Wow, what an action-packed weekend. Sleeping in both days was nice. On Saturday I started the day by replacing a controller board in our refrigerator in an effort to fix its weird behavior. Fifteen minutes of work and a $100 board from Amazon.com saved us over $150, which is the minimum a repairman would’ve charged us.
With that done, I got to work on installing an external siren for our alarm system so that the neighbors will be alerted should anyone be dumb enough to try to break into our house again. It took a bit longer than I expected because I hadn’t considered the need to fish the wire through a hole in the wall. When I worked on adding cables to our network cabinet I’d put in conduit to make future runs easier, but this conduit is not near enough to the alarm box to make it feasible to use it. Fortunately, this only added a half-hour to the project. Now the siren is tucked discreetly inside the house but packs a wallop of a blast when it sounds.
We left around 4 PM to check out some bedroom furniture being sold through Craigslist. We didn’t like what we saw so we politely declined but not before the trip cost us most of an hour. Kelly and I then worked to put down our new rug in our dining room, which involved wrestling furniture into and out of the room.
Once the rug was in place we got ready for the highlight of the day: a show by Southern Culture on the Skids (a.k.a. SCOTS) at the Berkeley Cafe. We had last seen the SCOTS at April’s Cuefest in downtown Raleigh and since that show I’d been looking forward to seeing them again. We had a blast at the show, though as Kelly told me later it seemed to be a bit “off” somehow. Mary Huff kept shooting Rick Miller concerned glances and Tim Barnes, their touring guitarist, lost power to his amp mid-song. SCOTS warned its fans that the winter weather shows turn out the weirdest, and so perhaps the weather gremlins were to blame.
As for weather, we had a few big, fluffy flakes Saturday but they didn’t last. While it was doing a little freezing rain on the way to the show, by the time the show was over the roads were clear and the sky was dry.
Today we slept in again and I made a pancake breakfast for the family. Then we puttered around the house until lunchtime, when I had my sandwich made by Travis, who has become quite the helper in the kitchen. He has named our kitchen the “Touchdown Turner Cafe,” and is happy to build anyone a sandwich made to order.
After an excellent lunch, Kelly took the kids out to the museum while I got the dog bathed. All in all that went pretty smoothly. He was clean and dry and in his bed, grooming himself, when he suddenly wandered up to me in my chair. He was smacking his lips repeatedly and I was about to laugh at him when I realized in actuality he was getting ready to puke. He didn’t make it out of the house in time but he did manage to miss our rug. I don’t know if was that he licked shampoo off his paws during grooming and that made him sick, or if he was sick before that. All I know is that at dinnertime tonight he seemed ready to eat (though I opted not to feed him tonight).
After the excitement with the dog, I did some more cleaning around the house, got a shower, and went with the family to my friend Guy’s house for a holiday party. We had fun and stayed until 7, at which time I took the kids home while Kelly attended a party in our neighborhood. I put the kids to bed on my own and here we are.
This week promises to be a bit busy for me as at work I’ve got a proof-of-concept to run. Then things pick up for me again after the holidays. There’s a lot going on with my job but I’m having a great time doing it. I was thinking yesterday about how much better things are than two years ago, when I got laid off and spent the holidays waiting for the phone to ring. Eventually, it did ring, and though the work wasn’t the most interesting it did tide me over until I found this job. I’m certainly glad to be where I am now, that’s for sure!