Coffee heat rising

Update: Life, the Universe, and All That

So, feeling slightly better when I rolled out at 6:00 this morning, I decided I’d better wash the damn car. The other day while we were at choir practice – god, was it only last Wednesday? no, I think it was a week ago Wednesday…but couldn’t be because two weeks ago I was too sick to drive…I’ve come unstuck in time! – a sudden windstorm blew up. It not only exploded a blast of dust into the air, it also spat just enough rain to cover every car in the parking lot with mud.

What a mess.

I’ve not felt well enough to deal with that, so used the windshield wiper squirter thing to clear the glass enough to see part of the road. And in the meanwhile have been driving around in a car literally coated in mud.

Tomorrow I have to take the vehicle to Chuck’s so he can perform whatever regular maintenance has to be done after six months. And…uhm…well…I do not want Chuck to know that I would let a “new” car languish under a layer of filth, driving around in public like that.

So first crack out of the barrel, before breakfast and (especially) before the sun could climb high enough to shine on the paint, the car went out in the driveway to be soaped up and rinsed down and dried off.

This job used up the entire store of microfiber rags remaining after the last housecleaning adventure. A giant wad of dirty microfiber rags has been sitting by the washer waiting to be laundered, so between those and the ones I used to swab off the car, I pretty much maxed the Speed Queen.

Yesterday I went to clean the debris off the floor of the pool, where it had settled after having been blown in there on said wind. The lazy person’s way to do this is to let the pump run for a day (or two or three or…) without benefit of Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner. This will push the litter into a neat pile along the north side of the pool. Then you can use a leaf bonnet – a gadget that attaches to the end of a hose – to suck up the chunky stuff. Harvey will then vacuum the dust off the bottom.

Junk out…no clogs in the pool equipment. Voilá!

Unfortunately, a pool bonnet comes with a stupid little bag that you’re supposed to cinch on with a piece of string…a highly inefficient way of doing things. About half the time, the string slips loose about when you’ve filled up the bag with half a bushel of debris. It then falls off the gadget and dumps the leaves and twigs and dead worms back into the pool, scattering them all over the bottom.

Naturally this happened yesterday.

It dawned on me, in my fury, that there really is no reason to use the flimsy bonnet baggy thing that comes with the product.

Duh! If a piece of hosiery works as a strainer basket filter, why wouldn’t it work as a “bonnet” on that thing? Cut of off the legs and tie the stumps at the crotch. Then slide the waistband, which is pretty tight elastic, over the top of the leaf bonnet. For good measure, tie it down with a piece of string.

Out with the old…
In with the “new”…

Damned if it didn’t work! Using a pair of hose for a fat lady (I need a “queen size” in L’Eggs), I could almost make the DIY sweeper bonnet stay on by virtue of its built-in elastic. I suspect a pair of hose made for a 12-year-old wouldn’t even have to be tied on.

So…later this week: a trip to the Dollar Store in search of cheapie hose.

I broke or wore out the Sandisk memory card thing for the camera, which will not communicate with the MacBook without it. So had to make a Costco run to buy another. At first I thought it didn’t work, but lo! It surely does.

Blogging from the front courtyard…

It’s a beautiful morning, cool and a little overcast. My poor under-exercised dogs have been loafing on the front patio, craving a doggy-walk, which they’re not gonna get, because I just heard from two of my journal editors, and so must pretend to get to work.

When is lunch?