Daily Journal: Day 9 of 365

Today wasn’t too bad a day. Work in the morning was pretty routine. When the girlfriend and I got home for lunch, we found that there was a carpet cleaner’s van out front. And, sure enough, there were a bunch of hoses and stuff leading into our living room. So, did the carpet look “as good as new”? No, not really, but it did look an order of magnitude better than it ever has since I’ve lived here.

While we were talking with the carpet guys, the new landlord came by. He had already looked at the leaky garbage disposal and figured out that we needed a new one. He’d also already fixed the countertop which was separating from the cupboards beneath it. And he had purchased a deadbolt for the back door, although he had to do some drilling to get the thing installed. He said that the chimney was actually clean, but the flue was really hard to get open, so maybe we can start using the fireplace tomorrow. We also showed him the lighting problems with the outside lights, and he said he’d get an electrician out to look at it and see if we can get a switch or something.

As we were leaving, he also showed us where he’s going to put a section of fence to give us some privacy on our back patio. And he said that he’d repair the screens and get them re-hung. That means we’ll finally be able to open the windows without flies getting in and the cat getting out. That’ll be nice.

The afternoon at work was pretty good, too. I had enough driving that I stayed busy most of the shift, but not a lot of really difficult-to-find addresses. Between that and pulling up a few cars for customers, it kept me pretty active all shift. And that’s a good day…

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Daily Journal: Day 8 of 365

Today, I started baking Christmas cookies. The batch today only wound up being a couple of dozen, and the girlfriend is going to decorate them tomorrow. I’m not sure that I’ll make any more tomorrow, since the landlord’s carpet guy is supposed to be over during the day to fix the carpet, and who knows how long all that crap is going to take. I need to pick up some more stuff and take apart the TV system so he can do whatever he’s going to do to make the carpet “good as new”.

While driving back to the dealership with an older couple this afternoon, I was reminded again why I should never talk about religion. I really didn’t bring it up at all, and I tried to sort of change the subject, but it wound up with me being invited to their church and them telling me how wonderful it is and how there are all kinds of groups of people there. I really wanted to just tell them to shut up about it because I wasn’t interested in the least, but I didn’t think that would be all that appropriate a thing to say to customers. Oh well…

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Daily Journal: Day 7 of 365

Today was at least a borderline productive day, even though I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to. I woke up fairly early for a weekend and checked the e-mail and such this morning while having my morning coffee. After that, I started taking some boxes upstairs to clear out the living room so the new landlord’s carpet guy can do his magic on Tuesday. I still have a few things that need to go up, and I need to take apart the electronics and get those put away tomorrow, but it’s a lot better than it was.

I also cleaned out Kala’s litter box, which really needed it. Unfortunately, I think all the dust from the kitty litter may have aggravated the girlfriend’s allergies, but her sneezing and snuffling settled down a little once she medicated herself.

On the computer and blogging front, I downloaded a new free HTML editor to use for creating my 2010 New Year’s resolutions page. It’s called PageBreeze, and it seems to be a fairly decent piece of software, although it does seem to be pretty advertising heavy. The company has some commercial software and hosts a system for creating online forms and retrieving the data, so it makes sense that they’d have this kind of adware. It doesn’t detract from the use of the free software, though. I used it to create a page for the resolutions and to revise my homepage and a couple of other pages on the website, to make them look a little sharper, I think.

We made pork chops on the grill for dinner. We haven’t used the grill for a few months now, and the girlfriend was saying that maybe it was kind of a wasted purchase. We just need to find more friends and invite them over more often. Maybe once the repairs are done on the place, or whenever we find a new place to live, we’ll be able to become a bit more sociable…

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Another slow day at work...

Looks like it's going to be another slow day here at work, doing the driving. I had a bank run when I first got here, and that's been it so far. Don't have any runs scheduled for later or anything, so I guess it's pretty much just sit and try to kill time until I can call it a night.

The girlfriend and I headed home around the same time for lunch, even though we didn't carpool today. When I got home, Rick, the new landlord, was waiting outside. He came in and talked to us for a bit about what he plans to do around the place to try to keep us happy. It seems like he's in a little over his head, and even he commented that he should have talked to us before he purchased the property. He said he has a really good carpet guy who claims that he can make the crappy old carpet as good as new. I tried to make it as clear as possible that we really don't want to have a bunch of mildew and stuff growing under the carpet, and he said that he understood. He also told us he's going to try to get a bunch of the other things done, although he obviously can't just wave a magic wand and get everything done. The girlfriend and I are going to give him a couple of months, as we're still on a month-to-month lease. If it looks like things are getting better at a reasonable rate, we'll sign a new lease and stay on. Otherwise, we're probably going to start saving and try to find a better place to live...

Oops, I have a run to make, so off to it...

So, yesterday was pretty dull for the most part. The new landlord didn't show up by 3, and the girlfriend called and mentioned that we'd taken extra time off work to meet him and wondered where he was. He called back a bit later and said that his carpet guy had a busted radiator and couldn't show up until an hour or so later, but there was no way we could wait that long. So it's not a real auspicious start for the new management.

Once I got back to work, I had someone to drop off down in Lewisville, so it was pretty much right onto the road. I ended up picking up four other people total, so the night was pretty much continuous driving with very little time to get bored. I like it when it's like that. Two of the people I picked up were ladies who I'd driven home during the past week. One of them gave me my first tip. Not sure if I'm even supposed to take tips when offered, but I figured that she could probably afford the two bucks, considering that she's driving a new Cadillac Escalade, living in a McMansion out in Lake Dallas, and evidently hubby drives a newer-model Corvette. Nevertheless, she's a pretty nice lady, and I appreciate the gesture.

That same lady and I were talking about New Orleans both when I drove her home and when I picked her up. She's originally from New Orleans. Sounds like October will probably be the best time to visit down there, so I guess we'll have to schedule that for our fall road trip next year. I'm thinking that our spring road trip might have to be the journey up to the northern midwest. Or if we don't have all that much money or vacation time saved up, maybe we can see more of Arkansas and Tennessee, as well as visiting Kentucky and West Virginia. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I made enchiladas for dinner after work yesterday. Some were cheese and some were beef and cheese. I thought we had regular enchilada sauce in the cupboard, but we evidently used it already, so I wound up making a pretty basic cheese sauce to go on top. I didn't think they came out all that well, but the girlfriend said they tasted good, and that's most of the battle right there. We ate them while we watched the new episode of Mythbusters.

Well, it's about time to head back to work, so off I go...

White stuff on the ground...

We had snow on the ground this morning when we got up. I'm glad that it seems to have pretty much all melted off now. I really don't feel like driving around this area in the snow, trying to find people at addresses I've never been near before. Tomorrow is supposed to just be cloudy, but they're expecting more snow showers after midnight tomorrow night, and then more into Friday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will either not stick or will melt before my driving shift. Not dreaming of a white Christmas, damn it...

It was freezing cold in the file room today, and my hands are like little ice cubes. I took my lunch early to come home and wait for the new landlord, who is supposed to be here between 1 and 3 to inspect the place and look over all the repairs and such which we e-mailed him about on Monday. There was a van parked outside between the two apartment buildings when I got here, but I don't know if one of those is him or not. In any case, the girlfriend should be home for her lunch in half an hour or so, and then she can take over the waiting duties. It won't be a good sign if he just doesn't bother to show up at all. Might be getting near time to start getting ready to move out...

Another day, another dollar...

I had three pickups and a drop-off on a cold, wet day of driving at work. I was a bit annoyed this morning. We carpooled in today. Yesterday, I walked over to the reception area to pick up the girlfriend for lunch just a little earlier than I had planned, at about 2:20 instead of 2:30-2:45. She was kind of annoyed at that. So today I had a couple of things to do in the file room, so I was busy until about 2:30. And she calls me to find out where I'm at, because Kathy, the other receptionist, wants to leave early. If that kind of thing is going to happen regularly, I guess the whole carpooling thing might not be such a good idea. I guess we'll find out as time goes along, though.

Before leaving for work this morning, I got a reply back from the new landlord. He's going to come by tomorrow and take a look at all the things that we've told him we'd like fixed in the apartment. I doubt that everything will be taken care of, but maybe we'll at least get some of the major stuff done.

Got home from work and watched a hockey game while eating leftover curry for dinner. The game was the Blackhawks hosting the Blue Jackets, and it was a pretty good game. Went through overtime at 3-3, and it took them 11 rounds of a shootout to determine the winner. Wish I had the luck to see a game like that live. Now I'm watching How the Earth Was Made on the History Channel. I suppose I should probably head off to bed now. It's getting late, I'm getting tired, and I still have to do the dishes tomorrow morning so we have the house a little cleaner for the landlord...