Up early. Mostly 'cause I didn't get to sleep yesterday until after 15:00. then I got up for an hour or so when Karen got home. Then back to sleep until 02:57... I woke up and looked at the clock and knew that I was done sleeping.
Yeah, eleven hours at a time is enough.
And I have all kinds of stuff that I want to get done today. For one thing, I think that I know what is the matter with the hot tub... the guy gave me the wrong directions for hooking it up. When the heater goes on, the pump motor goes into high speed. This, I think, is my problem, not the heater itself. I hope. If not, I'm going to call someone to come fix it.
Another minor project is making a whole-house FM antenna. I'm going to throw a wire up into the tall maple tree just off of the back deck and then hook it into one of the unused phone lines... then everywhere there is a phone outlet, I can get good FM reception by hooking the radio antenna up to the line.
And I need to clean the gutters. And while I have the ladder out, I need to fix the light over the driveway that the workers disconnected accidentally when they put the siding up a year ago...
And... and... and... the list, it just goes on and on and on... the basement need cleaning up. My tools need to be arranged so that I can find them... O'yeah, I need to pay bills and do the checkbook.
I did sign up for the dental insurance with the hospital, since they removed the two-year-before-any-major-expense clause in it. This means that after the first of the year, I can finish up getting my crowns, at least two more are needed. I'd like to get that done before they need root canals...
And I need to get scheduled for my colonoscopy. Not looking forward to that, and I will probably need to take a night off beforehand, and Karen will need to take the day off.
15:31...
The hot tub was mis-wired, as I suspected. I got out the analog multimeter like I should have done in the first place... I really should learn not to trust people when I can make the determinations myself.
Additionally, I had found that one of the leads on the heat sensor had rotted off, and I broke the other one off when I tried to remove it. So, since I was going to the bank anyway, I stopped by Carroll's electronic supply house, but they had nothing like it, and told me to order it from the manufacturer. I asked them if the had anyone there who could solder new ends on it (both leads were broken off at the nub) and they said that, since it was a heat sensor, it couldn't be soldered.
That sounded logical, but wait! Hadn't I just learned a lesson? So I called up my friend Herman, who does stuff like that for a living. He told me that it was OK, go ahead and try to solder it; the worst that could happen would be that it would be ruined, but he didn't think that was likely. It is most likely a bi-metal switch, and if it gets hot it'll just break the circuit, like it's designed to do... then it'll close again when it cools off. That makes sense, so I took my moderately non-existent soldering skills downstairs and made the connections in about 30 minutes. Soldering is something that I have to re-learn every time I do it... requires some finesse and steady hands.
Right now I'm waiting for the water to heat up... it takes about eight hours, so it probably won't be more than tepid tonight. The true test of the heat sensor working will be if it shuts off before it boils...
And I've decided that I've really done enough work for today, and I just made a pot of decaf coffee, so I think that I'll take a shower and wait for karen to get home... no, first I have to clear a path to the hot tub, just in case we can use it tonight. Then I can relax.
More tomorrow...
And I am so happy! I did get a lot of stuff done so far today... cleaned the gutters, fixed the driveway light, fixed the hot tub, cleaned the front deck, went to the bank with my paycheck... not a bad day altogether.