Busy

Last night on the way home my first stop was at UPS.  They had tried to deliver some .5 pound, signature required thing for a couple days.  I had no idea what it was.  When I looked it up I saw it was coming from California which didn’t ring a bell either.  When I got to the counter and handed the slip over the woman went back to grab it.  She came back with a UPS Express envelope.  She said “oh there are a lot of people getting these today”  Puzzled, I asked what it was.

“Your appliance rebate”, she says. Oh wow, I almost forgot that was still in the pipeline.   The woman then went into a bizarre story about how she received a rebate as well.  The bizarre part was she didn’t buy any appliances.  Evidently her sister fraudulently filed a claim for a rebate using bogus information and used her sisters name.  Wow, I wonder how many people pulled the same stunt.  Whenever there is a government handout you can bet your last dollar that people will be scamming it, sad.

I opened up my envelope and pulled out my preloaded American Express card for $344 and some odd cents.  Instead of giving you a check that you could put in the bank the refund came in the form of these cards that you HAVE to spend, an interesting way to put more money back into the economy.

When I got home I had a bunch of stuff to get ready since I was leaving right from work to head to Jeremy’s place on Friday.  I loaded up my pressure washer, extension ladder and a number of other things into the back of the truck.  Jeremy has another project he asked for some help with.  Last time I was there I helped him hang up some gymnast rings in his garage.  Most people would be put off to be asked to do home maintenance after driving across the state.  I happen to not mind at all.  In fact, I prefer having something to do.  Everyone knows that sitting around making small talk is very low on my list of things I enjoy doing.

Once I got all of my stuff together for the trip ( a lot of stuff)  I turned my attention to the Scooba.  The replacement solution valve I ordered showed up in the mail. I wanted to get it fixed asap since I was going to be gone half the weekend.  I would be hard pressed to find time to do it otherwise.

I have torn apart many Roombas but never my Scooba which has been more or less trouble free for the 3+ years I have owned it. I had a surprisingly hard time finding a tear down reference for it but eventually I did find a site that had some basic disassembly procedures.  The process is documented in my prior entry.  I made it a stand alone entry so it would be available as a reference for others that run into the same issue.

No need to rehash it but the repair was a success.  I need to grab some new wheels and a vacuum port for the Scooba.  After that it hopefully should be ready to give me another couple years of floor scrubbing goodness.

Tomorrow Jeremy and I will be playing in our second tournament as partners.  The last time we played was 3 or 4 years ago and it wasn’t all that successful.  Needless to say coming out of my previously announced retirement from volleyball may be ill advised considering my recent history on the court.  On top of that I still am suffering from an energy deficit and Jeremy somehow developed instant planar fascititis  after walking around the house in high heels.

If we make the playoffs it will be a HUGE accomplishment.  Regardless of the outcome I think we will manage to have a good time.