Home Repair - To Be Or Not

It was a nice enough day that Dix joined us on the dog walk. Went out to breakfast at Perkins - the hash browns were on the burnt side but we did ask for extra crispy. We ran into my old Human Resources Manager in the waiting line. He was dressed to the nines from church and I was in T-shirt and jeans. He must have thought I was definitely in retirement mode.

The dishwasher door has been restrung and rehung. I found a mistake in the owners manual that described the pulley adjustment backwards. I felt obliged to contribute a comment to an appliance repair forum relating to dishwasher door spring mechanism repair, but then decided screw it.

Had a nice lunch with Les and Debbie at a new sports bar. Food service was very slow but we had time while the Cowboys slowly self destructed against Boise State. Had a nice tall Snow Day draft beer. Felt cheery enough afterwards to buy a Christmas Tree at the Safeway parking lot where our local Santa had set up shop. He's so authentic - wears a full white beard all year long. He convinced Dix that the moss on one of the branches was bear fur. The tree is small this year, much more suited to senior decorating - two strands of lights did it and no ladder was needed. Milo is not as enthralled as Pyrite was, though he did try to bite the light bulbs.

Dix's "floor man" analysed the dips in the kitchen floor and concluded it could be floated out with a cement based leveler before laying new tile. Cost has increased to $4000. Les convinced us that a structural engineer should be consulted as he had to fix a design problem where a wall was offset from the basement bearing wall. That sort of reset our priorities on getting out of Casper. We're going to try out a pet sitter - the 28 year old nephew of our neighbor. He does house sitting, pet care, grocery shopping, and yard chores. We'll do a two-day trial trip to Loveland and Castle Rock to look at real estate, get a Beemer oil change, and get two woofer speakers reconed that were gnarled by Milo.