When I moved into my house, my uncle gave me some advice.

Do at least one job on the house that needs doing every day. It doesn’t matter if it takes 10 minutes or 10 hours, but if you get at least one thing done every day then you will never get overwhelmed.

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Since May, I have been taking part in the Portland Trails Back Bay 5k race series. Every Wednesday night at 6:00 for the last 19 weeks there has been a free 5k around the back bay trail.

I only actually raced 3 of them, since I usually did a speed workout such as quarter mile repeats or half mile repeats on my trip around, but they were fun and made it easier for me to skip some of the more expensive races I usually run in the summer. I only missed one of the races, and that was because I was on my honeymoon and did not feel any need to hurry back for it.

If you have a favorite activity that you like to do, such as running riding a bike, you should see what is available in your area. Local stores will often sponsor group runs and rides for little to no cost.

The problems with my cable service that I was having are not really solved, but they are worked around. The network channels still do not come in, but I now have access to the high definition channels which come in really well. The channels that I watch regularly are all available in high definition except for CBS, which was not the worst in quality to begin with. Even the shows that are not produced for high definition look fine on the 700 range of channels. The downside is that I could not talk them out of the extra couple of dollars that renting the high definition box cost. Hopefully when three months rolls around, I can convince them to continue my promotional rate for another three months in order to keep me from cancelling my services. Going back to the blurryness is not going to be easy, but it will not be worth it to spend an extra $60 when the majority of the channels still do not look all that particularly well.

There was a cacophony across the water while my wife was out in the hammock this afternoon. I thought that it was a bird, but she thought it was a small animal. We could not see what it was, but it turns out that she was right. It was a baby squirrel.

I went out with my camera and tried to track it through the trees. I finally caught sight of it, and managed to get one picture where you could actually tell what it was. The rest of the pictures it had managed to duck behind a tree or out of frame, or else there was too much camera shake to see anything other than a small brown blur.

It was making a lot of noise for quite some time. The squirrel never really stopped to take a breath; it just kept squeeking away for about 20 minutes.

Recently, Time Warner cable took over for Adelphia. They still have not got complete control, but that should come over the next three to six months. Football season started last night, so I had cable television installed yesterday afternoon. Last night, I watched the Miami and Pittsburgh game with what is somewhat less than the quality that I would have expected from digital cable. The tech who installed the cable checked the signal, which was plenty strong. However, once I actually tried watching the babble box I had to check to make sure that I was in fact using cable and not some rabbit ears.
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We went out to Office Depot this evening to see if they will make good on trying to keep us from buying a computer from them. The gentleman I spoke with at the local store was very nice and actually let us use the computer. It was still broken, however, and we did not want to spend $800 (after discount for a display model) on a broken computer.

With my wife going back to school, we are in the market for a new notebook computer. We do not want to spend much money, but are willing to above the budget if we could find a tablet PC so that she will have less danger of carpal tunnel. Office Depot had one that we were willing to buy, but they do not want to sell it to us. After trying on numerous occasions to give them our money, I have given up and will never purchase anything from Office Depot again unless their corporate office makes good on their inept store managers.
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A week ago I put up a new shower curtain rod in the bathroom. It was one of those ones that curve out away from the tub so that it seems like you have more room in the shower without actually installing a larger tub. It works out great. It took me a while to get it up, however. First, the old shower curtain rod was painted onto the wall with what seemed like 5000 coats of paint, so removing it was a little more difficult than just taking out some screws and not letting it drop. Once it was done, though, I had to install the anchors for the new shower curtain. I did not realize it at the time, but I was using too small of a drill bit for the sheetrock anchors that I had.
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Today was my day to do work around the house. As such, I had to run over to Home Depot today to pick up a few odds and ends. The parking lot was about half full. There were a couple of vans, half of a dozen cars, and pickup trucks. Yep, it’s Home Depot on a holiday in Maine! At a rough guess, I would say that there were about 120 pickup trucks in the lot.

Of course, one of the pickup trucks was mine…