Thursday, May 6, 2010

AC Drama

For those of you who are unaware, I recently purchased a house (less than 2 months ago) and it is in Texas.

Spring has now started to move into Summer here in Texas and the temperatures are rising. Today it is supposed to be over 90 degrees.

When it gets that hot, it is time to turn on the air conditioner. I mean, if you got it, flaunt it.

Sadly, when I went to turn on my AC...there was a lot of blowing, but no cooling.

OH NO!!

Luckily, I found the number of the heating and cooling contractor for my house and called them. They put me into their rotation today and a technician made it out here.

He starts asking me all the questions that they are supposed to ask and my answer to him is "I've lived here less than 2 months. I've never had the AC on. Isn't it just supposed to work in a new house with a new unit?"

Turns out that YES, it is supposed to work in a new house with a new unit....if the person who installed it had remembered to actually flip the breaker at the outside unit....

And, on a side note.... Dipping tobacco is disgusting. The guy, while very friendly and efficient, had a big ol' wad of chew in his mouth and little tobacco juice daubs at the corners of his lips, and when he smiled, or talked, all of his teeth were kinda brown and gooey looking. I have a habit of watching a person's mouth when they speak to make certain that I catch what they are saying, but with this guy I kept having to turn away because he was making me a little nauseous.

Cardinal ABBA Sin

I do not like to be late. I do not like to make people wait on me. I do not like to "make an entrance".

My family can attest to this.... A favorite story around the old homestead is the time that ABBA got Mom and Sister to Palm Sunday Mass on hour early, just so we would be certain and have seats. They have to agree that we DID have seats...we just got to sit in them for a very long time.
I've gotten a little better, I don't feel the need to be places quite that early any more, but I'm still an early bird and still like to leave plenty of time when I have an appointment to be someplace. Mind you, I don't necessarily hold everybody else to this compulsive need to be on time and have gotten very used to getting ready and waiting on people (patience is a virtue). What people don't understand is that when I'm waiting on them I have a constant stream of thought going through my head that goes something like "Oh no, did they forget about me...Where are they....Today is the right day....How am I going to get there...Oh no, did they forget about me..." This is my own cross to bare and I do not wish anybody to change because of it.

However, because of my own insecurities, I try really hard to have this Cardinal Rule: Thou Shall Not Be Late.

Well, this morning, I broke my Cardinal Rule. I had a workout scheduled with my trainer, Kyle, for 5:00 AM. I've been getting up at 4:00 so that I could eat something, get dressed, and head over to meet him in plenty of time to get a warm up in before we are supposed to start. Sadly, yesterday I had a killer headache when I woke up and decided to sleep in a little longer, so I reset my alarm for 5:00 (I still wanted to be certain that I was up, dressed and ready in time for The Queen to pick me up for carpool.) Sadly, I forgot to reset my alarm.

This morning, when it went off. I rolled over, managed to focus, and saw that it was 5....I JUMPED out of bed, grabbed my phone and texted Kyle letting him know that I was going to be late. Then ran into huge closet (got lost) threw on some workout clothes, brushed my teeth, ran to car and raced (at a legal speed) to the gym, which luckily is less than 5 minutes away. I ran upstairs to meet Kyle all within 15 minutes from the time the alarm went off.

I apologized profusely and Kyle's only question was "did you eat?" Ummm, no. "When did you last eat?" Last night at 8ish. He then said, "let's reschedule because I don't want you doing weights on an empty stomach." Ummm, okay.

So, as "penance" for committing this sin, I'm going to be doing a 2 hour workout with Kyle on Sunday....

P.S. Kyle completely understood my being late and didn't hold it against me, especially since our first meeting I showed up at 5, not getting HIS text saying he wasn't going to be there on time, and he didn't show up until 5:45....

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

I'm In Trouble

Just started reading this article about Lack of Sleep and had the following thoughts:


  • Which is worse? Getting more sleep or getting up early so that I can go get my workout in so that I can lose weight and get healthy...

  • Francesco Cappucino ran the study?!? Oh wait, Francesco Cappucio...maybe lack of sleep is impairing my reading

  • Wait!?! Too much sleep could cause early death as well?!?

  • I think the Serta Sheep are somehow behind this whole study...


What I Learned

I had every intention of documenting this on Monday, but whew, what a week I've had thus far....

This past weekend I learned that AT&T Uverse DVR/cable boxes can't be moved by me. Well, they can but they won't work.

I recently purchased a fancy new television for my fancy new living room. Since, I didn't really want to have the technician come out and get me a new box just yet, I figured I could move the one from the bedroom to the living room and hook it up. My biggest concern at the time was that I would lose the shows that I had saved....but that was a moot point.

Saturday morning, I get up and I start moving things around and getting the new television all set up. I unplug the box from the bedroom and take it out to the living room ready to get it set up. Turns out that the connection in the wall isn't quite ready for prime-time. The cable is run and the plate is in the wall, but the little thingy that you screw the cable from the box to is actually missing. Drat.

So, I take the box back into the bedroom and get it set back up. Yippee!! None of my shows have gone missing so everything should be back to square one. Should be....

As I'm watching a show, it freezes in the middle and there is nothing that I can do. So, I get out my handy-dandy owners manual and figure out that I just need to do a reboot, which I do. Problem is that it freezes in the middle of the reboot and I get a big red X in the middle of the screen. So, I grab my phone and call the 1-800-number and after a series of questions the computer generated voice on the other end of the phone says to reboot the box, again and that should fix the issue, but if it happens again "he" will keep my ticket open for 24 hours and "we'll" pick up where we left off.

I reboot, again. It fixes it this time....Until Sunday, when it starts freezing up again and the reboot freezes as well. I call the 1-800-number again and this time after only a short series of questions I'm actually kicked over to A Real Live Person (I felt like Pinocchio). After explaining every that had occurred, including my moving the box, the RLP said, "Yeah, sounds like you didn't turn the system off properly before you moved it, oh and you can't move the box to another room as it is routed to go only to that port, blah blah blah. Um, that red X is the disaster recovery symbol, if 'this' doesn't work we'll have to send a tech out with a new box." Luckily, whatever magic the RLP did fixed my issue.

Who knew Uverse was so touchy....