The university where I work was closed today in anticipation of a major snow storm. So far, with just an hour of the day left, the storm hasn’t amounted to anything. There’s a bit of ice from some early morning freezing drizzle, but no snow.
The forecast for tomorrow is far worse than the one for today was, so I will be surprised if we are at work tomorrow. However, campus hasn’t been officially closed yet. I’ll have to set the alarm for the usual 6:20 am and check my messages to find out.
One evening, about a week ago, Bootstrap was sitting on one of the pianos staring up at the ceiling. This isn’t normal behavior for him, but we didn’t really pursue it. A few evenings later Sibylle was working at the table in the studio when Bootstrap became interesting in the corner of the room there. She could hear faint scrabbling sounds from the wall.
Uh oh.
This morning I observed him very intently stalking the bottom step of the stairs. I went and stood behind him and I could hear the scrabbling sound too.
Crap.
We’ve got mice.
It is entirely possible that we moved a mouse with us from the Frey Street house as there was evidence of mice in that garage, which was full of boxes. Boxes which are now in our unfinished basement. It is also possible that we got mice along with the house. The area was only recently developed and still has large fields that are likely teeming with critters.
Sibylle did some reading on what approaches work best and we bought some spring traps today. If we are still catching mice a few days from now it means there’s some sort of access for them into the house. At that point we’ll call the pest control people. Until then I’ll put three or four traps in the garage and the rest in the unfinished portion of the basement to see what I catch.
Hopefully we can eliminate this problem quickly and with out too much trouble.
This afternoon I replaced two light switched in our bathroom, which made me feel like a true homeowner.
The original switches were fine except that they were what stopped the linen cabinet door when it was opened all the way. We were afraid that over time the door would become marred from contact with the switches so we replaced them with the flat style ones.
It took three tries to find the right circuit breaker in the garage to turn off. In the switch labeled “master” was the one that I needed; it also took out all the lights in the master bedroom. Eventually I’ll want to redo the labeling in the junction box as it was done with a thick-point permanent pen and is hard to read.
With the electricity off I was able to remove the old switches but I had to work at getting the wires off, or rather out. The switches have some kind of hole in the back that lets the electrician just shove the bare wire end in and he’s done. There is a release tab but it proved to be difficult to reach and operate. I was able to remove three of the four wires and had to cut the fourth.
The new switches were easy to install, and work beautifully. Now we can open the door with out fear of denting or marring the finish. And I feel more like it’s our house since I’ve made changes to it without electrocuting myself.
The music theory class I’m taking this spring occurs in a general purpose room in the music department. The class before us has all the xylophones out, and there’s a jazz band that meets there immediately following our class. Consequently there are no fixed chairs in the room. Instead there are stacks of plastic chairs in the back.
At the start of my class, as the xylophones are being wheeled away, we all grab a chair and find a place to sit. Since the jazz band needs chairs we don’t have to put things away afterwards. What I find fascinating about this ad-hoc arrangement is that after just one week we are all sitting in pretty much the same place every class period. No assigned seating, and no fixed chairs, and yet we all gravitate to the same general spot from one day to the next.
If I weren’t such a Taurus I’d deliberately sit in a new place each class period just to observe the impact on the people around me. Whereby “Taurus” I mean stubborn creature of habit.
With a house full of instruments, two 7-foot concert grand pianos and a violoncello being the primary ones, we have a keen interest in maintaining a good humidity level here at Casa Mark y Sibylle.
The pianos in particular would like a fairly constant 40% humidity year round. Here in central Kansas humidity is abundant in the summer months but rather scarce in the heating months. Forced air heating systems only dry the already parched air even more. For the first few weeks we tried a small room-sized humidifier that really couldn’t begin to raise the humidity in the studio space, much less the whole house.
The studio is roughly 20 by 30 with a nine foot ceiling so there is a lot of air volume in just that one space to keep moist. We decided to get a whole house humidifier installed. My father has had a General attached to his furnace for several decades, and he knows of several other people who had the same model in their house. We called the local plumber/heating/ventilation guy and they recommended a General 1099, based on the size of our house.
The install took about three hours one afternoon last week. Midway through the process the installer mentioned that newer houses, which are well insulated and sealed, tend to not run the furnace as often and therefore won’t run the humidifier as often. He offered to wire the control up to the fan as well as the furnace so that humidification would happen any time the fan was running regardless of whether the heat was also running.
We’ve run the fan for most of the day several times and managed to eek the humidity level up to about 40%, although it tends to hover a percent or two lower than that most of the time. The fan noise isn’t terrible but one is aware of it droning on in the background after a while - especially at night when the house is quiet. We are willing to put up with the constant fan sound however, as without it we wouldn’t be able to raise the humidity at all. With the solar gain today the house was a good 4º warmer than the thermostat setting and the furnace never ran.
Time will tell if we are able to continue to raise the average humidity level so that it never dips below 40%. For now it’s good that we are able to keep things in that ballpark.
Several of the lots around us aren’t developed yet, so we have been enjoying a sense of space, and sight-lines that will, one day soon, be obstructed. We knew this intellectually, but now that one of the vacant lots is being developed we are faced with the reality of a house in “our” backyard.
The ground behind our house drops away considerably so that the house which will eventually be most apparent in our view will be lower than us. We’ll be able to see the far horizon over the roof of that house, and things in the foreground to either side of it. The house that was started this week is off to the west of us, or to the right side of our backyard when you stand with your back toward our house. The view that way will be obscured by the new house as it is nearly as far up the slope as we are.
At one time last August we were seriously considering that very lot for ourselves, but eventually decided that the sight lines were better here than two over. We still feel that way, however it will be interesting to visit that other house as it is being built to see what its view would have been.
The other thing about the building is the noise and traffic. This morning Sibylle counted about 20 trucks and men at the new site. And they start early in the morning, the first two were there when I left for work at 7:15 am. By this time next year all the lots around us should be completed, we hope, and the construction chaos moved elsewhere.
I like that we are here early enough to see some of the changes. It is sad in a way to see what was here smoothed and shaped and manicured for a subdivision, but it is exciting in another way to watch the process and see the lots and houses take shape.
Upon arriving home today I was ready to setup and start using our new Fujitsu SnapScan, however I was thwarted by a variety of issues.
Our office has a desktop computer we refer to as the “Money Computer” as that is where first Microsoft Money and now Quicken live. (Money has been discontinued by Microsoft forcing us to make the switch to Quicken.) It’s an elderly machine that was new in perhaps 2005. It’s running Windows XP and does an admirable job as our financial center. However I was unable to get the DVD/CD tray to open, even after sticking a straightened paper clip in the little emergency release hole. So I was unable to install the scanner software on that machine.
Next I tried my ancient PowerBook G4. The scanner software installed without a problem, but I wasn’t able to install Evernote on to that version of Mac OS X. Strike two.
I have a ThinkPad that was running Ubuntu 10.10 that I wasn’t really using for anything, so I formatted its hard drive and started the process of installing Windows XP. I have a copy of XP, and that what was originally on that machine. Installing and updating XP is a laborious process at best, and as I have been distracted throughout the process it only just finished several hours after I started.
Late last year we had talked about getting Sibylle a new laptop as hers is full to overflowing and consequently slower responding. We actually purchased a Gateway from BestBuy and brought it home only to discover they had blundered during their setup of the machine resulting in a dead slow computer. We returned it and rather than exchange it we walked away from the idea for a while.
Tonight we returned to BestBuy and picked up a new Toshiba Satellite for her to have as her laptop. Her current laptop, a Compaq, will now become the new “Money Computer” and we’ll use the old eMachine desktop in the studio. This solves several problems: Sibylle will have a computer capable of importing and editing video files, she have enough room on her computer for all of her files, we’ll have a computer to act as the scanning station and be our money computer, and we’ll gain a machine for general purpose use in the studio.
Tomorrow, once all the rearranging is complete I’ll take a second stab at getting our paperless office setup.
In golf, and other sports, a mulligan is a do-over or repeat of a spectacularly errant shot or play.
I’d like a mulligan for today.
Normally after I get up I turn my alarm off. Today I forgot and midway through my shower the phone started in bing-binging again. So, out of the shower, dripping all over the floor and counter to turn the alarm off. Not a terrible thing perhaps, but a portent of things to come as we shall see.
When I went to sit down at the breakfast table I discovered that Bootstrap had thrown up all over the neatly labeled and addressed bills that Sibylle prepared last night for mailing today. Also on the table, and part of the rug under the table. He’s been throwing up more lately so we may have to take him to the vet to see what is upsetting him.
When I went to leave work to go to my Music Theory class I discovered the driver’s side rear tire was a bit soft, so I detoured through the nearest gas station to add some air. After class, a mere 75 minutes after filling the tire, it was again a bit soft. Obviously we’d picked up something sharp. So I detoured to the local Honda dealer to have the tired repaired. Fortunately they was able to take the car right way. It’s only 5 minutes from where we live so I called Sibylle and she came to pick me up for an early lunch.
After lunch I needed to take my cello with me for my lesson this afternoon, so we cleared out some of the things from the back of the Jimmy. While walking past the passenger side of the Jimmy I brushed against the outside mirror, and, you guessed it, it promptly fell off the car. We replaced the driver’s side mirror last winter after it fell off the car. Apparently the plastic that mounts it to the car gets brittle with age. I used a pair of kitchen scissors to cut the wires and completely remove it. We’ll have to schedule a trip to the local body shop for a new $130 side mirror.
All of this before noon today.
I’ll take that mulligan now.
In the classic musical You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, there’s a song about writing a book report about Peter Rabbit. I forget who sings it now (and I’m too lazy to open a new browser tab to find out via Google) but I do remember that the report was supposed to be 500 words long. The singer writes a little bit and then starts counting the words.
Tonight’s posting is a bit like that report. It’s 11:23 pm and I haven’t written anything all day so you are getting this rather flimsy excuse for a posting just so I won’t miss a day.
And now you can all go look up You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown.
Neither of us had a lot of energy today, and we both ended up taking naps late this afternoon. After a dinner out at Panera we did some grocery shopping in anticipation of freezing drizzle followed by snow tonight and tomorrow morning. The plan is to not go out at all tomorrow.
I did manage to get our recycling to the local collection station this morning. After which I bought a terabyte hard drive to go along with the scanner we ordered. In addition to being handy network attached storage, this drive will hold one of at least two copies of every paper we scan. I suspect it will also be used as a backup drive for Sibylle’s computer and the computer we use to track our money.
Other than instaling the drive on our network, and initiating the transfer of 50GB of videos from and older drive, I did little today. Which makes it a pretty good Saturday I think.