This morning I was able to recall my dream. It probably helped that I woke up to my own laughter. I apologize in advance for doing a dream post, I am compelled…

I was sitting at the smaller of the two reference desks – the one normally reserved for handling the majority of phone calls – when a youngish hipsterish type couple with child in tow approached and began speaking to me in low voices. I couldn’t hear a word, and said as much, to which the lady of the duo said – it‘s so quiet in here… – which, in point of fact, it was definitely not.

While they continued to soft talk, a line started to queue behind them. The low rumble of multiple bodies in proximity began to grow. I continued in vain to try to understand exactly what the soft talkers were after – beginning to lose my patience. Some of those in the queue took rest in the seats provided on the other side of the reference desk.

“look – I can’t help you if I can’t hear you – you’re going to have to speak up.”

Then – looking over with concern to find their child who had wandered off some distance – I noticed that another member of the queue had taken the liberty of resting in my chair, which I had vacated so that I could lean in to try, oh how I tried, to pick up any syllable of these mumblers. And she was eating cake! They were ALL eating cake! (It was pink cake, for the record)

For some reason this struck a nerve.

“Excuse me, if you could wait on the other side of the desk, and really – there isn’t supposed to be any food by the computers…”

At this point, shit got real. The growing noise of the gathering masses was beginning to tweak my senses. It was then that I realized that in addition to the shuffling, breathing, mumbling, childing, waiting in the queue conversating – a familiar crescendo of music was rising. All of a sudden, the track lighting began to dim and brighten – like it was some laser show spectacular – over the reference desk – in time to the music – which was similar to Pink Floyd’s “One of these Days” – but different.

I looked over my shoulder to see my brother, Willishrinx, seated before a lightboard – with his familiar maniacal grin face – rapidly manipulating the dimmers in time with the music. This brought on a slight sense of panic – and I quickly looked towards the main desk as if to say “I don’t know what’s happening – I’m SORRRRRRRRY” – before looking back at his shit eating grin and just breaking out in laughter.

That’s when i woke up.

Should be an interesting day.

External Hard Drive

Back in December my external hard drive ceased to be recognized by my tower. I’ve had it for quite some time and use it mainly to store my music files and my iTunes library. When it went, panic set in, and eventually I had to accept that I was going to need some outside assistance to get it back up and running.

Thanks to twitter I know somebody in the business and put my trust in him to set things right. After picking up some chazzano coffee I dropped off the external hard drive, watched him run a quick ear test for the dreaded click of the dying drive, and then left it in his hands. A couple days later he let me know that the data was fine – it was just the enclosure that needed to be replaced.

This led me to go all in and agree that establishing a backup system would probably be the bees knees. I’ve got too much music on that drive to let it all go to waste. So we’re in the final stages of that now. He’s ordered a secondary drive for the tower and a new enclosure for the hard drive and all of that should wind up, at long last, before this weekend with some backup software installed.

No word on the cost yet. It likely won’t be cheap. But data recovery never is.

Furnace

I can’t say that I’ve been too concerned with the data mess. The holidays came and went and I got to spend a lot of quality time with my family. As I continue to grow into my old man years – my love for my family grows exponentially. It was incredible to hang out with seestore, willishrinx, the nephews and my in-laws, including my new seestore-in-law.

A couple of highlights include their first dining experience at Slows BBQ, sledding on the hill of doom with the nephews, a visit to the DIA to see the Fakes and Forgeries exhibit, taking in True Grit, Bloody Marys on Christmas morning and a heckuva lot more.

Shortly thereafter, the parents left for their new snowbird home in Florida. I woke one morning to a rather brisk bedroom – and as I descended downstairs, to an even brisker family room. Something wasn’t right. I still wasn’t awake, but if you ever need a jolt stronger than coffee to knock your senses around – try staring into a thermostat that’s supposed to read 60 and get 46 in return.

The furnace wasn’t keepin on like it’s supposed to keep on. It’d rumble for about 45 seconds and then cut back out. I ran through the troubleshooting in the manual, but nothing seemed to be taking. I’d have to put in a call for maintenance.

Now get this. The guy they sent out was actually named Sammy Lovin. Not McLovin, just Lovin. It took the keen eyes of a good friend to point this out to me when she happened upon the receipt – but I’m glad she did. What a name!

Sammy rigged it so the fan would stay on until they could order a new control board – which meant I had heat over the weekend – but that my electricity bill is probably going to take a hit. That Monday he came back with the new control board – and after $395 – I have a heated house again. Oof.

Heated Car

So the house is heated and all is starting to be right with the world again when what should happen but another heat related catastrophe. Whilst out with said good friend, after a delicious encounter with dessert and drinks at Cork Wine Pub, the fan in my 2000 Ford Focus went schizo. When I moved the switch from 3 to 2 – it cut out, and then full on blasted – and then cut out again, for good.

I just finished piecing that back together. It started with a $25 resistor, as I’d replaced that part before and it was my prime suspect. No such luck. Had to pull the blower motor. Took that up to O’Reillys auto parts, where they were having some problems getting some juice into the motor to test it. They kept running the wires to it and to other things and were having no luck. They were at wit’s end and even at the point of giving up, suggesting that perhaps it was the $81 motor. But one guy kept at it, improvising with some motorcycle jumpers – which created a delightful shower of sparks – but also spun that motor to no end. It wasn’t the motor.

That left the switch. That simple thing on the console that goes from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. I had to special order it but it was delivered this morning. Picked it up and about two hours later I had heat coarsing through the car. Awesome. $26

Headed to work and realized the turn signals weren’t working. Not a good thing for the anxious. I just finished one of my worst shifts ever in the public librarian realm — came home — popped out the stereo and saw that I had forgotten to hook up one of the wires. That’s done.

Wire DVD

Speaking of wires… After much urging I decided that I’d take up another friend’s repeated suggestions that I watch The Wire. Apparently people that watch The Wire must make other people watch The Wire. She has the complete season – and had lent out Season One to the friend that had introduced us.

Tiny Apartment #103: “The Wire” from Tiny Apartment on Vimeo.

(video via said friend)
I’ve misplaced disc two of season one of The Wire you guys. IT’S NOT LOST. It’s just misplaced. If, for some reason, it doesn’t reveal itself soon — I’ll likely be purchasing Season One of The Wire. $30.49. Or losing a friend. She really wants to not be my friend right now because of this.

So that’s another 1000 word update. Sorry it’s not quite so uplifting as the last.

(Update) Found it. Hiding under the keyboard.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Currently don’t have an overhead vent hood – so obviously this comes in kinda handy when smells and smoke go awry. It also keeps it good and cool when the oven and whatnot is pumpin out some serious heat. Pops was concerned because of the orientation of the fixture – the previous owner’s kitchen redo was wanting in a number of areas – and we weren’t sure we were gonna be able to use the fan – due to the awkward plaster cut you can see in one of the photos.

It went a lot smoother than we imagined — and the fan was up and running in about an hour.

Voilà . We haz fan on 12seconds.tv

Still plenty of work left to do to make this kitchen a helluva lot more functional — including finding some time to purchase that elusive kitchen cart.

Thanks to pops – of course – but thanks also to moms – who went about dusting and cleaning and beautifying the way only moms is capable of.

Moses has been staying with us for a few months now, but I only began trying to teach him this classic a couple weeks ago. Success.


Caretaking of Moses from kevinyezbick on Vimeo.

I’m cleaning up the urls from the migration to wordpress from movabletype. Once that’s done I’ll get rid of the default templates. Whee.

*Update* screw it. Nobody ever linked here in the first place.

Yup. I’m an Uncle again. Congrats to Micki and JB and Aardvark. Can’t wait to meet him in real life. Mom and Baby are doing fine.

SHOCKING!