Jeremy Dieterich A Chronicle of My Life

Everybody else seems to have posted something about their Thanksgiving, but ours was really uneventful.  Marci and I (and Tipsy, who spent the weekend with us) were mostly just lazy and sat around the house. 

Wednesday, I picked up Tipsy a little early because I came home at lunchtime and worked the rest of the day from home.  It was so nice to home, dressed comfortably, rather than having to wear dress-up clothes (even though it's just business casual) and sit under flourescent lights in my poorly conditioned office (by "poorly conditioned", it's at the end of a weak A/C duct and in the corner of the building with big windows, so basically it's too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter).  [Maybe I'll make more of a push to telecommute, since my project leader works out of his house and calls me on my cell anyway...]  Anywho, I think Tipsy just fell in love with our yard--the weather was cool and dry and she could run through the grass and explore and not worry about stickers or anything like that.  Plus, it was great for us because the previous owners had already doggy-proofed the yard (they had a digger and had put railroad ties along the fence to keep her from getting out), so Tipsy got to spend as much time as she wanted outside without us worrying about her getting into trouble.

Thursday we slept in and piddled (sp?) around the house all day until it was time to go to Nana's for Thanksgiving dinner, which was delicious.  Nana's stuffing is normally good, but this year was better than it's ever been, as evidenced by the fact that there were almost no leftovers left after Sunday!

Friday we did actually make it to one of the Black Friday sales: Ace Hardware.  I'd heard on the radio that they would have folding tables and chairs for cheap so we picked up a set--good for when we host lunch at our house or as impromtu deck furniture since we still don't have any outdoor stuff yet.  The rest of the day didn't go so well--I was trying to change out the electrical sockets in the master bedroom (since we're doing the trim in black) and ran into problem after problem.  One outlet had been wired with reverse polarity (and had centimeters of slack to work with), others wouldn't mount in the box quite right or took a lot of wrangling to get the wires hooked up.  Next, I turned on the recessed lights in the living room and blew the whole thing, knocking out a bulb and leaving the dimmer switch inoperable.  Finally, I decided to hook up my surround sound speakers only to discover that one run had become disconnected in the middle leaving me with about 8 inches of wire in the wall not hooked to anything.  Needless to say, I wasn't feeling too good about my handyman skills (or the house) at this point.

Saturday went much better.  We ran by Home Depot in the morning to pick up some stuff (thanks, Brandon and Sam!), and I changed out the bulbs in the recessed lights, and even found that the dimmer was still working but came disconnected.  I fixed the reversed outlet and swapped out our noisy fan control in the living room with a simple three-speed switch.  Marci installed a set of shelves for our shower since we are somewhat limited for space.  We even started decorating for Christmas, which is pretty early by Dieterich family standards.  This year will be a first for me, since I'll have to try my hand at decorating the outside of the house (maybe).  Thankfully Sean left the Christmas lights that they used on the house; I just have to figure out where they go and how to put them up.  Oh, the joys of home ownership. . .