Thirty Days in May

Today is the official start of the events leading up to the Indianapolis 500, but it just doesn't feel right to me.  I guess I'm old and crotchety.  Oh me.

Back in The Good Old Days, young'uns, the 500 festivities started May 1, not on a Wednesday in the first week of the month - THE FIRST.  The Race itself was run on Memorial Day, MAY 30 - not the Sunday before the last Monday in May.  People talked about "RACE DAY" and nobody asked "Which race?"

It used to be all about the Thirty Days in May in the newspapers (yes, there used to be more than one) and on TV and radio.  There was big 500 news EVERY DAY.  Elementary school art teachers taught kids to draw race cars.  There was the 500 Festival of the Arts exhibit and competition for local high school students.  People stuck checkered flags in their front yards and hosted race day cookouts.  Who does that now?  Sad.

Drivers used to stay at the Speedway Motel or in people's homes, believe it or not!  And not like an AirBNB-type place, either.  Actual people's HOMES.  In their SPARE BEDROOMS, and sometimes BASEMENTS.

The Snake Pit had no bleachers, no family-friendly picnic area, and no grass most of the time.  If you weren't looking for trouble, you didn't go there except by accident or sheer ignorance.  It was full of bikers and drunks and women flashing their goodies - oh my!  (MAYBE we could do without THAT tradition - HA!)

If you went to the 500 Parade, you didn't need a reservation to watch; you could line up along the route and crane your neck to see, or climb up the steps of the old Post Office/Federal Building and find a seat - all for FREE.  Now you pretty much have to pay for a reserved bleacher seat if you want to see anything at all.  UGH. 

Practice days were every weekday.  High school and college students would skip school to go to practices, and return the following day with the most amazing lobster-esque sunburns!  Qualifications were run every weekend.  Today's "Carb Day" was Carburetion Day, when the crews tuned the cars' carburetors (no fuel injection!) in preparation for The Race. 

Anyway, the 500 was a big deal here.  But for the last couple of decades, it seems to have lost its luster.  What was once a source of local pride and excitement became a nuisance (the traffic!) and just another day - ho hum.

However, Penske recently bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and seems to be trying to bring back some of the local excitement.  There are commercials on TV that aren't just about "The Race is coming!  Buy your tickets NOW!" but evoke nostalgia for the ceremonial rituals and traditions of the race.  One of my friends has lived with the track nearly in her front yard her entire life, and can be excused for having a jaded attitude toward all the hoopla, but even SHE is getting excited about The Race again.

There IS hope!

RACE DAY IS COMING!

Curbside Pickup Just Got REAL

As I wrote in a previous post, we replaced our dishwasher (ourselves) and thought we were done replacing things.  

HA.

My (ancient) laptop decided to start giving me fits.  The sound played intermittently, and the touchpad stopped working.  There were things I could do with it, but there were many more things I couldn't, so I started researching.  Long story short, I got a new laptop - nothing fancy, but newer, and most importantly, it WORKS.

So I'm finally done and I can get back to it, right?

HA again!

Last summer, I noticed that the plastic kill button on my boat's little outboard motor was chipped around the edges so that the clip that keeps the motor running couldn't perform its function.  This has happened before, so I knew what was needed - a throttle assembly.

Now, the boat and motor are 35 years old this year.  Parts.  Ah, yes.  It always comes down to Parts.  I searched for places that carried The Parts.  There were several, but only one had all the pieces for the throttle assembly.  So I built an order.

HOLY COW!  The total!  ACK!  I have the original receipt for the old motor, and the amount for JUST the throttle assembly parts was more than what the motor cost new in 1987!  OUCH.  I mean, come on.  After replacing the throttle assembly I'd still have a 35-year-old motor.  Who knows what would fail next?

So I REconsidered my options and searched for an equivalent NEW motor.  I read reviews and sailing forums and ads and websites.  It took several days, but I found a motor that would work.  

The new motor, at home.

Time to order!!!

Well, if only it were that simple.  Supply chain issues haven't gone away yet - will they ever?

I found a few sites that carry The Motor, but only TWO with any in stock - that's the $64,000 question!  

One was in California and the other in Connecticut.  The place in California was a little less expensive, but the "preparation fees" and shipping costs and all the other add-ons made it quite a bit MORE expensive.  Bait and switch.  The ancient cheat.

I ordered the motor from Defender Industries in Connecticut.  They only had two in stock.  After considering my options AGAIN, instead of having it shipped, I said I'd pick it up.

Yes, that's right.  I drove to Connecticut to pick up a new outboard.  

Yes, I'm crazy.

Well, just a little.  I decided to make the most of the trip.  Why not spend a week in New England?  And I could look in on That Girl and her family on the way.  So that's what I did.  I visited in Baltimore and stayed one night going.  I drove to Rhode Island, where I stayed for my off-season vacation.

"Ultra-Low Emissions"

But the motor was in Connecticut!  Not to worry.  Where I stayed in Rhode Island was about two miles from the Connecticut state line, and Defender Industries was only a thirty-minute drive from my temporary home base.  Half an hour in the car is nothing.  It was the perfect location.  I was only three houses from the beach.  I did walk to the beach a couple of times, but it was too cold to do anything else there.  Even the closest restaurants were closed for the season, and it snowed one night.

No, no beach activities besides walking - in my down parka.  I don't know that I've ever done that before.  

Anyway, that Monday I went to Defender Industries.  Why "Defender?"  Well, they specialize in inflatables (!) similar to Zodiacs, used by all sorts of public safety agencies, and as tenders to yachts and stuff.  They have ONE retail outlet and they carry ALL kinds of neato marine stuff, including sailboat hardware, floats, dock bumpers, Sunbrella material for covers, and just about everything you could wish for.  

A dangerous place! 

Here's The Box.
No actual luggage.

I had to go inside to let them know I had arrived.  I showed GREAT restraint by not wandering around and exploring the warehouse-like expanse of boat-related goodies.  I DID almost buy a set of charts for the Chesapeake Bay and another for the Block Island vicinity.  I picked them up and leafed through them longingly, but better sense prevailed and I returned them to their shelves.

When I drove around to the loading area, I saw The Box.  Oh, I KNEW (in my head) what size it would be, but actually seeing it in the back of my vehicle, I started to wonder whether I'd be able to fit my luggage in there with it! 

I managed. 

And I managed well enough that driving home (via Baltimore again) I didn't have anything blocking the rearview mirror's sightlines.

So, a successful curbside pickup.  Now I just have to figure out the new motor's foibles and eccentricities - oh, boy!!!

Sick, and Sick AGAIN, and...!

It has been a challenging start to the year.  I just can't seem to get any traction!

After spending Christmas with That Girl and her family, I came home with what I assumed was the usual Creeping Crud courtesy of the Grands, a.k.a. the germ factories.

It seems I almost always come home with a LITTLE something after visiting Those People, but this one wasn't so little.  I started sneezing (an odd occurrence for me!) and blowing my nose, AFTER I returned home, of course.  Normally I just get congested with a sinus infection and it all drains down my throat and I cough like crazy to clear it all out.  (I know, TMI - sorry!)  But not THIS time!  I never really felt congested, but I blew and blew and BLEW my nose.  My word!  Where did it all come from?

I was exhausted.  I didn't want to get out of bed or take a shower.  I went through tissues faster than green grass through a goose.  I was thirsty all the time because fluids were leaving my body via the ol' Schnozzola.

And then came the day when I fixed some leftover soup for lunch.  It smelled great and was good and hot - just the thing for a pitiable sickie.  I took a bite and thought it needed salt   So I salted it.  I took another bite.  Well, it still needed salt.  So I salted it.  I took another bite.  What the heck?  It didn't taste like I had added ANY salt AT ALL.

I was so sick and exhausted, it didn't even occur to me until after few weeks and I was completely over it.

I may have had COVID.  

So I was sick for about a month.  Thank God it didn't last any longer. 

So... things should have returned to some sort of normal.

Well, no.  Other STUFF came up (doesn't it always???) which I won't go into right now (the post would be long and rambling, so let's just stick to the current point) and as a result, I decided to take a trip east (AGAIN) beyond Baltimore and Those People, but I figured why not stop in and see them.  It had been a couple of months, and the kids are fun to see.  So I stopped in both directions, going and coming back, one night going, and two coming back.  I would have only stayed one night heading home, but That Girl and her husband wanted to go out for the evening the second night, so I stayed and watched The Grands.  

Well.

As usual, all three kids were coughing, and the youngest had an icky nose.  And I got SICK.  

AGAIN. 

I started coughing almost the minute I got home.  UGH.  A few days later, I felt better.  I seemed better.  But over the following weekend, I got MUCH worse.  But it behaved like a "normal" sinus infection.  I went to the doctor that Monday and she concurred. I got antibiotics and went through a few more mountains of tissues.

And then I got a phone call.  "What are you doing this weekend?  We have tickets to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games, and wondered whether you could..."

What do you think I said?  What should I have said?  Ponder that a minute.

What I said was, "I'm sick right now."  And, "No, I'm not driving back there for one night and then losing another month to being sick."  Or something to that effect.

Anyway, NO.

So am I a Bad Grandma?  

Maybe.  

Do I want to be sick again?

NO.

After all was said and done, I spent 7 weeks of the first quarter of this year SICK. 

And I'm not going through that again soon.

Appliances - AGAIN

I thought we were DONE replacing major appliances.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we've replaced the washer, dryer, range, and refrigerator, and because the dishwasher was relatively new (just under 6 years old), I figured we had pretty much exhausted our major appliance needs.

HA!

The dishwasher's heating element decided to go on strike, so the "clean" dishes really WEREN'T.  There were some other annoying things about it I'd been putting up with, but this was the last straw.  Sure, we could have replaced the heating element, but the other annoyances would have remained.  So...I went shopping - online.

When I looked a couple of weeks ago, I found a machine that would do, put it in my online cart, and went through the checkout rigamarole, only to find that there was NO installation available.  Anywhere.  So I didn't finish the transaction.  Who could we get to install the new machine?  A plumber?  A handyman?  Maybe someone recommended by a friend? 

So I kinda sorta procrastinated on it, kinda sorta looked here and there for someone to install a dishwasher.  I mean, after all, a malfunctioning dishwasher's not an emergency, right?  So I goofed around for a week and a half.

Well...  

That Man said, not in so many words, that it can't be THAT difficult and WE should be able to do it ourselves.  I figured why not?  We replaced our water heater ourselves.  A dishwasher should be within our grasp.  Oh me.

So I went back online, put the chosen machine in my shopping cart, and proceeded to the checkout.  Lo and behold, a reprieve!  Installation was back on the table!  

However...

There may be some things we need to modify, according to That Man, or some things we may want to take care of while the space in the cabinetry is unoccupied - like maybe do something about the flooring in there or whatever.

Plus, we could save some dough if we did it ourselves.  Oh me.

So the day before The New Dishwasher was to be delivered, we pulled out the old one - FUN.  That Man descended into the crawlspace to have a look at the drain and the hot water line, shut off the water to the dishwasher, and roll around in the dirt and spiderwebs.  When he emerged, I cleaned him up with a broom and compressed air - MORE fun.  The crawlspace access is in our hall closet under the stairs, at the end where the stairs start, so not much headroom, and an ordeal for him.

The cats were fascinated by the new unexplored area in the kitchen, of course, and just had to nose around in there, the hairy little heathens.

The dishwasher arrived at 7:42 the following morning, and the old dishwasher departed with the guys in the delivery truck.  

I won't go into detail, but sometime in the late afternoon, That Man asked whether I wished we'd paid to have the dishwasher installed.  I didn't have the energy to answer right away, and besides, it was too late for that!  We soldiered on and finished about 12 1/2 hours after the new machine was delivered, including two quick meals (I get testy when I'm hungry) and another trip into the underworld for That Man to turn on the water.  More broom and compressed air.

The last test of my patience came when it was time to close up the toe kick.  There was a huge amount of insulation to force into that space, and I got down on the floor and pushed and tucked and shoved, looked at the directions, and pushed and shoved some more, and looked at the directions, and stuffed it all up and around and in the toe kick.  I took a few breaks, lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, and occasionally groaning.

THEN...

The toe kick panel had to be screwed into place.  So I rolled around on the floor some more, pushing that piece of stamped sheet metal against the insulation I had just stuffed into the undersized cavity while the insulation did its darnedest to expand and spring back out and cover the holes I was trying to get the machine screws into.  Plus the threads on one of the screws were messed up.  More breaks and groaning.

One screw finally found its home, but the other just plain refused until That Man took pity on me.  He got down on the floor and rolled around awhile, and eventually the final screw behaved.  

The trim along the floor had to be put back.  Of course, most of the nails were bent beyond redemption, so some more were exhumed from the depths of a cabinet in the garage.  

By the time we finished everything, it was after 8:00 in the evening, and we were limp rags.

The following day, my body had mysterious aches here and there, but when I unloaded the small load of dishes I'd run overnight, they were CLEAN and DRY.  

Totally.  Worth.  It.

And then That Man said, "The NEXT time we do this..."

ACK!