The Wrapping Genius

Barb was busy preparing for Sarah and Laura’s visit for Christmas.  She asked Ivan to help her by wrapping the Christmas presents for Sarah, Laura and Laura’s boyfriend Brad.  She gave him four rolls of wrapping paper.

There were no labels so Ivan wrapped all of Sarah’s presents in one style of wrapping paper, all of Laura’s presents in a different style of wrapping paper and all of Brad’s presents in a third type of wrapping paper that way, each of them could easily figure out who’s presents were who’s.

Barb thought this was genius.

Adventures in Heating and Air Conditioning

It became a little colder.  We finally broke down and turned on the furnace.  It didn’t work.

Barb and I asked around.  A friend of Barb’s friend was a bit of a handyman.  He said he would look at it when he had time.

We waited a few days.  He finally got around to looking at it.  He found that there was a rusted diode and he cleaned it up.  Then the furnace worked.  He had to go out of town but said he would replace the diode when he got back.

Then it became a lot warmer.  Barb turned on the air-conditioner.  Now it didn’t work.

Our handyman wasn’t going to be back for a while.  So barb called an air-conditioning and heating company. 

They sent a man out the next day.  He tried to fix the system but had trouble.  He called the head man.  He used his phone to send the head man pictures of the system.  The head man had some trouble figuring out what to do as well.  Finally after a few hours they figured out what to do and the repairman replaced a part.  Apparently was not the exact right part.  However, we now had air-conditioning and heating but it had cost us quite a bit.

The next day it became cooler outside.  Barb turned off the air-conditioner.  Unfortunately, now the fan wouldn’t turn off.

Barb called the company back.  They sent out two men this time.  They worked on it for quite a while and replaced another part.  They also sold us a new thermostat.  It cost even more but finally everything seemed to be working just in time for the visit of Sarah and Laura for Christmas.

The Ants Come Marching In

We had the outside of the house power washed.

A couple of days later, Barb noticed an ant on the kitchen counter.  Barb thought the power washing had created a hole in the wall for the ants to get into the house.

I said you never see just one ant.  Soon there were hundreds of ants trailing from the window along the kitchen counter.  Barb tried to plug the hole in the window with some duct tape.  It didn’t work.

Barb called the bug exterminator.  A guy came over the next day.  He said they were ghost ants.  There were very small.  So you couldn’t really plug the hole they were coming in.

He set an ant trap.  Then he found the trail the ants were marching along and the source of the ants.  He sprayed the trail.  As he was leaving, he said they should be gone in a few days.  If they weren’t gone in 10 days, we should phone them back.

In 10 days, they weren’t gone.  Barb phoned them and the guy came out again.  He set another trap and sprayed again.

In a few days, they were gone.

The guy from the exterminator said the ants were coming in looking for water because it had been such dry months in November and December.

We got a lot of rain at the end of December.  Although I’m sure the exterminators were good, maybe now that there was rain, the ants were not thirsty enough to bother coming into the house.

Car Repair

One day a person at the park followed Barb in his car.  When she stopped he told her that her rear brake light was out.

I asked my sister who I could take the car to to get the bulb replaced.  She said that I could do it myself if I looked it up on Youtube.

I looked up how to replace a brake light on a Honda Civic.  It seemed pretty easy.  It would only take a few minutes.

I told Barb I would go to a car parts store, pick up a bulb and replace it.  She reminded me of the time I tried to replace the headlight on our Toyota Tercel a few years ago.  I didn’t do it correctly.  It burned the casing which cost us a lot to replace.

So I looked up a garage close by where Barb could take the car.

She bought the car in while on one of her errands.  She expected to get the bulb replaced while she waited.  She thought is would cost about two bucks for the bulb and they would replace it for free.

The owner of the garage took the car away and replaced the bulb.  He brought the car back and charged Barb $15.  Barb was surprised but paid him in cash.  He put the money in his shirt pocket. 

Barb thought he ripped her off because she was a stupid Canadian.  She wasn’t going back there ever again.

Practical Joke?

Five of us guys from the park carpool together to slow pitch softball practices on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  There is a batting practice followed by an exhibition game.

After the exhibition game one day, myself and one of the guys were waiting for the other guys to finish their game on the other diamond. 

I had changed from my running shoes into my cleats at one side of their diamond.  I left my shoes under the bleachers where I left my softball equipment bag.  After my game, my running shoes were not there.  

There were a number of guys including one of the guys from our park on the other side of the diamond sitting in the bleachers.  So I went over and asked them if they had seen my running shoes.  There was a pair of running shoes on that side of the diamond.  I thought they belonged to one of the guys there.

Eventually the game ended and all the guys left.  Nobody took the running shoes.  I thought someone had taken my shoes and left these ones behind.

When I got to the car, one of the guys asked me whose shoes I was wearing.  I said I didn’t know.

When I got home, I told Barb the story.  She looked at the shoes that I brought home and said they were obviously my shoes.  They were the same make and had the same type of insert in them.

They were definitely my shoes but I have no idea how they went from one side of the diamond to the other side during the practice.

Early Bird

Last winter, we bought a used golf cart.  It had new batteries but old wiring.  We had trouble with the golf cart soon after we bought it.  Fortunately, there is a man in the park, named Don McNish, who has a business refurbishing golf carts.

He was able to fix the wiring problem by replacing one of the five diodes that was rusted.  He told us that it might be a temporary fix because the other diodes may need to replaced later.

This year we had the same problem with the golf cart.  Barb called Don.  He said he would come over to fix the cart on Sunday.

Barb gets up at around 8 am every morning.

She waited around the house all day on Sunday for Don to come over to fix the golf cart.  Finally in the late afternoon, she phoned Don to ask him if he was coming over.  He told her he had already fixed it.  He came over at 7:30.  He left his bill on the steering wheel of the golf cart.  He did not want to disturb us by knocking on the door.

When you live in a retirement village, you have to expect everyone to be an early bird.  Old people are notoriously early risers.

Fortunate Mistakes with Tech-Toys

My iPod battery was always dying on me when I wanted to use it.  Barb decided to get me a new one.  She investigated the sales on ebay.  She found a good deal on a 16G 4^th generation.  The seller said that his company bought it for him but he never used it.  So he gave it to his wife but she didn’t use it either.  So he was selling it and it was just like new.  So Barb bought it.

It came in the mail in a few days.  I excitedly initialized it.  I set up my email and my apps.  However, the new iPod battery was even worse than the old iPod at holding a charge.

So I did some investigation on the internet.  I found some information about iPod batteries going into “deep discharge state” if they are stored for a few weeks with no charge.

Barb emailed the seller.  She complained that the battery on the iPod was not good. She mentioned the “deep discharge state” information.  Barb thought that because the iPod was never used it was probably stored without a charge and the battery went into a deep discharge state.  She said she wanted her money back.

The seller wrote back saying the battery was fine.  It sounded like he wasn’t going to give us our money back.  So Barb started a complaint on ebay about the problem.  Ebay said we should try to work it out with the seller and if we couldn’t work it out in couple of weeks to our satisfaction, they would take action.

I prepared the iPod to return to the seller.  I initialized it back to factory settings.  Then we waited a few days.

After a while, I noticed the battery lasted a lot longer now that it was reset.  So I did some more research.  I found out that the apps that I had installed were draining my battery.  So the new iPod battery was fine and my old iPod battery worked fine too once I removed the apps.

Barb wrote to the seller.  She said we had found the problem and everything was okay now.  He said he was happy that everything worked out.  Barb was embarrassed about sending him the earlier email.  She cancelled the ebay complaint she had started.

Now I had two iPods. 

The funny thing was that Barb’s iPod that she uses even more often than I do started giving her trouble.  One day the on/off switch wouldn’t work.  She panicked because she had all of her contact phone numbers stored on her iPod and didn’t have a paper copy.

Fortunately, we were able to finally get it to turn on.  I backed it up on my computer.  Then I restored the files from the backup on my new iPod and gave it to her.  Barb was very happy to have a working iPod again.  So we really did need a new iPod.  Everything worked out fine for both of us in the long run.