Uh, yeah. About that.
Saturday I was in the Valley taking care of some business, which I will discuss here for the first time in the coming days. This item of business has been taking a tremendous amount of my mental, physical, and psychic energy for months now. I look forward to discussing it with you.
Sunday, upon my return to the city, Patricia and I went to the main Halifax library for the annual event where you take a broken electronic item in your house and volunteers try to fix it. I took in a table top fan that I purchased the first summer I was on my own, so 1988. It was in my apartment on Dahlia Street in Dartmouth, apartment 208. Crazy hot summer that year. I managed to find a fan and got it home and it helped make that summer livable. Over the years, it adorned my apartment on Green Street in Halifax. Of course, for the last quite a few years it has been here in my house.
In the last couple of months, as it oscillated, it made a little noise as it moved back and forth. A little, uh, cracking sound for lack of a better term. When it was not oscillating, it did not make that noise. I figured that while the fan didn't owe me anything after all this time, by the same token, it had earned at least a quick check by someone who knew what they were doing. I had taken the thing apart myself but didn't see anything amiss.
The volunteer took the fan apart more than I had. Peered inside the mechanism and had me look. "Nylon gears", he pronounced. After all these years, they were wearing out. He put it back together and had it oscillate. "That noise is the fan slipping gears", he told me. The cost of fixing the unit, if it was fixable to begin with, was more than buying a new one.
I thanked him for his time. Scooped up the fan. Went to a couple of the vendors, who were giving away some swag. Pencils made from recycled newspapers. Pens with recycled parts in them. A little "green bin" suitable to store those pens and pencils in. Sticky notes. A schedule of what is acceptable to throw out on garbage/recycling days. A nice tote bag.
Patricia had taken in a toaster. The volunteer took it apart and got it working again, after a fashion. He put it back together and it no longer worked. The problem appears to be a magnet that holds the lever down, which causes the toaster to do its thing. The magnet got mis aligned or something in the unit, so the lever will not stay in place, so the toaster will not toast. A shame. It is not that old. We will have to make do with the toaster I got at a thrift store a couple of years ago. It works fine for what it is.
After we left, we grabbed some lunch at the sushi place on Queen Street, across from the library. The sushi place is a franchise and mostly looks it. The sushi was acceptable, vacillating between bland and tasteless. The place further up on Queen Street is 100x times better.
We returned home. I found a power bar and took it downstairs to the laundry room. Plugged it in, above the washing machine. Plugged the phone into the power bar, along with the fan, and then one of my many radios. The fan is in the corner of the laundry room, on a shelf, pressed against the wall, so Newbie would have a very hard time knocking it over. I have it just where I want it (the fan, not Newbie). I permanently turned off the oscillation on the fan and pointed it in the direction of anyone who enters the room. Turned it on. Worked perfectly. With any luck, I hope to get another five years out of that fan, now that I know what it can no longer do. I will probably never run it beyond the slowest speed, too, once again to preserve the motor that much longer.
Sunday night, we watched an episode of "Poldark", and then the pilot episode of "Lodge 49", the latest drama from AMC. The show is about a man in his late 20's, early 30's who is at a cross roads. He has no job and no place to live, so he sleeps on his sister's couch. They are both deeply in debt. Their father just died, and they have lost everything. He ends up joining a fraternal lodge along the lines of the Masons, in an effort to turn his life around. It is a promising show, based on the pilot. I want to see more.
Monday I returned to work. I had a headache most of the day. When we got home, I had to take a nap. I got up after a while and ate something before returning to bed, this time for the evening.
Today, Tuesday, I felt much better. So much so, that I barbecued dinner tonight, a couple of turkey breasts. With some scalloped potatoes and tomatoes, we had a very nice dinner indeed.
Tomorrow is Wednesday already. What fresh fun awaits me? Let's find out, and I will try to tell you about it, tomorrow.
See you then.
Bevboy
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