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Congrats on the new job, Flyover!
Today is my sister's wedding anniversary.

I got a panicked call earlier from my best friend's fiance. She's in jail bc the 14-yr old girl they've been letting crash at their house (while her mother is at work) attacked her. Now, the 14-yr old is larger than her & outweighs her by at least 50lbs (the fiance is 22 & weighs only 80lbs-- she's also bipolar & has some mental deficiencies caused by her mother drinking & using drugs while pregnant). She threw her phone at the teenager in self defense after being kicked in the stomach. The 14-yr old jumped up & started slapping her. It all started bc the 14-yr old started being rude, disrespectful, & entitled. Her mother told the 22-yr old to "do whatever is necessary" to get her out of the house after telling her to leave & the girl refused. So the girl was trespassing. Unfortunately, the phone left a gash on her forehead & the girls' mother called the cops. The cops arrested the 22-yr old and charged her with felony assault. She's never been arrested for anything before but they are putting her in the prison tonight & her bail hearing is in the morning. My friend is calling everyone he can to make sure she gets a decent lawyer & try to get charges dropped. I don't know if it will help or hurt things that the 20-yr old is on medication & doesn't have as good impulse control bc of her mental/medical conditions. Or if it will matter that the 14-yr old is larger than her. I do know that my friend can't afford to pay bail & he really doesn't need this crap right now.

Before that call I was having a pleasant day. I'm just hoping the girl will be OK in jail tonight. I know she's going to be crying all night & possibly have panic attacks. I'm just hoping the prosecutor & judge will be reasonable. My friend said that in this state, if someone attacks you in your own home you have the right to defend yourself regardless of the attacker's age. I'm hoping the charges will just be dismissed.
 
thebuilder, are you able to ask your nephew if he would prefer a laptop or a desktop?
From what I've seen laptops tend to be more expensive & have issues with battery life. You can't customize them quite as much as you can a desktop.
There are other options in between though-- All-in-One computers, but you want to make sure they can be upgraded. He'll want something with a mainboard that has an M2 slot for an SSD hard drive (faster than standard hard drives & more stable), a good cooling system, fast processor & good amount of RAM. Not sure what the options are for the All-in-ones but they tend to be pricey.
There are the workstation thingies (not sure exactly what they are called) that are basically like tablets but can work like laptops. Pros: small, lightweight, portable, touch-screen, better battery life than laptops etc-- cons: expensive, can't be customized much, & tend to have lower ram & processor speed & video card.
CyberpowerPC actually builds custom PCs w/ good stats. I've had a few built from them. I used the specs for their computers as a guideline to pick parts to build a desktop computer for my mother recently. Mice got into her old one & ruined everything but the power supply.
Speaking of power supply, if he goes w/ a desktop, he'll want at least 600w (800 or higher gold plus certified would be good).
I digressed... Desktops come in different sizes and there are some cases that even have handles on them so they can be carried. They have full towers, mid-towers, cubes, & other types. With the smaller ones it's important to have good cooling.
Base computer should have 3GHz 6-core or higher processor, 1Tb hard drive (game files take up a lot of space), USB 3.0 or higher, 2Gb or higher video card, 16Gb RAM, & probably a DVD or Blue-ray drive (if the case even has a slot for it). Case should have good ventilation. Mainboard should have at least 4 RAM slots.
My mother's computer has:
RAM: Patriot Viper 4 16GB Kit (2 X 8GB) 3400 MHz (PC4-27200) DDR4
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Processor with Wraith Spire LED Cooler
Heatsink: ARCTIC MX-4 2019 Edition
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix B450
SSD: Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD
It's working well for her thus far. I'm not sure what the video card is bc my friend gave it to us. I have a Radeon RX480 4Gb video card in mine.

How did I miss this? Thanks for such a detailed reply, zannej, and I apologise for the delayed response. My nephew did end up with a desktop. The capability to upgrade did matter in the end--you're right that laptops are pretty limited in that aspect.

I'm looking forward to the weekend. Nothing special, just want to catch up on my reading and have some quiet time. The past weeks have been very busy, and I need a breather. I could benefit going somewhere like the beach, but now having some alone time will probably do. I checked in on my mum, who was fine, but it's been a while since we've talked. Also did some reading on the articles I've bookmarked, so I ended with plenty of tabs, is anyone else like that? Answered a friend who sought me for advice if calculators like this could be trusted, I said there shouldn't be any problem. Searched for cinema schedules, I thought I could also catch something during the weekend.

Btw @zannej, that's horrible what happened to your best friend's fiancee. Teenagers can really be horrible. Hope her mental illness isn't used against her. Bipolar is horrible but I don't think it has anything to do with being violent. I suppose being on her medication is a good thing, bipolar can be difficult to manage without it.
 
thebuilder, I hope your nephew likes his desktop.

I'm still waiting to hear back from my friend on his fiance's status. We got to go see her at the jail. They never transferred her to the prison bc the judge never signed off on the warrant. They are still waiting for him to do it. He is supposed to sign within 48 hours of arrest or they have to release her. Once it is signed (if he doesn't just dismiss it), they have 72 hours to give her a bail hearing. So, she's still in limbo waiting on the new judge in town to sign off or to just drop charges.

The girl who attacked her has at least one prior arrest, her father is currently in prison, & her mother has spent time in jail too. When the fiance got to the jail they had her sign off on a restraining order against the girl. The 14-yr old has already been released & served the restraining order- so of course she was hanging out directly across the street from my friend & mocking him when he got home. It's a good thing he has self control bc he almost slapped her. She came up to him & started trying to talk to him when he was talking to the neighbors & he told her she best GTFO. The fiance said when the police arrived she had red marks all over her arms and chest from being slapped & attacked by the girl but they didn't take any pictures. All the cops we talked to said the arrest & charged w/ 2nd degree assault was BS. But someone decided to bump it up to state charges. Not sure who, but we are still waiting. The next bail hearing is at 2pm & the cops have promised to call my friend to let him know as soon as the warrant is either signed or dismissed. He said it was likely she would be RoR given she has no prior criminal history & she only threw the phone as a reflex in self-defense. She said her stomach is still hurting where she was kicked. As far as I know, they haven't given her any of her medication for her heart condition, bipolar, or ADHD. I know that bipolar doesn't make people violent, but it can lower impulses & cause people to become more angry very quickly. The cop said he probably would have chunked something at the girl if she'd kicked him like that too. I'm hoping the judge agrees.
 
Update: either the police station sat on the warrant or they took their sweet time. They transferred her to the prison around 6pm (which means the warrant was signed). The cop said that she has a right to a bond hearing within 48 hours of the warrant being signed, but they aren't giving her a bond hearing until Monday at the earliest. They also charged her with 2nd degree battery-- which entails intentional serious bodily harm. It was a reflex without any intent & the girl was not seriously harmed. They are really making a mountain out of a molehill on this one. They also never allowed her to speak to a lawyer.
 
Sounds like you've got your share of excitement zannej. Hope things turn out O.K.

I got a start on a railing for the front steps tonight. A friend of mine gave me an old rusty section of commercial stair rail. It was about 8' long so I was able to cut lengths out of it. It's a little pitted, but I have some Por 15 coming tomorrow. That stuff likes rust and works pretty good as a pit filler. Everything's cut out. Hope to have it done tomorrow, if all goes according to plan.
Just to make the steps a little safer in the winter. We ain't gettin' any younger. lol.



Front steps 9 13 19 1.jpg Front steps 9 13 19 2.jpg
 
Thanks, Gary. Looks like an interesting project.
Speaking of rust: is there a way to get rust off of flatware? I found a spoon my brother had left submerged in some crud in a bowl & it rusted. It's a spoon I like & want to try to salvage.

More drama around here. The sister of the teen who attacked my friend's fiance was openly conspiring on facebook to organize a group of people to go "fukk up" the fiance when she gets out of jail. They were going to go over to my friend's house & were idiotically discussing it & agreeing to do it on a public FB post. It's a group of trashy grown women who have kids who were involved. They tried to rope in a guy who has a ton of photos of himself with guns to join in too. Fortunately screenshots were taken & my friend showed them to the parish police, filed restraining orders against every single one of them, was told by the cops that he can use as much force as he wants if any of them show up or try to lay a hand on his fiance, and both he and the cops notified all of them of the restraining orders & that my friend would put them in the ground if they tried anything. Just in case I'm going to be over at his house sitting with her when he's at work. If they see someone is over they will be much less likely to try to come by. My mother also said she can come over to our house bc there's no way they would find her out here.

It saddens me that I live in an area with people like that-- but at least I'm out in the woods away from them.
 
Zannej wow it sounds like you friends are having a sting of bad luck.Hope that it all turns out for the better for them. I have ben getting the exterior of my house ready to paint. It seems like it is taking forever, the paint on the house wasn't in all that bad of shape mostly just faded with some peeling. On the other hand the trim was horrible, most of it was peeling with some rot. So the pieces that were rotting I had to replace. About 20 years ago our city came up with the brilliant plan to make our neighborhood a historic neighborhood which doesn't wake a lot of since, since they have tore down a lot of the old houses and replaced them with Apartments for the college kids to live in, so it makes it difficult to choose a paint shade that they will approve.
 
Tuffy, it's a bad situation & we really need some criminal justice reform. My friend heard from his fiance today & she wants out of the prison very badly-- but he knows a lot of the other inmates (either through having met them, having some family association, or from knowing their husbands) so they are being nice to her. There's at least one inmate in there that will beat the crap out of anyone who tries to lay a hand on her. But she has medication for her heart condition that she needs to take & the prison hasn't given her any, nor have they given her any of her meds for anxiety & bipolar disorder.

I agree that it doesn't make sense to tear down a bunch of buildings & then claim it's "historic" and restrict what other people can do. I kind of wish they'd done that in this one area in Alexandria where there's this old building that used to be an orphanage. It's a beautiful building & they built something next to it (much smaller) in the same style, but then they built a very ugly apartment complex right in front of it so you can no longer see the beautiful building from the road. It made me sad because I always liked looking at the building.

We used to have some sort of white coated aluminium siding on our house but years ago we had it done in vinyl & all the trim (except around the back doors) is vinyl too. The windows suck though. A plane flew over earlier & the windows shook & rattled like crazy.

I hope you can find a paint color you like that the government will approve. I need to get motivated and work on stuff in the house again. I can't seem to find any of my brooms & haven't been able to sweep (not sure what happened to them). I've been ordering stuff for the laundry/bathroom reno. The magnetic vent for the dryer duct doubled in price & became hard to find so I finally ordered it (after having it run out of stock on me a few times). I'm thinking of getting a wrap-around curtain rod for the bathroom window so I can have a vinyl curtain that wraps around the side to prevent water from hitting the window. I started looking at drip pans for the washing machine & saw there are some combo ones that also sit under the dryer so they can be pushed flush together-- which is what I want. It would also offer some protection for the floor. People on Youtube had custom made metal ones that cost $250+. There's a Duraflex plastic one for $240+. There's a Driptite plastic one that is slightly larger & costs $98 + $39 s/h but that still comes out cheaper than the previous one. It's designed to work with pedestals and comes with the drain fitting. It claims to be "unbreakable". (As an aside, I saw a negative review where someone was mad that it was slightly damaged in a dryer fire but it protected the floor from damage-- owner of the business said that fire was not one of the things covered in the warranty as this was supposed to deal with water). It's translucent so if you already have your drain hole drilled in the floor, you can see it through the pan to drill the hole. I'm trying to figure out the best spot for the drain hole & figure out what sort of strainer would fit over it. Worst case I could probably use some sort of shower drain or regular floor drain instead. It's still expensive though.

If things weren't so crazy for my friend right now, I know he'd be helping me with stuff.

I'm waiting for the closing on my sister's new house & for her to get moved in & settled before we plan a trip to visit her. If we show up when she still has moving boxes, maybe I can help her unpack. Things will be too crazy for me to visit on my birthday though (since it's the first week of October and the closing for her house is Sept.30).
 
Almost done, but not quite. Got it welded up and set in place so all the holes are drilled. I ran into a little snag. I didn't even consider what's inside the vinyl post I'm mounting it to. It's been 10 years or better since I installed them. Turns out it's got a metal tube running up the center with the void filled with expanding foam. So, I dug through the iron pile and found a length of 4''x1/4" steel. I cut 2 lengths, drilled 2 bolt holes through, then sandwiched the post. Welded one plate to the railing and I was back in business.
I painted the railing with por 15, then a couple coats of bronze metallic, then a couple coats of black. The plan is to sand it down tomorrow, exposing a little of the bronze here and there to somewhat match the Oil Rubbered Bronze hardware on the front door & porch light fixtures. Then I'll give it a couple coats of satin clear and it should be ready to install.
I made a plug for the end of the railing out of a length of round stock I've had for eons. Turned it down on the lathe. Drilled 3 holes in the railing end, slid it in and button welded it on. The idea is, if water condenses in the pipe, it'll drain out at the bottom since the end isn't welded solid. Just drilled a small weep hole in the other 2 tubes at the low ends

Front steps 9 14 19 1.jpg Front steps 9 14 19 2.jpg Front steps 9 14 19 3.jpg Front steps 9 14 19 4.jpg Front steps 9 14 19 5.jpg
 
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Looking good Gary. You have gave me inspiration to try something similar. Even tho I don't own a lathe but I have a friend that does.
 
Thanks Tuffy.
I finished it up this afternoon, so this project is in the books. I always held my breath when someone (especially elderly) would use the steps in the winter. Should be much safer when it's slippery out.Front steps 9 15 19 2.jpg Front steps 9 15 19 3.jpg Front steps 9 15 19 1.jpg
 
Oh wow! That looks great, Gary! The metal lathe is so cool.What was the tool that added the texture? Some sort of stamp? That is so cool!

I've been doing what I call "browser shopping" instead of "window shopping". I look at stuff for sale online. Paid off though bc I found some stuff for my friend. He got a new LG washing machine on clearance awhile back but has an old fugly dryer that doesn't work well. I saw someone selling the washing machine & dryer plus 2 pedestals for $270. I thought maybe the pedestals were not included or that it was the price for just one, but apparently its the whole lot. The washing machine needs repair but seller said the dryer is "perfect condition". I'm guessing she just got a new set to replace them. So Tuesday we will go out to pick them up. I also discovered there was a flood at Surplus Warehouse so they have a huge clearance on the cabinets that got "water touched". My friend was planning to get a pantry. We saw one on the list for over $100 off the regular price so tomorrow (after his fiance's bond hearing) we are going to go up there to see if there are any ones still there decent enough to purchase. Then I can stain it to match the other cabinets.
 
@zannej, that wasn't how I expected it to turn out! I would have probably done the same as your mate's fiancee, wouldn't be the one to initiate it but would certainly do something if I was attacked. She doesn't deserve all the stress, especially since you said that she has heart problems on top of her mental issues. How old is the teen's sister? I would normally seek the parents' help but as you said this seems a non-option in their case.
 
Thanks Zannej. That's a knurling tool, normally used to put a diamond or X pattern in metal, usually to make a grip like you'd see on dials and knobs. I just used it to add a little detail. Probably not many will notice when they use the railing, but....;)
 
thebuilder, even most of the cops said they would have done the same thing in her place. She gave more details to me after we bailed her out (more on that fiasco later).
The brat had taken the girl's new shoes & was wearing them. Girl told her to take them off & give them back. Brat refused, swore at her, said she would hurt her if she tried to take them back & was generally being a pain. The brat's mother told the girl to deal with her & said the girl would get violent with her (the mother) or the brother if they tried to make her leave but told her to do what she needed. So the mother sort of set her up for it.

After the brat kicked her in the stomach & knocked her back across the room (while knowing she might be pregnant), she threw her phone & realized it hit the brat in the head & left a white mark. No gash. No blood. The brat then jumped up & said she was going to kill her, started punching her, slamming her against the wall, slapping her, & trying to knock her down. She pushed the brat back & started grappling with her and managed to wrestle her to the door. The brat tried to shove her down to the ground but she got enough leverage to just shove really hard and throw the brat out the door & off the porch. The brat then threw herself on the ground wailing & started rolling around (which is when we think she hit her head on a paving stone or maybe one of the steps). She started bleeding from her head. She ended up running off (still wearing the girl's shoes).

The brat's father is currently in prison. The mother has been to prison numerous times and will be going back shortly. It turns out she was one of the people on FB trying to organize a violent attack. My friend went to the parish police & filed charges against all of the people involved who said they were going to attack her. He also filed numerous charges against the brat-- trespassing, assault, battery, theft, violation of the restraining order, etc. We don't know what will happen on that.

We also found out that the warrant for the girl had been signed at 8:30am & we were all being lied to about the warrant not being signed. They didn't want to admit it bc the next day was a parish holiday (which does not count as an official holiday that pauses the timer on the 48 hour detainment limit for bail hearings). They just putzed bc they intended to keep her until Monday (when she had been arrested on Wednesday) so they could pretend it wasn't more than 48 hours. When they did set her bail, it was $4k. My friend tried to put his house up as collateral (the house that he had to pay late fees & stuff on for the property taxes bc his mother took the $ he gave her for paying the taxes & probably bought drugs). He paid over $600 to the parish & $60 to the city (which is what they told him he owed). They had sent him a notice saying he was going to have his house taken away & auctioned off in 48 hours if he didn't pay the taxes the very next day. We spotted him the $ to do it & he paid & never heard anything back from them afterward. No auction & it seemed fine. Well, when he went to put it up as collateral they said that he hadn't paid parish taxes bc he's got homestead exemption so he doesn't pay. I explained he had the exemption set up AFTER he paid the taxes to them. They then found notes that he did pay. But they said the city was claiming they owned it bc they said he never paid them. Whoever he paid at the city must have pocketed the $ & never wrote in the file that he paid it. They also (without giving him written notice) added $100 a month to what was owed in taxes on it in order to get it back. It is now at $610 for him to re-claim ownership. Nevermind there was no notice & he paid. But he changed vehicles & has been remodeling so he can't find the receipt to prove he paid. His mother- who co-owns the house-- was absolutely LIVID. She went down and chewed out the mayor in person over all this BS. My friend feels very defeated right now & I'm trying to get him to consult a lawyer (if he can find one for a free consultation) about what to do. This is pretty much robbery on the city's part. Also, the other cops all said that the charges against his fiance are excessive & unwarranted.

She spent all that time in prison without being given medicine. She also related to us that a woman she knows was put in there with her and was all bloodied up. Her face was all swollen & bleeding, her rib was broken, and she was throwing up blood. The woman has an ectopic pregnancy and needs emergency surgery but they threw her in jail instead of taking her to the hospital & refused to give her medical treatment. The only upside was that a woman who is in there for 1st degree murder decided she liked her & was chatting with her & being nice to her so nobody was willing to beat her up-- and apparently there were some nasty fights in there.

The bail bondsman is a really nice guy. We explained what was going on & he said how much we would have to come up with to get her out that day, waived half of his fee, & said the other half could be paid at a later date. He also said they had no business putting someone as tiny as her in genpop & that in all the years he's been a bondsman (more than 50) he's never seen them charge someone like that. So he said she's being screwed over. My friend had called the guy on the phone & then I saw the bondsman on the lawn in front of us in front of the courthouse & pointed him out. So we got to talk to him in person. He even knew my father & had apparently been out to my house before & remembered it. Apparently while we were overseas he'd been sent to retrieve my neighbor.

Meanwhile, the cabinet we wanted to get was sold out. :-(

We are still going to try to get the dryer tomorrow though.

The highlight of the day was we briefly stopped by the flea market & the furniture set that matched mine was still there. The lady had said it was sold & that it was only sold as a set. The old man was there instead & when I asked if I could buy just one piece he said "Yes. Twenty-five dollar." So I gave the guy the $ and my friend and I lifted it in to my truck. Now I have to clear a spot for it. In the light it's in rougher shape than I'd realized but I don't care so long as it serves as more storage space. My brother & I had a hell of a time getting it up the steps of the porch & up the steps of the front door, but we got it in. It had gotten rained on & we didn't have a tarp so that didn't help, but I'm happy with it.

I'm going to have my friend help move it in to my room once I have cleared a path & moved some other furniture over.

Today has been exhausting-- mostly from the frustration of dealing with the total BS.
 
My friend consulted lawyers & was told that this town is so effing corrupt that they would probably manufacture fake return receipts to claim he received notice & that he should just go ahead & pay and then fight for reimbursement later so they can't take his house away. The laws I looked at said he would have two to three years to pay before they could take his house. I was also told that the fee is supposed to be based on the value the house is assessed at and $100 is excessive. The original amount was something like $99 so the fee is more than the amount they claimed he owed in the first place.

It's legal here to record someone without their knowledge so my friend recorded his conversation with the tax clerk at city hall. He had her admit that they had sent all of the notices to the wrong address so he never received any of them. It all went to his step-father who has no claim to ownership of the property. Clerk said it didn't matter that he didn't get notice so he had to pay. He's going to ask his attorney about that bc they shouldn't be able to apply late fees w/o any notice of being in arrears to begin with. She told him the property taxes were due by the 21st of Dec every year & he can find out what the assessed value is in late October. She encouraged him to speak with the tax assessor about the price evaluation for the house bc it's dilapidated. I mentioned that I've met the guy & he is very nice and the clerk agreed. We'll touch on that later. I noticed there were security cameras in the building & said my friend could have a lawyer request the tape for the day he went & paid to show him paying. But the clerk told him he would need to show the receipt to be reimbursed. A lawyer's fees might be more than the taxes though... The receipt is a very thin piece of paper with very pale ink. I had him take pictures of the receipt as proof in case it faded &/or deteriorated. Still hoping we can find the other receipt.

Then he got his electric bill & it was $689 & he has no idea how the hell it could be that high. It's normally $200. His water bill (which is normally $40) was up to $153. He had a credit of $150 and somehow he miraculously used that much up. Many people have complained about the city claiming they used more water than they actually did though. Traffic tickets & the water bills are two of the cities largest sources of income. Newspapers have published articles about the discrepancies & suspicion of fraud, but no one has done anything about it. He's getting clobbered with lemons.

This is my new piece of furniture. I think it would be called an entertainment shelf maybe? It's in rough shape but its laminated particle board & was made in the 90s so it could be a lot worse. Yasuke approves of it as a seat.ashleytallshelf2.jpg

The particle board on the bottom got wet & has crumbled a bit & it's hard to drag across the floor without stuff falling apart. I want to put something over it on the bottom to reinforce it & add something to help it slide better.
Any suggestions?
 
Sounds like your friend will have to be extra vigilant documenting everything going forward. It's a shame when the people put in place to serve, abuse their power.

Yesterday I hopped in the truck to go uptown for some stuff. Without paying attention I turned the windshield wipers on as I got ready to back up since I noticed it was raining. lol. But wait, I hadn't backed up yet. Water was dripping out of the ceiling.
The only overhead plumbing in the house is above the garage for the upstairs bathrooms. And sure enough a valve under a vanity had a bad seal. I ended up tearing the wet drywall & insulation out of the ceiling and installing a couple new vanity shut off valves. I think I'll just leave the drywall off for the foreseeable future to give it plenty of time to dry out. We've been kicking around the idea of updating that bathroom/bedroom as it's seen it's better days. We just happen to have some leftover tile from our bathroom. I do believe there' enough to re-do this bathroom. That might be a project for after vacation in October.

The joys of home ownership...........I guess.
 
Yeah. I'm going to have to find my friend a good filing cabinet or something where he can store his important documents. He's misplaced a lot of things. Many things were lost in the house fire a few years back & ever since the wreck he was in where he got tbi (traumatic brain injury) he's been less organized & loses things more often. He's joked with us that he owes my mother both his kidneys & his liver at this point bc she's helped him out financially so much. He said sometime when the weather cools off, he's going to take a week off work to come help us work on our house to get it fixed up.

It really is sad that the city officials have to screw people over. He's really worried about which DA will get his fiance's case. If he gets the one we know, she'll be fine. He's reasonable. If he gets the other one, she's screwed. That guy gets paid to win cases & doesn't care if the person he's going after is innocent. He will railroad them.

Ugh, sorry about the plumbing leaks. That always sucks. Hopefully it was caught before any mold could develop. I hope your reno will go well on that & I look forward to seeing the pictures.

One of these days I'm going to stop procrastinating & start working on stuff in my house. I have so much to do & my physical abilities are not up to my mental ones. I know how to do things & what I want to do, but knowing and doing are two separate things. My body does not like to cooperate so I have to get help on things. Right now my friend is having a lot of back pain & he's been stressed to the max. But he does want to come out tomorrow to run the antenna cable to boost our cell signal in the house. The antenna is already mounted on our tower (he said it turns the entire tower into an antenna as well since it's metal). Just need to run the cable into the house & mount the booster somewhere. I think he was also planning to cut some weeds down but needed a more powerful cutting tool bc these weeds are tough. One of these days I'm going to just till up my driveway, level it, pack it, & put down pea gravel or something that will allow water through to the oak tree roots, but that won't let the damn weeds grow up. Maybe add some paving stones and a path to the air conditioner. There is a pit next to the air conditioner that needs to be filled in & to stop the ground erosion. air conditioner is already starting to tilt in to it a bit.

Today I was exhausted. After I went to bed last night I slept until almost 7pm (when the phone woke me up). Some political bullcrap. I told the person not to call again & hung up. Then I got up and made dinner. stovetop stuffing with corn. I heated up some chicken cordon bleu for my mother to go with it. I'm still tired so I might take a nap again soon.

I'm going to have to take my poor elderly dog in to the vet soon. Even though she eats, she's not gaining any weight. She's gotten super skinny & she refuses to sleep on a dog bed-- just on the floor. She's developed wounds on her hips & I don't know how to prevent them or help them heal. Only thing I can think of is to attach protective pads to them somehow.
 
Mom was sick all day yesterday, having back pain & nausea. I got her some lidocain patches (which have helped) and she kept calling me every few minutes & hours during the night so I didn't get any sleep. Around 6 something when it was still dark, she called again & said she wanted me to take her to the ER. She kept vomiting & couldn't keep anything down & she felt horrible. She was shivering & her whole body was hurting. Fortunately she has good insurance so they were nice to her. At one point the doctor came in & said they were going to do a CT scan on her head for the dizziness & we said there was no dizziness. I asked him if he was sure he had the right patient. He stepped back out & asked the nurses & was told he had the wrong patient. LOL. They apparently have a new system for testing blood that doesn't let them use the old containers bc the openings are too small so instead of being able to use one or two vials of blood, they had to draw blood from multiple spots. One of the times the nurse went all the way through the vein & had to call in another nurse to help her get a vein. They hooked her to an IV to give her fluids with intravenous anti-nausea medicine. I had asked them for a barf bag so they gave her the meds. After all the needles her blood pressure shot up to 205/89 so they gave her something to lower it. She had to get the anti-nausea meds twice. They did an x-ray for some reason, ct scan, & we mostly sat & waited. I covered her up with blankets & her jacket & put on some music she liked on my phone. Around 9:30am I was able to step out to get breakfast. We didn't get out of there until after 11am. I went to Walmart to pick up the medicine they prescribed as well as some gatorade & powerade bc they said she can't eat solids & can only have clear fluids for the next few days. Didn't get home until almost 1pm.

Close to 7pm I went back into town to take an adapter cable for 4prong to 3prong dryer plug/receptacle. That was when my friend discovered his dryer had the plug for a range instead of for a dryer. He went with me to go buy a $15 vanity light from someone in town. It has cut crystal shades & gold color on it that my mother really liked. The seller gave me her address & I recognized the street and said something about a house with a tower & a very long slide. She said she lived right next to that house-- which made it easier to find. Rolled up in her driveway & she had two blue CR-Vs there. I complimented her on the car choice & mentioned that our other vehicle is a blue CR-V. She'd never seen the Honda trucks up close so I showed I gave her a tour of it-- she liked the trunk. Very nice lady. Now we will have to figure out where to install the light (vanity is on an exterior wall) & how to wire it.

Meanwhile, when I got to my friend's house, his fiance was just getting back from the police. The girl who attacked her who has a "stay away" order keeps coming over in front of the house & staring at her-- not even on the other side of the street even-- just directly in front of her sidewalk & driveway. She also keeps calling my friend's dog & trying to steal him. She apparently stole the dog from the person across the street. Her mother (who also has a stay away order bc she made threats) also walked by. They took video and pictures of the mother & daughter violating the stay away order. Unfortunately, the local cops refuse to enforce it & said "It's a public street". The brat has a restraining order on my friend's fiance as if she's afraid of her, but she's going out of her way to go see her & antagonize her. I told my friend to just go to the Parish police with all the videos & proof. I don't know if it will help in her case to show the girl isn't afraid of her & that she's antagonizing, but at least it will be on the record. I wish I'd gone with the girl to the cops bc she apparently told them that the brat is just begging for an ***-beating- which I don't think helps her if she wants to appear non-violent. She's all bark though-- but a DA might not care about that.
 
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