May 01, 2006

Done been beat with a shovel, Part II

Yet another long, long weekend, eleven hours of it spent Saturday cleaning out the other side of the garage. And then packing it back up with all the stuff I couldn’t haul off or find a place to put. Or sell.

Our neighborhood was having our big annual yard sale, which I never participate in. Until Saturday, when I started dragging stuff out of the garage at 9, and people started pulling up, getting out, and wandering around my driveway. After telling the first few folks that I was only cleaning out, I figured I might as well start stacking stuff that I knew I didn’t want out closer to the sidewalk. Believe it or not, I managed to sell close to 50 bucks! I sold the big giant iron vise for $20, and an old wooden school desk for $15, and six Bear Bryant commemorative Coke bottles to my neighbor for 6 bucks, and then Catherine got in on the act and sold five of her old #3 sized soccer balls for $5. (She got to keep that for herself.)

Still, I wound up taking off two vanloads of stuff to the thrift store, and gave one more load to the thrift store truck that came through the neighborhood around 5:00 that evening. And managed to get another huge pile of garbage to take off to the dump next weekend.

As for the job itself, I uncovered all kinds of stuff I’d forgotten I had, and after cleaning off the countertop of mouse poop and pee, I actually had a place to put a lot of it. There’s still a bunch of stuff I need to put away, but at least the volume of crap has been reduced significantly. Not enough to get a car in there, but close. Of course, if I hadn’t have had to start hurriedly putting away things off the driveway when it started RAINING, I might could have gotten more put away. But I was doing all I could to keep the junk from becoming dampened. Oh, well--something to work on next weekend.

Of even greater significance was the fact that the garage door opener on that side FINALLY WORKS AGAIN! About five or six years ago, we had a lightning strike on the house that fried a bunch of stuff, notably one of the garage door openers. We bought a new one with the insurance money, but until this past weekend, that side of the garage was so full of junk, I couldn’t get enough room to work to change it out. Until Saturday. Or, I should say, Saturday night. After I’d gotten everything put back inside, there was still a nice seam of open floor I had left so that I could once and for all change out the silly thing and get it off my list. Despite the fact that I had eaten neither breakfast nor lunch, and despite the fact that supper was about to be a memory, I stayed out there with the near insane desire to get that final bit of work done.

The new unit was slightly different from the old one, but thankfully not in a way that mattered, which meant that all I really had to do was change out the motor unit, not redo everything. I struggled mightily to unbolt it from its mounting, swung it down to the floor, disconnected the rail, and nearly tore my finger off trying to get the old unit out of the way. That done, the new one was put into position, and I heaved and hoed and grunted and finally managed to reconnect the rail and the chain and the necessary bolts to that it was again one unit. Swung it back up into position, bolted it back to its moorings, reconnected the various control wires, plugged it up, and…

IT WORKS!

Yay me!

That was it for the night--I went in, ate a hot dog, then showered and went to bed.

Next morning, got up and put the lasagna on. We were having dinner at church, and then an early evening service, which meant after it was over, I could come home and have the rest of the afternoon to play.

But it was very IMPORTANT play. Fixing the garage door remote controls.

Our two old ones were just about dead, having been broken and taped together to the point that they were more tape than polystyrene. But the new opener came with new remotes, so I went back and forth on my stepladder reprogramming the various receivers and the buttons. SUCCESS! Each one can control both doors, so that was very nice. Next--the hateful keyless entry pad on the outside. This one has NEVER worked, mainly because the nice couple we bought the house from refused to give the code to us. I thought maybe I could get the thing to work, but alas, it was a button too far. There are, however, people who sell new button pads.

TO THE HOME DESPOT!

And while I was out, I decided I would take one of the remote controls with me in the van--it has its own HomeLink system in the overhead console, and I’d never been able to get it to work right. While I sat in the parking lot, I reprogrammed THOSE buttons, too, which hopefully meant that when I got home I would be very, VERY happy, with all THREE cars having operable remote controls. But first, the keypad had to be purchased. Time to make selection? About five minutes. Time to check out? About THIRTY minutes. One lane was stopped up with some kind of cash register outage. One was stopped up with someone buying an entire nursery of plants. Mine was stopped up with people who seemed intent on trying to scam the cashier out of a plastic swingset seat. ::sigh::

I have never seen anything that takes so long. (Until later on in the evening.)

Got home, and hooray! The van’s remote control WORKS! Very sweet. Next, the keypad, which for some unknown reason would not work on the old opener, but WOULD work on the newer one. Fine. At least one of them will open, and at least now I know I won’t get locked out of the house. Unless the power goes out.

Then, time to try to work on my stuff for work. Typed for a little while, made minor headway, then got stopped so we could go use our $25 Cracker Barrel gift certificate I’d been given. I have decided I’m not ever going back to Cracker Barrel to eat. We used to occasionally go there, but the service became so terrible and slow that it’s just not worth it. But, the lure of a gift certificate caused us to take the plunge once more. Got there, and although the parking lot was only half full, there was a forty-five minute wait. Fine.

Finally got called back and seated. Waitress began the evening by getting the drink order wrong, and it went downhill from there. The food came out in incomplete dribs and drabs, some of it was stone cold, none of it was particularly good, and it took nearly an HOUR to get it. By the time we finished, the place was closing up, and we’d gotten there around 7:30, and it WASN’T THAT BUSY.

To make it worse, when I went to pay the check, the cashier said it was $25 more than what it actually was. “No, the gift certificate is mine--I’m not buying it, I’m using it to pay for part of the food.”

“THAT NOT WHAT IT IS--your ticket be ringing up wrong.”

Well, fine. She called for a manager, who never showed up.

Even though she never would admit she had done it, she finally did take the gift certificate off of my bill and fixed it to where I was being charged what I was supposed to be charged.

“Fitty-fitty-figh.”

She stood there with her hand out. “Uh, okay--my gift certificate? Over on the counter behind you? I want to use that for $25 of my bill.”

“Hmph.”

Indeed.

Anyway, Trussville Cracker Barrel--you won’t have to worry about figuring out a check for me ever again.

Home, worked on my typing some more, sent it to myself, and went to bed.

And now? I have a BUNCH of junk to get written up, and to top it all off, my feet and ankles hurt. Feels like they’ve been snapped off and put on backwards. I think I might have overdone it this weekend.

Now then--to work.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at May 1, 2006 08:42 AM
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