Diane spent most of the weekend working on photos at an event (at home on Zoom, of course), so I went out yesterday and took care of some errands. I donated our old mixer and got rid of a lot of e-waste, both at Goodwill, and I looked at the Kia EV-6 and took another look at the Hyundai Ioniq 5.

“Looked” is the appropriate verb – going to a car dealer on Saturday afternoon is a recipe for being ignored! I will want to go back and talk to someone about the Kia, but I’m in no hurry.

I also spent a lot of the weekend hacking at my Toastmasters club’s agenda spreadsheet; I have to keep learning more and more about Google Appscript (Javascript with many built-in classes to talk to Google services). It’s not too bad, but I wish I could find a way that people who use the script wouldn’t have to explicitly authorize it to do things – Google’s message to request permission is very scary.

In fact, I worked on the spreadsheet so long last night that I was too tired to write a blog entry until just now – so the streak is over after 1082 consecutive days of blogging.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a problem with a camera battery swelling; I also posted a review on Amazon describing the problem. I disposed of the bad battery and forgot about it until I got a note from Powerextra (the seller) yesterday offering me a replacement or a partial refund. I didn’t need another battery (I’d kept the one from my ill-fated camera), so I asked for the refund. A couple of hours later, Amazon notified me that I’d received a full refund for the batteries and charger – that seems more than fair! I updated my review. :-)

On Wednesday, our microwave oven stopped working; its display showed “door”, but the door was firmly closed. I tried poking at the latches inside the oven in hopes of convincing the oven that all was well; that was a Bad Idea because it put the latch in a place where it couldn’t, well, latch, and the door wouldn’t stay closed! A little duct tape fixed that, but the microwave still didn’t work.

I did a little research and called Ace Appliance Service, who said they could come out today. Tom arrived just after 10, disassembled the microwave, found the problem (a fuse, not the door!), fixed it, and reassembled everything – total time, a little over 20 minutes including explaining things to me. :-)

$40 for labor, $4 for the fuse, and $110 for the service call and I have a working microwave again.

I’ll use Ace the next time I have an appliance problem. Highly recommended.

Shabbat Shalom!

I called the solar installer this morning to see when they planned to come out to do the inspection that they couldn’t do on Tuesday. My contact there said it would take a while, but suggested a way to move forward more quickly. All I had to do was give them some information about the house and take a bunch of photos, including the main panel, the service entrance, the gas meter, and a few photos of the attic and the furnace.

It wasn’t difficult (though I probably should buy a taller ladder!); he looked at the photos and the info I sent and said they’d suffice.

This afternoon, we signed the contract for the heat pump to replace the furnace and A/C. We should qualify for a couple of significant rebates – one from BayREN and one from the electric company. The electric company rebate requires that you send in a photo of the furnace you’re replacing…and I just happened to have taken such a photo a few hours previously. Serendipity!

Spring is nearing – it was about 10 degrees warmer today than yesterday, and the first tulips of the season are already blooming at our neighbor’s house.

I borrowed “Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never Ending Battle with Stuff” by Dana K. White from Amazon’s “Prime Reading” library nearly four years ago; I finally finished reading it on the plane home from Hawai’i (which says something about the speed of my life!). And I’ve been cleaning up stuff ever since we got home, such as the files in the office I mentioned last night.

Today, I finally got ready to try to get rid of the A/V receiver I’d replaced when we bought the 4K TV in January; it had been sitting in the living room ever since I took it out of service. I posted it on Facebook Marketplace and on NextDoor; five hours later, I’d sold it on Facebook for $45 (I got three inquiries on Facebook before finding the buyer; NextDoor didn’t provide any nibbles).

I also got rid of some other disused electronics…well, I moved them into the e-waste bag in the garage, which is getting pretty full. I guess I need to find out how to get the e-waste out of the house next!

Our solar installer was supposed to be here at 9 this morning to do the official site survey and roof inspection so that they can submit the paperwork for permits and PG&E approval. But the weather outside was frightful, and when the surveyor arrived, he said that it was too windy and rainy to do the inspection. As he put it, “when the ground is wet, the roof is usually wet, too.”

That wasn’t the most exciting thing that happened today; I could show you photos of the piles of manila folders I sorted through and refiled, but I’ll leave that to your imagination.