I recoiled from the thought initially, until I remembered the half-dozen coffee cups in the cupboard that contains our dishes, plates, bowls, and other assorted crockery. (Insert synonyms blah blah blah etcetera.) And which actually match the dishes in that cupboard, to boot.
Then I--realizing that we would never, never, ever need that many coffee cups at one time--said disgustedly, "What are we going to do, have a coffee klatsch?" And agreed that we could safely donate about 2/3 of the coffee cups in the house. "Sure!" I went on. "We'll just invite twenty-two or so of our closest friends over for coffee!"
We don't even have a coffee pot. *sigh*
Mrs. Fungus will occasionally get some coffee-flavored concoction from Starbucks, but I don't drink coffee at all. When at home, Mom only ever drank coffee out of one coffee cup--an orange plastic one stained with the departed essence of thousands of cups of instant--and we buried that one with her. Why Mom felt we had to keep all these cups is beyond me, except that she had a very hard time getting rid of useful things. (Depression-era, and then war-era, kid. Yeah.) It's true that of the ones we're donating, there is a complete set with saucers--but keeping them would mean we'd have more than twelve coffee cups in the house, and we simply do not need that many, so we're going to donate them to the church's thrift store. See what they can do with them.
Besides all that, decorating the bunker for the impending holiday meant some cleaning had to be done. The living room looks like a different place. We have it barricaded against the cats, since they were not raised in a house with Christmas trees and will destroy it (out of sheer curiosity, as well as giant sparkly thing oh boy oh boy!).
This is about how it would go:
The guy who does that stuff owns cats. He knows.
* * *
Anyway, we got on the order of five inches of snow last night. It started about 10-ish in the Fungal Vale, and as a result I ended up driving home from work at 30 MPH again.
As Mrs. Fungus was leaving I dug out the snowblower, started it, and blew down the driveway. It took about half an hour, which is not too shabby, and as a bonus I finally figured out why I always have so much trouble starting the snowblower the first time I use it in a season!
See: this is the first time the garage has had room in it for many a year. I didn't have to extricate the snowblower from a maze of junk. Previous years, I had to pick it up and tilt it at excessive angles to get it out to where the snow is; this year I was able to pick it up and hold it near level while doing that.
Apparently a little planning and foresight goes a long way. I primed it, pulled the cord three times, and BRUMMMMMUMUMMM. I had to prime and pull a couple more times before it would stay running, but what I did not have to do is pull and pull and pull and pull and pull and pull and PULL AND PULL AND PULL AND PULL AND WILL YOU START YOU MOTHERFU--
*sigh*
So apparently, in past years when that kind of thing happened, it was because the thing was flooded, not because there was anything wrong with the fuel. The fuel in the thing now is left over from last year, but other than a little cantankerousness due to a dry carb I had no trouble with it, and the only thing I did different this year was to avoid tilting it too far off vertical.
My only complaint with this thing is that I inevitably stink like two-cycle exhaust after using it, but I can't fix that without buying a new snow blower. I would, in fact, not mind getting a two-stage machine (this one's single stage) but those things get expensive fast and now's not the time of year to go shopping for a used one.
I'm going to need to go buy more gas for it, though, especially if this winter keeps acting the way it is, and I really really really ought to pick up a couple of spare belts, as I've been meaning to do for about three years now. I'm hearing tell that this winter is a record-breaker for cold and snow already.
Gee, I wonder why that would be. Look at the first graph at that link--it shows a decline in the peak sunspot counts for the last three solar cycles. #24 is half the intensity of #23, which was about 75% of #22.
But it's the CO2 and the CFCs! They're causing man-made global warmenating! We're gonna end up like Venus if we're not careful!
* * *
The new phone is a 3G phone, which is more than adequate for my needs.
What really gets me about it is how quickly it sends and receives text messages. It takes the thing more time to display the check mark graphic informing me that it's cost me 0.3 airtime units to send or receive the message than it does actually to send or receive the message itself.
The minor complaint I have is that the "vibrate" function does not do a very good job of alerting me that I've received a message or call. This doesn't matter too much since most of the time I can leave the ringer on--even at work--but it's still a check in the "less than satisfactory" column. It's the first one this phone's gotten from me, though. And it might be because I keep the thing in a case attached to my belt, rather than a pocket. So what the hey.
* * *
Last night while I was finishing up my closing tasks at work, I had my MP3 player playing Christmas music, and it was nice. I took the shipping back to the warehouse while singing "Holly Jolly Chrismas" out loud, and got a chuckle from the guy working in the warehouse.
WTH, I sing in choir at church, so it's not like I can't sing. Why not enjoy things a bit?