Saturday, November 26, 2016

Day 2539

There's a small Cuban restaurant in the neighborhood I've always been meaning to try. Today, when I passed the place on my way to get groceries, I noticed a TV satellite truck out front and a news crew setting up for an interview. I'm sure they were going to ask the restaurant owner what he thought about Castro's death. It seemed weird that world events would have an impact on my small neighborhood, but that's the world we live in today. I made a mental note to watch the local news this evening, but I quickly forgot. I guess I'll never know why the satellite truck was parked in front of the restaurant, but I still need to stop by and try a Cuban sandwich sometime.

There was a broken hinge on the rear door that I needed to fix today. I thought this would be an easy task. All I needed to do was replace three rusted screws and reattach the hinge to the door. I hadn't counted on the fact that my body is falling apart. I had to reach above my head to extract the rusty screws. I can easily extend my left hand above my head, but my left wrist is very weak because of carpal tunnel. My right wrist is much stronger, but I have trouble extending that arm fully because of my dislocated shoulder. Just reaching up and securing the hinge with three new screws turned out to require much more effort than I thought it would. Getting old is a bitch.

I had better luck repairing a broken iPhone case a little later in the day. This task required that I remove six tiny hex screws with a watchmaker's tool and then use a drop of superglue to repair a crack in the bezel of the case. I successfully made the repair without losing any of the tiny screws or getting superglue on my fingers. I don't know what this proves, except that maybe I need to stick to jobs that require finesse rather than strength.

I found a spare external hard drive in the office this morning and instead of taking it to the storage warehouse like I usually do, I decided to use it to create a Time Machine drive for the laptop that I've been playing with this week. I don't know why I never backed up this laptop before. I've had the thing for years. I defragmented the laptop drive while I was at it and then unplugged everything and put the laptop back in a drawer. I probably won't boot the thing up again until I need it to write a blog post during a power outage.

Dot was in good spirits today, although I did have a bit of a mess to clean up during the night. I debated whether to wake Janet up and ask for help, but she and Dash were sleeping peacefully so I managed to clean Dot up by myself. I'm getting better at this, but I'm sure not getting enough sleep. All I want these days is an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep.

Pepper is today's Dalmatian of the Day
Watch of the Day