It's been a rough couple of days. I had to cover for someone at work, so I've put in 40 hours in the last three days, and that included covering overnight. I was bone tired when I pulled into the driveway and pressed the button on my garage door opener. The door failed to move.

It's been quite a while since I replaced the battery in my remote, so I pulled right up to the door and pressed the button again. Nothing. I put the car in neutral and set the parking brake and walked up to the door. We've got an external electronic codepad to open the door. Did I mention it was raining?

Anyway, when I typed in the code, I noticed that the door was shifting noticeably and I heard an ominous humming noise over the sound of the rain.

There is a man door for the garage, but it opens inward, and stacked up against it were several bags of fertilizer that my father-in-law had gifted me. (He thinks that the quality of man's soul is reflected in the quality of a man's lawn. Me, I think dandelions are beautiful, and that if God didn't want me to have beautiful flowers on my lawn, he wouldn't make it so that said beautiful flowers appear without any effort on my part.) After some grunting and shoving, I got the door open enough to squeeze inside and take a closer look at the door.

One of the torsion springs had broken. I disconnected the garage door opener and tried to lift the door. No dice, it's an old-school wooden door and weighs far more than I can lift.

The problem is that while my car is now sitting in the driveway, the door failed with my wife's car inside the garage. It's now trapped there. And she's got a bunch of meetings tomorrow in several locations. Tomorrow morning we will see if we can borrow her parents' car for the day. If that falls through we'll just rent one. It turns out that car rentals are not too expensive in the middle of the week in the offseason- we can rent a small car with no notice for less than $50/day.

While home repairs of a torsion spring garage door are quite doable, they are also quite dangerous. The spring that didn't break has a lot of potential energy stored up right now, and I'm just a sack of meat. There are several garage door places nearby, and I suspect I can get one to come over tomorrow on short notice, because it's also the offseason for home construction. I hope the repair bill isn't enormous. I have no idea what to even expect, cost-wise. We've got plenty of savings, so I'm sure we can cover it, but that doesn't mean I'll be thrilled if the bill hits four figures. And I'm very much suspicious that it will.

EDIT 12/16: Repairs cost $230. That was pretty darn reasonable.

Posted by: Boviate at 12:46 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Some happy news! My wife's sister and her husband have been trying to have a child for something like six or seven years now. I am pleased to share the news that they are now, as the saying goes, "with child" and are expected to be downgraded to "with infant" at the end of May.

I'm an uncle three times over, but this is my wife's first niece of nephew. Yes, when she married me she became an aunt for those three, but it's not the same as a sibling having an actual baby while you are paying attention.

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Halloween can be fun for young and old. But it's also dangerous.

A friend of a friend was at a party when her costume was ignited by a candle. Her injuries are sufficient that she was flown to the regional burn center, and is currently in an induced coma. Her survival seems doubtful.

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For the last three years, I've been joking about how it's a good thing our cat Aria is friendly, because she wasn't earning her keep. It wasn't her fault– inexplicably, this century-old house hasn't had any mice for all this time. (It's not really that inexplicable, because there are hordes of stray cats outside, a challenging gauntlet for any mouse that wanted to find its way to our house.)

Well, last night Aria was unusually active. I figured it was pent-up stress from us having an overnight houseguest a few days ago. When Hil left for work at 8 AM, Aria was sitting on the floor staring at the ceiling. "Cats, who can figure them out!" Then at 8:30 there was some thumping. I arose at 9 AM (hooray for vacation), and quickly discovered a dead mouse in the corner of the kitchen. Aria was sleeping on a comfy chair, looking very pleased with herself. The mouse had made its last stand hiding under my full-sized suitcase, and the thump was caused by little Aria shoving it aside. The suitcase weighs twice what she does, so I'm impressed.

I disposed of the rodent's remains, and gave Aria extra petting. She wasn't interested in play later that day. I'm not sure if she was tired out from stalking the mouse all night, or if she has decided to put away childish things.

UPDATE: Three days later, Aria is playing with a live mouse. That's not good. We want a mouser, not a cat with live toys. We're going to have to get traps after all.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This wasn't a set-up from the previous post, I promise. But two people that I had emotional connections to just died, and I'm not feeling like blogging at the moment.

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I like cake. I very much like cake. But there's a limit. In the past ten days, I've eaten eleven different cakes. Folks, I'm done with cake for a while. I need a cake break.

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I just discovered that a woman in my book club has the same birthday as I do. That's cool. She's also a twin, so like me she shares the birthday with her twin.

She married a guy that has the same birthday.

They got married on the day of their mutual birthday.


I know it's not a competition, but I feel like I've been outdone.

Posted by: Boviate at 10:01 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It is a inevitable that just before a vacation, things will go haywire at work. But I made it through, and now I've got a week to relax. Sadly, I can't take the canoe anywhere yet, because the life jackets have been delayed. But we're going to Letchworth on the weekend and we can surely rent a canoe there. In the meanwhile, I intend to do some reading, gaming, and serious exercising. Naturally, of course, the weather is also unseasonably cold.

We were going to bike to a classic car show this evening, but my better half is currently napping. She's just now getting over a bout of illness, so the cars can wait for another day.

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Good weather has finally arrived. (Although, as a chronic complainer, I wish to point out that we are wanting rain.) So the bikes have come back out of storage, so's the ice cream maker, and I bought a used canoe. Now we just need to find some time to use said canoe. Also, I discovered that the previous owner of the house owned a smaller canoe than the one I just got. I know this because the nice canoe rack he had built into the garage is too narrow. I guess I'll have to make my own.

IMG_20150501_183452 by boviate, on Flickr

I'm experienced with car-topping canoes. But all previous attempts were made with flat-topped cars. The curved roof adds challenge.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'm considering replacing my car.

Now, the family tradition was to drive a car until it was totaled or until it is utterly uneconomical to repair. My current car doesn't qualify. It's an '04, but it's seriously only got 60k miles on it. It didn't get used much while I was deployed, and then when I was in university I found it was faster to ride my bike right up to the building I had class in compared to finding a parking space and walking.

But the latest Consumer Reports magazine was their car issue, and it had a checklist for "Should I keep my current car?" Mine is a great candidate for keeping, what with being low mileage and in good shape mechanically. But it lacks pretty much all recent safety features. It has no side-curtain airbags, no traction control, and doesn't even have anti-lock brakes. CR recommends replacing a car without those.

Further, it's a coupe, not a sedan, and the two-door configuration makes getting people or stuff in the back seats a huge pain in the rear, if you'll pardon the pun. Also it's a stick shift, which is fun, but my wife still hasn't learned how to use it. That means we can't trade cars, so we're missing out on one of the advantages of being a two-car family.

I'm currently thinking about getting a new Honda Fit. I'll have to schedule a test drive sometime. There are several dealers in the area, so that shouldn't be hard, and also if I decide to get one I can get bids from all of them.

Posted by: Boviate at 04:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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