Codes

Another productive yet relaxing Saturday in process.

Started the morning with a 2 mile walk with a friend - she lives about 10 minutes away and her home is surrounded by fields and orchards. We walked 2 full miles in beautiful weather - cold but clear as a bell with no moisture (so no muddy shoes to deal with). It was a nice way to start the weekend - and I'm proud of myself not only for walking but for not using sleeping in as an excuse not to walk. She invited me last evening and I let her know that I planned to get up early and get my errands done and if I did that, I would call her and we would walk. But I slept in until approaching 9AM - and instead of deciding to run my errands and not walk, I called her and suggested I'd be there at 10:15 - and so we walked! Yeah us!

I ran a couple errands including getting gas for my car since before the winter break. Love my hybrid and love my commute. Treated myself to a light caramel frapp and got it for free thanks to my Gold Card reward coupon!!

B. is off work already so we're going to treat ourselves to dinner out around 5....

J. and the boys are heading over the hill tomorrow to visit with family that's flying up from So. Cal for the day. I will work around the homestead.

The house had a couple projects completed this week - the fence is repaired and looks great. And we finally got the dryer vent cleaned out - identifying yet another code violation (the house is full of them). A dryer vent isn't supposed to be too long - ours spans the entire width of the three car garage and to compensate for that length, they used a much wider width tube. I can't believe the stuff the guy pulled out of the vent - it was incredible. He also (frighteningly) confirmed that at one point, the lint did ignite - thankfully, it didn't spread to all the lint surrounding the 'lighting element' and the lint just burned out on it's own. But holy crap - that's scary!

The dryer is drying things at least 60% faster now so we are sure we will save tons of $$ on our electric and gas bill. We will definitely have that service done annually from now on - never, ever want to risk a fire and now that we see the huge difference in drying time, it's not something we will not keep up with ever again.

Next repair project is the front door - the lock needs to be redone...and that means technically every lock should be redone so we keep the same keys. We also need a new back sliding door and I think that will be the next 'big thing' we do - hopefully sometime this spring or summer. The house is 11 years old and it's showing it's age a bit...nice to get things done.

Three day weekend too!!