House In Order, days 10-13

Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. (Laundry, dishes, litterbox, six dinners baked and put in the freezer, cleaning up for a party, cleaning up after a party, litterbox, more dishes after the square dancers came through, litterbox, litterbox, litterbox, litterbox. And this is with Rob doing a fair amount of the householdy chores. Gah!)

Now that I'm roughly caught up on that sort of thing we'll see what I manage to accomplish tonight.

House In Order, day 14

1. Pitched a whole bunch of expired prescription meds, including one the FDA has removed from the market.

2. Did the electrical connections for my car voltmeter. Well, most of them. Let it be known that the Radio Shack Lighter Socket Power Plug 274-331 is JUNK. The crimp connectors do not "lock" into place as the instructions so blithely state. They also do not make an electrical connection between the wire and the outside contacts of the plug, except about one try out of ten, and then only on the negative terminal. And you can't take the plug apart to see what's wrong and jury-rig it, because it's got a rivet through it, not a screw. It takes determination and planning to make a product this difficult to use or fix. I'm blocked at every turn. I grudgingly admire the designers' fiendish cleverness.

At least I still know how to solder. I suppose it'd be hard to forget. And if I pull the connectors out of the plug, my voltmeter correctly detects a 9V battery, so I know the rest of the connections are okay. Guess I just need a new plug.