Days of spinning wheels

This week feels a bit as if my figurative wheels are spinning furiously. I guess it happens sometimes, and, when it does, it’s best to just ride it out.

This week I’ve been working on setting up the second set of shelves in the lounge, and I’m now nearly done—but it’s taken me days to get to that point.

I didn’t do much of anything on the project until Tuesday, when I finally assembled them. When I went to open the box, I noticed it’d had a harder journey than the first one, but even though some of the outer protective stuff had come loose, it still did its job: Nothing was damaged.

However, this time it didn’t go as well as the first time. My biggest complaint is that a worker at the factory put the warning sticker (reminding buyers to attached the top of the shelves to the wall) on the inside of the back of the unit (the white side, which faces into the room). I had to use my fingernails to gently scrape of a sticker with strong adhesive—it took forever (the sticker was on the back of the first unit, where it’ll never be seen). I was not amused. I put that part at the bottom of the unit because that way only someone crawling on the floor could see the sticker residue I couldn't get off, and I seldom crawl on the floor.

Then, when I was tapping in the nails to hold the back in place, I accidentally hit two along the top at an angle and broke off a little bit of the top-most shelf of the unit. Because it's the top of the shelves, no one will ever see it (I suppose if an NBA player visited, they might be able to see it, but I certainly can’t). Even so, I glued the chips back down (sort of—again, no one will ever see it, and I was impatient and very over the whole thing by then).

That day the temperature was around 30 (or so…) at my house, and that meant that, as I said elsewhere, it was “hotter than a volcano in the garage,” and that’s where the CDs were stored. An hour or two after the sun started setting, I went out there and retrieved the boxes (a bit of a mission, really).

The next day, after doing some other things (like recording a podcast…), I started opening the boxes. I got a damp cloth to wipe them all off because we didn’t dust them before we packed them five years ago this month. In addition, they were mixed up—classical with pop—so it was a slow process. I only managed to get through one box (a rather large one, but still).

I decided to make onion rings that night, and the first batch was okay, but I now know I’ll never do it again. A lot of mess for something that wasn’t that nice. So much for assuming a craving is because my body needs something; it’s going to have to pick something nicer for its next craving.

This morning I thought I might get a delivery, so I decided that staying in the lounge unpacking those boxes would be a good idea so I could see the courier drive up. The delivery didn’t happen, but I got all the pop CDs unpacked/wiped (unless there are a few hiding somewhere, which is possible). I knew there were CDs by several pop artists I wasn’t familiar with and don’t particularly care for, so I think I’ll probably cull the pop CDs, keeping ones I’d actually listen to. Same with the classical ones, especially opera, which I definitely don’t care for. Basically, I think that there’s no point keeping CDs I’ll never listen to, but will still have to dust. I have one more box to go through, but I think they’re all classical (opera, mostly) CD sets.

Today I tried to ring the online pharmacy I’m using to check on my prescription renewal. I’m running out of the drugs, and hadn’t heard anything (due to the public holidays). Their customer service people were all busy, so rather than leave a message, I decided I'd ring back when I had the time. Then, as usual, I forgot. Later, I was checking my emails and saw they’d sent though the tracking number for the order, so it’s on its way. Might even get here before I run out.

There was one other frustrating stall: The podcast site. It simply doesn’t work as it should, and nothing like it used to—many things simply don’t work at all. I probably should change the overall format/template, but that’s a good way to bork the whole thing. I was particularly frustrated that I couldn’t delete my old snail mail address or dead links (like to Google+, for example) from the sidebar. In the end, I downloaded the relevant PHP file, then used BBEdit to make the changes I wanted to make (HTML coding, baby!), and re-upload it to overwrite the one I couldn’t edit any other way. It shouldn’t have been that complicated.

While I was proud of myself for sticking to it and solving the problem, I realised I need a more permanent solution, and that’s something I need to work on now because Go Daddy is once again “upgrading” some of my services for free! Though after 90 days it’ll be at a higher price than I was paying. Of course. That happened to me before when I had the old amerinz.com site: It was originally free, then was upgraded and cost me nearly $200 a year to have them host it (the site went away when I turned off auto-renew, and now the domain points to the podcast site, for now, anyway).

So far, this week has just been “one of those weeks” in which things, annoyingly, just don’t go according to plan. I’m really hoping the package I’m expecting arrives tomorrow, and my prescriptions by Monday. Somehow I also have to squeeze in my booster shot, but that’s looking like it might not be until next week, unfortunately.

At least I got the recycling bins to the kerb for pick-up tomorrow morning: Sometimes I don’t manage that. I’ll count that as a win; this week is a little light on those otherwise. Oh, yeah, I also took down my Christmas "decorations" today, because it's Epiphany, and that's when my mother always did that. I'll count that as a win, too.