Wednesday, September 16, 2009

For a guy with nothing to do
I sure seem to be keeping busy

A sample of my time from this week:

Monday I was supposed to be around the house all day. Doing the usual, catching up on laundry, cleaning the kitchen, hours wasted on Facebook. You know, the essentials. I don't really remember where all of the time went, but the stove is clean and nothing else seemed to get done around here.

There was an incident in the school parking lot. But seeing that I enjoyed it so much, I don't think that is where all of my time went...

Tuesday I was in charge of pulling together a last minute breakfast meet-up for the local Stay at Home Dads who are now without kids during the day, thanks to the start of the new school year. There are about 10 of us who have been friends since out kids were born. Now that our youngest kids have started kindergarten, we should have some free time on our hands, so we get together once a week to chat and eat breakfast.

I thought all of the details for Tuesday breakfast had been settled. According to my brain we were set to meet at a Mexican bakery in east Austin at 9:30. about 9am calls and emails started rolling in, looking for location and meet-up times. Evidently I had never sent a final email out to the guys, with final details. Oops!

A couple of quick calls and emails and my imaginary plan was back on. I rushed over to the restaurant, hoping no one was sitting there waiting for the group to show, I was assuming no one else would make the drive over due to the late notice. We still ended up with 4 guys and we had a good time. Glad it worked out in the end...

After breakfast I headed across town to My So Called Aunt's house to help out with some home repairs. I planned to hang a couple of ceiling fans and start on installing some new trim and baseboards in her recently water-damaged kitchen.

Installing ceiling fans is something I can do in my sleep. It usually takes me 20 or 30 minutes to take down an old fan and have the new one up and running. But I was adding a remote control unit to this fan and it turned out to be a big hassle. After trying several times to get the remote receiver installed properly I returned it to Home Depot and grabbed one of a different brand. It fit and works like a dream. After all that it only took me about 5 minutes to get the remote installed and everything buttoned up. But the one fan had taken me about 4 hours to install. :(

I couldn't sleep worth a darn after I got home from the world's longest meeting on Tuesday night. My legs were killing me from standing on the ladder for several hours.

Wednesday morning I dropped the kids and headed back out to My So Called Aunt's house. I got the second ceiling fan installed in about 25 minutes. Then I knocked out the kitchen repairs in a couple of hours. Made it back home by 1:30 which was a long enough break that I fell asleep on the couch and almost missed the school bus.

Thursday I am scheduled to be on campus with the kids again. Evidently this whole Dad of the Day thing is a sham award given to dads suckers who are gullible enough to show up for all day volunteering. Actually, I had a good time last week and I am going to continue until we think that The Princess is successfully settled into Kindergarten.

Friday is supposed to be my day at home. The only problem is that everything will need to be done at once. Laundry, yard work and cleaning have all piled up this week. So no matter how much I want to, I guess playing Wii Sports Tennis for hours on end will have to wait until next week.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was it a "hunter"? The original one you tried? They run like a train, but they install like a pain!
Plus, there's no room left after you stick the remote receiver up in the tiny space above the fan.
ugh! I have two 72" suckers on the way to my house right now. I can already feel my shoulders aching!

Mike said...

These were the Home Depot, Hampton Bay fans. Nothing special, but the problem child was a fan mounted on a 36" pole.