Day 1633 Nuts & Bolts

First order of business – I have got to fix the comments. I’ll turn off moderation unless abuse starts. All the regulars here play nice, it’s the odd rogue or spammer that will be a pain in the ass.

Second order of bidness – I need to figure out how to shut off these damn emails that get sent every time someone’s finger twitches over the comment button. Annoying! Although it looks like once I approve a comment from someone they need no further approvals? Maybe? I need to check this out at home because Big Brother here kinda hamstrings the controls on the site a wee bit.

Third order of bidness – If you really feel compelled to submit pictures relevant to the now oft misread b-i-k-i-n-i f-o-o-l site, feel free to send them to my regular email address (bikenbrian at the y@hoo d0t c0m) and I’ll figger out how to add ‘em to the side bar. Just remember – this isn’t necessarily a ‘family’ rated blog, but I would like to maintain a certain modicum of decorum. So shots swiped from the Wicked Weasels bikini competition (hint, hint) might be nice, but probably wouldn’t get any air time. Think of it this way – if it was you in the picture, would YOU be comfortable hanging it out there? (Some of those girls are comfy hanging a whole lot out there – and some shouldn’t be!) Although pictures of bikini clad folks ON bikes might be deemed acceptable for display “just because”.

Fourth order – I gotta remember to click the button to safely remove my thumb drive in the future. We have a scanner here at work that will scan docs for you and save them to a thumb drive, email them, send them to a printer – pretty much whatever you’d like to do. Except it doesn’t have a clicky thing to close out your thumb drive. I think I just blew away what few journal (blog) entries I had recovered. Now? I have one entry in my archives. This one. Pretty sweet, huh? So remember, practice safe thumb drive use and protect yourself from unexpected insertions & removals. Heh.

On to new business. The Bob is moved. Done – just like that. The social worker at the hospital received our message over the weekend, got things moving Monday morning and the transport happened a little after noon. Cindy & the boys are taking a bunch of stuff over to his new place today. It’s a shared room, but at least he has the window seat. He’ll have room for some pictures, a dresser & closet, his very own walker (that he doesn’t seem to need at the moment) and gobs of help. He seemed really alert and in the moment yesterday, but was a little worn out from moving. At least now he’s free to get up and move around freely. At the hospital he was kept belted into a chair so he wouldn’t wander. It’s a really busy place and he’d just get run over. At his new digs (need to come up with an alias for it), the dementia unit takes the entire 5^th floor so he’s free to roam where ever he likes on the floor. The elevators require keys for use. That’s enough to prevent jailbreaks.

Roxie – thanks! But that picture of our backyard I posted the other day is actually a ‘before’ shot. Several things have happened since then that have been kinda sorta finished. The pond has moved and the entire left side of the back of the house (where the pond was) is now porch. Needs painting inside & out, but that won’t happen till April at the earliest. I probably have some shots of the porch progress, but they’re gonna include snow. (Shocking, I know!) I might stick a few up here for posterity’s sake, but it IS still a work in progress. Really need to see if I have any newer shots from the same vantage point. If not, maybe this weekend. With sunsets here still coming at 5:30 or so, it’s hard to do anything outdoors after work. Till April. I can’t wait!

Hmmm. Update on The Bob from this morning. Seems it was a little rough getting going this morning. New routine and all. His nurse (Cynthia – what a coincidence!) eventually managed to get him dressed and ready for the day. They assured Cindy that he’d get the hang of things in a couple of weeks. One thing he got the hang of in the hospital – Depends. Eeewwweee. I hope I never get to witness that particular skill.

60 degrees forecast for here tomorrow!! That coupled with some rain might be enough to get rid of serious amounts of snow. It might even be nice enough to consider doing lunch off site someplace. Our standards here, given the time of year, are somewhat lower than other portions of the country. Heck, you get a stray beam of sunshine in January, people are stripping down laying in front of their windows at home, doing all they can to suck up some real light.

We’re getting a new sign mounted on our building today. We’re located several hundred feet in off the main road, and the ‘front’ of our building doesn’t even face the road. We’re actually in a reclaimed, renovated warehouse that was at one time part of Kodak’s rendering facility. (That’s where the leftover bones & stuff would come in to be boiled down to render out the stuff that was later converted to film base.) Anyhow. Northeast corner of our building. New sign. Mounted in the concrete wall. Know what that means? Lots of hammer drill work. It’s all I’ve heard for the last 3 hours. I hope those guys are taking turns or their crowns & fillings are going to fall right out. I think it’s making mine loose. I’m wondering just how big this flippin sign is?

Al Anon meeting tonight. It’s odd, for the first time in a while I actually don’t feel a burning need to go, like the hour and a half of peace and serenity is necessary for survival. I’ll go, there’s no reason not to. But at least I won’t be going out of desperation.

Now it’s after the meeting. I need to get my butt to bed, but I did find a more recent shot. This was taken 2 months ago, from nearly the same perspective as the last shot:

Porch progress, 12/6/08

Difference being that now the peak is glazed, screens are installed, fans are mounted & wired, step are there and doors are in.  Basically, it’s done except for the painting and landscaping.  Off the left edge of the picture, we have a few dozen plants heeled in, some that we moved & saved, a bunch we got at a local nursery when they were dumping their inventory for the winter.  Some of those weren’t the nicest looking, but we’re comfortable pruning & nurturing, feeding & weeding.  By the end of summer it’ll look like it’ been there forever.

Spin in the morning.  I really need to get to bed.  Laters . . .