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I had plans to do garden work over the weekend, and then the predicted "most areas will get half an inch of rain" turned into an all day rain with occasional stormy bits such that we got 2 inches of rain.

Monday and Tuesday were chilly (highs in the 40s!).

Monday's FCB rehearsal was stressful. The business manager (BM) had made a comment to PB (the NFHS band director) that made PB think that we weren't going to be rehearsing on Monday, so she had her band kids stage out of the bandroom for their Festival trip. Which is perfectly fair! But it really messed with my evening. *I* wasn't going to try and move their gear. The stage was set for a choir concert, and while I'll move risers and music shells, I will *NOT* move a concert grand piano without permission (at the very least) and preferably supervision. (BM and PB are in text communication at this point, trying to figure out a space to use.) We wound up in the choir room, which is considerable smaller than the bandroom. But everyone fit (as did most of the percussion). We had to take every moveable table out of the room, and scrounge chairs from various storage places in the music wing. And then we rehearsed -- down one BSax and two Tubas, with a concert in one more rehearsal. Then we had to put everything back where we found it. gaaah! (I don't get paid enough to do that regularly!)

Tuesday we processed incoming ballots. Well, DC did incoming ballots, I did outgoing ballots (applications come by mail, through the voter system, and voters can come in and get them), and BC did bills. I scampered out the door at 4:40 to make it to the PO before the mail left at 5. (DC was not yet done processing the 120 ballots that had come in since Friday. She apparently came in on Wednesday to finish them up.)

Then I went to LCCB rehearsal. (Thank Ghu I'm not playing bari in that band this time around. I didn't realise how tired I was until I got halfway to rehearsal.) But music is a thing I do, so I rehearsed well and made a few notes on my music. At this point in the session -- the concert is Sunday! -- rehearsals are mostly just run-throughs and picky bits. (there are still a couple of notes I missed, so I made notes to myself on the music.)

Wednesday I slept in. Then I sorted in the workroom and did some more in the laundry room. I re-thought the boot tray positioning, and the tray that I bought will work, just in a different place. (Upon further thought, I realised that my original plan for it was a bad idea anyway....) And I got the box of mealworms (for the birds) out of the hall and into the laundry room.

Today is errands and an evening at Hill Auditorium, and hopefully a cart or two of stuff out of the gardens. Between things that need to be cut back because they're dead and weeds that need to be pulled, there's a lot of work to be done out there. Maybe I'll do the groceries after the concert -- Meijer is still open then. But I do have a couple of local stops, so I do have to go out. Sigh.
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because it's Friday again.

I did the usual things - rehearsals continue apace. Livingston's concert is Oct 20, Farmington's Oct 27, bell choir has been shifted to November because there weren't going to be *any* rehearsals with everyone there until Oct 28. Maybe.

I got into the gardens over the weekend -- one of the gardens was too dry to weed (the weeds broke off at ground level), but I was still able to cut back things in that bed, and then I went to a different, more overgrown, garden and the ground there hadn't dried out so much and I was able to fill the garden cart three times!

I'm still reveling in the new laundry room! Space! Recycling not blocking the dryer door! Shelf that doesn't wobble when I put the detergent back on it! (It is a little weird having to take a few steps *before* turning down the hall -- I haven't _quite_ run into the doorframe yet...)

Election work has been ramping up. We have about a dozen people (out of 1200+) concerned that they haven't gotten their AV ballots yet. sigh. They all went to the PO at the same time. The PO says that they're not to be considered "late" until it's been two weeks since they got mailed. *and* it's still almost four weeks until the election -- there's plenty of time for it to show up. And if it doesn't? Fill out a form saying you didn't get it and we'll issue you a new one. (this will invalidate the first one we sent you so that it cannot be voted.) The only people with a valid concern are the snowbirds who plan on leaving in mid-Oct who had their ballots sent to their summer address, and they were all very polite about the whole thing....

BossClerk wasn't in last week (her husband had some weird reactions to meds and spent four days in hospital), so DC and I had to make sure that the clerk-y deadlines were met. Fortunately, BC wrote up and sent off most of the notices for publication the week before, so that bit was done. I hope she gets back into the office before payroll needs to be done, because I *hate* doing payroll.

Thursday, I ushered at Hill Auditorium for the first UMS concert of the season -- a solo piano performance by Isata Kanneh-Mason. She is terrific! I really like her stage presence -- she doesn't do a lot of flourishing while she's playing, but it's obvious that she really knows and appreciates the music. The audience was just the wrong size for Hill -- too big for just the main floor, but the mezzanine and balcony were at less than 30% capacity. But they were very appreciative! (I recognised her encore by the second measure of the intro (I missed the first measure because I was closing a couple of doors that had been opened early). Too much listening to Gershwin piano music or something....)

brr. ish

Oct. 9th, 2024 01:52 pm
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Annabelle has been curling up in her "winter" spots recently (the box by the back door, the corner of the sofa, the sunbeam in the upstairs East window), so I know that cooler weather is coming.

This morning, there was frost on the ground in exposed areas, and the birdbath had a 1/4" layer of ice on it. The pond, being much larger and with a fountain running in it, did not have any ice.
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but I still didn't get into the garden. Tomorrow for sure! (whenever I was home last week, it was either too wet to be in the garden or I was working on the laundry room.)

The FCB did a concert at Franklin Cider Mill on Sunday -- two weeks earlier than we're usually scheduled there, *and* earlier in the day. It was still 6 hours from when I started packing the car to when everything was unpacked. sigh. It rained off and on all day Sunday, but *not* while we were playing, so that was very good. Had the wipers on for much of the drive there and back. Monday we did a deep dive into the tricky piece for the October concert, and run-throughs on the less difficult pieces. Tuesday's LCCB rehearsal was working on tricky parts for *that* concert, which is a week before Farmington's. One of the pieces we're doing in Livingston is one that SR played when she was in HS, so I'm having flashbacks to her in front of the microphone singing the sax solo (so that ZM wouldn't go all loud and stompy on it).

Monday and Wednesday and Friday, J and I did more work on the laundry room. OK, he did most of the work, I provided recommendations/design preferences and "heavy analytical work" (aka "hold this"). I think the actual construction work is done in there. I still have a box of stuff in the front room that needs to be sorted as to whether it goes back into the laundry room or somewhere else. The rack for the recycling bins went in yesterday. I still need to find a boot tray for the room -- the one that SR had in her apartments would be great, but I think it went away; whether to the rummage sale or with DB to OH, I do not know. The boot tray I bought today doesn't fit.

Work days are getting long, as election work is ramping up. Between ballots going out and ballots coming in, and voters coming in to replace spoiled ballots, and trying to figure out who is actually going to be able & willing to work on Election Day.... (and BC's husband is having back trouble, and DC's husband is having heart trouble, and the computers are doing weird shit, and "can you proofread this", and oh-by-the-way 'what carpet do you want in your new office?'.)
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whew. That was a week.

At work, we mailed over 1000 ballots this week. Monday AM, we finished the accuracy testing (three different ballot styles each had to be tested in two tabulators, each test takes about 45 minutes). Then we started the process of getting the ballots ready to mail. ack. fortunately (fsvo), somebody has to take the flats of ready to mail ballots to the PO, so the day usually ends about 4:30. I took the last flats into the PO yesterday (Thursday), then came home and sat down for longer than it takes to put on socks & shoes!

Monday, I had rehearsal in Farmington, for which I leave about 5:15. It's a long drive, so I always check with Google to see the best route. This week, there was a 60 minute backup on my usual route. Yeah, I'm going the other way.

Tuesday, I had rehearsal in Howell, for which I leave about 6. I actually had time to make dinner between work and rehearsal!

Wednesday, I had to be at the HS in town at 4:30. That was a weird staffing day, as Wednesday is not a usual office day, so we all had something scheduled that day, but all at different times. I left work at 4, came home and changed into my Band Mom shirt and 'layers suitable for standing around outside until after 9pm', and dashed off to town to work the Marching Band Exhibition. I had actually only signed up for the second shift, but I went early, assuming that there would be something for me to do, and there was. The people who were supposed to be doing that task for the first shift were too busy yammering about band trips and the tours that the specialty groups could go on to do the task they were signed up for.

SR claimed that the theme song for Michigan high school band was "it's a small world", as it seemed that every time she'd come across a new director/clinician, they knew somebody that she or I had worked with. Wednesday's iteration of that was one of the Western Michigan graduate assistants played with the Farmington band during his gap year between BS and grad school.

He came up to me with a slightly perplexed look on his face "do you play bari sax?",
"yes, in a couple of community bands."
"which ones?"
"Farmington mostly, but also Livingston"
"I played with Farmington for a season. I thought you looked familiar."
(I mean, who expects to see someone you met in Farmington at a high school football field in Chelsea? His confusion was not surprising.)

One of the band directors (who's been at every one of the shows) pointed out that most of the kids on the field for this event weren't even born in 2008 when we held the first one. sigh.

In other news (hurricane Helene), the telephones to the senior complex where my mother lives are down. She lives near Greensboro, NC, so this is not actually surprising. The house phone here rang with a call from her number, and when I answered it there was nothing there. So I tried calling her back, and got a fast busy. Yeah, that system is down. I'll probably hear from her sometime next week. Meanwhile, I'll try not to worry. They're in a stable part of town, well up a hill, so I don't expect her to flood out, but they'll undoubtedly lose power (the emergency generators will run out of fuel, and they'll have to prioritize the rehab wing) and have already lost phone. The only real source of danger from Helene for them is tornado or general disruption. They're not in a high tornado threat area, but that is subject to change.
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J got the dryer installed late yesterday, so the main construction in the laundry room is done (and the Russell Hobbs kettle that started the whole project has its own plug in the kitchen). There's a nice new water heater in the basement, and the one that came with the house is at the dump. The laundry room is finally painted(!), and now we get to rethink how we're going to do storage in there -- one of the things that went away was 14 linear feet of shelf space. We added another 15 square feet of floor space, and we need to figure out how we're going to use it before stuff just appears. (and since it'll be "good enough", we'll never get around to doing something else with the space.)

There's a new floor in the laundry room, and a laundry sink! I've only wanted one since we built the house, but for Reasons we couldn't do that.

There are still boxes of things from those shelves around the house; and there's a pile of pantry things in the basement that need new homes -- the water heater took away about 20 linear feet of pantry storage, so that stuff has to go somewhere. But there are shelves in the storage room that are underutilised or full of "stuff that's not been sorted in years", so I should be able to find room for it all.

But early next week is the big push to get ballots in the mail, so I'll be working. Maybe I can get to the basement on Friday.... sigh.

(edit to fix typos)

ACK!

Sep. 18th, 2024 06:05 pm
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that is all.

Tuesday was a day. I left for work a bit early, because there was a work-related Zoom at 10am, "went" to the meeting, did the things I usually do on Tuesday, then we went into the rabbit hole that is "the ballots have arrived". Open the big shipping boxes, make sure that the correct boxes of ballots are in them, then open the boxes of ballots to make sure that *their* labels are correct. Then "fight" with the test chart site and Acrobat to get the test charts printed out ("this worked before!" "yeah, four years/one computer upgrade/two software versions ago. it doesn't work that way now."). Then two hours to make a test deck.

and then it was late to be leaving for rehearsal, and I still had to go home and get my instrument/music, because I hadn't planned on being at work until 6pm. Get to rehearsal about 15 minutes later than I usually do, but still before rehearsal starts. Play rehearsal, do teardown after (they rotate sections to do teardown, and this week was our turn). Stop at MickeyD's for something to eat; they're woefully understaffed and slow; finally get food and head home. Get nearly home, and the last major corner before home is blocked with lots of bright lights and haze and firemen and firehoses. Sigh. Even if they're done dealing with whatever it was, it'll be another 30 minutes before the intersection is clear. Turn around in a convenient driveway and go all the way around North Lake, thus completing the trifecta of small towns (Pinckney, Hell, Unadilla). Still don't know what happened at the corner -- I may find out Sunday at church.

I got home over 12 hours after I left for work. The cats were annoyed.
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or something like that.

Set up work for the November election has begun to ramp up. Last week, we ordered the ballots. This week, we started stuffing secrecy sleeves, and sorting out envelopes for mailing ballots, and we sent out applications for Absent Voter Ballots to the people on the list who haven't returned an application yet this year. Late next week, we should have the ballots in hand to send out to the people who have requested them. Including one person in The Netherlands who wants to be mailed a physical ballot. Not a problem, you say, just put an international stamp on it and be done. But with the new MI election laws, we have to provide *return* postage as well. It is unclear whether we can just put an international stamp on the return envelope and have it honored by the Dutch postal service, so someone (probably me, because I'm the minion), gets to go to the PO and ask. (unless the clerk remembered to ask today when she bought stamps.)

Farmington Band had their first rehearsal of the season on Monday. I'd forgotten how much work a full rehearsal is. concerts are easier. :) There is more overlap than usual between the concert repertoires for Livingston and Farmington, so that will be fun. It's probably easier that I'm not playing the same instrument in both, so it will be easier to keep the style/tempo separate....

With all the work I've been doing, I've had no time for the garden, so I think I know what I'm doing this weekend. (well, and helping J with a home renovation project. What started as a new outlet in the kitchen has morphed into installing a new water heater, remodeling the laundry room, changing the cold air return paths from upstairs, *and* a new electrical outlet in the kitchen.)

brr.

Sep. 7th, 2024 01:25 pm
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it's chilly today. they tell us it's not supposed to get much above 60F, which is quite chilly for early September. And it was over 80 on Thursday! Temperature swings like that annoy my back, and since it was already annoyed.... It did get much better on Tuesday -- the muscles relaxed enough that I was able to move 'just right' and resettle the bits that got shifted last Monday -- but there's always some residual soreness. Temperatures are supposed to warm as the week goes on, so maybe I'll be able to get into the garden then....

Yesterday, I got caught in the traffic snarls that come when the President of the US comes to town. I didn't know he was coming (not sure how, but maybe they didn't publicise it), and merrily went off upon errands. I came out of my last stop, and the freeway ramps were all blocked off. So I tried the surface streets, and the overpasses in that direction were closed. So I tried to go the other other way, and there was construction kerfuffle -- construction equipment blocking an "open" driveway so that the panel truck returning to the supply center couldn't get in until the equipment was moved. Fortunately, I didn't attempt the other other other way, because that would have been hard stopped, as that route goes right past the building where he was appearing. It took over an hour to get home, on a trip that usually takes 25 minutes. Whee?
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J and friends have gone off on a (scheduled well in advance) outing to Mackinaw City and environs. I did not go, as my back is misbehaving, and I felt that a)a four hour drive followed by b)three days of uncomfortable chairs followed by c)a four hour drive was unlikely to be a positive experience for anyone. (nerve impingement isn't fun.)

I didn't actually make the decision until Thursday -- I stepped in a hole I didn't know was there while I was weeding on Monday and jarred my spine -- I was hoping that the inflammation/impingement would clear by midweek so that I could go on the trip, but when I had actual *pain* from the impingement at work on Thursday, it became pretty clear that it would not be a good choice.

I'm bummed to have missed the trip, but.... J's been gone for nearly a month, between "so busy" before and ick after(*) the UK trip (and he was away from the house for a week before *that*, so he's really not been "home" since early July). I'm not sure that spending a long weekend in close company (anyone's company!) after being solo for most of the summer would be a good thing either.

* he caught COVID on the boat -- everyone who was on the boat got it. I seem to have dodged it, again. yay!
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egads.

Remind me to not go that way on Friday again. Oy! I had to go to Troy to pick up Lily (the bari sax) at the music shop. Google sez it's 75 minutes to the shop from here. With construction delays, it took me an extra 30 minutes to get there. Coming back was at least as bad, even though I came a different way. I may just alternate shops that I take her to -- it's a small chain of music shops, with two storefronts within "reasonable" driving distance. While I prefer the tech crew at the Troy shop, the crew at East Lansing is competent enough and it's a lot easier to get to, and if all she needs is simple adjustments.... (or I can just not go to Troy during construction season.)

I went to the hygienist on Monday to get my teeth cleaned, and (as is usually the case) the chair did unhappy things to my lower back. So despite the terrific weeding weather (cool for August, sunny, hasn't rained since Sunday), I haven't been able to do any weeding. The weather peeps tell us it's supposed to get hot for the weekend/early next week, and then cool off for Labor Day weekend (when we will be gone. Probably.).

OhMiBog!

Aug. 16th, 2024 05:44 pm
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sheesh. late last week, I got an email from a board member of the FCB. "we need to have our stuff out of the music library at the Hawk by the end of the month (for Reasons). We have storage space for the music, but not for the copier. Can you help?" yeah, I can find a temporary space for the copier somewhere in the house. Just don't ask me to haul it to rehearsals more than once.

So we made a plan to meet at the Hawk at noon on Friday (zie has keys to the music library, I do not). Zie called the Hawk three times to make sure it would be OK that we access the music library at noon on Friday. We get there "oh, it's still camp week. We really don't want you disrupting camp", but they let us sneak in anyway. I loaded the copier and the huge shipping crate we'd put it into when it was being stored near HS kids into my car, and headed home. Ye ghods and little fishies! it took almost two freaking hours to get home! Detour after traffic jam after detour. gaah. (and if I'd turned left at the first corner, I'd have been home in less than an hour. but by the time I figured that out, I was committed to the "long" way.) Fortunately, the Camry is a hybrid, and the engine doesn't run when the car is standing still or moving slowly, so I still got 50mpg on the trip.

(Reasons being the Hawk is being unreasonable. "You can't rent the music library space unless you rehearse and perform here." which is OK. This part "But you can't rehearse on Monday nights, and we won't let you charge less than $XX per ticket for performances." is not. That's just not gonna work.)

(edit for grammar. foo.)
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the clerk took the actual results in to AA at 11pm. We (floor and AVCB) were both done with counting and closing out the elections by 10, but it took another hour to get the township hall reset from the election. We got cocky in AV, and started a bit later than originally scheduled, and then one of the experienced teams got off. And then they did it again. sigh. (both early in the process, so it didn't take as long as it sometimes can to reconcile, but we still lost 45 minutes to tracking errors.) And the clerk brought us another 100 ballots over the course of the day, including 2 that were dropped in the box at 7:58pm. When the average processing rate is 100/hour, you can see why we ran a bit over. But we were done running the final tally tapes at 8:45 (and some of that time was waiting for the tabulator to send the preliminary results to the county -- with 120 tabulators all trying to send results at the same time it can take a while to get through...).

Only made two "rookie" mistakes while closing up/sealing election stuff, and they were both procedural. There's a place on the poll book where the chair is supposed to write the number of voters processed, which I missed until DN mentioned it. And we forgot to write the seal numbers from the interior bags in the poll book before we sealed the ballot container, so we had to cut the seal and do that, then change the seal and tag on the ballot container. (I haven't chaired an election since 2014, and I got this one dumped on me -- as the clerk says "she works for me, she can't say no".)

Yesterday, I took the day off -- I worked 11 days straight on elections. I did wash the dirty dishes I'd made when I made stuff for the potluck, and a couple of loads of laundry. Then I went up to Meridian to get the annual tuneup on the tenor sax, and to buy a new mouthpiece for the bari -- one of the ones in the case took a dive last week and broke. Meridian actually has it in stock, and I'd prefer to buy local than order online. So the tenor is good for another year. I may not be playing it in the fall, but at least it's ready.
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Both the Farmington band and the Livingston band played outdoor concerts last week. This finishes my band season -- while Livingston has one match left, I will not be playing that concert.

Last week, I pulled some weeds out of the rill. Later that afternoon, we noticed that the water level in the pond had gone way down. Blargh. After some testing, we determined that there was a leak in the rill, not the pond liner (yay? I mean, it's better than a leak in the pond, but it's still something that needs to be fixed). We both looked over the rill structure to see if we could see where the water was coming out, but couldn't. Sigh. That means that the leak is *inside* the rill, and the water is going down. J has since cleared much of the new growth around the rill so he can get to it, and cleared the rocks lining the rill so we can see the liner. And there's the problem -- a couple of large chipmunk nibbled holes in the second level, that were probably blocked at least somewhat by the huge root&dead leaf structure I pulled out. So he's been planning how to fix that, and how to fix some of the other things that are "not right" on the rill.

*I've* been working on elections. I worked three days of Early Voting, and worked at the township hall setting up for Tuesday's Election Day activities every day this week. (I will be Chair of the Absent Voter Count Board, so I'm actually official. phooey. do not want.)
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We cancelled Monday's Farmington concert at about 5pm, just as the percussion and set crews were getting ready to leave for the venue. The weather services kept shoving the rain back into the performance time (even if the rain's stopped, the grass is still wet and the air is damp). It turns out that it was a good choice, as BM (who lives 10 minutes from the venue) said it started raining about 1845, which was *after* call but before the concert.

Tuesday's Livingston concert was in Hartland. We got about 2/3 through the program and it started to rain. Not hard, but there were dark clouds around. So the director skipped to Stars & Stripes and we closed out the concert so that the audience could go home. He asked if we wanted to keep playing, but it was raining on the back of the band (the breeze was blowing rain under the pavilion). So we started to pack up. And then there was a big rumble of thunder and it really started raining. I took my time packing up, hoping that the rain would pass, but people watching the weather on their phones said "it's gonna keep doing this for another 20 minutes or so". Blah. So I trundled off to the car, in the pouring rain. Got soaked on the way. :( Deployed the picnic blanket so I wouldn't get the seat *too* wet, cleaned the raindrops off my glasses (which I had taken off and tucked into my shirt so "they wouldn't get wet", wiped down the condensation on the inside of the windows, and headed home. I was about 20 minutes from the venue when it stopped raining (and I was going in the direction the rain was coming from), so I would have been under the pavilion watching it rain for quite a while.

The primary election is coming up in two weeks. We're still at less than 50% of absentee ballots returned. (to be fair to the voters, I haven't returned mine yet.) Saturday starts Early Voting. I hope we get better turnout than we did in February. "They" all say we will, as people get used to the idea and/or don't mind voting early -- which is sometimes a crapshoot on the Presidential Primary, as the candidate you voted for the week before the election drops out two days before the election.

I was planning on working in the garden today, but it's currently raining. Not very hard, but added to Monday's rain, it may make the ground too soft. We shall see.
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(plus an indoor concert that, while an exercise in staging, is not subject to weather unless roads to the venue are flooded.)

Monday, the Farmington Band was outside at a Senior Housing complex. It was hot and sticky, but we were in the shade of a building. Somewhat unfortunately, the building blocked some of the (slight) breeze.

Tuesday, the Livingston Band was outside in downtown Howell. It wasn't quite as hot, nor as sticky. I, however, was showing the effects of three concerts in three days, and was off my game (I got the tricky bits, but the easy stuff I flailed at. Why is it so freaking hard to count in 2?!?). The audience outnumbered the band by a wide margin -- they were sitting in various shady places all around the amphitheater. We didn't play as well as we often do, but I bet that's because we haven't played since June....

Today has been an annoying day. I woke up with a headache, probably due to too much reading music outdoors without sunglasses and/or not enough water. Then, when I went out to deal with the birdfeeders, the Camry was making noises (fan noises, mostly) and there were lights on. I *KNOW* that everything was off last night when I closed the garage door, so I was perplexed. poke the Start button "No key detected" (fair enough, they're in the house), try again with the key. Nothing. The dash flickers a little bit. well, f#$K - the battery's dead. Turn the light control to "no DRL" from "Auto" and the right headlight and left running lights go off. get out of car, close door. "Smart Key failure" (erm, no. smart key _sensor_ failure, yes.)

Text J (who is, of course, 600+ miles away) "where's the battery charger?' First, we try the smart charger. Says the battery is at 6V. Well, there's your problem. Put the smart charger on the battery. 10 minutes later, it throws a "battery failure" alert. (Apparently the smart chargers sometimes don't work if the battery they're connected to is under about 9V.) Dig out Papa's old charger, the one that he built from a Heathkit kit in the early 70's. (hook that charger up. the engine fan that's been surging from 'only if you're listening for it' to 'why is that fan running' (WHY?) revs waaay up immediately after plugging the charger in. jump into front seat and poke Start button. Fan shuts off entirely. starter clicking noise also stops.) Get the battery charged to 10V so I can put the smart charger on it. Now it's up to about 12.5V, so I'm going to drive into town and back and see if it will start again. If not, I guess I call the dealer and say "WTF?" If it does, I go to the gas station on the corner, then run into A2 so that the battery is charged. Then cross my fingers that the same thing won't happen tonight.

UPDATE: drove into town (the long way) and back again, turned the car off in the driveway. Came in to the house, did a couple of things, went back out to see if it would start. Yay! it did. So off to the corner store for gas, and back again. Now I hope that it starts in the morning so I can go to work. (We often buy gas at the corner store because an abandoned gas station on the corner is worse than a gas station on the corner. And really, they're not that much of a problem. The lights are good downlights, so that the only time we really get any skyglow from them is when it's been raining and the parking lot is wet and reflective; they're not open really early or really late; and it's far enough from anywhere that the "kids" don't hang out in the parking lot all afternoon.)
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The Livingston concert on Tuesday evening was cancelled due to "probable inclement weather", and Prez & Director didn't think we'd have much audience with the wet grass at the venue (which has, as a feature, hillside seating). Wednesday morning we got lots of rain -- over 4.5 inches between 1:30am (when I went to bed) and 11:30 am. It was the remnants of Beryl, so it mostly just rained -- not a lot of thunder.

There were not as many ballots to process this week as there were last, so I was able to keep up without leaving some undone so I could make it to the PO. We did have a few people come in and say "I think I messed up. Can I get a new ballot?" so we went through the process of spoiling their old one and issuing them a new one. DC spent most of the week assembling employment packets for the new election inspectors, and making sure they all had the links to the county training site.

Tomorrow starts the end of season concert binge -- 9 concerts in the next four weeks. Most of them are outside, so there may be some weather cancellations.

The ground is nice and soft, so now that it's dried out I've been weeding. I can tell that it's not been getting done (when the good conditions for weeding are work or concert days, the weeding doesn't get done). I don't have to pull very hard to get the weeds out (which is good for my shoulder), but there's a lot of "wading" into shrubberies to pull the weeds and grass.
jennlk: (Default)
FCB rehearsal on Monday, work on Tuesday, then the rest of the week off.

Had thought about going in to the office on Friday to do the filing I didn't get done on Tuesday (had to leave so I could get to the PO before it closed), but Thursday morning I slipped on a retaining wall in the garden and *nearly* faceplanted on the deck. I did wrench my back and jammed my right wrist and shoulder. So Friday I wasn't up to much. I'll probably wind up going in on Wednesday to catch up, especially since I expect that quite a few ballots have come in. OTOH, DC will be back from "vacation" (her son got married, and she was very involved in the wedding), and two people working on ballots is more than twice as fast as one (less task switching).

Shoulder still hurts (I hope I didn't tear the rotator cuff more), and wrist is still a bit cranky. And I have a bruise on my forehead where I clonked it on the handle of the pond skimmer.
jennlk: (Default)
It was a pretty good week for the bands. Tuesday night in Hamburg was very lightly attended (most of the audience was friends/family, but there were some locals there). The concert went reasonably well, but it was a bit loose, even by Livingston standards. It was not really hot, and there was a decent breeze.

Wednesday night's concert on Belle Isle was *much* better. The music selection was a little more demanding and the performance level was waaaay higher. There's much more listening across the band in Farmington (and honestly, the base level of musicianship is higher in Farmington. There are only a few people in the Livingston band who would play more than one concert with Farmington, because the expectations are so much higher). The weather was just about perfect for a concert in the park -- low 70s, some clouds, not humid -- the only problem I had was that as the sun went down, the clouds thinned and the sun went 'around' the trees so that I had sun directly in my eyes.

I went into work on Monday, and we got the last of the 800 AV ballots out in the mail. There will still be applications coming in and ballots going out, but the big push is done. Also on Monday we pulled a ballot box out of the basement so we'd have it in the office when ballots started coming back in. Which they did on Tuesday. The changes in MI voting law mean that we've had to make some decisions about recordkeeping, with nothing useful from the state.

This morning we got over 3.5" of rain. That's a lot of water. There were a few rumbles of distant thunder, but we mostly got a steady rain. I think I'll probably not go into the gardens today. (well, maybe the strawberry bed, because I can reach that without stepping into it.) But it's really humid, and I may punt. I shouldn't, because it's been way too long since I've done any weeding. OTOH, tomorrow is supposed to be cooler/drier, and the water will have soaked in and loosened the soil so that the weeds will come out better. We shall see.
jennlk: (Default)
Despite the heat advisory on Tuesday night, the Livingston concert in Fowlerville went on. Tuesday evening was cooler and drier than it's been the rest of the week, and there was a nice breeze. The trees in the park there are getting big enough that there was enough shade for the audience - the band is under a pavilion, which is nice for purposes of heat mitigation, but not-so-nice for purposes of playing for an audience. The sound goes up into the pavilion roof and bounces around, and not all of it gets out to the audience. OTOH, they keep inviting us back. :)

DC and I got the first set of ballots into the mail today, after altogether too much faffing around figuring out how to get the state voter database to do what we wanted it to do. The method that they suggest is intended for large jurisdictions with 5K voters per precinct and multiple full-time clerks; not little townships with under 2.5K voters and three less-than-half-time clerks. Once we got it figured out, I don't think it's any slower than the "old" way, but getting to that point was way more confusing than it should have been. Didn't help any that my label printer had somehow gotten only mostly unplugged, so it looked connected but actually wasn't. And it was both ends of that cable....

J has been busy with a friend's car and working on some much needed repairs at the parsonage (things that probably should have been done 15 years ago and *still* aren't done). It seems as though they've also recruited him to be a non-hostile IT person.

I guess that if I have to pick a week to be at work every day, the week that it's too hot to work outside is a good one. I don't feel as guilty. :) And, honestly, even the weeds don't like it when it's this hot. :) We do get more birds when it's hot -- they don't want to wast time flying around looking for food, they just come here where they know there's food *and* water.

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