Weekend, the summary form

I'll write more later, in detail bits. The summary:

Friday day: Off work. Run errands. Spend money Discover that the car, just out of the shop, has kaput AC. Make immediate decision to use other car. Call car place, annoyed.
Me: I need you to fix this AC. You replaced the belts and now it doesn't work.
Car place woman: Well, my first opening is the 27th...
Me: So you expect me to drive around in 80 degree heat for 10 days with an AC that you broke? That's not acceptable.
Her: Please hold.
Car place guy: What's the problem, sir?
Me: I need you to fix this AC. It worked before you serviced my car on Friday.
Car place guy: I'll look at it first thing Monday morning.
Me: I'll be there.

I'll skip the bit where I log into work email to update my schedule only to discover that Shit Broke while I was out of the office. I should set my auto-reply email when I go on vacation. I mostly Fail to Deal, tell work I'm on vacation and they can Bloody Well Deal.

Friday night: VNV Show. OMG good, see http://drwex.livejournal.com/204851.html
Skip after-show party because of need to wake up early Saturday.

Saturday morning: wake up early and drive to PA. Traffic sucks. Taking Pygment's car meant we had AC, but less room for stuff. Oh well. Kids mostly cope. Pain levels manageable.

Saturday evening: birthday party for step-mom. Meet many relatives and not-relatives who know stepmom. It's mostly OK. Between the driving and kid-wrangling and the staying up late Friday and everything we're both exhausted and pass out around 10:45. Which would've been better if we hadn't woken up at 5 AM on...

Sunday morning: visit to Mom. Manage to avoid breaking into outright tears in front of mom, children, and random lunch counter person. Manage to be useful, and get a scope for what needs to be done, which is way more than I had thought. Acquire task list of Shit What Needs Doing, starting Monday. Much of it is scheduling for More Shit To Be Done Soon. Thank ghu Mom has money and most of the really hard stuff will be done by people who get paid to do that kind of thing.

Sunday afternoon: drive back. Kids manage less well, despite it being a shorter drive (less traffic, started about half an hour closer to home). I'm not terribly sanguine about trying to drive them to Worldcon in a couple weeks, but I don't see a whole lot of other options.

Sunday night: run Warcraft raid, which is a great deal like being a Stage Manager for a rep company, if you know what I'm talking about. If not, don't sweat it.

Monday morning: wake up early again (who ever thought mornings were a good idea anyway?) to get kids to camp and car to dealer. Arrive at work via walking, drenched in sweat (right, it finally IS summer) to find shitstorm from Friday. Not completely my fault, but I'm definitely in the inner ring of the target circles.

And how was YOUR weekend?

Weekend, the summary form

I'll write more later, in detail bits. The summary:

Friday day: Off work. Run errands. Spend money Discover that the car, just out of the shop, has kaput AC. Make immediate decision to use other car. Call car place, annoyed.
Me: I need you to fix this AC. You replaced the belts and now it doesn't work.
Car place woman: Well, my first opening is the 27th...
Me: So you expect me to drive around in 80 degree heat for 10 days with an AC that you broke? That's not acceptable.
Her: Please hold.
Car place guy: What's the problem, sir?
Me: I need you to fix this AC. It worked before you serviced my car on Friday.
Car place guy: I'll look at it first thing Monday morning.
Me: I'll be there.

I'll skip the bit where I log into work email to update my schedule only to discover that Shit Broke while I was out of the office. I should set my auto-reply email when I go on vacation. I mostly Fail to Deal, tell work I'm on vacation and they can Bloody Well Deal.

Friday night: VNV Show. OMG good, see http://drwex.livejournal.com/204851.html
Skip after-show party because of need to wake up early Saturday.

Saturday morning: wake up early and drive to PA. Traffic sucks. Taking Pygment's car meant we had AC, but less room for stuff. Oh well. Kids mostly cope. Pain levels manageable.

Saturday evening: birthday party for step-mom. Meet many relatives and not-relatives who know stepmom. It's mostly OK. Between the driving and kid-wrangling and the staying up late Friday and everything we're both exhausted and pass out around 10:45. Which would've been better if we hadn't woken up at 5 AM on...

Sunday morning: visit to Mom. Manage to avoid breaking into outright tears in front of mom, children, and random lunch counter person. Manage to be useful, and get a scope for what needs to be done, which is way more than I had thought. Acquire task list of Shit What Needs Doing, starting Monday. Much of it is scheduling for More Shit To Be Done Soon. Thank ghu Mom has money and most of the really hard stuff will be done by people who get paid to do that kind of thing.

Sunday afternoon: drive back. Kids manage less well, despite it being a shorter drive (less traffic, started about half an hour closer to home). I'm not terribly sanguine about trying to drive them to Worldcon in a couple weeks, but I don't see a whole lot of other options.

Sunday night: run Warcraft raid, which is a great deal like being a Stage Manager for a rep company, if you know what I'm talking about. If not, don't sweat it.

Monday morning: wake up early again (who ever thought mornings were a good idea anyway?) to get kids to camp and car to dealer. Arrive at work via walking, drenched in sweat (right, it finally IS summer) to find shitstorm from Friday. Not completely my fault, but I'm definitely in the inner ring of the target circles.

And how was YOUR weekend?

In search of storage options

One of the things that came out of visiting Mom this weekend is a realization of just how much furniture we've suddenly come into possession of. Three desks. A full dining room set. Two large cedar chests and a cedar closet. Et cetera. Our household can't possibly absorb all of this. There's a very small chance we might be able to store it, but realistically I want to find someplace to park it long-term.

The ideal situation is that when one or the other of my children decides to set up his own abode I can hand him several good and useful items of furniture. In the meanwhile there's a chance we'll move to a larger house where we could use this stuff. So I don't want simply to sell it all, unless I can't come up with another option.

So if anyone has ideas for how to store several large pieces of good quality furniture in a reliable fashion I'm open to hearing about it. Renting a storage facility is an obvious option since there's not really room on our property. Though we might pull out the current shed and replace it with a larger one I'm not sure I want to store this stuff in non-climate-controlled air for several years...

In search of storage options

One of the things that came out of visiting Mom this weekend is a realization of just how much furniture we've suddenly come into possession of. Three desks. A full dining room set. Two large cedar chests and a cedar closet. Et cetera. Our household can't possibly absorb all of this. There's a very small chance we might be able to store it, but realistically I want to find someplace to park it long-term.

The ideal situation is that when one or the other of my children decides to set up his own abode I can hand him several good and useful items of furniture. In the meanwhile there's a chance we'll move to a larger house where we could use this stuff. So I don't want simply to sell it all, unless I can't come up with another option.

So if anyone has ideas for how to store several large pieces of good quality furniture in a reliable fashion I'm open to hearing about it. Renting a storage facility is an obvious option since there's not really room on our property. Though we might pull out the current shed and replace it with a larger one I'm not sure I want to store this stuff in non-climate-controlled air for several years...

Today's music - not your usual

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcaziuL6nxc
This is TOTALLY NOT your usual Japanese girly pop that makes its way across to this side of the pond. If you like this, there are a bunch more in the "Related Videos" section. I like his voice, though I think the backing band is just so-so.

http://www.rcrdlbl.com/artists/Yeasayer/track/Final_Path
In a wholly other path comes Yeasayer. This particular track seems to me like a sort psychedelia-influenced post-punk. It reminds me of something else, but I can't put my finger on it right now. If you visit their myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/yeasayer) you can hear a couple more tracks from them, neither of which help me very much in nailing down their sound. They do have something that sounds gospel-influenced, but this is not your usual gospel, either.

http://hypem.com/#/track/566752/Moby+-+I+Love+To+Move+In+Here+Holy+Ghost+Remix
Then there's Moby. I like Moby and I'm pleased that he's embarked on this project of making an album of things he likes rather than what the studio thinks will be popular. To be honest, though, the four or so tracks I've heard sound more or less like what I'd expect from him. This one isn't the usual sort of thing I recommend as it's a lot more disco-ey than what I usually like. But as I said to Mizarchivist, it's Moby and I'm willing to grant him a lot of slack. Plus, it's got phat horns!

Today's music - not your usual

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcaziuL6nxc
This is TOTALLY NOT your usual Japanese girly pop that makes its way across to this side of the pond. If you like this, there are a bunch more in the "Related Videos" section. I like his voice, though I think the backing band is just so-so.

http://www.rcrdlbl.com/artists/Yeasayer/track/Final_Path
In a wholly other path comes Yeasayer. This particular track seems to me like a sort psychedelia-influenced post-punk. It reminds me of something else, but I can't put my finger on it right now. If you visit their myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/yeasayer) you can hear a couple more tracks from them, neither of which help me very much in nailing down their sound. They do have something that sounds gospel-influenced, but this is not your usual gospel, either.

http://hypem.com/#/track/566752/Moby+-+I+Love+To+Move+In+Here+Holy+Ghost+Remix
Then there's Moby. I like Moby and I'm pleased that he's embarked on this project of making an album of things he likes rather than what the studio thinks will be popular. To be honest, though, the four or so tracks I've heard sound more or less like what I'd expect from him. This one isn't the usual sort of thing I recommend as it's a lot more disco-ey than what I usually like. But as I said to Mizarchivist, it's Moby and I'm willing to grant him a lot of slack. Plus, it's got phat horns!