Homemaking: August 2004 Archives

We had our small claims court date today, and the crazy former landlady didn't even show up. We got a default judgement for $800 more than I would have been willing to settle for out of court, and once we get the judgement paperwork we can collect. In theory she could contest the judgement, but she'd have to show good cause for not being present.

Afterwards I dropped my car off at Albany Tire to get four new tires and an alignment, in preparation for the great drive. I took the wonderful new 72R bus, which cu tthe travel time from Albany to Alameda by three quarters, and no I am not kidding. It was magestic.

Now I'm going to piddle around in the Front Bedroom some until the tire shop calls to say my car is done.

I just spent a couple hours putting together paperwork and our case for our small claims case against our former landlady. Our court date is tomorrow, so this is sort of the result of procrastinating, but really, there's not much to do.

Now I have a huge pile of photocopied letters and the lease and all that, showing that we tried to get her to pay us and she refused, we gave her a lot of time to come up with money, and she still refused to pay us. She's made no attempt to pay before the court date, though of course she could show up on the day-of and offer to settle, and I'd take that. I just want my damned money at this point.

While I was out I went to the grovery store to get a few supplies for this week. We're trying to eat everything in the fridge before we leave Friday, so I didn't want to do a huge expedition, but we were out of milk and some other minor things. Noel left me this inexplicable supply list on the kitchen counter:

• cardamom
• honey
• listerine

Um, whatever, dear.

In theory, I am on my summer vacation. This time is supposed to help me recharge, revitalize myself for a very demanding school year of nonstop work.

So how have I been spending my time? When I'm not doing construction work on the house, I'm do web coding for myself and other people.

I decided to redesign the Casa Decrepit web page a month or so ago, because I wanted less crap on the main page. All fine and good, except that I didn't spend enough time on the planning, started out without a good idea of where I wanted to go, then got wrapped up in other stuff for a month or so. So it's been waiting for me to get to it for a while.

As I tottered around on the ladder this evening, dripping mud into my hair as I put the second coat on, I wondered what people who don't have a giant house full of major renovation projects do in the evening. Imagine being able to sit down and read a book all evening, if you wanted! Or having a conversation with your husband that did not include rough sketches of construction plans! How would you function?

Apparently, thinking such things tempts the gods or something, because I ran out of drywall mud again this eveing only ten minutes later. I swear those walls suck the stuff up; I've just polished off the third gallon, and I could easily use as much again on the rest of the room.

I figured I'd sit down and work on the site a bit, since I don't have anything worth taking pictures of. I did some planning and plotting, got the home page functional, and destroyed the archives as the first step to making them more pure, or something like that. I still have to fix two templates, but we're almost there, really.

Running out of mud also gave me time to practise the mandolin, which is coming along nicely. I'm developing callouses quickly, which helps a lot; I can practise for ten minutes instead of three or four. I'm having trouble getting the hang of strumming just the two strings I need to, but practise also seems to help, there. Still can't tune that sucker, though. I had this brilliant idea that I would de-tune it and tune it to practise, and the result is amusing, at least, if not very pleasant to listen to. I can get the higher strings to sound OK, but the G sounds godawful no matter what I do to it. I suppose I could track down Noel's electronic tuner, but that seems like cheating.

Now I'm tired and sleepy, and I'm going to have a nice hot shower and go read a book in bed. Quite a change from staying up until 1am flinging mud around.

My entire body hurts. I'm going to take a hot shower, then slip into my new pajamas and go to bed. Tomorrow's an early morning.

I have this to-do list that is three pages long, and I decided to settle down to tackling some of it today. But the day got off to a late start because my shoulder has been acting up, and it kept me awake between 5:00am and 6:30am, so I slept in.

Then I had a hard time motivating myself to get going. I was going to do five things, I thought:

1. Get fuel for car
2. Take three sacks of papers to the shredders
3. Get a new watchband
4. Drop off proof of service at courthouse
5. Take the dog to the vet for her leptosporosis shot

So I piled the dog in the car and set off. First I discovered that fueling station of choice was clogged with customers beyond value. I drove to the next one that had diesel, but they were charging way too much for it, so I decided to go up to the shredders' first.

I messed up the address of the shredders, but I did eventually find them, and that went smoothly. I got to watch my papers being shredded (along with my childhood diaries).

Then I managed to find a decent fueling station, but I realized as I was leaving that I'd forgotten the proof of service paper at home. So I set off for the vet clinic.

At this point, my shoulder felt the need to remind me that ibuprofen is good for six hours, not eight, and we'd all be happier if I took some more. So I got the dog through her shots and headed back home.

And when I looked through my 3-page to-do list, I realized that the shredding was the only thing on the list that I'd done. Damnation. At least the recent application of ibuprofen has taken effect, and I can go work on the taping and mudding.