Life News – Page 8 – ::: jeffphillips.org :::

Feel The Heat

Today, I went on a ride with my motorcycle club from South Riding to Frederick, MD. It’s not that long of a ride, but doing it with a group of 35 or so people takes quite a bit of time. In fact, the round trip plus lunch took over 6 hours.

That wouldn’t have been so bad except for one thing: it was over 90 degrees outside today! Ouch! It’s not so bad when you’re moving, but once you stop, the heat gets very uncomfortable.

Anyway, it was all in all a great ride except for the heat. Then I got home. Seems that even though our HVAC has been repaired, that I forgot to reset the thermostat and put it on Auto instead of Heat. Well, it’s over 80 in the house now and it’s still uncomfortable for me to move around.

Maybe I’ll just go lay on the tile floor… too bad it’s fake tile. Won’t really be cool enough.

Cherry Blossoms and Other Things

Okay, so I don’t post nearly as regularly as I should, but at least I do post and I try to do it at least once a month.

So the AC is now finally fixed and operating as it’s supposed to.

And I’m sore like I haven’t been since high-school spring football [and not recovering near as fast] due to some increased workout activity. I’ve been doing a little of that P90X workout once per week and it really tears me up. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do it 5 days per week.

So, we went out and got great pictures of cherry blossoms.

Now, all we need to do is post the thousands of remaining pictures…

HVAC Issues

Over the last couple of days, we’ve noticed that our heating and air-conditioning system was not functioning correctly. On the one hot day, we couldn’t get it to cool [luckily, it wasn’t that hot – only high 70s] and the rest of the days, it seemed like it just wouldn’t get warm.

After playing with it a little bit and smelling some strange electronic burning smell, we discovered that while the main furnace/AC was functioning, the fan system was not blowing. It was getting hot inside the furnace, but nowhere else. We had someone look at it today.

Sure enough, it was a bad circuit board – the one that switched the fan to “on” was broken. The technician bypassed the board for today and ordered the part. It should be in next week.

For now, we have heat – which is great since it got below 60 in the house this morning. I think we might be up to 68 or so by now. All this means that I had to work at the house today [since Laura had been called on to work an emergency shift due to someone’s illness I think and wasn’t able to be home] and sit freezing in the basement most of the morning. Hence my ability to take 5 and blog…

Maybe I’ll even get some of my work administration done. Status reports, research, etc. Stuff that normally doesn’t get done in a timely fashion when I have to sit with the customer all day.

Back To Bills

Getting back from Vegas means going through stacks of mail and entering many transactions into Quicken.

I think I’m finally done. It’s taken all evening to work on and now I don’t have a pile of debit card receipts in my pocket.

Returning from travel also means returning to work, and work I did today. Especially since I had so many unread emails to deal with.

Returning to work means EXPENSE REPORTS! Yay. Fun. So, I’m now done with that, too. I learned early on in my 100% travel days at IBM to not dally with the reports – it only hurt me in the end. I now stay clear. Zero balance on the Amex once the reports are approved.

So now I’m done. And I’m tired.

Viva Las Vegas?

As Winter can’t quite make up its mind about when to die this year, Laura and I will be heading out west to Las Vegas, or more precisely Henderson, NV.

I’m going there for a Directory and Identity conference, hoping to learn new things and Laura’s going… well, just to hang out with me! Isn’t that cool?

When I’m not in my conference, we’ll be heading out to the desert for some photo ops and possibly some night light shots of the strip, so it’s doubling as a photography trip. We might even go back to Red Rock Canyon. And I think I’ve been persuaded to do some indoor skydiving.

This year, unlike last, we’ll be staying in the hotel which is hosting the conference. Last time, I tried to “maximize” our Hilton points, but the hassle just wasn’t worth it, and this hotel looks to be VERY posh.

Is Winter Really Over?

It’s probably not, but it certainly feels like it. After the post below, many of you outside of our area might be thinking it’s still cold up here. Not so! In fact, it’s now 73 and a warm Spring day, even though it’s not really Spring yet. Not only that, we already have our US tax return sitting in the bank!

On that note, Laura and I will be heading out to go shopping! Well, to buy a couple of new lamps for the bedroom. Not that big of a purchase, but something we need.

With Spring knocking on the door, Laura has been moving furniture around and thinking about what our next home improvement project should be. I’ve hijacked that thought and decided that we’re going to wire the living room for surround sound speakers. I finally figured out a way to make it work with a minimum of effort and cost.

—- UPDATE —

I forgot to hit “publish”, but we’ve just gotten back from a nice shopping day. We have a pair of lamps now that look to fit the bill.

Winter Ain’t Left Yet

Last night, some fierce winter storms blew in across the entire eastern part of the country. We had an unseasonably large amount of snow: over 6 inches, maybe more in parts. With quite a lot of snow [for our area anyway] headed our way, it looked like I would be snowed in for the day. Sure enough, I was!

Until I made Laura shovel the driveway!

Well, I didn’t make her. [Don’t worry, Norma: I’m not a slave driver!] I started it, and she started taking pictures so I offered to take pictures of her doing it. Well, she had fun and I had fun. Did I tell you I love snow? It smelled like a ski resort here today. And we even had hot chocolate in our “lodge”.

And when I say she had fun, I mean it! Notice the snow flying through the air?

Ah, well. It was like a mini vacation, but I have to go back to work tomorrow. As you can see behind her, the roads are now clear – they sent trucks to scrape all the roads just so I could make it to work.

How kind of them. [Darn]

Taxes And The Waiting Game

I love to be early, and this year is no exception. I have what I think is most if not all of my information entered into TurboTax. This is made possible by the marvels of electronic form delivery. Gotta love that! So, I have to wonder now: “what am I missing?”

I hate that feeling where I think I’m done, but don’t know if it’s really true. Will some other bank send me a form? Have I listed all my deductions? Is there something out there that I forgot? These are the questions that keep me from clicking on “Send to IRS”.

The big question, though, is “How long do I wait before I ‘know’ I have all the forms?”

So, here I sit with TurboTax open and thinking over these questions and trying to remember if there is any other source of income or deduction that I have to put down.

Hopslam!

Yes, it’s that time of year again when Bell’s Hopslam hits the shelves. Actually, it didn’t even hit the shelves, but more like the receiving area and straight into my hands. The entire shipment of this rare, seasonal beer has sold out in one day. Maybe not all, but certainly all of the stock around here. So, I’m pretty excited that I managed to obtain 2 full cases of this rare liquid gold. That means I can have 1 per week if I want it to last an entire year.

I had a good amount last year, but it wasn’t quite two cases. This year, I should be able to make it stretch out further.

I had my first one tonight and it’s as good or better than I remember.

Yum!

Brr!

It’s rather cold today. Temperature outside is currently 17 degrees. Wow!

I’ve been recuperating from our trip to Phoenix where I picked up some kind of bug. I’m convalescing today and hope that I will be good tomorrow, since I have to go to work anyway – even if I feel bad.

I did learn quite a bit at Imaging USA and I will post more when I can get around to thinking about it. But for right now, I’m just glad to be home and a little rested.