I cleaned out the garage Friday morning. But let me back up to September.
In September, the gas guy visited the house. He was there to replace the meter. Only there were flowers in the way, so he left us a nice note, asking us to remove the flowers, so they don’t get damaged in his work. This was about 45 minutes before The Yankee’s crash, so I got around to doing the flower removal — they were all weeds, anyway — in November. But I’d misplaced the note with the phone number in the interim.
Last week that door hanger floated to the top of a pile of papers, so I made the call, and we scheduled the guy to come back out. They were perfectly pleasant. No beef was offered for the delay. And the guy would be out Friday.
Are there pets? Is anyone sick? Will someone be home to provide the technician access to kill, and later, restart the pilot light?
So he was scheduled to come Friday. He needed access to the pilot light. All of that stuff sits in a custom corner of the garage. The only problem is that the space around it is perfectly suited to be a place to store extra things. So Friday morning I moved out the cars and slide a cabinet, a shelf and various other small things out of the way.
Friday evening, since I had all of that stuff out of the way, I did the annual air filter replacement, a procedure that is some months overdue.
There are 21 steps to removing the old air filter and putting in a new one. I know this because that is the number of instructions there are on the air filter box.
I felt a bit like these guys.
With that job done — there’s a light with a pleasing blue glow on the front of the air filter system that tells me I’ve been successful — I could put all of the things back into their proper place in the garage. In doing so, we decided five old paint cans could be recycled.
So on Saturday I took them to the waste disposal facility, where I met a man most pleased to do his job, as bubbly as a government employee working on a Saturday shift could be. He happily accepted two of my paint cans, chummily explaining that they had an ingredient deemed hazardous. He could not take the now ancient house paint. Not hazardous, he said. Well, he could take them, but he’d have to charge me $5 a can. Now if I’d brought any of my leftover uranium, he said, he could take that straightaway.
Wouldn’t you know, I left that in the backyard.
But the garage is now cleaner, five paint cans and a handful of junk cleaner, anyway. That’s good progress.
But enough about my Herculean attempts at decluttering. Let’s get right into the most popular weekly feature on the site, the check-in with the kitties. They’re doing great!
Phoebe has developed a real affinity for this blanket, and only this blanket. If someone is using this blanket and she is offered another blanket, she will not be pleased. Phoebe is a blanket snob.
The cat tunnel is usually more of her brother’s territory, but this weekend Phoebe got interested in it. And then she realized her blanket was up on the sofa.
Recently, we told Poseidon a good joke. How many cats does it take to change a light bulb?
He took it literally.
And if he had thumbs, the answer would be one. He’s very observant. He watches enough to understand that door knobs are important, but can’t figure out how to manipulate them. So, I figure, he can’t be too far off on the concept of light bulbs, either.
Electricity is beyond him, you might think, but he’s helped with plenty of plumbing fixture projects. The other stuff that magically comes out of the wall can’t be too much harder for a smart cat.
I think I’ve only had one wiring project with him in the house. He slept through that, so he’s not yet an apprentice in the electrical arts.
Between Saturday, Sunday and today I got in five Zwift rides. I managed to record five Strava PRs on four of those rides. Three of them were on climbs. Two of those were the same climb. I am not a climber. The other two were on sprints. I am also not a sprinter.
Here’s a bit of video from one of the weekend’s rides. Please note how my Zwift avatar always remembers to hydrate.
Apparently this is the island where aliens first visited. You eventually ride through the front wheel of the lead alien bicycle rider.
I thought, Wouldn’t it be great if the road bent back around and you rode through the back wheel of the second alien bicycle rider? And just a moment later, the road bent that way.
After close encounters like that, you sneak away as fast as you can.
So after tonight’s ride, a few days off, because of work schedules and such. But!
The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 60 routes down, 60 to go.
