helluva prank or I missed out on the easiest action since, well I won’t go into that.
Saturday was good times. Lilley and wife ventured up to the lake and we headed to the sandbar and watched girls dance like strippers on the other boats. Matt and I also got the tailgate game plan together for FSU and I issued the email upon returning home. Did a little yard work had one of the best evenings at home in quite some time. Hopefully I will be able to go into more details on that one in the future.
Sunday was pretty standard. Slept in, did housework. hung by the pool and had dinner and Skippy and wife’s then killed a bunch of time on the phone that evening with friends and primarily family.
Considering I had a really good weekend and don’t have anything other than the phone call off the wall to report, I found it kinda random, but I’ll take it anytime. A positive ending to the call and it would be damn hard to beat.

F-You Fortune Cookie Man

Ok, I know the little Chinese folk that run the cat buffet don't actually write these (they were started by someone in the San Fran area years ago and their are varying stories with some roots in ancient China) but I'm still gonna blame them. The sad thing is, I like the one we go to here, it tastes good and has 97.5 health rating. Unheard of in the buffet world. But they pissed me off todya. On to my story and issues. We all know I have an issue with over thinking and over analyzing pretty much everything. We also know that all fortune cookie messages should be followed with "In bed," or at least it's much more fun that way. Well, as if my complete analytical treatment of everything, including figuring out the best place to meet women and what their actions and words mean, I get slapped with this at the buffet today at lunch. "Your mentality is alert, practical, and analytical", in bed. Great, so I am cursed with the same problem between the sheets that keeps me from getting there to start with. I needed any help screwing things up instead of just doing the screw part? To top it all off, I'm head to Chucktown this weekend, where the odds are supposedly so good for guys. You know why I am going though? Oh yes, an engineering professional organization conference where I will be representing the Charlotte Chapter in all the business meetings, dorking it up through late afternoon Saturday preventing me from heading out on the town until then. Will I even feel like going out. Probably not since I have breakfasts for this damn thing at 6:30 both tomorrow and Sat. morning. Of course fortune cookie writer man has already screwed me. 1 of 4 engineers at the table and I get this one, real effing nice. F-you fortune cookie man, f-you.

Maybe I am useful

As we have all learned, I can't paint. From now on, I won't paint. Well, can't say that, I won't paint other than the ongoing touch up and fixing of the job mentioned a week or two ago. Especially considering the amount of original paint that peeled when the tape came up along with the places the new paint peeled back from the edges. One thing I will say, if you start having orignal paint peel along with your tape, spray down the tape with Goo Gone and let it soak for a minute. It seemed to help on the last quarter of the room that I peeled.
Anyway, though I can't paint, it seems I can do a few handy man things. Hung a bunch of organizer stuff in the garage, replaced all my kitchen cabinet hardware (a 5 y/o could have pulled this one off, but I expedited it with the use of a screw drive bit on a drill) and my most recent feat.
I've had some moderately annoying electrical clitches with my refridgerator. Needless to say they didn't spring up until about the time the one year warranty was up on anything other than the refrigerant cycle. Read in the compressor and other parts that allow the appliance to do it's work. Your heat pump kinda works the same way. Anyway, the light was randomly fading in and out on the front panel for ice and water. The water dispenser wouldn't always work, neither would the ice dispenser. Skippy tended to be on the receiving end of this until the past month or so and therefore I didn't seem to worry too much about it as I didn't know the frequency of the problem. Well, I came home the middle of the week to find the ice in the dispenser fused up as though a thaw and re-freeze cycle had occured in teh freezer. A clicking sound was coming from the rear of the fridge. I got it restart after simply powering off then replugging it (causing the cover plate to the recepticle to completely crumble and fall in the process). After getting home Friday, I foudn it clicking again, warming inside in both the fridge and freezer and the restarting trick to not rememdy the issue. Off to the store for 50 lbs of ice and to the grarge to round up all the coolers. I let things go, keeping all the perishables iced over the weekend, 75% of which I was able to save. In the process of this mess, I checked the pack, removing a cover plate and finding the sourse of the clicking sound. I knew it was electrical from the previsouly mentioned problems and the fact that the little fan in the freezer was attempting to spin but only doing so in sync with the clicking sound and never actually "kicking on." Today I got after the job at hand, first calling GE's service hotline and having what I was afraid of confirmed. Everything but the condenser and associated parts was out of warranty. Tomorrow being the earliest they could come giving me a lovely 8-5 time frame with a call ahead that I had to request (and probably wouldn't actually occur). While on hold, I was instructed that parts could typically be purchased locally from a distributor (not the same place I bought it from though) . At the same time I was already online checking out the GE appliance home page which luckily had a parts listed also present. I scheduled the appt for tomorrow but was able to track down the part number (I had the model and serial numbers of the unit with me) while at the office. A phone call later and I had tracked down the part, at a store just up the street from a customers office. Three hours later I had the motherboard for the fridge in hand. 6 hours later, the board was installed and I was up and running again.
I will say I am proud of myself. I know I've saved a fair amount of cash even if the board was much more than just a possible capacitor to be replaced ($100 vs 25 or so) compared to $70 for a service call and whatever parts and predetermined labor fee I would have been hit with for a 15 min job. I don't have to spend half tomorrow waiting for a call ahead. I didn't drop $10 on ice tonight. I actually gambled on a solution and won. Keep me away form the paint. Give me something with nuts, bolts, or real basic electrical stuff (I self diagnosed the boat but didn't have the tools to make that one happen). OK, so be leary about the electrical stuff but I'm getting better at it. Now, if things would go my way with wood products I would be ok. Good tools would help. Guess it's time to call and cancel that appt for tomorrow.

Weather Man

Those who read this probably know I have an "thing" for the weather. No, I don't get "excited" by it but I like to know what the forecast is, like to know there is a chance in hell that the forecast I am getting will be correct, and I like taking my own stab at with a bit of commentary on how it will affect goings on. Let me continue by saying, this week has sucked. OK, I know I live in the Piedmont area, an area prone to high heat and humidity during the summer. Hey, we get mild winters and the legitimate threat of severe weather (Tornadoes, Hurricane's, etc) are minimal compared to other places with a similar climate. This will be the 3rd or 4th day in a row that the thermometer has topped 100. I'm not talking hit the mark, I'm talking exceeded it. So hot that even with my windows down, the steering wheel is almost too hot to touch. I had some Nivea Q10 heat so much in my car yesterday that it oozed out of the pump, with the cap still on.
Now I knew it was going to be a warm one. Initially the week was forecast to be much like what we had the one prior and this upcoming. Mid 90's lows around 70. As the week went on, not only did they update it but the temps kept bumping up, and have been achieved. This weekend we are supposed to be back in the mid 90's and sadly this will be our "relief" for the next week as Monday and Tuesday it's supposed to push 100, again. The 10 day has us in the upper 80's the end of next week, and you know that crap isn't right. That forecast is only based on historical data for the date and has no relevance to what is actually going to happen. I guess all this will make fall that much more pleasurable. "Sweltering" tailgates in the sun in the 80's won't seem nearly as bad. I know I won’t have to worry about melting Bowman at least. Now if my grass would just stop growing, I would be ok. Mowing in this crap sucks. And for you people in the swath from Augusta GA through Fayetteville NC, I know, you have it even worse but you knew this going in.

Kinda Sad

I jsut watched 40 yo Virgin for the first time. Laughed my ass off and wish I would have seen it earlier. This isn't the sad part. I can understand half what the character was thinking. Sad...really, really, sad.