Long, Strange Day

Got up with the idea of a trip to town for pressure tank parts, but ended up having to wait until mid-afternoon for the oil to be delivered.

While waiting I decided to stage the truck with cardboard and other materials for recycling tomorrow and to collect stuff left behind by the previous owner to be taken to the dump and to Goodwill. I found out that the "full to overflowing" trash can contained -- under the tied-shut green trash bag -- nothing but clean, unflattened cardboard boxes. So now I have an empty trash can with which to haul water in the pickup when I plant my bushes and such (starting tomorrow, to have them all in in time for the good soaking that hopefully will come their way courtesy of Hannah, on Sunday.

I have a truck full of recycleables, a pile of stuff destined for the dump Saturday morning (and a pile of "dump tickets" that are used to pay for the service), before I load up the charity stuff, my City-Data sign and myself and head to Bangor for the City-Data.com Bangor area meet. I need to buy a few balloons to attach to the sign and to the area in the Sea Dog restaurant where we will be sitting.

I even carried the first box FROM the garage/storage into the house, and hauled a lot of stuff to the garage (trim and molding pulled of during our renovation work, etc.) though the piles of "dump-bound" and "charity-bound" stuff from the house are still sitting in the living room. It IS a living room now, though, not a poor excuse for a storage building. I even swept the kitchen floor!

My fussing about in the garage did, however, confirm that I am allergic to DUST (as my sinuses clogged up big time after a few minutes of working there) though I am not suffering (from that at least!) now, thanks to a teed-off WASP who was disturbed by the oil delivery. I was leaning on the little structure that encloses the tank, talking to the delivery guy, when WHAM something hit my cheek, just below my glasses and STUNG!. Damn... I am somewhat sensitive to those critters so I beat a hasty retreat, hollered at Kevin for ice and went rummanging around for some antihisatamine. All I found was DayQuil, but it has antihistamine in so I took one, planted the ice pack on my cheek and went back out to deal with the oil dude. Turns out we had more oil in the tank that the previous owner thought, as we now have a $200 credit, more or less, with the oil company (as well as a similar credit with the propane company due to the fiasco of the water heater and ultimately getting a smaller tank.)

K drove to town, I continued to lean on my ice pack and by the time we hit Home Depot the swelling was mostly staying down. I had him go by WalMart to pick up a new poster frame for my large old hand-lettered piece that hangs in the dining room... "Give us this day our daily calcium proprionate, spoilage retarder; sodium diacetate, mold inhibitor.... Forgive us, oh Lord, for calling this stuff BREAD." It is done in black letter (old English) on rice paper, painted with acrylics (my first use of this medium) back in the very early 70s. the old frame was dying and the plexiglas cover had gotten badly scratched in the move. NOW I need a larger piece of foam core board, or the like, as the new frame is a bit larger than the old, so I need to totally rework the piece. This will be the third frame for the art in its life.

We ate in town and I am still stuffed... not really wanting to lie down but I must. Dawn will come, though not as early as it has been, it will be early enough.