More than three decades ago we were blessed with our first grandchild. It was easy to shop for Christmas presents and thinking what we thought was a great present would be appreciated by kids of a third generation. Not sure exactly when it changed but by the time five or six of the grandchildren were attending sixth grade and up at school, we noticed a change. Their schoolmates were showing up with iPods and Nintendo Gameboys while we were gifting lots of inexpensive toys. I got tired of the disappointed looks and decided to give the older grandchildren money. At first (early 2000's) we gave the older children a token gift and fifty one-dollar bills. Eventually we upped the presents to $100 each and switched from singles to a single C-note (after one of the teens commented how good singles were at the strip clubs). I put each bill in a Christmas card with their name on the envelope and a little note inside.
I still give money at Christmas seeing the cards end up in the trash with the tissue and wrapping paper, I decided to cut back a little and just print something on a plain white C6 envelope. I gave myself lots of time to make the envelopes and it turned out it was a good thing. My Epson printer doesn't like envelopes and when one jams in the printer, the subsequent envelopes have ink smears or stripes. Neither my Epson nor Canon ink jet printer has a pre-set for a C6 envelope, although my HP Laserjet does. At first I tried to custom print each of the 23 envelopes (some family members still get presents (from Santamazon) because they "don't need the money."
Because our son and daughter-in-law do all the holidays at their house and she's a [junior] nursing supervisor, Christmas happened on Sunday, the 22nd and was a brunch celebration. It was just the immediate family so only 25 people. By Saturday morning I had a pile of horribly printed envelopes with our "Spirits of Christmas" tree as the subject.
The majority of the decorations on the tree that year were airline-size bottles of liquor. The local Crown Liquor store gave me a mixed case of 50 for a really good price when I told them what I was doing. Entertaining was great, with friends dropping by during the holidays. Told them to decide for themselves what they'd like to drink and untie it from the tree. Holiday decorations were real easy to put away in January with a mostly bare tree.
I determined that the Brother P-touch label maker would make short work addressing the envelopes. By Saturday evening I was sure I had made up an envelope for everyone and even made two personalized Happy Birthday cards for two family members whose birthdays fall on the 27th and 28th. Woke up early Sunday morning with a sick feeling I had forgotten someone. Went through the pile of envelopes and sure enough I was one short. We're all set to go and Liane is at the door. When I say "Just a minute" and actually succeeded in printing the best envelope of the bunch and the final label.
Unfortunately, I'm all too familiar with how the older someone gets, the less they can smell. It seemed like my grandparents' house suffered from natural gas leak that nobody else could detect. My grandparents couldn't smell it, and my dad and uncles worked in the oil field, so their sense of smell most have been killed off some by the environment of their workplace. I kept telling them that there is a smell in that house, but I didn't know what it was. When I was cooking one day I couldn't get the burner to light fast enough and that's when I got a whiff of the gas, and it finally clicked on what I was smelling in my grandparents' house. So, I took a spray bottle of soapy water to all of the gas lines and sprayed it all down. When I showed my dad the 6-7 leaks in their house, he cut the gas off and we took the time to fix all of the joints. I was around 12-13 years old when I did this, and my grandparents must have been in that house for 2-3 years by then. After that day the house never did smell like natural gas anymore and they started listening to me when I said, "I smell something."
My wife is convinced that due to my hearing loss and being my eyesight isn't the greatest, that my sense of smell is overcompensating for the missing senses. She also knows my sense of taste is escalated also, so I enjoy the different flavors of food and isn't a fan of bland food. So, because of this gift I usually can detect something faster than others if it's smell related. Something tells me that as I age and my hearing and eyesight keeps diminishing, my sense of smell won't be disappearing as fast as others experience. Which could be a curse if I end up in a nursing home. I'll be the guy with 30 diffusers going in his room to combat the smell of the nursing home. Which might be a good thing as I combat the smell of my own self.
Matter of fact, as I'm sitting in my office I'm smelling cookies from the front offices right now. I'm going to investigate that smell now.
Cody, Shamus (blind son of our neighbors' in New York) was a great example of compensation. His hearing was good enough so he could ride a bicycle around our neighborhood (we lived on a cul-de-sac). He new he was getting to the edge of the street by the sound of the thicker gravel and he sensed obstacles like parked vehicles and telephone poles. I believe he had a great sense of smell as well because he knew it was me, the kids or Liane who came to the door when he rang our doorbell.
Somehow Liane has a more sensitive sense of smell than I do even though she still smokes. From three feet away she asks how many cloves of garlic I minced. Obviously she senses I've doubled or tripled what the recipe calls for.
Glad to see I'm not the only one that now keeps a spare capacitor or two in stock!
Always nice to have a small win!
@fouckhest, somehow A/C components have a lifespan measured in hot Sundays. When it's 90°F and 85% humidity you don't want to call for service at night or Sunday.
Nice HVAC fix Bob.
Gotta have extra caps on hand if you live in hot climate. Electrolytic capacitors do not age well, and even worse at higher temps.
You're right
Justin. The one I put in lasted all of two days. Fortunately we've been having cool temperatures so a little heat is needed at night to maintain 79°F (once the sun goes down Liane needs extra warmth to be able to move).
Agreed! Prior to getting our new heat pumps, I started buying caps that were made in the USA. Those lasted MUCH longer than their Chinesium counterparts.
Dan, the one that arrived today is Chinesium so I'll be doing a deeper dive to find the right one made in the USA. The spare I had was from our previous system, which was a dual capacitor (three lugs). This one is just like the original (which was the factory one and made in China) with only two lugs.
Bob, about the nursing home, and the air purifiers, we use those too. When family comes to visit, we thoroughly clean her room, close the door, and leave the purifier on high for the duration. There are other air purifiers in the spare b.r.'s and the dining room.
When I was working on fire-rescue here south of you, there was a nursing home, a big one, in the city. We were in/out of there frequently, and the aroma/odor (choose one) of discharged urine was always prevalent. It actually was kept clean, but the number of elderly residents and the constant need to change bedding despite the oversight of the care staff somehow didn't keep up with the demand. This was a place where people needing more-advanced medical care were housed. Some were ambulatory, some were bedridden. I believe the bedridden were the source of the ammonia odor. One of the signs of neglect of patients is a rash in the groin and buttocks from lying in discharged urine. If we were called to transport someone to the hospital, and it wasn't a medical emergency, we would always get the staff to change their diaper, and to clean them. It made the drive to the hospital less of a discomfort for the patient. If it was a medical emergency (loss of consciousness, EKG showing a likely M.I. (heart attack), CVA, or other issue requiring immediate transport) we opened the windows in the rescue unit and made-haste.
I am always amazed at your accomplishments and diagnosing issues, and then your comprehensive write-up. You are one of the best posters on the GJ, and here's hoping you're around for many more years of repairs and writing.
My friend who's a HVAC master license-holder in Wellington (western Palm Beach County FL for you out-of-towners) is my 'what do I do now' contact, once I've run through my knowledge of fixing our AC's. We work together on diagnosing things wrong on our motorcycles.
We just did our rear yard renovation, and now have the same hole in the ground, w/new gunite to change the layout, and diamondbrite for the finish. We added a heater and a spa off the deep-end. Both got LED lighting, which has about 15 different programs to light the pool and the spa. At night, it's fun to watch the colors change. Our pump is a Pentair multiple-speed 1-1/2 HP w/a timer, and I removed the old Intermatic timer which served for decades w/no issues before the current pump. The old incandescent pool light, a Hayward 'big eyeball' w/a chrome plate on brass bezel, in a SS bucket, was junked. The new lighting is much more fun to watch in both the pool and the spa. I also repaired our Hayward Navigator pool robot, and it does a good job on the pool. The #1 thing helping us with the pool is to my mind, the saline chlorination system, which I mentioned before. Here is a beautiful blonde having fun at the pool/spa. Not yet a year old.
Philip, one of the deals we made when we got married was that Liane would be home to see the kids off in the morning and be there when they came home. We both grew up with both parents working full-time and when we figured out how much it would cost to have babysitters, a second car, fancy clothes and everything that went with a job and career, it became a no-brainer to live on less but be present in our children's lives. That way I could focus on working as many jobs as needed or as many hours as needed to support the family. Once in a great while Liane wanted something extra, like new carpeting or drapes and she'd get a job for a few months to make extra money. It made her feel good but it cost us every time she took a paying job.
My retirement came real early (left IBM when I was 50) and the 6-week job at AOL that lasted four years allowed us a little extra cushion so we could afford the $10,000 pool patio/diamondbrite refinish. What you did in your backyard was way beyond that and would mean cashing in an investment or two (reducing our long-term cash flow). At this point in our lives a couple of grand to convert from chlorine tablets to a salt water pool system falls into the solar panel category -- good chance we'll be gone before payback.
Bob
Nice job fixing the AC. I was going to ask why do you have spare cap at hand but then rattle_snake answered that question. Well I guess there are some advantages of living in a cold climate
.
As strange as it might sound to some, my wife and I prefer the cold to heat and even when we retire we do not anticipate moving to a warmer climate. As they say to each their own.
@gman007, I understand your love of the colder weather. My grandparents moved from Sweden and Norway to Northern Alberta then Wisconsin and eventually to southern New York. They retired to Vermont and lived six miles from town on a dirt road that rarely got plowed. My Scandinavian genes make me more comfortable in the cold. In the Hudson Valley I didn't wear a coat to work until it got below 0°F. I was better off a little chilled than bundled up and sweating.
It doesn't sound strange at all. What is strange to me are the people who move to warm places like Florida and then hide in the A/C with the thermostat turned down to the low 60's. I generally keep the temperature in the middle to high 70's during most of the year.
Andrew, we moved to Florida in 1975, in the days of "The Oil Crisis" and got really scared. Our house in New York had oil heat and added extra insulation in the attic to control our heating costs. I installed a DIY central air system in the house and used it during the hottest days of the summer. Our oil and electric bills totaled around $100 a month (oil on the budget plan). Got the first electric bill in Florida and it was almost $100. It was November and I was imagining electric bills bigger than our mortgage ($312 a month). The first summer we had $200 to $300 electric bills and when the weather cooled off we decided to hold off on running the A/C for as long as possible. Unless we had visitors, the A/C didn't get turned on for three years.
Instead of A/C, I installed ceiling fans in every room (except the two bathrooms, which had squirrel cage blowers). Saved a ton of money living like that (if you're hot, take a dip in the pool and the ceiling fan will cool you off). By the third year, my wool suits needed to go to the cleaners to get rid of the mildew smell so often that the de-humidification the A/C would provide became a break-even. We keep the house between 78° and 80°. I know when it hits 80 because fluid begins dripping from my forehead. A degree cooler and I stop sweating while motionless but 78° allows me to walk around in dry clothing.
50+ years ago, I moved from north of I-94 in S.W. MI to S.E. FL and I have never regretted it. I still visit friends in MI and I like visiting MI any time of the year, but I really appreciate being in FL during the winter. I wasn't a habitual, frequent outdoor sports activities person when I lived north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Philip, I've adjusted about as well as I can and I love our life in Florida. In our younger years we took a cruise or two every year and vacationed in the islands in the between seasons (April-May and September-October). Trips to Great Britain, Spain, Greece and Scandinavia were as easy to arrange as a trip to Australia or a round the world flight with stops in multiple countries, including two weeks in India. It's 23 miles south to Ft. Lauderdale or 23 miles north to Palm Beach International airports and for some trips to Europe and Mexico it was cheaper to fly out of Miami International, still only 47 miles south. Cruise ships leave the Ports of Palm Beach, Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale) or Miami.
About a generation ago, a lot of wealthy folks who had moved to FL for the winters but grew to hate the heat and humidity decided to move to the mountain town of Asheville, NC, where no bad weather ever happened again.
@Squankum, I am convinced disasters of some kind lurk everywhere. Getting away from the sweltering 90-degree Florida weather doesn't mean you'll miss out on those 100°+ heat in the midwest. I remember a cold snap one winter in Florida when Anchorage, Alaska was warmer than Miami, Florida.
Andrew, then there are those who moved back to New Jersey and New York in time to greet Sandy.
Sorry to hear of the fall, Bob. Hoping for a speedy recovery.
While not familiar with Arnicare, I've been using a similar product (very effective for pain and bruising) for decades called Hirudoid which some Australian friends had introduced us to in the late 80's. At that time it wasn't available here, so they would bring several tubes back from each trip they made home.
Love the X1/9 by the way!
Mark, I'm almost fully recovered. A couple of enthusiastic hugs on Sunday from our grandchildren reminded me my ribs were still tender where I hit the hand truck tire.
I may have invited someone to purchase my kidney but Google AI responded to my query about the two products:
"Hirudoid gel and arnica gel are both topical treatments that can help with pain and inflammation, but they have different active ingredients and uses:
- Hirudoid gel
Contains heparinoid, an active substance with anti-inflammatory, anti-clotting, and fibrinolytic effects. Hirudoid gel is used to treat superficial thrombophlebitis, bruising, and hematoma. It can be applied to the skin up to four times a day.
- Arnica gel
Contains arnica montana, which is used to treat a variety of conditions, including bruises, sprains, muscle aches, joint pain, and inflammation from insect bites. Arnica gel may also help with wound healing, superficial phlebitis, and swelling from broken bones.
A pilot study found no difference between the effectiveness of Hirudoid and arnica creams in treating pain and bruising associated with dialysis-related infiltrations."
I really miss the X1/9. By 1995 it had reached its lowest value (they stopped selling the Bertone in 1987). Parts were harder to find and when the clutch master cylinder gave up, even the folks at Bayless Lancia-Fiat (before they were bought by Midwest) didn't have one in stock. Liane talked me into junking the car because I was commuting between Florida and DC at the time and didn't have the time for three elderly cars. A year later we bought the house we're in now and the Fiat would have fit nicely with the other three cars (on dollies and turned sideways at the back of the 3-car garage).
Merry Christmas Bob!, I wanted to say best wishes for this season for you and Lian and to hope that we ll have a safe and comfortable new year.
Your stories and experiences have added much to my life and, I am pretty sure, many others.
Be well, my friend.
Alan, thank you so much. The GJ is my hangout and I really like the people who hang out as well. I hope your Christmas is Merry and your new year brings happiness.
Hope you're already on the mend from the fall, Bob. Arnica is good stuff.
Thanks for all the advice and stories this year, best wishes for your health in 2025, and I sincerely hope you and Liane and the extended family have a very Merry Christmas!
Nick, Liane swears by the stuff and these days bruises show up out of nowhere.
It has been a good year and we had a wonderful time with the family Sunday. I'm actually glad we celebrated on Sunday. Seems like there were very few
drunks 'Noggers on the road and we can relax and cook the standing rib roast we bought last Christmas. Pretty sure sitting in the freezer for 12 months dosen't count as 'aging.'
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.
