DreamShark's Journal

Why does everything take so long??

2023-11-04T22:17:04Z

I started out to do this one simple thing and I am now on Day 2 and counting. Back in 2015 I made Richard a little photo album showing the progression of his Halloween display from 2003 onwards. Since I was in the midst of creating my first Lena Album on Shutterfly, I just printed off a couple of dozen digitized pictures and stuck them in one of those cheap little magnetic page photo books that was lying around empty. Yes, I know those albums are terrible, but it was empty and the pages still had stickum on them and that part of the project was actually quick and easy. Every now and then someone stuck a few more photos in the back but I didn't keep it up.

So now it's Halloween again and we were flipping through the album to see just when we bought that first giant inflatable pumpkin (2005 apparently! Those things used to last so much longer than the ones they make today!). But the pictures were falling out like autumn leaves, and Richard was sad that the book stopped in 2017. So I said, no problem, I'll just stick those pictures back down and add a few more. Yep. I spent most of yesterday working on that, and now most of today, and somehow I'm just further from the finish line.

First off, why don't I just throw away that nasty old album and start over? Well, for one thing, while half of the old photos are falling out, the other half are welded to the pages and I don't want to wreck them by trying to pry them out. But mostly because Richard loved this album so much that he created this hand-painted cover for it, which is also welded to the front cover and it would take a Renaissance painting restoration artist to remove it intact.

So I just tacked down the loose pictures and removed the detached plastic covers and everything was going fine until I noticed that I was missing pictures for a couple of years. So I printed them out and replaced a few redundant photos and shifted things around, and it took a little longer than expected but not THAT long. Then I got to 2015, which had 3 pages of pictures taken by a random photographer who happened by, took pictures and sent us copies. His camera was better than mine so they look nice, but none of them really record the display the way we would do it. Mostly cute pictures of us posed in front of the pumpkins. So I removed most of those to make room for more recent pictures.

I have a fairly nice printer, good enough for scrapbooking anyway, so I thought I'd just print out some photos and stick them in. But the Halloween pictures turned out to be scattered all over the place, and it took most of yesterday to gather them into one Google Photos album. But now there are about 100 photos in that album, so I had to sort through them and pick out a dozen or so to print. That took a large part of yesterday.

So today I was finally ready to start printing them. But to do that I have to download them to my computer and rename them so they appear in the right order for sorting them into groups for multipage printing. At which point I notice that 4 of the photos are in that dreadful Apple format (HEIC) that is incompatible with everything. No problem, I have a little converter app somewhere that can handle HEIC. But where did it go? I can't find it anywhere? I downloaded it just last year from the Microsoft Store, but it's vanished from my computer. Also from the Microsoft Store. WTF?? Did Microsoft DELETE AN APP FROM MY COMPUTER because they no longer support it?? I don't know, but iMazing is still out there and still has the free download on their site, so I downloaded and installed it and converted the nonconformist pictures. Okay, now I have a nice ordered set of pictures. But somehow the number has grown to 19, which clearly isn't going to fit in the 5 empty pages at the end of this album. sigh

Well, I do have another empty 8.5x11 album, this one of nice scrapbooking quality. I guess I'll start a Volume 2. Where do I start? I guess print out one year at a time and stick them in the old album until I run out of space and then think about Volume 2. And so it goes.

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COVID Report: - 2 weeks and done (I hope)

2022-08-15T20:50:16Z

It's exactly 2 weeks since I tested positive for COVID and I feel fine! I thought I felt fine 3 or 4 days ago, but I feel better now. I'm actually feeling energetic, which is much better than "I no longer have trouble staying awake in late afternoon." My post-COVID sniffles and cough have seamlessly transitioned to My Normal for mid-August (hello, ragweed pollen!). I thought I was well when my appetite came back, but it came back kind of unhinged, with my body trying to gain back the 3 pounds I lost while sick. Today I'm just normally hungry and able to consider eating balanced meals instead of unlimited amounts of ice cream. So I went grocery shopping and stocked up on healthy food.

The rest of today is slated for Putting Stuff Away

I found some good deals on fresh meat (as I always seem to at Cub), but some of it is in large packages that must be broken up and labeled and frozen. I stocked up on toilet paper, which must be stashed behind the towels in the linen closet. I've removed the car seats from our vehicles, packed them back into their enormous boxes, and wrestled them down to the basement. Over the course of the past 3 days I have packed up all those bulky toddler toys I got for the grandkids' visit and now must find somewhere to put THOSE boxes. And then there's a ridiculous project involving moving many boxes of comic books so I can access a hidden outlet behind a heavy oak shelving unit. And then putting the comics back, which matches the theme for the day.

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Posting from the back of my closet

2019-05-16T23:38:41Z

Taking advantage of the spring cleaning urge by tackling my closets, looking for stuff to donate to Goodwill. I managed to fill a couple of medium sized boxes with decent donatable clothing and two grocery bags with rags and throwaways. According to The Internet, larger thrift stores don't mind getting rags - they actually have avenues to recycle them that ordinary folk have no access to. At least ever since the old Rag Stock went hipster upscale and stopped taking donations of rags. Anybody else remember when it was called The Rag Factory?

I also unearthed a surprising number of perfectly wearable, surprisingly nice looking pieces of clothing that had just gotten log-jammed in the back. Now I'm in the middle of a project to add pockets to as many skirts and dresses as possible, which is also a nice way to use up scraps of fabric. Know what makes really good pockets? Old pillow cases and sheets.

At Richard's suggestion I expanded my throwaway projects outside and got rid of the 4 tires that some asshole had dumped behind our garage. Man, is it a lot of work to dispose of tires!!! In keeping with its general policy of offering superb garbage and recycling services, Minneapolis does have a way to do this for free, but it's a multi-step, time-consuming process. It's actually harder to get rid of tires than hazardous waste. If anybody ever discovers a cheap, easy way to recycle rubber, the planet will breathe a sigh of relief.

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Waterbed Defenestrated

2018-07-31T19:02:06Z

I called the Mpls Solid Waste number and after a couple of runs around a voice mail loop got someone who told me to just put it out with the garbage labeled "solid waste." Yay for Minneapolis and their stellar waste collection services!!

So Richard and Thorin rolled it up and tied it with a couple of ropes and then all three of us heaved it out the back window. Yow! As Lydy warned, that thing is freaking HEAVY. The guys seem to think that they can wrestle it to the alley without me, so I'm letting them work on it.

Meanwhile, the wooden water bed platform has some drying out to do. Turns out it was leaking in more places than we realized and there is a lot of wet wood. Fortunately, the platform seems to be made of extremely good quality plywood and shows no sign of splitting or rotting. I hope there's a new liner in that waterbed mattress box, as the old one was pretty much done for and is rolled up along with the mattress.

ETA: I knew that was too easy. When I opened up the box with the new waterbed it did NOT contain a liner. I double-checked the invoice, and it definitely listed a liner as part of the purchase. Called the store. Apparently a miscommunication of some sort - he seemed to think that I had decided to get the "value package" without the liner after he had already typed up the invoice or some such thing. That wasn't my understanding. And I didn't feel like another 50 mile round-trip drive to pick up the liner. So he agreed to "send it down on the truck," which would get it here tomorrow. But then he called back and said the truck had left already so it won't arrive until Thursday. *sigh* So two more nights in the guest room. At least that will give the plywood time to dry out thoroughly.

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Waterbed Drama Continues

2018-07-31T17:50:55Z

So far so good. Following tips from seekerval (LJ only) and lydy , we trekked to the far NW suburb of Anoka and purchased a replacement waterbed mattress. There was, guess what, construction on Hwy 169, but other than that it was a pretty easy trip. But by the time we got home it seemed too late to start a major project so we both slept in alternative locations for yet another night. Today we stripped the old waterbed, ran a hose through the window, and started draining it. I vaguely remember last time we did this trying to pour water from a pitcher into the end of the hose to get the air out (WTF?). This time we turned the hose on long enough to fill it with water. Duh. What were we thinking? Anyway, working fine so far - hose is currently watering the highly invasive buckthorn hedge.

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