Friday, July 16, 2021

Day 40: Plan B in progress

The ducts we're scheduled to be cleaned today.  They were supposed to arrive between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.  As I was starting to eat my breakfast, my phone rang.  Apparently a couple of previously scheduled stops had to be rescheduled.  Could they come between 8:00 and 8:30?

Time to scramble!  I shuffled things away from the registers, as directed, but in a lot more of a hurry than I had planned on being.  

Two gentlemen, Sean and Derek, arrived promptly.  They gave me the rundown on the process.  It's going to take about 6 hours.  They are however, bonded, so I should not feel like a prisoner in my house.  Fine by me.  I took a shorter than usual morning walk, now I'm back, and starting on my blog responses, etc.

I can hear the machine working away.  They are all the way into the ducts, so depending on which part they are working on, it can be quite noisy.  

The last time that sister #3 and I walked together she did a "heads up" on a soft board on the little bridge in the park.  I told her I expected they would be fixing it within a week or so... I was right.  This morning on my walk, the bridge was closed:  

There are new boards where the soft step was!  There are advantages to having a neighborhood association, eh?

And there have been several answers all pretty much "we're OK with a followers gadget" to my Poll blog yesterday, so I'll be adding it today.  It's at the very bottom of the page.  It provides a nice little "follow" button for new folks to add the blog to their reading list.  But it also shows who all is following my blog.

When you roll over a photo (or blank photo) the name associated with that icon will pop up in a little bubble.  If you see your photo/name in the array and you don't want to see it... go to your Reading list, pick "Manage" and find my blog, and change from following publicly to following anonymously, and your photo will go "poof" from my blog's array of followers, but my blog entries will still be in your reading list.  If you follow anonymously, I won't see you in the stats, either, so unless I already have you in my reading list... well, that's the disadvantage of this balancing act!

Here's hoping you all get out there and LIVE the best Friday, July 16, 2021 you can manage wherever you sit on the journey and transition from Spark to the wider world.  After all, it's the only one we'll ever get!  And Life is Good!  ✨🎇😍💖 Spark on!

31 comments:

  1. I have used FitBit for many years and do enjoy it for my purposes. Keeps me motivated. Good for your sis alerting the HOA about the soft boards on the bridge. And glad it's repaired.

    Good luck w/the duct cleaning. Sure hels allergies!

    HUGS

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    1. I use Fitbit for steps and activity, and have since 2014. Part of my criteria for picking "New tools" for tracking anything else is that it be able to take Fitbit's input!

      Funny, when I synched Fitbit and Spark I had to do it every day, and then Fitbit would get my food diaries from Spark. Now that I'm using Cronometer, it's getting the food diary from there. I no longer have to synch Fitbit every day, but I do have to re-authorize the Withings synch every day. But I'm OK with that... then I can choose WHICH days I want to synch it.

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  2. Clicked follow. No longer Anonymous as spouse helped me with setting up a gmail account with SP ID.

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  3. Your Powers of Prognostication are Prodigious! 😄 Good call on that board repair. And nice to know the neighborhood association works as one would hope 👍

    My Garmin activity tracker is snobby with other apps. It’s happy to tell everyone my steps, but very selective about importing data. I’m OK with that; I pretty much have LoseIt set up as my Central Tracking Hub, so it’s all good, LOL

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    1. Isn't it great to have settled into your "new/old home"? Central tracking for me is at Cronometer, having disconnected other "secondary" apps and devices from the two main ones that now feed it.

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    2. It IS a good feeling to see a “new normal” taking shape!

      In my case LoseIt had pretty much been my Tracking Central since 2012. So the anxiety-calming “new normal” for me is actually all about being able to read blogs across multiple platforms (thank you!) and easily communicate with folks daily via email in the Google group. It’s that support piece I’d needed to replace, and I think this will work for me.

      I love that the maintenance challenges can just continue with no adjustment, since they were always off-site, anyway.

      Nice job on the Get Back to Goal challenge, BTW! 👍😃

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  4. I am surprisingly enjoying my Fitbit more than I thought I would. It helps to have a competition going with my daughter!

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    1. LOL! Nothing quite like the ability to best your grown kid(s) to motivate you!

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  5. Yikes! That seems like a long time on those ducts! We don't have any. This was an all-electric house till we added a gas fireplace. So no ducts. WE do have mitsubishis that provide heat and air, for which we are grateful, since it cut out heating bills by nearly 2/3rds with the fireplace.

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    1. What, the six hours? That was prepping the house by covering all the registers, and later the "return" intakes, cleaning the heating/cooling ducts, vents, the dryer vent, and cleaning up after themselves at the end. Oh, and they "misted" / "fogged" the vents with disinfectant while they were at it.

      I admit they cleaned up dirt that was there before they got here. It was almost like getting an extra Shasta visit included! They were out of here by 2 p.m., and I'm left with a fresh house, all back in one piece.

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  6. I used a fit bit for many years but the last time it stopped working we were on vacation and so my husband gave me his Yama and I have been using it ever since. It keeps track of my steps, sleep, calorie burn and keeps time. If someday I feel like spending 150.00 I will get a fit bit again but until then this works fine. It doesn't sinc with my spark and it won't with spark 360 but I just have to take a little time and write the info down.

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    1. LOL! If it works, don't fix it... lessons from those of us who've lived a while!

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  7. Glad you got the ducts cleaned. The heat here makes me very happy our a/c got it's tune up and in A+ shape.

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    1. I got lucky with the weather. Only got up to 80 while they were here, and most of the time had the windows open and the A/C off.

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  8. Clean duct work should help with dust and allergies, if you are troubled by those. ;-)

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    1. That's what they advertise. We shall observe the next few days/weeks. Recommendation is do this every five to seven years.

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  9. I love that MFP has a blog section! didn't know that. I just posted a blog on wordpress. Had a home there but never used it much, was more comfy at Spark. We will see! Thanks for giving me the push. Hugs. Betsy

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  10. Wordpress is a much more powerful tool than the little blog section on MFP. I opted to make BlogSpot my main blog, and just post a link and a few words over on MFP for the Sparkers that have migrated there and might not be joining Blogger with a reading list.

    You are so welcome for the push, Besty... hope you like the deep end of the pool! You're a keeper, so I'm glad you jumped!

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  11. It sounds as if you have great services.very reassuring.

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    1. Now this is something new... your comment posted three times! And the notification I got was something about Bounce Google something? Chalking it up to Google hiccups, and deleting the extras!

      Guess I'd better pay my dues, huh? For the park upkeep alone it is worth it!

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  12. Great that your board was repaired so promptly: it feels good to live in a community with attentive services!! No ducts here (or in our old house either): hot water heat. So we get that friendly gurgling all through the house which I quite enjoy!!

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    1. I absolutely love those hot water radiators. Memories from childhood... and from my first efficiency apartment, which was part of a carved up old house near the University.

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  13. I read this yesterday but wasn’t able to comment. I think as my hip heals, my balance is changing. Starting to notice tripping hazards ☹️ #not for sissies #pricetolivelonger ❤️

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    1. Keep in mind by the time you noticed it, I had been aware of it for a couple of weeks, so really, it was about a month in coming (the fix). Still, to have attention with the first neighborhood association meeting where it might have been mentioned shows how important that park is to the neighborhood!

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  14. I just checked, I'm one of the blank faces, but...I made it that far!

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    1. Woo-hoo! Into the life-raft! Now, here's a towel, we can dry off and when we get to shore, there will be s'mores! ✨ Spark on!

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  15. Catchin' up ... we have hot water heating. Ahhh ... no dry heat sucking the moisture out of our already dry air.
    😍

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