Puttering

     It was a weekend of puttering around the house. I had almost nothing planned the entire weekend, so I decided to enjoy the solitude and work on odds and ends. I've noticed that when I "finish" a project, there are always a handful of things left undone, sometimes for an embarrassingly long time. Since painting my bedroom in February, there have been no covers on any of the electrical outlets. I started to change them out (since every outlet in the house is either dark brown or painted a bright color) but got stuck when a screw in an outlet box broke, leaving me with a head-less screw and unable to go further. If I had small kids, it would be a problem to have wires capped with a bit of electrical tape hanging out of the wall for six months. Since it's just me and two non-curious animals, it just sat there. But now all the outlets are changed and it's looking pretty finished up there.
     I also fixed the toilet. It's had a tiny leak, just filling up the tank for a few seconds every now and then. Fixing the flapper (a rubber piece that can grow old and fail) was the first thing to try. The internet assured me this was a five-minute job. And it is, as long as you don't call the phone call to your dad, the 25 minutes of informational YouTube videos, and the 30 minute trip to Home Depot to get the part. After that, it's really only five minutes.
     I had a chat with one of my neighbors while I was doing yard work. I've mentioned before that I really like my neighborhood. My next-door neighbors have been quite welcoming, and I like them a lot. They do regularly play super-loud music, but it's almost always on the weekends and never goes very late. They've helped me shovel out the drive during an epic snowfall, and diagnose a car problem. I've now figured out why they like me. Remember the loud Latin music? It turns out that dear old Bill, the previous owner, called the police regularly about them. So I think I get points just for not being Bill.