Blog Carnivals

Today my blog on Modern Necessities is included in the Carnival of Personal Finance, Financial Superheroes Edition. This thing is huge this week!

The Carnival of Personal Finance is hosted by a different blog each week--those hosts read a huge number of entries and then write some sort of introduction to each one. A lot of work!

There are blog carnivals on many subjects, so if you like the idea but not the topic, check out a different one.

Productive Day

Today I stayed home all day while two guys installed my new furnace and air conditioner.

I thought they would leave for a while to get lunch and I would have my lunch then, but they never left, so they had to smell my lunch. They were gone by 3:00, so I could have waited. I chose frozen pizza instead of chili--it's less aromatic--and refrained from making popcorn.

We moved the shelves and bench and pictures out of the hallway to give them plenty of room to maneuver the old and new furnace. What we didn't do was clear out a bunch of outlets. Or be able to tell them where an outside outlet was. At least I did have an extra-long thick extension cord to lend them.

I didn't get to joke enough with them. English was not the first language of either of these two guys. We could communicate everything we needed to just fine, though it sometimes took two tries (mostly I was the one who was incomprehensible, even though we were using my first language), and joking requires pretty good language skills, so it just didn't happen.

It's good I still have a mostly grassy yard rather than a yard full of bushes and trees because the workers took advantage of the space to make a large outdoor workshop and storage area. While the old AC and furnace were in the yard, a guy came by and asked one of the installers if he could haul it away. The installer asked if I wanted to keep the stuff or if I'd let this guy have it. Uh, I wouldn't know what to do with it. So, the stranger took some things away. The installers were pretty happy about that because now they didn't have to haul it away.

I've heard stories about workmen not wanting to come to lower-income parts of town because the tiny jobs they get just aren't worth it. On the other hand, today's events show that there can be advantages, too. My street is not a through street, either, but I guess you can see the big HVAC company truck from the nearest through street.

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I found a project to do today to keep out of the way of the workers without using up a valuable outlet to be on my computer all day: cleaning out the bottom cabinet in the kitchen. This job has been on my list of things to do for an embarrassingly long time because something spilled onto one of my lazy susans. Vegetable oil? Corn syrup? Light molasses? Whatever it was, it was extremely sticky and required a lot of soap and scrubbing and--like when a price tag leaves behind a sticky spot--alcohol.

I've been wanting bigger lazy susans, but even the bigger openings to the cabinet won't allow for much bigger ones than I already have, so I'm just going to stick with the ones I have.

( Details on how to cram as much as possible into a corner cabinet and still be able to get to everything. )

The food processor used to be on the counter, but we haven't used it in months, so it lost its place on the valuable countertop real estate. This means I could move the microwave back into a diagonal position in the corner which makes it easier to get to while still keeping a lot of front counter space open.

I tossed a lot of extra Whole Foods deli lids and a few other containers from things like peanuts that seemed like they must be ideal for something but which we haven't ever used.