Finally Discovered an Easy Spot for Farm Brand Switchplate

While I haven't gotten around to painting my switch plates blue in my new room, one of the first things I tried to do when we moved in was put up my farm brand plate we used to have in the great room on a light switch near photos of my great grandparents farms in North Dakota. However, the plate was designed for rectangle switches and none of the lights have that in our new house. Eventually Dad may have gotten around to making one work for it, but tonight I realized the speaker control knob's plate was a rectangle.

Now if only the bookcase wasn't taking up that wall, as that would be the logical place to put the farm photos. I guess maybe, I will let Dad try his idea of switching the bookcase with the piano in his den, as then there would be wall space for the farm photos, but it will also make the furniture more crowded as it sticks out more than the bookcase and that feels almost too close to the couch as is.

Mom, Mik, a Mustang, and a Shoe

This afternoon Mom came home driving a rental Mustang.  I happened to be outside running my scooter to keep it from being ruined sitting totally unused so long and I was confused at a random car parking in front of our mailbox.  Mom's first words were "I didn't buy it!"  I did not think she did, but I did kind of think she may have lost or left her Prius keys somewhere and had to get a rental.  Turns out, though, she flew into Nashville because it is so much cheaper than Huntsville (actually right after we moved here I saw on the news it is the most expensive airport to fly in/out of).

She is headed back out of town tomorrow, so there was no point in getting her car from the airport.  Also, she thought Mik might find it fun to go for a ride in a Mustang, which is one of the types of cars he likes to check out whenever he sees them.  So, I disassembled his manual chair and managed to get it to fit with enough room for me to still sit the back and Mik in the passenger seat.  I had figured that out before bringing Mik out, though, so he had to drive his powerchair out to load into the car.

Instead of just putting him from his powerchair into the car, Mom decided to just hold him sitting on the hood while I drove the powerchair inside the house, which I am proud to say I managed to do without driving off the sidewalk even once (see previous post about last attempt)!  Mik and Mom were not so successful at what would have seemed the easier task of just waiting, as I came back out to the two of them laughing as Mik was sliding off the hood and the two of them almost falling on the ground.  I grabbed Mik and held him up while Mom got a better grip and I could get into the back seat before putting Mik in the car, but nicely even if I was not there the guy from across the street had seen what was going on and came over to help if needed.

In the whole fiasco I had seen that Mik lost his shoe and assumed that Mom had, too and had picked up the shoe.  However, we get to the restaurant and I pick up the other shoe that had fallen off in the car thinking it was the one he lost outside the car, but then realized Mom had not picked up his shoe.  Not surprisingly, it was still were we left it went we got home from dinner and a movie five hours later.

Mik Stuck in the Bushes

I forgot I had taken this picture of Mik getting stuck in the bushes when he was bringing in his powerchair from getting repaired (the controls did not work when it arrived on the moving truck back in February) the one weekday Mom was home earlier this month.  Clearly, we need to widen the sidewalk, which we kind of suspected, as we had even widen the turning area of the decently wide ramp up to the old house when he got his powerchair.

It did seem like it would be a tight, but doable thing if he took it slow.  Not so much, as he quickly ended up in the bush and he could not get out because it was the control stick part stuck in the bush.  I helped him onto the porch, but not without going off the sidewalk into the bushes on one side and the grass on the other several times, since it really is hard to line it back up on the sidewalk it just fits on once your offtrack.

The real funny thing is that one of the things he said when we were house hunting in Alabama was that he wanted to have bushes in the yard including maybe planting them.  Now I think he is good with what we have and perhaps less near the sidewalk.

Mik's First Tornado Siren Experience

Last night I happened to catch the news and they were talking about possible tornados with storms today.  Earlier this month Mom and Dad were out of town and heard about bad weather in our region and wondered whether Mik and I knew what to do in a tornado.  I did, as I remember a few times hearing the sirens during the summers I spent in Illinois as a kid.  Mik didn't and when I asked him last night he still did not know, so I told him where to go if he heard the sirens.

This afternoon I heard a siren like noise, but at first I thought it was the laundry I had just started (my desk is right next to the laundry room).  I opened my door, though, and realized it was in fact the tornado siren, which I kind of was expecting since I happened to have the local channel on and they interrupted regular programming with storm watch coverage as the storm.  I went to see if Mik heard it (also, our safe spot is also right inside his room), but it could not be heard in his room at all at first (could slightly hear it when he turned his game system off).  Apparently, my room is not as sound proof, which makes sense considering it is the garage area.

When he saw that the tornado watch was in effect until 7 p.m. (it was only 4 p.m.), he said he really missed Tucson now because there are like no natural disasters there.  It only lasted about 30 minutes, though.  In that time, though, he decided we should have an emergency supply kit in the linen closet in his room, since that is in the alcove that makes one of the safest areas in the house.  I have a lot of that kind of stuff in my room and we sure keep stocked on food considering Mom and Dad seem to keep being going for weeks at a time, but the only thing in that closet is a big bag of dog food (and we did not even think of letting Billy in the room...poor Billy) and his glow stick flashlight that I only hung on the closet door this morning.

Mik's Xbox Drives Us Nuts

Last week Mik's Xbox 360 disc drive stopped working. He was going to have Dad try to fix it, but after finding out he won't be home for another month and the Xbox 360 now came in a newer version with the WiFi built in he decided it was worth spending his savings on a new one instead. I got it with my Amazon Prime shipping, so he was back to playing games quick. It was even surprisingly easy to transfer the harddrive data over to the new one and that is really saying something because I really stink when it comes to Microsoft/Windows stuff. What stumped us, though was getting it to connect to our WiFi network.

At first the Xbox seemed to not be able to understand that there were two networks with the same name when we have an extended network. We read about it being a known problem for some, so we thought if we got it connected to the main base it would then work like the old one did because that one was connected before we has the extension. So, last night we spent hours trying to get it to work in my room near the wireless router only to have the same issue of it not working. Part of the problem seemed that no one could remember setting up the password to login into the router to change the settings that may be messing with the Xbox connecting. We finally gave up and put it back in Mik's room to reevaluate what to do another day.

Then this morning I decided to finally hook up the Apple TV Mom got awhile back because I wanted to have it up and running for watching Nationals games on MLB.tv before the free MLB ends on DirecTV. When setting it up Mom noticed I was typing the password to join the wireless network wrong. Turns out I had been doing that the whole time with the Xbox, too, although I know I did it with re correct password at least once with it still being an error connecting. However, going back to it this afternoon I got it connected no problem and it appears it really was just typing error and one fluke of nonconnection error.

Getting Trapped

Several times since we have moved into our new house I have been annoyed by the door between the laundry room and the kitchen because when the pantry door is open it blocks that door. It hasn't been a problem lately because no one else was home using the pantry and every time until today I just ended up pushing the pantry closed when opening the door. Today though Mom opened the pantry door all the way and when I tried to come in the door would got stuck and it wouldn't open enough to get through. I guess if I really had to I could have gone out to the porch from my room and in the front door, but I called mom over to let me through and Mik thought it was funny that for once someone else was stuck and not him.

Who Really Moved?

The past week Mik and I have been wondering who has really moved to our new home in Alabama because neither Mom or Dad have been here for over two weeks and only Mom "should" be here two days in the next two and a half weeks.  Thus, it kind of feels like only we moved, especially since Dad is back in AZ most of this time.

Considering the first month we were here, we spent two weeks at Disney World, and the other time running around to government and medical places to get things all transferred over here, not only is it like half the household has not really moved here, but we have not really moved in either.  Boxes are still taking up half my room, although yesterday I did finally clear the path to open the door that goes out to the trash cans from my room.  Dad's den is still full of boxes and is actually a bigger disaster because he asked me to find his camera stuff and I could not exactly keep the somewhat organized set up when going through the stuff by myself (and I did not even find the stuff to go with his camera, so finding the camera was useless!).

So, going on two months in our new house, it does not seem much different than the day we moved in.  At this rate I predict we may have the boxes unpacked after a year in this house, but that does not take in consideration who knows what ended up in the attic!