(no subject)

Things accomplished tonight:

About 35 minutes of walking, in the middle of which we got food at our new Noodles & Company. It was our second time there, and it was again "okay." Nothing extra special and nothing horrible. Though I think I will opt for a different soup than their Thai Curry next time.

So there was exercising and there was food.

And when I got home I thought I'd start hanging stuff up, but it works better to have two people do that (one to say "No, higher. Wait. Lower!") and Pres Man was so exhausted from allergies that he went to bed. So I started working on (DUN DUN DUNNNNN!) the bolt covers for the upstairs toilet.

I'm very close to being done. In fact, all the bolts have their new plastic washers installed, and two of them have their caps on. Like I said, it's close to being done.

I was relieved to find that I still had disposable sponge thingies and gloves from when we moved in and I was CLEANING ALL THE THINGS. I had a hard time unscrewing a couple of the nuts but I finally got it done.

And I knew going into this that a couple of the bolts needed to be sawed off so they would fit under the new caps, but I thought "Oh, I can hacksaw right through that, no problem!"

It is more of an inconvenience than I had estimated. It is very awkward to get in there with a hacksaw, it is difficult to get any good sawing done when you're trying very hard not to hit anything that should not be scratched, and I think our blade (which is probably over 10 years old) needs to be replaced.

But I got one done. And found out I had not cut it down enough. Rarg.

And THEN I remembered I have a dremel. So I'm going to go dig that out and see if I have anything that will cut through these bolts. But I'm going to rest first, and maybe paint my mirror's frame. My back hurts.

Animals Talking In ALL CAPS

This is for Dawntreader

Successful Test!

Well. Now I know how to cut with my dremel. And I have bolt covers for all my bolts and things look much better.

There were a lot of sparks. I am afraid of sparks.

I am scared to death of the dremel. They always look so easy to use in videos, but they are terrifying. Instead of the happy noise of a drill, they are more like a crazy hopped-up-on-Red Bull type of sound. And they vibrate and blow air out really fast and are heavier than you think they should be and OMG-WHAT-IF-IT-GRABS-AND-I-DON'T-REACT-FAST-ENOUGH-AND-IT-SPINS-OUT-OF-MY-HANDS????!!!!

I think what scares me is the lack of control. With the drill, if something goes wrong and I drop it, it will stop. If I drop the dremel, it will just keep going at blindingly fast speeds. And it won't stay still; if it has a disk on it it will run itself around looking for something to chew, right up until it finds me. At which point there will be blood and tears and probably an emergency room visit.

You know those chain mail gloves to keep you from cutting yourself? I think I need two of those for dremeling.

But I did okay tonight. I wore my safety stuff (every time I saw my goggled face in the mirror it made me jump) and no one was harmed except two toilet bolts who frankly had it coming.

Maybe I should clear a space in the basement, put the dremel on the floor, and plug it in. See what it does if it gets loose. Maybe that would calm me down some. I honestly thought having a dremel would be way more fun and useful than it has been. It sits down there in its little Craftsman bag, and I stay up here trying to forget that I ever bought it.

At least it was useful tonight. I don't think we're on our way to becoming best friends, but I'm encouraged that no blood was spilt.