Home again, home again, hot, diggity dirt. Had a most enjoyable vacation in
the Tennessee and North Carolina mountains, but returned home to less than
pleasant circumstances.
We intended to come back from Asheville on Saturday, but we were alerted Friday
afternoon by our catsitter that our air conditioning was off. Fortunately,
since our house is built into the side of a hill and two sides of the basement
are below ground level and the other two with the windows and doors are shaded
by the woods in back, it's always cool down there, AC or no AC, and that's
where the cats were hanging out, so we weren't too concerned about them.
But since I have a strong attachment to indoor temperatures in the low 70s
range, and because we were on the eve of a holiday weekend with poor prospects
of getting much of anything done without it costing an arm and a leg, we
elected to divert back over the mountains to Knoxville and spend the weekend
with the oldest son in air-conditioned comfort and take care of problems at
home Tuesday.
Did I mention I hate hot weather? My wife is from Texas, and she's going in a
couple of weeks for the annual family reunion between Houston and Austin. I
went once many years ago. I ain't going again. You'll never catch me in
Texas, or any place like it, from May to October. Even though Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta at the end of the War For Southern Independence
and is pretty thoroughly despised in these parts, I can't really disagree with
what he said about the Lone Star state: "If I owned both hell and Texas, I'd
rent out Texas and live in hell." I feel pretty much the same way about
Florida, except in Florida they at least know that real barbecue is pork, not
beef and goat.
I'm sure I'll hear from some folks about that. :-)
Anyway, I spent a productive Saturday evening with the son in his garage
helping him (i.e., bossing and watching) get his tricked-out Corvette ready for
a 'Vette show on Sunday. Thanks to my expert supervision, he won his first
first-place trophy. :-) He didn't much care for my suggestion that we
duct-tape it to the hood for the ride home, however.
Also, the laptop died during the trip, so I couldn't keep up with the list
after last Monday. I could've checked in from the son's house, but he's gone
over to the Mac side, and I didn't want to touch that thing. I do have certain
standards, although I am easily tempted, so I decided to just wait and check in
when we got home. Which brings me to more of the story.
We arrived back in Marietta early Tuesday morning to get things going on fixing
the AC, only to find we had no dial tone, and, of course, no DSL either. It
seems that Monday night the spawn of some moronically and recklessly
over-indulgent parents had lost control of his high school graduation present
on the curve by the entrance to our subdivision and demolished the big, green
box with the telephone apparatus in it that serves hundreds of people.
Unfortunately, the brat survived, but fortunately, the Saleen Mustang he was
driving was totaled. What kind of brain-dead, too-rich yuppie scum would buy a
17-year-old a Saleen Mustang anyway? They should be shot. I've put that on my
list of things to do when I get time.
I spend all day Tuesday, until almost 9 o'clock, and today until nearly noon
supervising the installation of an entire new HVAC system, which we decided to
do since the dead AC compressor was 17 years old and the furnace would be
facing its 31st winter this year. Yes, it's a wonder we hadn't died of carbon
monoxide poisoning years ago. The bill was just over $6000, but these things
hurt a lot less when the house is paid for. At least the furnace kept going
even longer than the mortgage. :-) That'll probably delay the 300/2.8 ED
Zuiko Digital lens for a while, though. (Yeah, right!)
Anyway, winding this up, the phone got fixed just before noon today, so I was
finally able to visit the Odyssey site and look up Gary's address, after which
I boxed up the Odyssey OM-1 and rushed to the post office to send it on its
way. I know I kept it way too long. I'm just old and slow, I suppose. :-[
Gary lives just a hop, skip and a jump away, but I figured it would be quicker
to send it priority mail than try to arrange a time to get together. Besides,
the house is starting to get comfortable again; I've got nearly 500 list
e-mails to read; I'm deep and getting deeper into a fridge full of cold beer
and shouldn't be driving, and I ain't going back outside until at least
tomorrow, maybe the day after. I haven't even offloaded the digital photos
from the trip yet, but I'll worry 'bout that later.
Walt, cool, and getting cooler
--
"Anything more than 500 yards from
the car just isn't photogenic." --
Edward Weston
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|