Settling in

I decided it was time to wax my Prius. No, that’s not a euphemism, though I sometimes use it as one. The poor car had become really dirty, so I lovingly hand-washed it, dried it, polished a few small scratches, waxed it, cleaned the windows, and used some other cleaner on the black plastic bits.

It’s odd to have an ongoing relationship with a car; even odder than owning one, which in turn is somewhat stranger than driving one. I really never thought I’d feel this way about a car, of all things. But hey, Prius was #1 in customer satisfaction last year, so I’m hardly alone.

Also odd is finally having a legitimate interest in power tools, paint, ladders, sandpaper, and all the other equipment necessary for house maintenance. I think my parents are secretly a bit disappointed that I haven’t begged them to fly over and help fix things up.

The ugly hole with cables snaking out is now a neat rectangular hole with cables snaking out. Hopefully during the week I’ll find time to gently sand it, texture it and paint it; then by the time we’re ready to unpack the TV and speakers and I’ve replaced the busted amplifier, we’ll be ready to call someone about getting DirecTV.

We replaced some 75W floodlights in the kitchen with energy efficient bulbs today. One of them failed almost immediately, so I’m going to have to contact the manufacturer about a replacement. We also discovered that the ceiling fan lights in the living room and bedroom were using 3 25W “candle” bulbs, which explains why they were so completely useless at illuminating anything. Replaced those with energy-efficient 40W-equivalent bulbs. The dimmer functionality no longer works, but we didn’t want it anyway. In fact, I’m going to try and find out how to disable it, as it’s a pain.

I also started the long painful process of getting organized (again). The amount of paperwork that had piled up while we were in the hotel was amazing. Now almost all of it is dealt with, filed and indexed.