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Since it became incredibly hot last night, I was commanded to get a ceiling fan, and a box fan for the window. I asked if it would be more practical to get an air conditioner, but was shot down. I have a feeling that decision will be revised once August gets here.

It took Scott and I about an hour and a half to install the ceiling fan. The remote mechanism has a short in it, so once we got it all assembled and tested it… we found the light barely goes on and the fan takes forever to start up.

A few minutes later, and we have a functional, if not wobbly fan in place. We’ll fix it next weekend or so.

Never buy a house on a 3-day weekend.

We came home from work Tuesday to find that we had no water and no electricity. Not as much as a post-it on the door to say “hey, you needed to call already”. We ended up having to stay out at our friends’ house, as they graciously put us up for the night. Even though the utility co was closed for the entirety of the 3-day weekend, they still felt that it would be fine to turn everything off with no notice.

We called after-hours help, and they said there was nothing to do. Then they talked to Nik. Then they offered to come out if we paid them $125 in cash. Since I will not be shaken down by some two-bit wrench turner so that was not an option. It’s back on now, and we found that as unwilling to help as the utility was, Northwest Natural was incredibly helpful. They even sent a tech out at 8:30pm to take a peek at everything and show us how everything works. For no charge.

Turned in the down payment check today. We get keys tomorrow morning. Moving on Saturday.

This weekend is going to be the easiest move of all, because we gave so much to goodwill, etc. My estimates are that it will take about an hour to load the truck, 12 minutes to drive to the house, and about an hour to unload.

Updates will be forthcoming.

If cat boxes smelled like fruit roll ups.

but they don’t. they really, really don’t.
way to go kitties.

I came home from work tonight and caught part of Jeopardy. Things have changed on the show quite a bit, and not in a good way. First off, they now have an orchestral version of the iconic theme, and tonight they had a special category that was nothing but a sell-out. An entire column of questions about “Safe Driving Brought to you by Ford and the Virtrax Virtual Driving Simulator”.

All the questions were videos showing off their system while gluing giant Ford logos to the screen. Blech!

VH1 Classic is doing an 80s marathon. There’s a lot of good music from the 80s, but there’s also a ton of crap.

Looks like it’s going to be a low key weekend though. We are going to organize stuff and get ready to have a garage sale and go to Salem. I was smart and mowed the lawn yesterday after work.

and of course bbq.

if you are curious, in Timbuk 3′s song Future’s so Bright (gotta wear shades) they say $50,000 a year will buy a lot of beer. Well, adjusted for inflation that’s around $104,000 these days.

The same week that I get a Wii, there’s all kinds of crazy neat stuff on the Tivo. Firstly, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. Nik got terrified of the aliens episode, which was funny (to me).

Also very worthwhile is America: The Story of US on the History Channel.  They don’t gloss over the less sparkly portions of the history and tell it a little more honestly.

Also, bananas are on sale at Albertsons.

I found a frog out in the yard. It was a Pacific Tree Frog. Cute little green guy. Since Nik is sick, I brought him in for her to play with. Then, I let him go back into the yard and eat some of the grubs.

After going through the garden and doing a bunch of weeding, it appears I have no choice but to do a raised bed with a border below. Too many Japanese beetles and grubs.

So I guess today is the 40th Earth Day.

I am celebrating in my own way. I planted all my peat pellets into bigger pots, which are completely biodegradable and I can plant them directly in a few weeks. Also, if I do end up driving today, it will only be because it’s really needed.

So Verizon finally rolled out the 5.0 software for the Blackberry Tour, f0r which we have been waiting quite some time.  I installed it, and it turned my phone into an electric paperweight.

More than 2 hours later, I finally fixed it. Had to restore it from the very beginning, and lost most of my data that was on it. Not a great start to the day.