Today was a productive day because I managed to get three whole things done!
But first, some pics of my little vacation.
Afterwards we had a rousing game of Arabian Nights.
Meanwhile Mom turned this…
…into this…
…which eventually turned into this:
As Kent Mansley would say, mmmboy.
On Sunday I had a little Washington reunion in Alpine. Friends came from Logan, Provo, Idaho, and Lehi. Grand old time.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were the days where I earned my keep at Google, running recruiting events at BYU.
We ran out of food at one of our events, so Mom and Dad were just awesome and saved the day by darting over to the Cougareat to completely clean out Papa John’s.
Afterwards we had a little get-together at a local sushi joint.
Another evening I dropped in on a Washington friend and got to say hi to the cats again! While I’d been down in Utah she’d come by my place in Washington to pick up the cats and flew them down to her new place in Lehi.
Scout got some attention this week for sure.
On Saturday Hayden and I went for a bike/run, then picked up the new living room TV, a 65-incher.
We’d been instructed not to lay the screen flat, else it could get damaged. And since it was too large to lay straight up, we resorted to 45-degree angles.
I introduced the fam to Bollywood this week, with the film Three Idiots. Seems like it’ll be an Andersen favorite.
Got to spend Sunday evening at Grandma’s monthly dinner before heading on up to the airport. Bittersweet.
During the week I’d received some pics from my neighbor. The snow had come down hard, and unfortunately my old lilac tree wasn’t able to stand the weight.
I got back and did some damage assessment.
It was a good thing the next day was gonna be a vacation, would give me time to work on this in the daylight.
I’d forgotten to re-enable my heating system before arriving, so I got to walk in to a house at 42 degrees. It was too cold to sleep so I flipped on the TV, and was met with this message:
Looks like Vizio may have sold my viewing data without proper consent, so I get a sweet sweet payout of ~$20. I’m quite sure I unchecked that setting, but I’ll take the cash anyhow.
So today I got the hack saw out and went to town on the tree. Uncle Dan said the prognosis was slim, but there was a chance it could be saved.
We’ll find out in May if there’s any growth.
But amidst this cleanup job, I spotted new life! The hydrangea bush Mattie and I picked out last year had looked pretty dead all winter, and I’d had my doubts that it’d come back.
So that’ll be pretty.
Cleaning up the tree was one of my things I did today. The second was smarten up my bedroom. Due to some really poor electrical work, my wall switch has never been able to control the outlets in my room. Many months ago I ordered some smart switches to help rectify this, but I’d never gotten around to installing them.
Z-Wave smart switches have this feature called “association groups”. You can designate up to four other devices that turn on and off with the switch, whenever it’s toggled. I use it on the ground floor to have one switch control all floor lamps in the living room. I can also use the feature to install a switch that doesn’t actually electrically control anything, but sends a signal about four feet away to a smart outlet, into which my bedroom lamps are plugged. Voila, switched outlets. With three more microprocessors than should be necessary, but whatevs.
The third thing today was rectifying my mistaken door handle purchase. When I called for a locksmith to re-key my front door, I’d also wanted to get my garage door re-keyed as well. Unfortunately I didn’t have a key to that lock, which ends up being kind of critical to how re-keying functions. So I went out and tried to buy a new lock that matched up with the old one. I’d have keys for it, so it could be re-keyed.
Ended up getting the wrong brand, with incompatible mechanics. I’d be stuck with two sets of keys for the front and the garage doors. Thankfully I’d kept the receipt, so I disassembled the lock and took it in for a return. Picked out the actual right brand this time, and, got them to re-key it on the spot. Chatted with the guy doing the re-key operation so I could see how it was done.
He was an interesting character. Knew lock-picking because he’d been a magician for 30 years. Said he preferred Schlage locks (the brand I’d just purchased) because their competitors were too easy to pick.
When I brought the lock back home to install it I realized how many extra parts there were that I didn’t need, and I felt bad about not having those parts when I returned the other lock. They were totally nice about the return, but I wonder how they’ll process it.
In any case, I now have matching doors and matching locks, woohoo.