–Took Grace shopping at Smart & Final.
–Learned that Papa Murphy’s Pizza in the Town Center closed today. Things are getting ugly.
Month: November 2022
–Set up stereo, without too much hassle. Grace noticed that the stand was loose in places, so I pounded it back into shape.
–Took a shower and shave. New razor from Charcoal Goods was doing really nicely, and then BOOM a huge cut on my upper lip, for no discernible reason. I do not understand it.
–Got some drywall anchors at Home Depot and hung Grace’s towel rack.
–Papa Murphy’s pizza for dinner using Mark Solich’s $50 gift card. HUGE medium pepperoni/mushroom for $6.99. I’ll look again, but I really don’t think this price is on their menu. Maybe I’m special.
–Went to Barnes & Noble for the latest Reacher and Best American Mystery books.
–Moved things around and around in the garage; got nowhere.
–Installed the new TV stand that came today. Kind of a pain, but it seems to work.
–Burger King for lunch, Bel Air for frozen dinners.
–Put folding handlebars on bikes. Seems to work great (haven’t ridden yet. Really opens up that side of the garage.
–Had a nice pseudo-Thanksgiving dinner: ham, yams, cranberry jelly, crescent rolls. Good stuff.
–Went to Lowe’s and got a couple of Kwikset door handles for the patios. Front one went on fine. Back one is a nightmare. Handle is farther back from door edge, so requires longer hardware. I had to leave the original spindle on. Gate is also far from fence, so previous owner (at our request) had kluged up a spacer to make it fit. Spacer is rotten and (perhaps necessarily because of a step in the fence) in two pieces, so I made my own. Too tired to try and fit it up tonight.
–Went to Sprouts for a pumpkin pie (reddit/sacramento recommendation).
–Moved stuff in the garage again.
–Went to Home Depot for door handle (nope) and coax face plate (nope).
–Took a shower and shave.
–Moved stuff around in the garage. Thinking about not using a table for grinder and buffer; they seem to work fine standing free on the bench.
–Papa Murphy’s for dinner.
–Went to Home Depot to look at faucets and door locks.
–Frozen dinners.
–Went to Five Guys for lunch (yum) then Smart & Final for fruit.
–Played with knives; actually revived (centered) the Touch.
–Frozen for dinner.
–Put some bins in the attic; unpacked all bins in the kitchen. Tried to improve the garage a bit, without much success.
–Watched Bullet Train. Entertaining, but too fast/complex for me.
–Continued unpacking. Set up the two glass-front bookcases by the fireplace.
–Walked to Bel Air for frozen dinners and to deposit the house sale check and a check for $50k written to myself rom Chase, preparatory to dropping Chase to the minimum (still need it for Zelle, maybe wires, etc.).
–Escrow closed this morning around 11. Yay! Picked up a check at American Title.
–Puttered around, put a couple of bird feeders out.
–Went to REI to pick up wall-mount bike holders. Installed later in the afternoon. I’m drained, but they’re not going anywhere. They don’t leave as much room as I’d hoped. This will improve with folding handlebars, but then it turns out that the sawhorse I was going to remount buffer and belt grinder on is too wide at the bottom. Crap! Nice to get the bikes on the wall, but I’ll have to get creative before I can do any polishing.
–Went to Bel Air for frozen dinners, cream, dessert.
–Heard from Mark Solich that the final walk-through was successful.
–Lunch at Panera (+ bagels and croissants).
–Picked up some Jack’s for dinner.
–Replaced four bathroom faucet stems. Utterly trivial. Wish the one I demolished had been so easy. Still have near-zero water pressure in my left sink.
–McDonald’s for lunch; Papa Murphy’s for dinner.
–Unpacked all day. Can’t find my knives that were on racks in the kitchen. Discovered the attic is clean and has a huge amount of storage space–floor and shelves. Could be a godsend, depending on what I can haul up there.
–Jack’s take-out for dinner.
–Went to Pause Coffee on Madison for breakfast–really nice place, with Ettore pastries even.
–The real challenge begins tomorrow.
–Went to Tunnel Hill for bagels and coffee. Hauler came over with a huge loader and two buddies. They tossed (literally) everything in and charged their minimum: $675. Oh well, couldn’t have done it myself.
–Comcast cable guy (another Russian) came over early and set things up. There were four cables under the TV nook: a white one that had been cut and shoved back in, two black ones with coax connectors, and one black one with the connector cut off. The last one turned out to be Comcast. The cable guy crimped a connector onto it, did some magic in our box on the side of the house and the “community” box across the alley and Voila! Internet seems faster than at Tunnel Hill.
–Took a shower and shave.
–Moving day. David and Joe from A Couple Great Movers (and good weather) got the furniture over with only a dropped file cabinet for $460. Now that everything is here, I believe unpacking will take forever.
–Went to Starbucks for wifi. That place, once a haven for me, has lost it. Undrinkable Americano, and the cream/sugar bar is empty: you have to ask for x packets of sugar, and they pour some cream (milk?) from a jug into a paper cup. Just awful.
–Bone tired. Took a load over; set up the house for mover access. Brought bikes over. Got an estimate of $500 for cleaning Tunnel Hill. Junk guy is coming over Thursday to haul stuff. Notary is coming over Thursday for signing papers. Got a chance to say farewell to Rowena the mail carrier. Lunch at Beach Hut Deli. Dinner disaster: Spilled Marie fetuccini out of the microwave and some dribbled inside the oven door, untouchable without disassembly. Crap. Ate a couple of Grace’s frozen burritos for dinner.
–Took a couple of trips over to DVL. Still seems like there’s a never-ending supply of things that need to be moved.
–Papa Murphy’s pizza for dinner, though not the one I (thought I) ordered.
–Took a load over to DVL.
–Bought, de-restrictored, and installed square “rain” shower head. Works nice. Noted that shower had been dripping since yesterday, as I failed to whang hard enough on the handles when turning them off. First turn of Mustang key (so to speak) went “click;” second turn started it up. Put it on the battery tender on return from Home Depot.
–Took a light load over to 1956 DVL. Turned on heat for a later shower.
–Marie for dinner.
–Talked to mark about the Tunnel Hill house like ours that came up yesterday at $599,000. He said he’s never seen buyers back out after all contingencies were closed, but he’s also never seen this big a price difference between two highly similar houses. He also said if we were the buyers and this came up, he would feel bound to inform us of it. There are barriers if our buyers want to switch (loan, second floor leak on the twin house, no solar pool heat, someone potentially snapping it up quick, etc. BUT there’s nothing stopping them from trying to negotiate us down to $650,000 (say), which would be very annoying.
–Boboli for dinner.
–Played with knives.
–Took a load to Goodwill. They didn’t take the low folding chairs (no furniture) or Grace’s lifejacket. They did take a handful of LPs.
–New Shirogorov/Sinkevich came in. Too small.
–Shirogorov/Martin Overkill in titanium came in. Sweet!
–Marie for dinner. Not bad.
–Took espresso machines and stereo stuff over to 1956 DVL. Tried again to fix the faucet. Failed.
–Talked to Geronimo movers; will move on the 9th.
–Took a load over to 1956 DVL. Took a second trip over to try and fix leaking faucet in my bathroom. Spent a LONG time without success. Totally chewed up one stem getting it out because the nut is a non-standard size; real plumbers use pliers or adjustable wrenches, whereas I tried to use a sized wrench, which rounded the nut and forced me to use channel-locks to remove it. Found exact matching stems at Home Depot, but then had issues with (pick one) the valve seat, the tightening nut, and/or turning the faucet all the way on or off before tightening. Incredibly frustrating. Will likely call Ross Broadley and have him replace all bathroom faucets with current cartridge technology.