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appliances from Newburgh
Thursday, May 26 2016
Gretchen had found a new high-tech LG washer and dryer on Craiglist to add to the basement of the mansion from which we will soon be collecting rents. This morning before my workday, we made a roadtrip to get it using the "new" Subaru, now equipped with something of a sound system. Our destination was just southwest of Newburgh, in a suburban neighborhood of modest ranch-style houses. The seller was a woman who was in the process of foreclosure, and you could see the despair in her lack of lawn maintenance. A middle-aged gentleman with a European accent was also there, and he seemed to be something of a newly-acquired boyfriend. It was good that he was there when it came time to wrestle the appliances into and onto the car, though I quickly wearied of his constant hovering and picky advice. Weighing on my mind at the time was the emailing system for The Organization, which had been a shitshow for much of yesterday, and I was worried that it might be exploding. Despite the obvious embarrassment this seemed to cause the woman of the house, the boyfriend guy also tried to interest me in buying his stereo system (as if my randomly wanting such a thing was to be expected). Fortunately, Gretchen and I were able to truncate that part of the conversation before it had taken more than a minute or two.
Using the wide Thule-branded straps designed for securing kayaks (and the admittedly-good advice of the boyfriend guy) I was able to strap the dryer down to the roof rack with remarkable tightness, which made me feel secure later when rounding curves and driving as much as 80 miles per hour on the Thruway. The straps were flailing around and making a terrible racket, but that's a difficult thing to control.
Despite the greatly-increased air resistance, the car performed acceptably, though at some point the check engine light came on (as it inevitably does on used Subarus). I later checked the error code and saw it was "420," a memorable number that also routinely plagues Ray & Nancy's 1998 Subaru.
I had thought that once I got my full-time remote job, Gretchen would try to get me to "come out and play" more than she has. To a surprising degree, she's actually respected my workday and hasn't tried to get me to slip away to do things like eat dinner, watch Jeopardy, attend meetings, run errands, and the like. But I've been getting the sense that her subconscious desire to lure me away from my workday has been getting more assertive. For our errand today, for example, she had originally suggested setting out for Newburgh at a time that would've had us return at 12:15pm, that is, fifteen minutes into my workday. Today, on the drive back from Newburgh, she tried to convince me to swing by the brick mansion to drop off the appliances, that it only make me "fifteen minutes later" (that seemed unrealistic). I denied both these requests, insisting that I be able to start my day on time. I later had a conversation with Gretchen about my need for her to respect my workday and not to "saboatage it." I said that it's stressful to have competing demands placed on me (one by an employer, the other by my wife), and that it would be so much easier if she could just let me work in peace during my workday. She seemed to get it, and the day went well. There weren't even any shitshows from the email system.
The day was a hot one, requiring me to use my fan. Over at the brick mansion, Gretchen discovered that the attic apartment was a deeply uncomfortable place on a day like today in the absence of any air conditioning. There is one small AC unit in that apartment, but Gretchen is going to buy two more.
I'd actually ordered another dashboard-mounted MP3 player before the one I'd installed yesterday (and had ordered that one when it seemed the other one would take too long to arrive). But that other one arrived today, and it seemed a better fit. It had a faceplate narrow enough to fit inside the Subaru's dashboard trim and could also make connections to bluetooth devices. Unfortunately, though, a big problem with both devices is the crappiness of their FM radio reception. Using the Subaru's built-in antenna (which is actually screen-printed onto one of the windows), I could only pick up one FM station (the local "the Wolf" country station) other than my own pirate station. It's possible, though, that the problem is the Subaru and not the stereo.
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