Dec 8 - a tired little girl

Things started off slowly yesterday but were in full gear by mid-morning. Emma owns the house but is particularly mesmerized by the new master bath shower. The escutcheon had come in to cover the over-large hole in the tile so I set about installing it and Emma was helping.

First off I had to enlarge the hole in the escutcheon so that the "L" would fit snugly. I thought that would be a quick job with the dremel but it wasn't and a hand file worked better. After that the shower work started, with Emma's help. She loved coming in there, closing the clear vinyl curtain (glass on order) ... Sandy joined us ... time to party ! At one point she grabbed the shower control but quick action on my part stopped her from drenching us. She got the idea and never reached for that again. Whew.

We concluded that it looked good so I finished the installation and set about installing the bar. For that I'd bought a porcelain drill bit which was wonderful. When doing the work up north I'd used a special bit for drilling glass and porcelain which is triangular shaped. The porcelain drill bit that I bought this time is round, has diamond edges and is open in the center. You start the bit by drilling at a 45 degree angle, otherwise the bit "walks" on the tile since there is no center point. A necessary complement to the work is a wet sponge, with which you dribble some water on the work as it progresses. It's really slick and proves the long-learned lesson that with the correct tool ...

Emma helped, was in and out of the shower, handed me screws ... and for the rest of the day was in and out of the shower, with or without others around. Funny.

The day was looking clear enough so we decided to go boating. Sandy was stuffing the turkey so we waited until she was ready to put the bird into the oven, had lunch and then called NCM to say that we'd be there in 1/2 hour. Just before we were going to leave, they called back to say that they couldn't get the forklift started ... oh oh. We hung around another few minutes and then because everyone was ready to go, we decided to head on over anyway and take our chances. As it turned out, after we left they called the house and my cell (which was at the house) to say that they'd got it going and were putting the boat in the water.

We putted up to the inlet and then headed out into the ocean. The waves were really bouncing us around so we didn't go very far out to the ocean ... not because we couldn't ... we were having a blast. Back to the sandbar island we went ... wait ... what island ??? The island was completely underwater with only the tall grass showing over the water and the tide was still coming in ! This had never happened to us before, i.e. not being able to get out and walk. Poor Abby !

We headed north to the Port Orange bridge just for the ride and then stopped at Down the Hatch to use the restrooms on the way back. The porta-potti has still not been christened ! We saw many dolphins on the way back, in spite of the high tide. It was just about slack at this point, but we weren't going to wait for the island to show itself. Back we went to the marina; Emma had fallen asleep so Sandy took the gang home while I waited and rinsed the boat and flushed the motor. She came back later and picked me up.

While she was home she called Lisa Swan to arrange for her to tend Abby today, because we are going to go to Disney World. We'll have another long day. I'm not sure ... no I am sure ... that I'm not ready for this !

Before our turkey dinner we brought out the Christmas presents for Jeffrey, Sara and Emma. Of course most of them were for Emma, but she helped unwrap every present anyway. Then we had turkey with all the fixings -- the usual -- and I did the usual cleanup afterward getting all the leftover turkey -- future turkey sandwiches -- into ziplocs.

By bedtime, Emma was tired. She bounced around a little, typical of over-tired kids, cried a little, but went down reasonably quickly, considering. Today will be a very long day, but she'll be able to sleep in the car on the way back. Will she go to bed after that ? Time will tell.

Oh -- much earlier in the day, before I did the work on the shower installation, I went over to Ace Hardware on U.S. 1 to pickup a longer nipple. A nipple, in plumbing terms, is a piece of pipe, in this case copper, threaded at both ends. The nipple that the plumber had left was 1/2" too short due to the depth of the escutcheon. I did the Ace errand with the Harley of course, trying out the new windshield. It's great ! I'm anxious to do more riding but that's not going to happen today.

I had two messed up deliveries yesterday. Vigorous Living had sent my gels, but sent the wrong ones. They sent vanilla, which I don't like, vs vanilla-orange, which tastes like a creamsicle. I'm not going to use 6 boxes of stuff that I don't like so I called them and they will re-ship once it's in stock and include a return shipping label. I warned them that they won't see the return shipment until the end of January and they are putting that note on the file.

The second issue was even more annoying. A place called leatherup.com had sent the spare motorcycle helmets "signature required". I've had that before and simply left a sticky on the front door for Fedex or UPS, and that has sufficed, but not this time. They left their own sticky saying "Direct Signature Req". I called them and they said that only the shipper could release same for non-signed delivery. I arranged the next delivery day for Thursday, knowing that we will be out of the house all day today (Disney World), however, I won't arrange Thursday's activities around the Fedex man.

I contacted Leatherup ... and they refused to release the package, a matter of policy. I talked to them and have had several emails back and forth with them and they are adamant. My emails are barely polite at this point. They are saying that I'll have to pick it up at the distribution center so that it's not sent back ... and since that distribution center is in Orlando, I'm not going to do it. I don't have time for a wasted 1/2 day with guests here -- nor would I anyway. I'm really PO'd at them. I have all sorts of deliveries, all much, much more expensive than their stuff, and have never run into this before. The only time that I've ever gone to a distribution center to pickup something was a large package shipped via Yellow Freight -- the Takagi tankless hot water heater for up north -- that they put into the SUV and it went straight north from there.

What's wrong with these people ? Is it because they normally deal with motorcycle riders ? Grrr. It's been a long while since I've been so steamed about something. It almost reminds me of work ! The more I think about it, the more PO'd I get. So ... I'll stop thinking about it. I do have one more option that I could exercise -- have it delivered to Lisa Swan at her office on Friday. I'll consider that on Thursday if we miss the package again.

It's 7 a.m and still quiet here. That's not going to last long.

Onward !