The Fence, The Alarm and My Mom - Here, There and Everywhere

Happy Wednesday. Despite the weather being lovely yesterday, DH "putzed"  in the garden, but didn't do anything about spray-coating the fence. I, on the other hand, watched several YouTube videos about how to use our paint sprayer. I'm much more confident now. DH has decided his best days to do the fence are Saturday and Sunday. Supposedly the weather will be best. I have my doubts that the weather people can tell with any certitude this far away. But we'll see. We need to get the fence clear coated, and if he won't do it, I'll have to fold it into my time. 

The spray painter is pretty easy to use, the tricky part is 
making sure that the paint is the correct thickness to easily 
work through the mechanism. There are some videos that I 
was watching yesterday. I'll try and watch a few more today. 
I might get stuck doing this on my own - sometimes these 
jobs start with good intentions and then never quite get done. 

I phoned my security alarm company yesterday, and it seems like the lack of communication was a glitch because everything is working well now. That's a relief. I don't have to have a technician come out and play with the alarm panel. At least one thing was a positive. 

I'm not sure if the statement above is grammatically 
correct. It's grating on me. I suspect it should be 
"...recover emails that have disappeared ..." rather than 
the shorter way in the illustration. But ... the concept is 
exactly what I'm talking about, so here you go. An 
incorrect text box for the correct idea - LOL. 

Today I have to check out an email from Missy - she's tried to send it several times without success, so we'll see if it arrived in my in-box yesterday afternoon. I certainly hope so. It's old photos and memories of my Mom that her Mom had kept. I'd very much like to see it and read about it. 

This is the photo that I have hanging on 
the wall to the left of my computer. I see it 
every day. Mom was probably around 40 in 
this photo. She was a beauty! 

I also need to contact the county watershed district. We need to schedule a walk-through on our property. They will be clearing trees from our stream bed (or drainage ditch) and we want to make sure that they are quite aware of what trees are on their property and which ones are on ours. I'll call them today, between cooking, cleaning, laundry and finally collapsing and chatting with Aearwen - whose birthday it is today. So, Happy Birthday Aearwen. Hope you have a wonderful day and year ahead. I'm heading for the pool, so have an excellent Wednesday. Slava Ukraini. 

A Lack of Sleep and the Outdoor Pool - At Least it Was a Nice Memorial Holiday Weekend

Once again a sleepless night. I went to bed and to sleep shortly after 9:00 pm, which is exactly on time for me, but my alarm company called with an interior alarm at 11:15. So I grabbed some outside clothes and drove over. This time it was for the front interior motion detector, the past two times it was for the back interior motion detectors, but just as before (and fortunately), it was again probably mice. Time to try and get a handle on the critters' movements and get some traps set up. 

I've had mouse problems in the store before. Our doors 
aren't so tight fitting that they can't squeeze in from 
the outside. Usually we'll have more mouse problems in 
the winter than in the spring and summer - there's more 
for them to eat outside than in the store. Still, they 
are destructive and, if they are setting off my alarm 
system, they're also really annoying me. 

Unfortunately, this time I wasn't able to fall back into a deep sleep. I tossed and turned and finally, shortly after 2:00 am I gave up and listened to some meditations, then read a little bit more in my current e-book. At 2:45 am I finally went ahead, got up, got dressed for the pool, and am settling down to write this before leaving for my first swim in the outdoor pool in more than two years. 

There is a possibility, although a bit more remote, that 
it could be a field mouse instead of a house mouse. 
The ears are a good tell for that. House mice have larger 
more apparent ears than field mice, their eyes are 
also larger. 

I always approach the outdoor pool with respect and a little bit of trepidation. I'm good in the water, I'm certainly not afraid of the pool in the least, but it's quite a different swimming experience in the outdoor pool than in the interior pool. There's something amazing about an Olympic-sized pool, and we'll have swimmers from all over the Metro area coming over to join us. It's always more crowded for the outdoor pool than the much smaller indoor pool. 

At the literal crack of dawn, we're not as busy in the 
outdoor pool as an hour or two later. Also, during 
the middle of the workweek, it won't be as crowded. 
I'm hoping I'll only have to share a lane with a single 
swimmer, but I can chain if I have to. 

Fortunately, not everyone is crazy and wants to be in the water at 5:00 am. We'll have less competition for our time slots, and also I swim on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so I'll miss the weekend group as well. All things considered, I'm lucky. But I'm not going to be at my best today with less than three hours of sleep. Still ... it's swimming, it's the outdoor pool, and I have a good book that I'm listening to, so it's not all bad. 

"The Halfling's Gem" is the sixth book 
in R. A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden 
series. It's always fun to listen to a 
good book while swimming - it makes 
the laps go faster, at least for me. I've 
tried music in the past, but found I was 
changing my stroke to meet the 
rhythm of each piece. Counterproductive 
to say the least. Books don't have that 
problem. 

I hope all of you had an excellent Memorial Day weekend. We cooked burgers on the grill on Sunday and steaks on Monday, and I have plenty of leftover steak for at least one more, and possibly two more meals. All in all, it was a pretty good long weekend, even with the weather warnings of late Monday and the shop's alarm issue. I can make it through a day at the shop with minimal sleep - it won't be the first time. And I'll try to make sure I get a good night's sleep tonight so I won't be a zombie tomorrow. Have a great Tuesday and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini. 

Survival, Alarms and Lack of Sleep - The Story of My Life *sigh*

On LJIdol, I managed to scrape by enough votes to end up in the bottom third, but I'm still in the pack. Thank you to all who voted for my haiku. The next topic and deadline was announced early this morning. Perhaps I'll have better luck next voting session. This time I lost two friends - murielle and adoptedwriter. I'm quite sad to see them leave the competition. 

I enjoy playing with different types of literary 
styles. I also enjoy playing with different 
literary types. 

This week's LJIdol prompt will take a bit of thought, but could lead to some interesting tales. "You are an opossum living in the trashcan of my heart". A bit crazy, isn't it? Apparently it's a song lyric. You can get away with statements like that in song, but I wonder how well it will work in prose and tale. Time to start thinking about this one. 

On this list, I laugh at the fact that News 
Article follows Fairy Tale, Legend, Myth, 
Tall Tale, and Fable. Hmmm. Perhaps the 
listing should be altered to put News 
Artlcle after Informational Text? 

I had gotten less than two hours of sleep last night before my alarm company called about another internal alarm at the shop. ARGH! I pulled on a set of street pants, grabbed my keys and headed out. Of course nothing was wrong or disturbed in any way - which was good. But it was a 45 minute chunk out of my sleep before I was back in dreamland, and my "get up" alarm only waits until 3:15 am before chiming at me to get going on my day. It's going to be a hard swim today. I hope I can fall into the words of my novel and lose my "blah" at swimming tired. If this continues, I'll have to call the alarm company send out a tech to check out the sensors. I might have one going bad. That's an expense I really would rather avoid, but I may have no choice. 

I gave up about 2-1/2 hours of sleep on Saturday night 
so that we could get to the garden store at 7:00 am. Now 
I ended up with an interruption in my next night's usual 
six hours. I'm going to be dragging by next Sunday! 

So, to expedite things and so that I can start thinking about opossums and trashcans (who the hell thinks about those two things as 'romantic'?), I'm plugging in photos and heading out to the gym. I hope you have a wonderfully fantastic day, and I'll be back tomorrow - hopefully after an uninterrupted night's sleep. 

Retail - Never A Dull Moment

It's never a dull moment in retail. This morning, just after I had finished eating a lovely pear for breakfast - after I had been on the treadmill, taken my shower, and gotten dressed for the day - I received a phone call from my security company. There was an interior alarm at the shop. Knowing that getting an interior alarm without a breach of either the back or front door or another broken front window, I wasn't overly concerned, but quickly tossed on my jacket and headed over to check the place out. 

There's really no way for any interior alarm to happen 
without an exterior alarm happening first. Of course 
things can fall off walls or shelves, but that didn't 
seem to be the case. I'll have to keep an eye out - maybe 
that motion sensor is deficient. 

Sure enough, everything looked fine - no intruders, no breach of any entrances, and no mice (that I could see - LOL). I cleared the alarm, reset it, and returned home. Once here, I directed DH to get the motion detectors dusted today, provided him with an extendable duster, and returned to what I had been doing - writing my daily blog. The only disadvantage I could see for my quick back-and-forth run ... my tea is tepid. *sigh* LOL

The only disadvantage of this quick trip was my tea 
getting cold. I could reheat it in the microwave, but 
that's just ick. I'll just drink tepid tea and look forward 
to a second cup that's nice and hot. 

Yesterday, I spent the entire day transferring Wednesday's photos of Swarovski crystal cubes into the laptop, then bringing them up one at a time, cropping them, resizing them, and renaming them so that I can use them for my Etsy listings. I had fifty photos I had taken on Wednesday to process and it took me most of the day to get them pulled over, revised, and ready for use. 

I still need to upload the revised 8mm crystal cubes pages, 
but I'm working on the photography of the 6mm cubes 
right now. I have a lot more 6mm cubes than I do 
8mm (and even more 4mm cubes). I need to do this 
regularly to get that category fully up and running. Then 
I can start on the next shape - I have a LOT of 
crystals that I want to get listed. 

Today's goal is to finish the photography on the 6mm crystals. I got a bit less than half of them done on Wednesday in three hours. I want to push to finish this size today, but I also need to get to the grocery store, and I'd like to make another four Alkagizers so that I won't be in a time crunch next week. I'll have to see what I can do, but I'll do whatever I can. The photos simply won't take themselves, and I have it down to a formula now. 

Let's jump right into the day. It's going to be a good 
one, I'm just focused on that - LOL. 

So, that's my excitement for the day - a false alarm, a drive out and back on what proved to be a lovely morning after the storms, and a day to be spent indoors doing fussy work. Oh joy! I hope your day is a bit more exciting than mine - although mine started out with a bang. I'll be back tomorrow. 

There's Nothing Like A Security Alarm at 12:30 am!

I'm going to be dragging today. Bleh! I went to sleep shortly after 9:00 pm, as usual, but was awakened by the house phone shortly before 1:00 am. It was our security company telling us that the front door/window alarm had been tripped at the store and that the police had been contacted. We got dressed and went over there. 

Looking towards the street through the decorative rod iron 
security bars we have across our front, it was pretty obvious 
there was a serious hole and a lot of cracks. I grabbed my 
broom and dustpan and started cleaning up the detritus. 

Sure enough, our alarm was blaring. DH shut off the alarm and we went in and headed toward the front windows. We have walls on the south and north, with other businesses on each side. The back is brick and stonework with a steel door. In the past, that door has been forced open. I think we've had three times when a break-in was attempted through the back door, but it's pretty solid and it's been secure for a few years now. This is the first time anyone has tried anything from the front - full windows from side to side with a glass door for customer entry/exit. 

Looking from the street view into the store, 
you get a good look at my hardwood flooring, 
as well as our cases (which we always cover 
overnight since the George Floyd riots. It's 
not a huge hole, but it's far larger than a bullet 
hole would be, and smaller than a baseball. 
To me, it looks like an elbow - possibly from a 
drunken student being pushed by a friend on 
his way home from the bar. 

Looking at the position of the hole in the glass, it looked more like a strike out in anger or maybe a fight on the street where someone got pushed into the glass. I don't think it was intentional, although it certainly leaves us with a mess to take care of on a weekend. While I swept up shards of glass, DH found cardboard large enough to cover the hole, then went outside and taped down the cracks and across the hole with duct tape (his go-to tape for almost anything - we should own stock in that company - LOL). 

I don't think it was a baseball (and there was no baseball or 
rock inside the store, so I'm saying it wasn't a projectile 
at all). Baseballs through glass leave round holes, and, 
although it could have been a rock, that rock should have 
been somewhere on the floor of the store. So no - it was 
an impact of some sort, but not a projectile. 

I contacted the police and spoke to the officer who had stopped by. He had gone before we arrived. I'm sure there were many more important things than a simple hole in the window. He was speculating rock or baseball bat. I told him the bat might be a possibility, but there was no sign inside of any projectile causing the hole. If it had been a smaller hole, it could have been a gunshot, but no. I've seen gunshot holes before and this just wasn't one. 

I may never know what caused the glass to break, but 
I really hope no-one was harmed. I also hope the 
insurance company foots the bill for replacing the 
window. It's a large expanse of glass and it won't 
be inexpensive. 

So, it's a bit of a mystery. My suspicion is that someone either struck it with intent, or pushed someone else into the glass (in which case, I hope they weren't harmed too badly). I've got a sheet of cardboard over the break right now, I'm eternally grateful that our temperatures are still relatively mild and it isn't the middle of winter, and I'll be contacting my insurance company and my landlord first thing later today. 

Perhaps I should call Sherlock Snoopy and set him 
on the case - LOL. I'll probably never know why/how 
my window was broken, but I'm glad the shop seems 
untouched and replacing the glass is relatively minor. 

I got home, and decided it simply wasn't worth going back to sleep, so I'll be dragging today with less than four hours. I did take the opportunity to have an extended session of meditation - I needed to recapture my equilibrium. But I was too tired to do my entire two miles on the treadmill, I only managed 1-1/2 mile today. Still, things could have been much worse and I'm very grateful to whatever entity has watched over me during these years. I'll work today, call it an early night tonight, and try my best to sleep in tomorrow. I think I need it. Have a great weekend and I'll be back on Monday. 

Yesterday Was A Hard Day for DH

Yesterday turned into a total cluster-f__k, at least for DH. I saw my Physical Therapist and I'm doing good, but since there's always room for improvement, we'll continue on next year - January appointment already made. I asked him about chairs. My computer desk chair has been causing me a lot of pain and a new chair is on my holiday list. I was going to hit the office supply store on my way home and look carefully at what they had to offer before heading home to the usual household chores. 

After trying out chairs for more than 30 minutes, I
ended up liking this one the most. It's got a
firm seat and great back support, is adjustable more
than the height I need, and it seems comfortable
for hours of sitting. It's on sale for a bit more than
$200, which isn't bad for a professional chair. 

I dropped by the shop after PT and got the computers up and running. Everything ready to go. I locked behind me and continued on my way. While sitting in chairs, I got two texts. My Assistant Manager was in the parking lot, DH was running late because of who knows what, and I told her to go ahead and open the door and go in so that we could get the lights on and be open on time. She texted back saying her key just made the lock move around in a circle, but that the bar of the dead bolt wasn't doing anything at all. Crap! 

When a lock goes, it can be a catastrophe. It was
lucky DH was able to get the deadbolt opened
from the inside of the store, or we would have
had a super hard problem getting the broken
lock out. Personally, I would have called
a locksmith. *sigh*

When DH arrived, he had the same problem, so he went in through the front and fortunately was able to get the back unlocked from the store side. But a new lock was required. From 10:00 am until shortly after 4:30 pm, DH worked on replacing the lock. The length of the deadbolt was an odd one - there were shorter bolts and longer bolts, but not the dimension we needed. He checked four different hardware stores, and no lock with the right dimensions. 

We have a heavy duty security plate on that door, to
make breaking in much harder for any thief. It
works! It was a total PITA for DH to get the
plate removed enough to install the new deadbolt. 

Finally settling on a good second choice, he got keys made and headed back to install the lock. He worked on getting it into the door. We have a security plate covering the locks and the doorplate that had to be removed. That sounds so easy and was so hard. Hours, yeah hours to get that removed enough to install the new bolt. Then, after installing it, he realized he had forgotten to index the lock and it was something unfixable. Back to the hardware store for another lock, which was finally able to be installed. 

So, he ate his lunch for dinner last night. We have new keys and new instructions about how to open and close the new deadbolt, and my Assistant Manager doesn't have a key for the bolt. That's OK, but not great. It only has to last until the fall next year. It'll make it that long. 

At least I managed to get my household chores done, some holiday shopping done, and almost the final few cards addressed and mailed. I still have four to send. I'll look through my 2018 master list and see who I want to send one to, but I got my LJ and DW friends taken care of. Sharon's holiday package is in the mail as well - it wasn't even a horrible line at the Post Office. It might have been a horrid day for DH, but I actually had a pretty good one, finishing with a long-overdue convo with Aearwen. 

Tonight is Project Runway with the unusual materials challenge. Who will be sent home tonight? I can hardly wait to watch, and if all works well, I'll have a PR post for you in the morning. Happy Thursday and I'll be back tomorrow. 

Must Sleep

My alarm company awakened me last night with a false alarm and I had the devil's own time getting back to sleep afterward. I'm going to grab another hour of sleep and call this my blog for the day. Short, sweet, and barely there. Have a good Tuesday, all, tomorrow should be better.

I need sleep more than anything else right now. 

A Night Filled with Disappointment

It's been a night filled with disappointment. After getting to bed early, I slept deeply until about a quarter after one when I got up to take a quick bathroom break. Just falling back to sleep, my cellphone rang (this is why I have my phone with me 24/7). It was my alarm company letting me know that the power had gone off at my shop. Now, sometimes this is a true power company issue, but sometimes this is a breaker tripping. Either way, my sleep was destroyed. I tried to get back to sleep, because the alarm was on battery power and any break-ins would be another phone call to me from the alarm company. Sleep was restless and not great. I should have just left the house, driven to the shop, and checked the damned alarm. But I'll be there by 8:00 am this morning. I'll probably have to get a new battery pretty soon, though.

While hunting for a picture of a tripped security alarm, I came across this
picture with the words "Would Angel Gabriel have tripped Mary's
security system?" I love the concept - LOL. 

So, the gym opens at 6:00 am and I'll be there waiting at the door. I want to do at least 30 minutes on the recumbent bike and 15 on the elliptical before hitting the showers. It's a shortened workout, but I can't do a full one with the gym opening that late. I need that 5:00 am time I get from the weekdays. At least the machines aren't as busy on the weekends.

Body Pump works with weights to increase strength and power. I have
always enjoyed working with weights and wanted to add either resistance
machines or free weights to my routine. This might be a good way to do
this and still have it work into my schedule. 

I'm thinking about trying a drop-in class next week. They have what's called a "Body Pump" class at 6:00 am on Tuesday. That would work in with my schedule if I keep a close eye on time. I'm not sure where the specific room is located, but I can find out. I'm just curious. The class will be held throughout March, so I'll try to catch it at some time or other.

I've got two stories in the works, a third knocking at my mental door, and
I have two other prompts in the wings. Guess I'm keeping busy. 

I'm keeping up with my reviews for B2MeM stories (yeah me!). It's been great reading all of these other tales from authors having their own distinct visions and phrasing. It's part of why I enjoy reading so much - hearing the different voices tell their tales.

I'm grateful the mail issue is on Saturday when I have an extra hour
to post and work with my blog. During the week, I would have
been very late getting a blog out and it might have been missing pictures.
Horrors! LOL

And then, for one more nail in the proverbial coffin, my email account can't list my emails this morning. I normally check three accounts, and my main account isn't available. *sigh*. I'll need to try again, because I can't get this posted properly if I can't pull it over from my email post. So, off to propitiate the wizard of electronics. Have a great weekend, all!