Rants

Today was day two of my air-conditioning repair marathon. After the filter replacement, I’d walked around the house holding my hand near all the outlets to feel if we were getting cool air out of them. Found one, the one near the back wall of our bedroom, that was not really working. Damn, no wonder our bedroom has been warmer than normal for a while. Shown a flashlight down there and it looked like the ductwork had fallen off the register.

It figures it would have to be this one, as it is almost the furthest one from the little door into the crawl space under the house. I got on some old clothes, grabbed the flashlight and a roll of duct tape. Crawled around on my belly like a dog soldier creeping up on enemy lines and dodged other ducts and pipes like bullets and tracers to get to where I needed to be. The actual repair went pretty fast and smooth. Duct tape is a marvelous tool and I have used it for a hundred different things, but this was the first time I actually used it for its intended purpose.

Something, I’m not sure what, triggered my memory to change the filter in the central air conditioning unit today. I remembered that I hadn’t changed it in a while, a long while, but couldn’t remember exactly when. It was probably more than a year ago judging by how dirty that sucker was. Next month’s power bill will probably be 20% less…

Well, two winning tickets to the powerball game were sold, unfortunately neither was one of the 18 tickets we held for our group buy at work. Just to be sure I asked the fellow at work who was buying the tickets did he take a trip to Missouri or Pennsylvania to buy this week. He said no.

The jackpot for this coming Saturday is only $10 million, hardly worth the effort to go to the store and buy a ticket.

I don’t know what else to call them. Drove over to Augusta this evening to buy some more wheels for my inline skates and before we left I cleaned off the dead insect residue from our last trip. About 1/2 way there I ran through a cloud of invisible bugs, you can’t see them in your headlights, but when they impact the windshield they leave behind a little puff of dust no bigger than a couple of millimeters in diameter.

When we came back out of the store I got out my bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels and cleaned the windshield again. It lasted about 20 minutes before another swarm of bugs peppered the windshield again. I used the washer jets and the wipers to clean up this time, only to get another dusting within 5 minutes.

Squirt, squirt, wipe, wipe and this time we made it home without another encounter with the mysterious ghost bugs.

Or “Where The Boys Aren’t.” Having spent the last couple of weeks following boys little league baseball I now know where all their sisters are, doing gymnastics.

A cousin of Donna’s from NJ (Exit 14) has a daughter competing in the YMCA National Gymnastics Championships being held in Savannah, GA. So we drove the 3 hours down to see her compete.

Kristen is 11 and is on the Madison Rosettes Novice squad or the level 6 division. Age doesn’t matter, just skill, in determining what level you compete at, the girls ranged from 8 to 14. Also going on in the same arena were the levels 7 & 8, (Developmental and Championship.)

A veritable sea of glittery hair and even more glittery lycra. I watched as long as I could and then I pulled a play I learned from my sister, I had brought a book, so I climbed to the top row of the arena and read.

…in this fast paced world. Finally got my CafePress stickers I ordered June 14th. I bought two for the Rant and two for the Miata Diaries. They look pretty good, but in the 2-1/2 weeks that have passed between ordering and receiving I’ve moved the blogs. Both URLs printed on the stickers are wrong.