Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Various and sundry, May edition

Yeah, yeah...I haven't neglected this place on purpose. Busy time of year.

The final (sort of) corporate taxes for my workplace were mailed May 12th. You get an idea of what fun the last month has been when I tell you it took the clerk half an hour just to stamp the envelopes (I had all the certified slips completed and attached already), and it was $182 in postage. There are still a few weird things to finish up with a state or two, but I can't seem to get to it...

...because people far above me in the food chain seem to have no grasp of the fact that taxes are a part of life, even for a so-called tax exempt institution. The fact that we are facing a rear-guard action on a partially executed agreement makes things ever so much more fun.

Meanwhile, as of 10 a.m. on Friday I will be on vacation for a week.

Not that much actual "vacating" will be done. I'm hanging around home. Not even resting, when it come to that...

On Saturday (yes, a holiday weekend - there is a story behind that which I won't bore you with, but the bottom line is Diane stuck to her guns and got what she wanted), my air conditioning unit is being replaced. Four years of severely evaporating coolant, an unsuccessful leak test and a total lack on my part of willingness to dink around with it any longer brought us to this place. The new unit is a bit more energy efficient. It's also a two-stage thing: it first sucks the humidity out of the air before cooling it and sending it into the house. The theory is that I'll be able to set the temp higher and still have the same comfort level, as the air will be considerably drier.

On Tuesday, the crew comes to do some minor renovations. The bigger project is installation of closet doors to turn a nook in the loft into an actual closet, as it is in other units in my building. Ordinarily, hanging a sliding door like this is something I could do (with added muscle from a friend to lift them in place), but the opening is 90" wide, and I'm having the contractors extend the wall so the opening is only 72". It will still be 90" on the inside, so lots of storage, now out of sight!

I need to paint what will be the interior of the closet before they arrive. It's currently the same color as the walls - think the color of those reddish-brown accordian folders you see in offices. A bit too dark for the interior of a closet that has no light of its own (I'm not crazy enough to have electric run to this closet - it's only 30 inches deep, and I have motion sensor, battery operated lights to put inside).

In addition, they are putting up a new light fixture and staining/hanging a new door in the downstairs bath. While this is a piece of cake for the contractors, it's the larger of the two projects for me personally. I need to paint the room, which, unfortunately, includes the ceiling. The ceilings are rather low in there, due to the need for space to run the plumbing stuff for the kitchen, which backs up to this bath, and the bathroom immediately overhead on the second floor. So the previous owners painted the bath a nice, lighter grey...including the ceiling. It does in fact make the ceiling appear higher, though friends over six feet are still eye level with the light on the wall...near the ceiling.

So, it needs a base coat, then a white ceiling, and at least one, maybe two, coats of a wonderful medium lavender on the walls. There is no medicine cabinet, just a large mirror that I am replacing. There re a couple of nice shelves I need to take down and relocate. The toilet seat needs replacing, as does the flush lever.

If I'm realistic, if I get the closet interior painted and the base coat in the bath, along with some of the smaller stuff (toilet stuff above, a railing support replacements, curtain rods up and a replacement for the shower head upstairs) I'll call it good. I also have 4th of July week off, and if I do a little bit a weekend, I should be done by then.

Oh yeah - the new wall upstairs? Means I need to completely move my desk and two file cabinets, as well as unhook the computer. I should still be able to get online, at least in the evening - my internet cord is 25 feet long. But it's going to be a long three days, as I just realized I can't exactly stream movies to watch while I sew if everything has to be unplugged.

Ay. I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation.

No comments: