I’m Free

The doctor said I can throw away my splint.  For the first time in 3+ months I don’t have an arm in some sort of contraption.  The only snag in my doctor’s visit was that he had to dig out the 2-inch piece of monofilament stitching that the nurse left in me.  The nurse messed up.  The doc fixed it.  Unless I have some problem I’m not likely to have to go back to that doctor again.

We had planned to eat at the Hawaiian restaurant on our way home from Gulf Breeze but to our dismay it closes at 2 PM on Monday and it was 4:30.  We ended up eating at Fridays.

Penny Christy and I won our playoff game in fantasy football this week.  That means 3 of the 4 teams in the semi-finals are family.  I play Christy.  I don’t want to beat her and I do want to beat her.  It’s hard being a Dad.

We got a Roku video player and I set it up today.  It is pretty neat.  I signed up for a netflix free trial, and tested it out by watching a small portion of a movie.  The Roku delivers the movie with the highest quality our wireless system can handle – which is not HD – but still good.  I didn’t know if the movies would stop and start like videos do on the computer.  They don’t.  The delivery is smooth and the time from selecting a movie and beginning to watch it is only 2-3 minutes.  A nice feature is that you can pause and rewind the movie at any time.  So Penny and I will probably start having a movie night  periodically—pop some popcorn, light the fire and enjoy a flick.

Another Lowes Adventure

We did our normal visit to Waffle House this morning followed by a walk through Lowes.  On the back aisle of the store  Penny found a 48” general use cabinet that was damaged for $20. The hardware alone was worth that so I thought about getting it.  Then Penny pointed out a cart with 4 more cabinets on it all marked at $20.  We bought all 5.

My job today was unloading the units-they all were disassembled and in their boxes – each box being quite heavy.  The cabinets are made of fiberboard . Four of the cabinets have melamine laminate and 1 has nothing on the fiberboard.  I unloaded the boxes and brought them to the back yard 1/2 box at a time assessing what shape the panels were.  As it turns out the only broken and unusable piece was 1 baseboard.  One cabinet had obviously been assembled and fell apart.  It had some damaged dowel holes but nothing that can’t be used by providing a little reinforcement.

The final tally is 3-48” cabinets and 2-36” cabinets.  I’m missing some hardware I haven’t determined how much yet and maybe 1 panel from  a 36” one.  I’m pretty sure I can restore all 5 cabinets if I want to or integrate the panels and shelves into some other projects.

So kids, do you have a use for either a 48 or 36” wide by about 18” deep and 6 ft tall white cabinet? ( or something narrower made by modifying the panels)  I don’t have plans for the stuff yet.

I just couldn’t pass up all that material at that price.  Each cabinet listed for $229. I was pleasantly surprised to find all the panels and shelves in good shape and much of the hardware still in the boxes.

There's a gorgeous  full moon tonight and I couldn’t resist taking a picture.

1st Week of December

Winter cold has moved in here and the time for open windows is over.  I lit the fireplace this morning and warmed up the den while I made a batch of banana pecan pancakes for Penny and myself.

A good part of this past week has been occupied with our angel-tree activity.  This is one of Penny’s moments to shine.  I just turn her loose and she does what she feels is needed.  I do help in making buying decisions but this is mostly Penny’s  hard work.  This year we took an entire family, mom, dad, a 13-year old boy and 7-month-old twin girls. We delivered their Christmas stuff to the church today.

Penny also put my recent harvest of tomatoes to good use.  She found a recipe for tomato soup and the final product was fabulous.

Each time the weather gets cold I try to make a warm area for the outside cats.  Until this year they never used it.  This year Buzz has decided our backyard is a good place and he actually uses the warm area.  All it is is a small quartz lamp under a layer of bricks.  The light warms the bricks and the cat can lie on the towel on the bricks and stay comfortable.  Buzz spends a lot of time like this:

Slash has been showing up on the cold mornings and evenings to get some food.  On warm days he hangs around hoping to get fed every time He sees me.

Meredith was gone for over a week and the showed up on the coldest night this year.  I thought someone in the neighborhood was taking her inside but if that were the case she wouldn’t be out on the cold nights.

The clouds were right again tonight so I went beach walking at sunset. It was chilly, 43 degrees, and the sunset was a good one.  Here are a couple pictures: