The goal was not accomplished. The leak in zone 5 is very obvious, but I have no idea how to get the problem piece out – it’s 3 inches of hose between two plastic pipes, but it is crimped on. I must destroy the crimps, but I don’t really have a suitable tool. I’ll give the tin shears a try, but they are awfully large for the job. Home Depot also doesn’t sell such small pieces. Perhaps Ace Hardware will be more accommodating. The leak in zone 2 is not anywhere near where the water is bubbling up in the yard. Digging down there, all I found was a jet of water coming from elsewhere. More digging is required.
While at Home Depot looking for tubing, I bought two gallons of stain. Despite the nice cedar picture on the front, it’s WHITE! This must be returned – along with the “cedar in picture, brown in reality” stain I bought from Ace Hardware, previously.
On the productive side, I spread Weed-and-Feed on the not-easement part of the front yard, pulled dandelions out of garden beds, and cleaned the house for Game Night. The guests at which agreed with me that I need a new stove and dishwasher before listing the house, but saw nothing else awful.
It’s about to rain, so I’ll find something to do inside, today. I’m rethinking the flag pole. I bought a (solar – yay, green! oh, wait, rare-earth mining isn’t green, boo!) light for it so I wouldn’t need to take the flag down every night, but there’s not much that can be done to avoid rain. Dealing with the flag(s) is just one more thing.
Oh, and an interesting discussion with the folks next-door who are AirBnB hosts (actually, it’s something else – “loftium” maybe?). I found it incredibly amusing that they were discussing how it took some time to learn to clean the place, quickly. After growing up with parents who entertained and nearly 500 parties of my own (1st and 3rd Saturday of every month for 20 years), this is really not an issue for me. Granted that I don’t have to change sheets for these parties, but I do need to clean the entire house – not just the rental part.
Pro-tip that works for me and is against most advice I’ve read: Clean a room until something takes you out of it (e.g. moving shoes from beside the door to the closet where they belong) then clean that room until something takes out of it. It saves much walking back-and-forth. It has the surprise benefit that the entire house is suddenly clean all at once rather than constantly thinking about how many rooms are left. This probably drives “must have checklist!” people crazy, but I hate checklists.
One more (why, yes, I am procrastinating): Start things that take care of themselves (e.g. dishwashers, clothes-washers, roombas), first and deal with them quickly when they’re done (e.g. moving towels from washer to dryer). This maximizes parallelism. Note that it doesn’t matter what order you wash things in – you need to do it all, anyway, and there is no reason one has to make the beds before or after hanging clean towels in the bathroom. Leaving aside that means your linen stock is insufficient, an unmade bed doesn’t prevent vacuuming nor do unhung towels prevent tub scouring. Another reason not go room-by-room.
Hah! I wasn’t procrastinating, I was cogitating subconsciously. My, admittedly easy, task for this afternoon: Sand and repaint that bubble of paint in the bathroom.
BTW: I’m entirely aware that no one is reading this. If nothing else, it’s not interesting. This is to motivate myself by keeping track of what I’ve done and the barriers I encounter doing it.
Update (ten minute later): SERIOUSLY?!?! I have 27 (I counted) cans of left-over paint, but none of them are the bathroom color. I find these constant barriers very demotivating. I need a gallon of John Deere Green to repaint the porch floor and I need to return the stain, so bringing in a chunk of the bathroom wall to be matched at the same time is no big thing, but it’s still a thing.
Marked Up 