My Day Off On A Ladder

Putting In Brighter Bulbs...


A couple of things finally hit me yesterday--a Saturday--when many if not MOST working people were taking a day off from their jobs.

I personally didn't have the opportunity to enjoy any such luxury because I still have about half of my possessions sitting in boxes in my office and garage, and there's a nearly infinite number of other things needing doing around here as we settle into our new home in Oklahoma and they (the things needing doing) are not going to get done all by themselves.

My first realization was this:

WE HAVE FOUR TOILETS IN THIS HOUSE.

Seriously, I had been confused for a while because the real estate ad said "three bathrooms"...but when the dust settled and I walked around and counted toilets...each of the three bedrooms had dedicated bathrooms, and then there's a half bath off of the kitchen in the hallway leading to the garage so the actual total is FOUR toilets.

FOUR TOILETS.

After living for five years in a house with only a full bath and one half, it's sort of interesting being able to just turn around, take a few steps, and take care of business without having to plan the event and have a map and make a trip across the property to accommodate my physical needs.

And Pat's already begun the process of buying a new assortment of lovely decorative toilet brushes with integral holding containers...

...so each toilet has it's own toothbrush brush residing nearby for cleaning purposes.

The next revelation came in regard to the CEILING HEIGHT in this house...or more specifically... the realities of accessing the ceilings most 9' and some 10' and 12' high in different spaces and...

all having things like ceiling fans and recessed can lights which will need maintenance in the coming weeks and  months.

The project at hand yesterday was to replace all of the 65 watt bulbs in the ceiling can lights in the living room, kitchen, and master bathroom with higher wattage bulbs and install dimmer switches.

Problem was, I had a 20' extension ladder only good for leaning up against stuff while climbing, and then I had a little 5' A-frame step ladder which was just asking me to climb it to it's top so I could fall off and break my neck or leg.

So of course a trip to Home Depot was in order, and then after returning home I had to haul my butt up and down my new 8' step ladder about fifteen or twenty times, and then I got to wander out to the breaker panel out in the garage and find out that things were actually pretty well labeled so I could turn off the electrical power to various circuits in order to install dimmers...

and at the end of the day I was tired but had avoided electrocution.

All and all a good productive day I'd say...and now it's time to plan the next Home Depot trip for Sunday, and try to spend the day with my feet on the ground instead of up on a ladder rung if possible.

Hope you all have a LOVELY  SUNDAY...Y'all...  

Spring Forward...Fall Off Back

There's A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On...


As most of the people that know me in real life know, as a rule I generally try to stay off of the TV News and out of mention in the Newspapers--local and national--because I'm not good enough at anything in particular to warrant glowing, positive mention on video or in writing.

This means if you see a photo or video of me on the 6 PM TV news or I am written about by the press, generally something bad has happened.

That said, although I personally didn't make the news or the news papers in the past couple of days, since we relocated cross country this week the area here in and around TULSA, OKLAHOMA certainly did get the Headlines by having a 4.7 earthquake (third strongest on record) at around 2 AM Saturday morning...

...followed more than 70 aftershocks afterwards...

and then...

as a grand finale...

 at a little after 11 PM last night while I was soaking in my new giant bathtub after a day spent opening boxes and looking for my computer stuff...

WE HAD A RECORD, NUMBER ONE OF RECORDED HISTORY, 5.6 EARTHQUAKE WHICH ALMOST SLOSHED THE WATER OUT OF MY BATH TUB.

The good news is that the way the quake moved there was little or no damage except at the epicenter about 70 miles to our southwest (and possibly some new cracks in the corners of our sheetrock walls), but the bad news is that little Missy the Turbo Pup and Pat are looking at me wondering what the heckI have gotten them into.

I did a little digging around in the online scientific literature on quakes and found that the state of Oklahoma is actually very seismically active--averaging about 500 minor quakes a year--but the geological structure is very different from places like California and the New Madrid fault line in Illinois.

The quakes we have here are compression/extension and slip fault line quakes which happen more frequently but possess much less energy that the ones which occur in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

So I guess that in the end we'll go back to worrying about getting blown away and having our roof torn off by tornadoes rather than having our roof fall in on us from a quake.

Time to get back to unloading boxes I guess.

Regards Y'all... 

We Made It!!!

I Just Hope All Of Our Stuff Does...


Yesterday at about 2:30 PM we arrived at our new home here in the eastern suburbs of Tulsa. 

It's considered Broken Arrow as far as the school system is concerned (which is a good thing), but technically it's outside the Broken Arrow city limits as well as the Tulsa city limits but for some reason the US Postmaster assigned our neighborhood "Tulsa" when the dust settled.

So any way, Pat and little Missy the Turbo Pup got to see where they were going to be living for the first time and I got to finally spend a couple of extra hours in the building and I have to tell you we REALLY have a nice home in a nice neighborhood.

The best part of the deal for me is that we will live only 15 minutes from my office and about 20 minutes from the Tulsa airport so my life will be low stress and continue on the path of maximizing my pleasure and limiting the crap like traffic I put up with in Atlanta for 27 years.

Of course Pat will continue to telecommute from her new home office using the Internet so she will be working in her pajamas every day if she wants to, and the Turbo Pup will be in charge of giving everyone a good barking when needed to get things under control in the new neighborhood.

(As an interesting side note, our lot backs up onto a giant undeveloped piece of property and while looking over the fence yesterday I noticed what appeared to be giant hoof prints in the mud and several artifacts which appeared to be "Cow Pies" laying around on the ground.  If in fact we have livestock living on the other side of our rear fence it's going to be interesting to see how our little 12 pound Turbo Pup reacts when she sees an animal weighing 1000 pounds.)

The "moving crew" is supposed to show up about 9:00 AM, so I guess I better finish doing my news reading and get some more shut eye.

Y'all have a LOVELY Friday, and wish us luck dragging everything off of the Tractor Trailer...

We're Having A Carport Sale...

As If I Already Didn't Have Enough Stuff To Do...


So last night we took the neighbors--Danny and Sheila--out to dinner to thank them for their good company in the past 4-1/2 years and for the stuff they are going to do for us in the future like keeping the homeless "occupy Knoxville" crowd from moving into our vacant house before we can rent the place later this winter.

Earlier I drove around West Knox picking up some last minute things at Lowe's and Home Depot before cutting the FINAL BOARDS and hanging the NEW DART BOARD down in the Wee Pub.

That's right  Ladies and Gentlemen...all that's left to do in my basement besides moving everything onto a truck on it's way to Tulsa, Oklahoma is a little paint and stain.

It's really sort of sad because I put so much attention and effort into the design and details and I'll hardly have more than a couple of nights to enjoy the finished room before I leave the state pretty much forever.

Now I have to go back down in the basement and crack open some paint cans and swab some paint on a few things, and push some stuff around toward the Carport door in anticipation of having a "yard sale" in my carport from 8 AM to 2 PM today.  We have a whole bunch of stuff we don't want to pay to move again, and it's either going to sell on Saturday else go to Goodwill/Habitat for Humanity on Monday.

That said...Regards Y'all...hope you have a LOVELY weekend..

I probably won't but I'll try my best any way.

Changing Home Utility Services

Lord...Give Me The Strength To Not Get In The Car And Go Kill A "Customer Service" Idiot


I've spent a couple of hours over the past few days fiddling around on various monopoly utility service websites trying to get the power and gas and cable TV turned on out in Tulsa next week.

I finally gave up and resorted to getting on the telephone today, since I had to call the City of Tulsa any way for trash and water service.  Only the government would have a website telling you what they can do for you but making you call them to sign up.

The other feckless utilities are all having some problem because the previous resident of our house--the builder and developer of the sub division--just moved out and their computers haven't caught up with the process.

So any way...I just got off of the phone with Cox Communications for the third time in five minutes and I'm not feeling any better about them than I do about Comcast for Cable and Internet service.

Either I can't speak clearly else the "customer service" representative can't hear and understand my Alabama/Georgia/Florida/Tennessee Southern Redneck Accent--or AGFTSR Accent for short...

So now it's time to call the Electric company and the Gas Company and finally the Government, so you will excuse me while my eyeballs roll further back into their sockets and my ever greying, ever balding head starts spinning at a speed approaching orbital rotational velocity.

AhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHH...