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Found It

Thursday is grocery shopping day for us. As usual we take the Mini so that no one has to ride home with any groceries on their lap

On the way to Fred Meyer she went to put some hand cream on and realized her small tube of the stuff wasn’t in the the bag. We spent the next few minutes guessing as to where the tube of hand cream might be. Back home on her desk? In the smaller alternate yellow knapsack? Maybe it was in dedicated Geocaching knapsack?

When we got back home, she started all the unpacking and I headed back out in the Miata to fill up the car with gas. As I backed out of the garage I head a cracking noise. I looked back and saw several dead leaves had blown into the garage and figured they were the source of the noise.

When I returned and opened the garage door I noticed something else on the garage floor along with the leaves that I didn’t notice before. So I stopped the Miata and got out to see what it was.

I found the hand cream.

While standing around in garage getting ready to go grocery shopping this morning Donna’s knapsack had slid off the the trunk of the Miata onto the floor. She picked it up and we got in the Mini to head to Fred Meyer. The tube must have popped out and slid under the Miata where I ran over it as I went back out.

Just in Time

On the afternoon of the 28th of June in the middle of the afternoon our home A/C just quit. The outside condenser fan was still spinning, but the blower motor was as quiet as a church mouse. I checked for tripped breakers and found none. I flipped the furnace breaker on then off with not luck. On the afternoon of the 3rd of August it was finally repaired.

June 28 June 29 June 30 July 1 July 2 July 3
103° 100° 94° 93° 94° 96°
July 4 July 5 July 6 July 7 July 8 July 9 July 10
91° 94° 96° 96° 91° 98° 99°
July 11 July 12 July 13 July 14 July 15 July 16 July 17
96° 96° 94° 93° 90° 86° 90°
July 18 July 19 July 20 July 21 July 22 July 23 July 24
94° 92° 91° 86° 89° 91° 92°
July 25 July 26 July 27 July 28 July 29 July 30 July 31
95° 94° 70° 88° 95° 86° 87°
August 1 August 2 August 3
91° 93° 92°

I searched the net for some local heating and air conditioning contractors with some decent ratings, there were only a couple that stood out. I called Contractor #1 and was told they were were scheduling 2 weeks out, I said thanks, but no thanks. Second place said they could be here in a week, I took it.

Contractor #2 arrived and troubleshot it down to a bad controller board. Right there on the back of the board was a large blackened spot. They had to order one and said it would take a week for the new one to arrive. Eight days later the same tech arrived with the new board. After he installed it and came upstairs to turn the unit back on the result was the same as when it quit in the first place, no blower running. I followed him back downstairs and before we even got to the furnace we could smell toasted electronics. Yep, the board was burnt in the same spot.

He called his boss and was talked through finding out what was causing the problem. Turns out that the blower motor was shorted to ground and all that current made it’s way right through that spot on the control board. The tech left us with what his boss told him, they weren’t sure whether they could warranty the board, they would have to eat the cost or it would be on us. We were going to need to have a new board and a motor to get back up and running. We should get a call back from the boss on what was what in a few days.

After a week of radio silence I decided to call them up. No one answered the phone and the lead in to leaving a message didn’t sound promising. It went a little like, “Due to a lack of technicians we will only be servicing our existing customers and will no longer be taking new customers. If you are an existing customer leave your name and phone number and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” When we hadn’t heard back by the following day I called again and left name and number. I then took a chance and called the tech direct (I had his number because he called me before showing up the first time.) He didn’t return my call.

The next day, we tried a second tack, Donna emailed their contact number with our displeasure at the lack of communications. Within the hour the tech called us back. His sole statement was that the boss is handling it and we should hear back from him in a day or two. The next day I called the main number again and left one more message, “Sorry about your technician troubles, but thanks for nothing, we are going to go with another contractor. Don’t contact us again.”

So, I called back contractor #1 and got on their 2 week waiting list. Sure enough 2 weeks to the date, a technician arrives outside our door. I gave him the rundown on what had transpired so far and he said, I’ll look into everything to make sure the original diagnosis from Contractor #2 was correct. After about 45 minutes he told us that sure enough that was our problem. He thought that for sure we could warranty out the burnt board and all we would need is a new blower motor.

Four days later he was back with a new board and motor. They did get the board under warranty, so all it would cost us was the service call fee, the motor and labor for the installation.

A little over five weeks later and five hundred dollars poorer, we are once again enjoying a cool house.

430,000 Acres of Scorched Earth

The country’s biggest wildfire (so far) this year has burned nearly 430,000 acres of eastern Oregon. Fortunately for us it started about 40 miles north and east of us and because of the prevailing winds that generally blow in those same cardinal ordinates, we were never in any danger from the fire.

Our air has been smoke filled, mostly not from the Bootleg fire, but from others in northern California. Last summer I took a picture of the smoke filled skies in the direction of Mt. Shasta (25 miles south and west of us) and commented that the mountain was invisible because of the smoke. I thought that it was unusual, but apparently it is an every summer occurrence during our 5th season here in Oregon, Fire Season.

This morning on the way to our weekly shopping trip to Fred Meyer the Ladybug turned over 1/10 the number of those scorched acres…43,000 miles.

Adventures in Online Ordering

On the afternoon of June 15th I ordered a couple items from Home Depot online for our continuing effort to put our stamp on the new House of Bogardi. One item was a matching bathroom mirror for the vanity we bought at the store because they didn’t have one there. The other item was a small flush mount LED light to put in the hallway to replace the ugly contractor grade item that hung from the ceiling there.

The mirror shipped on the 17th with an expected delivery date of the 21st, but there was a late truck so it was delivered a couple days late. No big deal.

The light was a different story. It was shipped the day after ordering it on the 16th with an expected delivery date of the 19th. It left Arcadia, CA (basically LA) on the 17th and then it fell into black hole.

JUN 16
11:21 PM
Arrived At FedEx Location ARCADIA, CA
JUN 17
10:35 PM
Left FedEx Origin Facility ARCADIA, CA
JUN 18
10:46 AM
In Transit MT SHASTA, CA
JUN 19
8:00 AM
In Transit TROUTDALE, OR
JUN 20
8:01 PM
In Transit TROUTDALE, OR
JUN 21
8:02 PM
In Transit TROUTDALE, OR
JUN 22
8:03 AM
In Transit TROUTDALE, OR
JUN 22
8:03 PM
In Transit TROUTDALE, OR
JUN 23
8:03 AM
In Transit TROUTDALE, OR

On Monday the 21st when I checked the status there was a note that said if there is no update after 3 days to contact Home Depot. So on the morning of Thursday the 24th I did just that and gave them a call. After only a couple minute wait I was connected to a very helpful Customer Service Rep. When I explained the situation, she thought the same thing I did, FedEx lost the package. She gave me two choices, she could open a ticket with FedEx or she could cancel the order and refund my money.

I said, “I’ll take the refund and probably just reorder the light.” She said, “Hold on, I’ll see if they are still in stock.” She said they are available and we proceeded to order a replacement. As she was telling me that I should get a confirmation email shortly, up popped the email. I thanked her and we hung up. Later that evening the new light shipped with an expected delivery date of the 30th.

This afternoon around 2:00 I heard a truck stop out front, we weren’t expecting anything, so I figured it must be for a neighbor, until the door bell ranWhe I opened the door a FedEx truck was just driving off. That’s right, sitting on the welcome mat was a small white box that could only be one thing, a small flush mount LED light.

Because my friendly Home Depot CSR already has the light marked as returned in their system, so she could refund my money, I guess I’ve got a free light.

The Prodigal Miata Returns

The CTBNL is back in the garage tonight after exactly a month in the car hospital.

Knew it was going to be soon because I got a call from Emmett’s yesterday, they wanted to know where the key for the aftermarket lug nuts was. This afternoon at about 2:30 they called again to say I could come pickup the car.

They had to put the car on a battery charger because it wouldn’t start for them yesterday (that’ll happen when The car sits for nearly a month.) So, today when we paid the tab they left it running outside for me and suggested we take for a bit of a drive on the way home.

When I got in the car the windows were filthy. Kind of to be expected because it was parked outside while waiting to be worked on. But not only was the outside dirty, but the inside was almost worse (how that happens I don’t want to know.)

We caravanned home and I left the car running while I cleaned the windows so we could go for a couple dozen mile trip.

It does seem like they wiped the back of the car clean of all the vaporized oil, but I don’t think they cleaned the undercarriage because when we did park in the garage after our short drive, you could smell burnt oil. I will give the Miata a bath tomorrow, but I’m not sure how I will get the chassis de-oiled.

Mechanically Induced Coma

The CTBNL is very sick. Right now it is sitting at a local auto repair shop in a mechanically induced coma for the next week or two while awaiting an opening.

A week ago today on the way home from a shopping trip over in Medford we were only a couple of miles from home when calamity struck. Cruising along at 50 MPH behind a BMW 3 Series when what should appear from right underneath the back of this car, but a softball sized chunk of concrete! With zero chance to avoid it, I held my breath.

Boom Bang Crunch Clang! I looked in the rearview mirror and could see the chunk tumbling behind me, along with a trail of smoke leading back to it. I instantly knew what had happened. A busted oil pan.

We were in the left lane preparing to turn off towards home in about 100 yards anyway, so I eased on over into the turn lane right behind the BMW. We both pulled into an unmanned fuel center. I immediately shut off the car and we had been leaking oil for only maybe 10-12 seconds.

The BMW driver got out and looked under his car. I don’t know whether the concrete piece actually hit anything under the BMW, but if it did, it was just incidental contact because he got back in his car and drove off (he did ask if we needed any help first.) I looked under our car even though I already knew what I’d see and I wasn’t disappointed, it looked like I had removed the drain plug. Our only option was to call a tow truck.

After the BMW drove off I got out and pushed the Miata several feet forward because where I stopped I wasn’t totally into the lot. The CTBNL had left a nice sized oil spot behind and oil was still slowly leaking. I called a local shop that had done some work on the Mini for us and they said they could do the work, but it wouldn’t be until June sometime.

I then called for a tow and about 30 minutes later the truck showed up. Once the car was on the flatbed, there was another slightly smaller spot left behind there too. I thought for sure that was all 4 quarts of oil, but when the car was offloaded at Emmett’s there was a small slick of oil on the flatbed.

Now we wait to see just how much it is going to cost to fix the CTBNL. Trying to determine what the breaking point is where we say, @%#! it, and save that money for the Wrangler.

Jigsaw Puzzle Madness

It all started back in early December when we were at a local bookstore and Donna bought a jigsaw puzzle. We thought it might be a nice way to while away the hours during the cold winter days. If you follow my Instagram, you have noticed that it has become an addiction. I will usually post a photo of the completed puzzle or sometimes the work in progress. For the heck of it, I just went back and counted the puzzles we have done since December and came up with 55!

We have bought eight or nine new puzzles for ourselves, but most of the puzzles have come from scouring the three Klamath Falls thrift stores where we can get a used jigsaw puzzle for a dollar or three. If we didn’t shop frugally I don’t think there would be anyway to afford our puzzle habit.

You take your chances with used puzzles because sometimes they are missing a piece or two. This has happed maybe 25% of the time, so we just shrug it off as the cost of business, but this last spate of puzzles has changed our minds. It all started innocently enough when we bought 4 puzzles at one place and started doing them. The first one we started was a smaller 500 piece puzzle of a display of colorful magic markers. When we finished the puzzle it turned out to be missing one of its pieces.

While sorting pieces to find the border of the colorful marker puzzle, we found four pieces that didn’t belong at all, they looked like they came from a puzzle with hot air balloons as the theme. Well, as it turns out, one of the four puzzles we bought at the same time was a 1000 piece puzzle of hot air balloons. Maybe that is where those extra pieces go and if we are very lucky, the missing colorful marker piece might be in the hot air balloon box.

Hmmm, now what. Before starting either of the 2 puzzles we still had left from that store, we went back there to look for a hot air balloon puzzle. Sure enough, there was a 500 piece one, so we picked it up. There were also two more different 500 piece puzzles from the same company and series, chocolate candy and a street scene, so we bought them too, just in case. And here is where it gets really interesting.

We, of course, did the hot air balloon puzzle first. Those 4 extra pieces fit right in like they belonged, because they did. But the puzzle was missing three different pieces. And, as a “bonus”, there were four different dark brown pieces that didn’t belong at all. We thought we knew just where they would go too.
 
 

So we did the “Life is a Box Chocolates” puzzle next. Sure enough, those four extra pieces in the hot air balloon box belonged right here. As Forrest Gump’s mom said, you ‘never know what you were going to get’, but if you are following this, you can guess what we got, two more missing pieces and, surprise, one that didn’t belong.
 
 
So we started the last of our trio of puzzles hoping that this extra extra piece might go into our street scene one. While also hoping to possibly find any of the other missing pieces from the previous 2 puzzles and maybe even the one from the puzzle that started it all, Colorful Makers. Yippee, that last extra piece did go into this puzzle, but unfortunately, there was a totally different piece missing.

As usual though, it did have two extra pieces that didn’t belong in the puzzle, or anything else we have here right now…