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From the Maritimes to the Lakeshore....
Aug. 5th, 2019 09:22 pmI looked at my car's display this morning and went, huh. Where did all those miles come from? I didn't GO anywhere this weekend!
Once I thought about it, though, I realized, yeah. Did some things there, didn't I?
I tried my hand at a couple of household tasks on Friday. Early in the day, the relatively new freezer-on-the-bottom fridge left a puddle on the kitchen floor, as it seems to about once a month; we got it defrosted, but I hadn't had enough coffee just yet and it was slower going than I would have liked. Things stayed slow at the office- lots of vacations or at least long weekends going on, I guess- so I decided to take off a little early and visited a friend and father/FIL of friends for the first time at his home in North Tonawanda. His twin daughters have been longtime friends of mine from early LJ days, and they've both married and left the country- Erin to Sweden, Sara to Newfoundland. Vince made the overland trip Oop North a few weeks back, and asked if I'd be interested in him bringing back the books of short fiction that Sara's husband Jeff has been published in:
Of course, eh? (And he wouldn't take a loonie for either, since he didn't pay the kids for either of them.)
I hadn't seen Vince (or his daughters) since the funeral of their beloved Cathy early last summer, but we've connected through Facebook and we spent time talking about various adventures in life and cars. When he saw JARVIS at the curb, fresh off its $160US car wash, he brought out his mobile tester, confirmed that Herr Overpricederdealership had correctly diagnosed the code, but also confirmed that their pricing on both the repair and the part were ridiculously high. At last report, he'd found the main offending part, running over $600 at the dealer, for $75 on eBay.
I am blessed knowing the best people:)
----
The good feeling carried over into the bathroom.
Let me rephrase that. I'd had such a nice visit, I set out to correct another longstanding household defect once I got home. Heaven help me, I plumbed.
Our bathroom sink backs up a bit- recent treatments with various goops have helped- but the bigger problem was that the built-in stopper wasn't going up and down properly and you couldn't get the sink to fill. I got under there with a flashlight and confirmed Eleanor's diagnosis- that the mechanism connected to the gizmo above sink level wasn't actually moving the gezakis inside the pipe. Of course there's a Youtube video on how to remedy this- from a Canadian, yet- and somehow, I got the ratty old piece out, the replacement part secured for under ten bucks (five with a coupon), and the new one installed and working in five minutes out of the package. All without injury or adult supervision.
----
That-all accounted for maybe 30 of those 100 miles. (At least 10 of them were needless because Siri misdirected me to a random spot on Niagara Falls Boulevard rather than Vince's actual house until I corrected her.) A few came Saturday with routine stops at my office and Wegmans after we did some modest outdoor work, but the rest were saved for yesterday. Our usual dog park trip got postponed since our walking buds were volunteering at a road race downtown, so I accepted a different invite for the morning and took Pepper to her first trip (with me, anyway) to a beach.
Emerald Beach, it's called- no swimming, but quite the view:
A coworker sponsored a morning-lawn cleanup of the plastic detritis that rolls in with the tide and gets left from the walkers along the shore and on the path above. I've lived here on and off for going on 40 years and never knew this beach existed, but the directions to the Erie Basin Marina seemed clear enough- at least until I hit a detour caused by the same road race our friends were volunteering at. Several wrong turns later, I was much closer to the former industrial pillars of the city-
(okay, not exactly brimming with human activity these days;)
- and wound up going past this place for the first time ever:
That's the solar panel factory that Elon Musk has promised to take us into the 24th and a half century- except between tariffs and other economic issues, production and employment so far are way below projections. They may need to start making other electricky things here to justify the big chunk of the "Buffalo Billion" the state sunk into this brownfield.
When I stopped for that shot, I then saw this oddity across the street from it- just sitting there in a car park:
Who knows? Maybe it's bigger than it looks on the inside;)
Ultimately, Siri apologized for her misdirections of the previous experience, put me safely on the 190 and landed me not far behind City Hall where I should have just known to go in the first place. We quickly found the cleanup crew already in action-
(Michelle from my office in the middle, her older daughter and a friend either side)
- and Pepper quickly found the cache at the top of the site to keep us hydrated et al-
(I also like donuts.)
Within an hour, we'd collected quite a haul, being both cleaned and catalogued for an environmental project about the lakefront, but we also found far more than just things to pick up: monarchs were seen flying about-
- and led us, in quick succession, to the first monarch caterpillar I think I've ever seen:
I texted that one to Eleanor and immediately got back:
Oh. My. God. I'm drawing that!
Pepper was very good the whole time, but we were both fairly worn out by homecoming time. I got a bit more done in the yard, but ended with reading from my new finds and continuing another I've wanted to finish this summer.
----
Today was memorable and uneventful. The latter because I did NOT spend it arguing to a jury as originally scheduled; the former because today marks 25 years since we closed on the purchase of this home. That's way longer than I've lived in any one place, and we're closing in on how long my parents homesteaded in East Meadow. These other sights make things interesting, but there's no place I'd rather be.
Once I thought about it, though, I realized, yeah. Did some things there, didn't I?
I tried my hand at a couple of household tasks on Friday. Early in the day, the relatively new freezer-on-the-bottom fridge left a puddle on the kitchen floor, as it seems to about once a month; we got it defrosted, but I hadn't had enough coffee just yet and it was slower going than I would have liked. Things stayed slow at the office- lots of vacations or at least long weekends going on, I guess- so I decided to take off a little early and visited a friend and father/FIL of friends for the first time at his home in North Tonawanda. His twin daughters have been longtime friends of mine from early LJ days, and they've both married and left the country- Erin to Sweden, Sara to Newfoundland. Vince made the overland trip Oop North a few weeks back, and asked if I'd be interested in him bringing back the books of short fiction that Sara's husband Jeff has been published in:
Of course, eh? (And he wouldn't take a loonie for either, since he didn't pay the kids for either of them.)
I hadn't seen Vince (or his daughters) since the funeral of their beloved Cathy early last summer, but we've connected through Facebook and we spent time talking about various adventures in life and cars. When he saw JARVIS at the curb, fresh off its $160US car wash, he brought out his mobile tester, confirmed that Herr Overpricederdealership had correctly diagnosed the code, but also confirmed that their pricing on both the repair and the part were ridiculously high. At last report, he'd found the main offending part, running over $600 at the dealer, for $75 on eBay.
I am blessed knowing the best people:)
----
The good feeling carried over into the bathroom.
Let me rephrase that. I'd had such a nice visit, I set out to correct another longstanding household defect once I got home. Heaven help me, I plumbed.
Our bathroom sink backs up a bit- recent treatments with various goops have helped- but the bigger problem was that the built-in stopper wasn't going up and down properly and you couldn't get the sink to fill. I got under there with a flashlight and confirmed Eleanor's diagnosis- that the mechanism connected to the gizmo above sink level wasn't actually moving the gezakis inside the pipe. Of course there's a Youtube video on how to remedy this- from a Canadian, yet- and somehow, I got the ratty old piece out, the replacement part secured for under ten bucks (five with a coupon), and the new one installed and working in five minutes out of the package. All without injury or adult supervision.
----
That-all accounted for maybe 30 of those 100 miles. (At least 10 of them were needless because Siri misdirected me to a random spot on Niagara Falls Boulevard rather than Vince's actual house until I corrected her.) A few came Saturday with routine stops at my office and Wegmans after we did some modest outdoor work, but the rest were saved for yesterday. Our usual dog park trip got postponed since our walking buds were volunteering at a road race downtown, so I accepted a different invite for the morning and took Pepper to her first trip (with me, anyway) to a beach.
Emerald Beach, it's called- no swimming, but quite the view:
A coworker sponsored a morning-lawn cleanup of the plastic detritis that rolls in with the tide and gets left from the walkers along the shore and on the path above. I've lived here on and off for going on 40 years and never knew this beach existed, but the directions to the Erie Basin Marina seemed clear enough- at least until I hit a detour caused by the same road race our friends were volunteering at. Several wrong turns later, I was much closer to the former industrial pillars of the city-
(okay, not exactly brimming with human activity these days;)
- and wound up going past this place for the first time ever:
That's the solar panel factory that Elon Musk has promised to take us into the 24th and a half century- except between tariffs and other economic issues, production and employment so far are way below projections. They may need to start making other electricky things here to justify the big chunk of the "Buffalo Billion" the state sunk into this brownfield.
When I stopped for that shot, I then saw this oddity across the street from it- just sitting there in a car park:
Who knows? Maybe it's bigger than it looks on the inside;)
Ultimately, Siri apologized for her misdirections of the previous experience, put me safely on the 190 and landed me not far behind City Hall where I should have just known to go in the first place. We quickly found the cleanup crew already in action-
(Michelle from my office in the middle, her older daughter and a friend either side)
- and Pepper quickly found the cache at the top of the site to keep us hydrated et al-
(I also like donuts.)
Within an hour, we'd collected quite a haul, being both cleaned and catalogued for an environmental project about the lakefront, but we also found far more than just things to pick up: monarchs were seen flying about-
- and led us, in quick succession, to the first monarch caterpillar I think I've ever seen:
I texted that one to Eleanor and immediately got back:
Oh. My. God. I'm drawing that!
Pepper was very good the whole time, but we were both fairly worn out by homecoming time. I got a bit more done in the yard, but ended with reading from my new finds and continuing another I've wanted to finish this summer.
----
Today was memorable and uneventful. The latter because I did NOT spend it arguing to a jury as originally scheduled; the former because today marks 25 years since we closed on the purchase of this home. That's way longer than I've lived in any one place, and we're closing in on how long my parents homesteaded in East Meadow. These other sights make things interesting, but there's no place I'd rather be.