We had a cat when we first got married but it’s been about 8 years since we got rid of her and haven’t had any since. When we did have her, it was not like she peed all over everything. She did start pee on things, and that amongst other reasons was why we got rid of her, but it was all limited to towels on the bathroom floor that I put down to step on for when someone’s getting out of the shower. Once it was one of my shirts and that actually washed right out with no residual smells. It was never in this particular room. This room is called the “lower room” and it’s the one you enter when you first come in the house. This is the room we’re currently remodeling. Rather, Steve is remodeling. :P He’s taken out paneling and put up dry wall and all that comes with it.

The other day we started smelling this… smelly smell that… smells. A thought crossed my mind and I went… cat pee??? Then later Steve said something about it to my friend who was leaving the house. She said, “you know what, I smell it, too.” So we ended up, the three of us, smelling around.

It does not make any sense! There have been no cats in this house since we got rid of ours aside from the one we found last year and kept until we found the owner a couple of days later and she spent most of her time in our garage except in a kennel in the basement at night. I mean, I refuse to have cats in the house (especially since we’ve recently discovered that E is allergic), so she wasn’t even in that room.

We pinpointed the approximate area of the smell but can’t find anything that actually smells. We thought maybe it was something that was set outside and then brought in – we do still have a lot of junk in that room, I’m working on cleaning and re-organizing – but really, it is all books and papers and binders and candle supplies. The only thing from outside was a board Steve brought in that was an old picket from a fence that he was showing us how he’s going to do some rustic trim. We all smelled that at close range, it just smells like it should, nothing strange or offensive.

The next day, he painted the next wall and… yup, we’ve come to the conclusion that the smell IS the paint. So it’s not REALLY cat pee, it is just kinda like it I guess. It has to be the paint, I can’t figure out what else it could be. It seems like it smells about 8 hours after the paint goes on though a day later now I smelled it when I walked in. And thinking back, I remember that when he was painting, I thought that the wet paint smelled pretty strong and sort-of unlike what paint usually smells like.

I do not like this at all. Do not like it, Sam I am.

So now what to do?

I’ve heard about the new paint with Arm & Hammer that’s supposed to neutralize odors. If this doesn’t go away any time soon maybe we can paint back over it with that stuff and see if that helps.

I mean, it’s just so weird. I need to find out what brand of paint he is using because we will never buy it again. Just one of those things that makes you go hmmmm….

WELL! It was a 5.2 earthquake, centered in New Salem, Illinois! That’s something like four hours from here, as a straight route (not following the highway).

It apparently lasted for 90 seconds which is probably why I feel like I sort of noticed it in my subconscious and would have woken up, had the pain in my leg not gotten me first.

Around here, we’re no stranger to the shakes. There’s a mine here in this town that blasts daily at 2:45pm and sometimes at 10:40pm. You can tell when they’re closer to us, more below us; it’s been known to shake the house and rattle the windows before. (I was in high school the first time I felt it, at someone else’s house. That was also a WTF reaction.) This also isn’t is my first earthquake, but it’s certainly been a while. And we’ve never had anything here that’s really caused damage where we live… at least during my lifetime. Does New Madrid, MO and the New Madrid fault line mean anything to you? :) I also remember the time, when I was in junior high, I believe, that a plane flew by and broke the sound barrier, that was like an earthquake!

But for us, it was an hour before I happened to hear on the radio that it was an earthquake, while I was trying to fall back asleep! Now I can’t sleep, so I’m up watching the news and hoping that no one got hurt… Strangely enough, today is also the 102nd anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake. From what I understand, this earthquake is special because of the time of day, its location, and how far away it was felt.

Oh, and Elijah? He didn’t even stir, of course!

So, with that being the extent of my Apple software, I was surprised when this popped up a bit ago:

Uh, yeah, I don’t have Safari but Apple wants to push it on me! I almost clicked to install without looking at it since it seems like there are constant iTunes and QuickTime updates. But look at the screenshot, it appears as if Safari has/is an update, rather than optional software.

So, uh, what’s the deal, Apple?

So I’ve been extremely tired since around 1pm, I assume all that is the reason why.

And since this post sat untouched for the last four hours, well, you can see how I feel about it all.

Bor-ring. And I forgot my point. So, adieu.

Many moons ago we were just driving around town and happened to see a cute brick home for sale by owner. I knew it was probably unaffordable for us, but I was really curious anyway (we’re always looking for deals, too, you never know what might happen), so a few days later I called and left the guy a voice mail asking about the house.

A few days after that, the guy called and it ended up being a conversation about me, and who we are, what we do, etc. I don’t know why I kept answering his questions, but he found out more about us than I did about the house. And the real kicker? He refused to tell me the price he was asking for the house. Refused! Said he’d rather we come look at it first, could we do that this weekend? No, I told him for the fortieth time, we’re not serious right now, we’re just looking around. Because, to be honest, I want to know the asking price up front because I don’t want to fall in love with something and then find out I can’t afford it, amongst other reasons. I don’t even remember everything he did tell me about the house, just that I knew they weren’t living it anymore, they’d already moved an hour north of here.

When I got off the phone and told Steve about the conversation, he rolled his eyes and said something about “people in this stupid town, gotta know everything about you.” He seems convinced that there are actually people here who would refuse to sell a house to someone who isn’t a “native” or that they don’t like. Me? I’d be like, oh, you want to buy this house? Please, take it, and I don’t ever want to see it again!

Okay, so that was weird, but then two weeks later? That guy called me back! He wanted to know if we were going to come look at the house and I had to explain for the forty first time that we weren’t that serious. However, my non-confrontational personality caused me to just do the typical: try to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible instead of saying something like, “no, I don’t want to look at the house until I know if it’s in our price range or not.” Of course, that would have been a bit dumb, since he asked what our price range was during the first conversation and I wouldn’t tell him. Haha, that’s because I don’t know. There are too many variables to consider.

I was completely weirded out that he called back about it, though, and I kind of remember posting about this then, but can’t seem to find that post. So anyway, time goes by and I’m messing around on realtor.com again. Sometimes I just look (when I feel the need to depress myself :P). I saw the house, he’d finally listed it with a realtor. He was asking in the $214,000 range (price reduced!!) and I just started laughing. Especially when I saw the pictures of the inside. Of course, I ALWAYS think EVERY house is overpriced but I hated the interior of this house, too. The outside is nice, but inside… eh, it looks like it walked out of the 60′s.

Fast forward many months up to the beginning of this past week. We’re talking at least two months but probably more like four since I’d last talked to the guy. We were in bed, hadn’t been there long. Granted, it was kind of early but we’d had a long day and all three of us were wiped out, I think it was a little after 9.30pm. My cell phone vibrates – it had been ringing all day and I’d turned off the ringer finally – I don’t recognize the number, so I answer it.

Val: hello?

Man: Hello, Valerie, how are you?

Val: Uh, just fine, how are you? *Looks at Steve like, who is this guy?*

Man: Is Steve available?

Val: Yeah, he’s right here.

I gave the phone to Steve and laid back listening to his end of the conversation. After a few minutes I realized… it’s that same guy!

He was calling to see if we were interested in his house! What the heck!? I mean, this can’t possibly be normal behavior. It seems to me that we’d already told him not once, but twice we weren’t really that interested and we’d never come to look at it so why is he calling us after 9.30pm on a Sunday? It was just one of those “wtf” moments, you know?

Steve had pretty much the same conversation with him I’d had before and it’s funny because, you may have noticed, this guy never talked to Steve before. I was the one who’d called and the one who was called the second time. Steve really had nothing to do with any of this, so why would this guy ask for him? Craziness!

No dude, I’m not interested in your house, as cute as it is on the outside and though it be larger than this one… Unless you have a gold mine in the basement, that is, because you’re just asking way too much money.

I wonder if this guy thinks he has some great power of persuasion that if he gets us over to look at the house, we’ll already be sold or something. Or if he’s just that desperate to sell. There is a lot in this town for sale, a lot in nearby areas, too. And everyone is asking a ton of money, and stuff is not selling. I just took a look on realtor.com again, and I didn’t find that house that I’ve been talking about the whole time but I did find at least six others that are in the $200k to $900k (yes, $900k in this town if you can believe that) that have been for sale for at least eight months. So… that’s gotta say something.

I have always clicked the power button then shut the lid, and the computer goes into hibernation. If you just shut the lid, it’s supposed to sleep and then revive when you open the lid again. With hibernation, I would press the power button to bring it back. I never had a problem on the old hard drive.

Well, Saturday morning, I put it in the case and headed north. It’s a 30 mile drive plus the time it took me to get into the building and all that jazz. Taking the laptop out of the case I discovered that the hard drive and fan were running and the dang thing was hot. Not a bit warm over the hard drive but hot. And it wouldn’t wake up, either, the screen stayed black even though I’d opened the lid, pressed the power button, and the lights for wi-fi and bluetooth and the number lock were on. I had to hold the power button and shut it down then start it back up. Battery power was at 89% even though it should have been at 100% when I put it into the case.

It seemed fine after that but this wasn’t the last time this happened. I used the laptop Sunday morning to check the weather then pushed the power button, closed the lid, and we were gone for about eight hours. When we got home, Steve opened the laptop and it was again with the lights on but nobody home. We waited a while more this time, but nothing. I had to shut it down and restart it again. It wasn’t hot this time, but warm (as it hadn’t been in the case but sitting out).
This has happened other times, too, before the Saturday example, but I have no specific examples or different stories.

My power plan is on the default one, balanced. It says that on battery, after 5 minutes inactive, turn off the display and sleep the computer after 15 minutes. When plugged in, shut off the display after 20 minutes and sleep after 1 hour. I think the advanced settings are default too. Shut off the hard disk on battery after 10 minutes and when plugged in after 20 minutes.

I was wondering if maybe I was shutting the lid too early after pressing the button, before it had fully hibernated, and if that made a difference. However, twice today, I’ve told it to hibernate, both by the power button and then later by the Start menu and both times it went to a black screen right away and the wi-fi light would go off, but the bluetooth light would remain on as well as the number lock and it never would fully hibernate.

Addendum: so this last time I tried going to the start button then telling it to sleep and not hibernate. It went down all the way, quickly, turning off the wi-fi light, then the bluetooth, then the number lock and the whole thing went off. Two hours later I come back and open the lid, I can already hear the hard drive and fan running. Open the lid and it’s back at that black screen with the lights on. Sigh.

More addendum: I checked devices to make sure they weren’t allowed to wake the computer up.  The NIC never said it was, the modem did – turned that off, and bluetooth doesn’t have that option except for bluetooth speakers (?) which is turned off.  The computer is allowed to turn off my SSD to “save power.”  Grrr.

Anyone have any idea what the deal could be? I think I’m now out of ideas. Either that or I’m just tired.