Discovering a new Galaxy

Somehow I missed the fact that my bedroom clock was flashing after Wednesday evening’s power outage and a result, I had no idea the time when I woke somewhere in the middle of the night. Fearing the possibility of oversleeping, I managed to roll over and rise a enough to see Mindy’s clock on her night stand. It read 1:45am. What I didn’t know was how accurate, but know that she typically has it set about 15 minutes fast. From that I was able to do the math with the flashing number on my own clock to determine the number that I needed to correlate to 530am. I did all of that while more than half asleep.

My twisted math worked. I was downstairs at 534am. I’m sure I mustered a little smile. I had designs on working from home, but at the time had made no mention of it to Mindy. I proceeded through Thursday calisthenics (sit-ups, windmills, and curls) then headed to my PC with coffee near 555am. It was yet another clear and chilly day, the present temperature only 27 degrees. Expected it to end up around 50 later in the afternoon. I made a firm decision to work from home. And as a consequence, pulled out and logged on my laptop in preparation for my work day. As a side, I didn’t plan to run until after seeing Bella on the bus. It feels really good to set aside one morning each work week to do that.

I delivered Mindy’s coffee near 610am and made mention of my intentions to work from home, so she could plan accordingly. Anytime I work at home, I don’t expect for her to make my breakfast. She can then sleep a little later. That’s what she did. She wins too.

Back downstairs I enjoyed my PC & coffee time at a much more leisurely pace. The time went fast. First Jacob was downstairs and then off to school, and not far behind, Mindy was down and gone. She left around 725am. I didn’t walk the dog until bus stop time. Like a lot of work from home days, I was busy working much earlier than I might be otherwise. Took care of a handful of minor issues even before bus stop time.

Headed out with the pug. The gas company was out front of the neighbor’s house, there to ‘upgrade’ the size of her gas line at the prompting of the contractor she hired to install a tankless water heater system. The notion made little sense to me when she first shared it with me a couple weeks ago, but who was I to tell her otherwise. But apparently, the gas company came to the very same conclusion. Said the gas line was already the proper size. They had numerous trucks, a backhoe, and about 8 employees on site. They sat out there for about two hours doing nothing. I’m assuming they reached out to her and eventually her contractor. I’ll be she/they had to cover a pretty big cost even without them doing any work.

After Bella was on the bus I walked the dog taking our usual path. She took care of her business in relatively short order. I headed back to the house then quickly readied for a run. I left the house no later than 830am. I opted to run only three miles, further giving myself a ‘down’ day. It was a very enjoyable run. Back at the house by 9am I enjoyed a little fruit, poured another cup of coffee, then dug back into work.

Had a couple issues come up that really tested my patience. I’m sure that I dropped more than a few swear words. Sometime late morning, and for the second time in less than a week, I tripped over the pug who chose to lay just beyond the passage way between the kitchen and dining room, a direct path to my home office. I gave her the dickens. Her light coat blends nicely with the carpet, making her easy to miss, especially when my mind is somewhere else (in this case work), and my vision straight ahead. I think she likes laying there for the sun drenching this time of year.
Hunger soon overcame me, having eaten nothing substantial since the evening before. I ended reheating half of a cheese burger still the fridge from Sunday. I think it was Bella’s. Topped only with cheese and pickles. Very good, too. Hit the spot!

I took a real lunch break around 1230pm and headed to the basement to move the electric line and receptacle for the sump pump. I wanted to move it south about 18” on the block wall putting it inside what will eventually be a closet. As it was, it would end up just outside of it. The job seemed almost to simple – a 15 minutes job, tops. But I am also wise enough to know that nothing I do ever seems to go so simple. It wasn’t ridiculous, but it took far longer than I speculated. Had to overcome a few minor problems.

The toughest part was drilling the holes for the new anchors in the mortar joint between two blocks. For some reason, even with a concrete bit and hammer drill, I could only penetrate about an inch deep when I needed to go about 1-1/2”. Tried two different holes. UGH! I eventually moved to plan b, which was to drill directly into the block. That worked far better. Had to make other modification too, but won’t bore you with the details. Bottom line, the work took me almost an hour! I have two or three more ‘small’ jobs needing done before I can frame away. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to rush myself through the project. Want to savor the experience, something I failed to do in my younger years while completing the numerous major home improvement projects I took on.

Back to work. Around 2pm, the Fed Ex guy stopped by to deliver our new phones. I opened the box right away, but quickly set them aside after confirming that all three were inside. I had to focus my attention on work. As usual, it hardly seemed possible that Jacob’s school day could be over, but it was. He was home around 250pm. Man that time goes fast! He is fairly self-sufficient these days and hardly a bother. We chatted only briefly, and he wasn’t inside any more than 15 minutes before he headed off to play with friends.

I continued on with my work day. About an hour later Bella was home, and at approximately the same time as Mindy. Around 430pm I decided to try and activate my new phone first. Given these are 4G, the process is a bit different. One has to install the 4G SIM card in addition to the battery. Turned out, the simple activation instructions didn’t explain the pre-activation well at all. As a consequence, online activation failed and I was prompted to call customer service. I did. The young lady was helpful and friendly. I was more than friendly too, but also let her know that the instructions provided were poor at best. Stuff she was asking me for wasn’t anywhere to be found. Eventually got it together and she activated my new Galaxy III. Sweet!

Once my phone was working I figured Mindy’s would be a breeze. I went ahead and finished my work day first, however. Sometime near 530pm I asked Mindy for her phone. This time I followed all the steps the young lady had me do for my own before trying the activation. Still, even after following those instructions, I got the same failed message and was prompted to call customer service. No problem. Got a different rep but she was just as friendly and patient. Had Mindy’s new Galaxy fired up in a hurry. By then it was time for Mindy to run Bella to gymnastics. She asked on her way out if I was still planning to attend Bella’s parent teacher conference. Apparently my after shower attire of flannel PJs and a t-shirt didn’t give off an air of confidence. She was right. I’d forgotten all about it. We were upgrading our home cell phone to an iphone 4. That activation involved less work since it’s a 3G phone. Still, there were technical difficulties that once again prompted me to call customer service. By then I could only laugh. I got yet a 3rd rep to walk me through the activation steps. She had to try two or three times before it took.

Once all the new phones were activated, I headed upstairs to quickly change into attire more suitable for the parent teacher conference. I was back downstairs in less than 5 minutes. Mindy still wasn’t home. I decided to go ahead and delete all personal information from our three old phones so they can be donated. The process returns the phone to factory defaults an clears the SD card, contacts, and any trace, at least that’s what they say.

Mindy was back just as I was struggling to figure out the menu on the old home cell. I couldn’t figure how to power it off.  Collectively we got it. Jacob told me that he was going to the conference with us. For some reason, Mindy seemed to not want him to go. OK. She and I left the house at 615pm for our 640p appointment with Ms. Leahy.

Jimaken called Mindy just as we parked. I thought that he was joining, but he wasn’t able. Among other things, he shared that his good buddy, Pez just learned that he was stricken with breast cancer. Was scheduled to have a double mastectomy next week. Apparently the number of male cases is like 1 for every 1000 in females. Yikes! As I understand it, it hadn’t spread to lymph glands which is very good. We’ll pray for full recovery.

Inside the school we had to wait about 10-15 minutes for Ms. Leahy to finish the conference scheduled just in front of ours. While waiting, we talked with Ms. Hanes, Jacob's 4th grade teacher. She's seems fun. I noticed that Chrissy was scheduled to meet with Ms. Leahy right after us. We spent the first few minutes of the conference joking about the birthday snacks policy. Ms Leahy told me to bring them to the window next time, thus avoiding the inevitable office criticism. Bottom line, Ms. Leahy really seems to like Bella and had nothing but positive comments about her academics as well as her social skills. Chrissy knocked on the door just a minute or so after we got started. I went to the small school door window and stuck my tongue out. I then opened the door laughing my ass off, telling both Chrissy and Kenny that we'd just gotten started. We had to wait too.

Finished our conference near 705p-ish. We headed to the gym to pick-up Bella. We were a few minutes early so we spent time familiarizing ourselves with our new phones. We talked with Kelly, Bella's gymnastics instructor, after practice. She invited Bella to join her and Laurel in Pennsylvania the weekend after Xmas. We thanked her for the invite but had to decline since it was the same time as our family ski trip to NY.

Arrived home just ahead of 8pm. I spent the next 90 minutes wrestling with my new phone, trying to configure my roadrunner email account. With no success, I turned to chat forums for assistance. Lots of complaints about roadrunner compatibility issues. Everybody was pretty much on their own dinner-wise. Mindy offered to warm-up her leftover gyro for my eating pleasure. I accepted.

I wasn't in a pleasant mood to say the least. The email phone thing had me climbing the walls. I bit Mindy's head off when she came to see what I was up to. I suggested that she leave me to myself. It's best that way. I snacked on the gyro in between swings at my email problem. After visiting both the official Samsung Galaxy III support forum and the Roadrunners help forum to no avail, I finally turned to an unofficial forum that gave me a configuration that worked. I was quite pleased to have that taken care of.

Mindy wasn't very happy with me for the remainder of the evening and headed to bed around 930pm. I stayed up watching the Thursday night NFL game by myself. It was Buffalo & Miami, a game I had little to no interest in the outcome. Like I do many nights, I fell asleep on the sofa while watching the game.