Housecleaning, Vacuum Issues and the Renaissance Festival

If you read my posts at all, you know that I've been cleaning. The house actually isn't in bad shape - I've kept up with things in the harder rooms - bathrooms and kitchen - but I wanted to tackle and finish the upper rooms yesterday. I did a final clean of Sharon's Room, and pulled out the vacuum to give it a good go before tackling DH's bathroom. 

I have a Kenmore vacuum similar to this that 
I purchased at Sears in the 1980's. It works 
great, so I haven't felt the need to upgrade it. 
However, when it doesn't work, it needs a 
vacuum doctor. So I took it to the "doctor" 
yesterday, and they'll heal it and call me to 
pick it up next week. 

I wasn't getting any suction through the vacuum head, so I took a bit of time to disassemble it, clean it and make sure the belt was properly situated and not off the track. I reassembled everything and tried one more time. No. Still no suction, although the motor was working fine. Taking a quick internet search for "vacuum repair" I saw the listing for a firm I'd used before - very nice, competent people. They had moved from their old location near my store, to a location very close to my house. I put the vacuum into the car and headed over there. 

Their diagnosis - there's a problem with the vacuum head, but all of the other items - the hose parts, are conduction power properly, so it's just not reaching the head. It might be a simple fuse, or it might be a broken wire. They gave me a date of "next week" so I left the vacuum head with them and took the rest of it back home again. I'll have to shift my cleaning schedule, but it never hurts to vacuum last, right? LOL. 

Actually, the bathroom wasn't quite this bad (and I didn't 
bother with the bathtub because we never use it). But, the 
double-sink counter-top was cluttered and scuzzy, and 
the toilet and floor needed a seriously solid scrub. It took 
me two hours to get that bathroom into shape enough that 
I won't mind sharing it for 3-4 days. So Gross!!!

Because of my braces, I have quite a few more items that I have to deal with several times a day in the bathroom. I've been using the guest bathroom, but I'll turn that over to Sharon when she's here, so I'll share the master bathroom with DH (not my favorite thing). In the past I've used the shower room, but there's no vanity around the sink in that room, nor is there an electrical plug. DH's bathroom, however, was a DISASTER! OMG! It was absolutely filthy. I started in on that, and it took me 2 HOURS of serious work to get it looking clean and civilized again. When I showed it to DH, his comment was "Where's all my stuff", which I had put into the below sink cabinet. He's also complaining about my sharing his bathroom with him. Tough! It's the Master Bathroom. Two sinks. He can have his (which was disgusting) and I'll have mine. It's only for a few days, and he'll just have to deal. 

I have four cherry tomato plants - two yellow and two red. 
They're bearing really nicely right now - I guess I'd better 
research some tomato sauce recipes because I can't keep 
up just eating them with my nightly salads. They're SO 
good, though. I'm quite pleased. 

My tomato plants are in full season now - lots of cherry tomatoes for my meals. My peppers are also going a bit crazy. I pickled a batch of the banana peppers for DH, he'll start munching those today probably. I'm waiting for some more of my jalapenos to ripen a bit more before harvesting them, and I have one more type of pepper that's just starting to go red. I think those are Tabascos, but I'm not 100% certain - I'll have to check the sign at the bottom of the plant. 

This is a great photo of the Eastern Food Court at the 
Renaissance Festival. There are several Food Courts 
at the Fest. From the angle, I think this photo was taken 
from the top of the Climbing Wall/Tower. 

Tomorrow is our first day of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. They're charging for parking on-site this year, urging people to use Park-and-Ride instead. I'm fine with that, but we come from a long way away, so we drive in. I purchased my parking tickets earlier this summer and I just have to remember to bring the parking ticket with me each week now. I'll have to check Minion and see if there's a good place to stash all of the tickets. If not, I'll have to remember to grab the appropriate one each time. The tickets are by the specific date, so if I forget to grab it, we've got no-where to park! 

Have an excellent weekend, I hope the weather is kind to you wherever you're living, and that you have a lovely weekend doing exactly what you want to do. I'll be back on Monday. Slava Ukraini.