252 - Wood

We laminated the header today. It is now one big, thick piece of wood... gonna be a hoot getting it up the stairs and installed where it needs to be... I can help a little, but it would be better to get Tom or someone to help. Lifting it into place? No idea how that's going to happen; but I'm almost sure Mike has a plan...

It's like wood lasagna.

Bo and the kittens had a nice little romp around the yard while we worked on it. I get nervous letting Bo out but he mostly stayed within visual range... mostly...

And he did mostly come back when we called... mostly...

Mike fixed our bedroom closet so that now we have two hanging rods with a shelf in between. Looks good. I'll have to use a stool to reach the top rod, but we can put stuff we don't wear as often up top and the rest can go on the lower rod. It's just nice to have extra space instead of everything being all scrunched up like it has been.

The bathroom closet is still a work in progress but it's close, just need shelving cut for the sides. The two shelves he added are already helping immensely. Soon I'll be able to empty some boxes and get everything organized.

And there has FINALLY been a resolution with my camera. Long story short, I am keeping the camera I originally got, they have sent the missing lens and I am getting a $75 credit. They did send the camera I asked for but even though I was told it would be black, it was white and completely hideous... the flip screen is a nice feature but I would be angry every time I looked at the camera, so it's going back. I guess I just need to get an anti-glare screen protector. It's not the resolution I originally wanted but I'm happy with it.

Bo is never more focused than when there is food involved... here he is staring pointedly at Mike's chicken wings

He has also taken to supervising me as I make his meals. Every time he sees the saute pan I use to cook his chicken, he gets excited and now he thinks it's "his" pan... And he goes bonkers over his Bo cookies. They smell really good but don't have much flavor that I can tell... yeah, I sampled one after they came out of the oven... he is very food centric. He's such a sweetie... we couldn't ask for a better puppy.

251 - Meh.

Another rainy day. All week... rain... flurries... rain/snow... showers... flurries... BLAH! I don't care too much except that I get better pics when there's sun out. Mike is hating it because he wants to be outside tinkering, and I don't blame him.

Mike got to work on the bathroom shelves last night. We still need one going lengthwise and then wood to complete the side shelving on both sides. It's going to help immensely... we still have boxes that we haven't unpacked... Storage... this house needs storage...

Monday, we will get dowels to increase the hanging space in our closets. They aren't very large, more like coat closets than anything else, but they are what we have to work with.

Tonight we will, perhaps, laminate the header so we can finally start moving the kitchen wall and get the pantry built. It's a pain in the butt not to have one, and adds to our already cluttered state to have a half finished project. I know we need to borrow tools from a friend, so we'll have to wait on that... I'm just ready to have it done. I'm looking forward to a pantry and I think it will be the biggest one I've ever had.

Also, my almost month long battle with Overstock seems to be nearing its end... I ordered my camera and their site pictured it with a flip screen. With the advent of LCD viewfinders and the the demise of actual viewfinders, the sun can cause a glare which makes it impossible to see what you're shooting at. The ability to move my screen around would resolve that somewhat. So when I received my camera I tried to use that feature but couldn't figure out how to get the screen to move, and in fact it appeared to be fixed in place. When I downloaded the user's guide, I found that this model doesn't have a flip screen after all.

So I contacted customer service. Went from an online chat representative, to another representative, to a supervisor and finally a manager. My solution was simple: swap out the camera bodies so that I get what I thought I ordered. They kept giving me stories about their warehouse and inventory and how they couldn't just swap the camera bodies, they'd have to have the whole camera and the bundle back. Then they tried to entice me with a camera that is two generations old, with 4 fewer megapixels, a slower shutter speed and no touchscreen... but it had a flip screen. They tried to dance around it... always using the word "comparable."

Well finally they are going to replace the camera body with the one I originally asked for, the one that is the same, but with the flip screen. Yes, that's correct. They will swap out the camera body now, which is what I suggested doing three weeks ago. I also realized that in focusing on the screen, I failed to notice that one of the lenses I was supposed to receive was not in the box. So they tried to duck out of that one by first making it seem as if they were doing me a favor by allowing me to keep the lens I have and just return the camera... which means I would still be short a lens. Then by giving me whatever lens is in the box with the new camera... one that goes to 84mm, when the lens I should have gotten goes to 150mm... that's almost double the zoom, so no thank you... I want the 150mm that I should already have.

I THINK they have have already shipped the camera body out. The manager is working on the lens issues, she knows by now that I'm not going to let it slide... It was supposed to have been in the box... since it wasn't, they need to provide it to me. Anyway, I guess we'll see tomorrow. If not I will call the corporate headquarters and take it up with them. I'm done settling for things. My life has been crappy enough and sometimes it is because I didn't fight when I should have. Lesson learned.

Tonight I'm going to make Pad Thai for dinner, but since the grocery store doesn't have rice noodles, I'm going to have to hope egg noodles will suffice. And we'll be watching The Walking Dead later. This season is looking really good. The prison setting was good for a while but started to feel stale, and all the new characters they brought on... eh, they didn't add much to the story. The Governor is finally dead... that's at least some progress; he was a loathesome individual. This season looks exciting... the group has been split up and who knows where some of them ended up since it was chaos. Only 4-1/2 more hours...

P.S. This gorgeous cardinal dropped by