June 30, 2012: Carpet Cleaning

Last night I finished listening to Wil Wheaton reading “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and realized, at the very end when it ended ridiculously abruptly right in the middle of the story, that something was very wrong.  The book was way too short and I had felt that the pacing seemed odd.  It has been decades since I have read the book myself so I had thought little of it but had been quite surprised that the book was only three hours long when read.

So I listened to part of it again while following along with the online text and figured out that this was an abridged version of the book.  Very abridged.  And abridged very poorly.  Argh.  I never buy abridged books.  I check this carefully.

I went online and verified everywhere that absolutely everything involving this book states that it is unabridged.  If you filter by unabridged it is there… one third the length of all of the other books.  Grrrr.  So I called Audible and had a very hard time explaining that the book was abridged but that they had it labeled as unabridged and that I was quite unhappy to have purchased the book and received less than half of it.  Eventually they figured out what was going on (I have no idea how this was complicated in any way) and they took that book back and gave me an unabridged version instead with someone else reading it.  That kind of sucks because I had wanted Wil Wheaton reading an unabridged version but, apparently, he has never recorded anything of the kind.  So I have to make due.  I hope that the same thing hasn’t happened with Elijah Wood reading “Huckleberry Finn.”

Today I finally got around to working on the floors.  It is not quite as hot today.   I have been avoiding working on the floors to some degree simply because it is ridiculously hot outside and if I boil tons of water in the house that is just going to make it that much more humid and make the air conditioner have that much more of a problem keeping up.

I put down fifteen gallons of boiling water today.  That let me clean some pretty significant patches on the floor.  We are hopeful that now that we don’t have a dog constantly adding to the mess on the floor that with some heavy duty cleaning that we might be able to make headway on the carpets and actually recovery them enough to be able to keep them.  They have taken such a beating, though, over the last few years (both before we were there and since we have been there) that they really only have a little life left in them anyway.  But I am going to do what I can to save them.  I don’t want to deal with replacing them on top of everything else this year.

I started experimenting with aluminum foiling the windows in the play room.  Pretty silly, I know, but I really think that it is going to work and be pretty easy to do.  I did one window to try it out.  There are only four and pretty much we want that room dark all of the time as it is used for watching the television up on the wall or for Dominica to use her computer.  In either case, having it be too bright is a problem and it is the room that gets way too warm all summer.  So going over the top is not necessarily a bad thing.  Silly, yes, but practical.

Late this morning we finally found out that the door glass in Peekskill had been cleaned up and the door, while not yet fixed, is at least okay for the moment and no one should be complaining any further.  A single pain of glass remains (again) and we will get an estimate on Monday as to how much it will be to have it replaced.  At least our stress levels have gone way down after this one.

I had a mid-afternoon “lunch” with Chris who watched our house for us while we were gone.  He was coming from the airport so we just met at Redneck Heaven.  I like their grilled shrimp salad there.

This evening I fired up the XBOX 360, turned on the television and got in just a little bit of Mass Effect 2 which I have not had a chance to play in months.  I probably only played for an hour but it gave me a chance to get into the game and learn the controls again.  It has been so long since I have played that I didn’t even remember what to do.  I was still at the very beginning of the game where no decisions had been made yet and they story had just started.  It was that part at the beginning of most games that is effectively nothing but a tutorial getting you ready so that you can play the game from that point.  So I got myself past that point just a little bit, saved and am ready to actually play it tomorrow.  I am looking forward to getting into the storyline again.  I haven’t been able to play anything in so long.  If I am lucky I might actually be able to complete Mass Effect 2 before Dominica and the girls return.

I started listening to Rick Steves’ “Postcards from Europe” again today.  I had listened to about half of it in the car while driving from New York City to Rochester.  Dominica read it while we were on our trip and had used it to help her calm a bit when she was getting so stressed out.  So I am attempting to complete it now.  I listened to half an hour or more from bed before the iPod died and I decided to just go to sleep.

I am really liking sleeping with my head in the middle of the room rather than against the wall.  It keeps you cooler and feels more natural to me.

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