Ticking down the hours

 It was the day of small things, and I'm grateful for it, because this darned sinus stuff is waking me up throughout the night. I even got up at 3 AM and took a long hot shower just to see if the steam made it easier to breathe. It did. I got myself all warm and cozy back into bed and was able to sleep a couple more hours.

We had some pretty damaging winds here last night. We had no sooner climbed into bed when suddenly there was a bang, and it was followed by blue flashes coming from the window on the north side. The streetlights went out and so did all the lights next door. That scarcely registered when we saw blue flashes through the sliding glass doors on the west side of the bedroom. It looked like it was something pretty major, and we got up right away to unplug the computer. Surprisingly, the power was back on again in pretty short order. We didn't expect that. Turned out the power outages affected a lot of people on the western side of Pennsylvania, and there are some without power still, so we were lucky.

Still, Tim headed out to the new build to check on things there. Everything was fine. It is supposed to get cold, so he relit the heat in the house and out in the garage for the cats. He used the time to put the last breaker in. We are now ready for our final inspection. 

Being short sleeped, I appreciated a day home. I cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, changed the bedding, did a load of laundry, vacuumed. All those things a body gets behind on when you're in the middle of a holiday and working on another house. 

The day started out with a call from Andy. A neighbor has died, and Mattie and Levi both are very busy with that. Since the funeral is on Tuesday, she doesn't have time to get off the hill and into town for their  pork loin and sauerkraut for their New Year's Day meal. They were hoping we wouldn't mind doing that bit of shopping for them and dropping it off at some point tomorrow afternoon. Of course we can do that.

I even remembered to call a prospective tax preparer. We have to find a new tax person. We liked the person that we used for many years, but without warning, he announced he was going in with another accounting firm in town. We used him that year, and then he retired. Much to our surprise, the charges for doing our taxes went up 30% the following year. They also had to file an extension. They missed the April deadline by 3 months. We explained it away to ourselves. Our federal taxes are complicated due to the multiple properties. We had to file the state taxes, of course, but because Tim worked out of state, he was required to file taxes for that state as well. Local taxes are paid separately. But last year, without warning, we received the bill (only after the taxes were done) for $925, which was an additional 30% increase from the previous year. There were only two forms to fill out: Federal and Pennsylvania. Due to our age, we don't pay local taxes and Tim doesn't have to file New York State taxes because he is retired now. We also break itemize the expenses for the properties ourselves, going through our own receipts and totting it all up to save time for them.  We dropped off our tax forms with the lawyer today, and, fingers crossed, we get a sensible estimate. 

A person stopped in to pick up some coffee I was giving away: 2 2lb bags of it. I used to drink flavored coffee. It was on sale a while back, and so I picked up three bags to go in the freezer. Just in case of the zombie apocalypse. I always like to make sure I've got a few bags of vacuum sealed coffee in my freezer. I just think that I'd handle a zombie apocalypse much better if I'm caffeinated. However, much to my surprise, it turns out that in my dotage, I've developed an actual aversion to hazelnut coffee. I was cutting it with unflavored coffee to try to use it up, but ack! Just aaaaaaaaack! Mornings are bad enough without starting the day with bad coffee. 

Tim and I met up after lunch and put the rest of the kitchen ceiling framework up, so that's done. Bathroom plumbing next. We're ticking boxes there, too. 

We dropped off the last of Grandma Violet's fruitcakes to where it needed to be, and since we were in that end of town, we stopped into a grocery store known for its meats, and picked up the pork loin for Mattie at a decent price, a whole one just over 10 lbs at $2.49 a pound

I ended up the night by folding laundry and doing some online research. I bought two smart watches, one for Tim and one for me. I'm drinking my third cup of brewed ginger and snorting saline. I just really want a full nights sleep. 

We have another storm moving in New Year's Eve. Sounds like a mighty fine excuse to stay home. Which we were going to do anyway, but really, it's nice to have an excuse.