Then, on Thursday, came Tropical Storm Zeta. Although the worst of it
didn’t hit us directly (and some places I saw really did get hammered), we had
damaging wind and rain that took out power at both Brugger’s house and mine
for almost two full days. I had recently spent a few hundred bucks keeping the
freezer stocked, so despite being frustrated by the lengthy outage, I was
happy as a clam when the power came on in the nick of time to keep most of the
frozen things from going bad.
Or so I thought.
Because the outage caused a series of electrical spikes, my
refrigerator/freezer burned out. But I didn’t realize it right away because it did have
power and appeared to be functioning. Eh. Not so much. Anyway,
after considerable hunting, I have a new fridge on the way... but it’s going
to be over a week before it can get here. Apparently, in the entire city of
Greensboro, there is nary a refrigerator to be found that can just be
delivered and plugged in. Today, I did find a mini-fridge at a good price, so
I picked it up and got my surviving goods in there. I hope it will do the
trick till the new one arrives. The old fridge wasn’t all that old — a little
over eight years — but I guess these days, that is about what one can expect, especially when the power goes out with such frequency as it does
here.
All that aside, I enjoyed spending a portion of Friday in Danville,
VA, where I went after Danville Millionaire’s Row adventure lab cache.
This one takes you on a tour of Danville’s historic Main Street, where one
will find some of the town’s most elegant and imposing old homes from
its glory days of tobacco and textiles. This was the best possible time
of year to hunt this lab cache, since so many of the old homes were done up
right for Halloween. And that evening, friends Terry & Beth came
round for a pleasant, socially distanced dinner (burgers!), followed by a
showing of The Exorcist, which Ms. Beth had never seen before.
Halloween itself turned out to be a fair mix of work and play. Ms. B. and I
are in the opening stages of doing an intensive and much-needed
renovation of Casa de Rodan. For a good portion of yesterday, we occupied
ourselves stripping old wallpaper, mostly in the kitchen. There is still a
long way to go. We’re looking at painting, replacing flooring, replacing the
old, all-but-useless outdoor shed, all kinds of things that have languished
for far too long.
Today, there had been geocaching plans with the usual suspects, but a big dump
of rain forced a change of plans. However, the skies cleared late morning, and
was yet another adventure lab cache awaiting my attention at nearby
Gateway Gardens. So I went for it. I had gone geocaching there some years ago, but I had
forgotten how attractive that little park is. There were five stages to the
cache, each requiring the discovery of certain information to complete. All in
all, it made for a nice diversion from the more prevalent pain-in-the-ass
nonsense.
There is yet more to do regarding Mom’s estate this week, which I can
only hope will go as painlessly as possible. I can’t say I look forward to it,
but at least with every such step that gets done, the closer that little dim
light at the end of the tunnel gradually comes.
And so. There it is.
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| One bad apple.... |
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|
The kiddie area |
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| Musical instruments in the woods? |
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| Froggie went a-waterin’ |