#one of my first apartments we used a sawzall to chop my sectional sofa into four pieces

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 215

October 12 Today was a day for cooking and cleaning, so that was at least a change from the last couple of days, plus my parents got to town, very fun! First thing this morning I went down to the big food bank and offloaded all of the stuff that was still in my van, including a surprise ninth case of Takis that I hadn't even noticed before. They did accept it, though I don't know what exactly they plan to do with it. Maybe if they can't give it away they'll just put it in the breakroom or something. But now I have my van back, full of lots of room for future unwise decisions! Yay!  Last night I stayed up super late because I was too tired to clean but too keyed up to go to bed. I mean I did clean, I cleaned the kitchen pretty well at least and that was the big job for the night. But then I decided that the broken recliner really, truly, absolutely needed to go, but it was too big, so I got out a scissors and used some elbow grease to rip the arms right off that sucker. Not as impressive as it sounds, since "semi-detached arms" was the biggest single symptom of brokenness already, but it did make me feel strong! The back of the chair came off without needing to be destroyed, which was less fun but much easier. Tonight my husband carried down the smaller pieces himself, and then he and I worked on getting the still-extremely-heavy center mass portion down the stairs and into the truck. I wound up sort of scooting down on my butt and hanging onto the back bar of the chair while he guided from the front, my mind filled with visions of the thing sledding down the stairs and running him over flat. But we got it done, so now we just need to take it out to the dump and rid ourselves of it forever. Hopefully the truck will still start when we turn it on.  My folks decided to go with an AirBnB about 20 minutes away from us for this trip, and it is super gorgeous. It's at least the size of our apartment with two bedrooms, a large living room/kitchen, and a center room devoted to a pool table. The kiddo is very excited about the pool table. We went down there and took them supper this evening because I had to go to election official training this evening and they didn't want to have to drive themselves back in the dark their first night here. Only trouble was, their place doesn't really have a kitchen, just a sink, microwave and fridge. No problem,  I broke out the crockpot and the emergency second crockpot I got at an auction and spent much of the afternoon cooking.  I made butternut squash soup, a perennial favorite I already talked about, and pulled pork. I was in a hurry because I got started late, so I splurged on a boneless pork loin, cut it into fist-size chunks or a little smaller, then seasoned them with rub and seared them with butter in a skillet till the outsides were brown and had little crunchy bits on them. Then I piled them into the crockpot and deglazed the pan with a sweet onion and a couple tablespoons of jarred minced garlic. Once those were soft and translucent, I added four cups of water to the skillet, stirred it around, and then poured the resultant broth into the crockpot as well. A little bit of liquid smoke, four hours on high, and voila! On a sesame roll with a little barbecue sauce, it was excellent. I showed the kiddo how to use a spiral pineapple cutter to turn a fresh pineapple into a hollow tube, and that made a pretty good dinner.  It's so good to see my folks again! I haven't lived in the same state as them for well over a decade now, but I still miss them a lot and we try to visit as often as we can. My sister lives much closer to me than to the old homestead and we have tried convincing them to move closer to us, but their house is so full of so many things, I doubt it will ever happen. Plus they like where they are and have many friends there, which at least makes me feel less guilty about being so far away. We only got to spend a couple of hours with them tonight, but tomorrow I'm springing the kiddo from virtual learning so we can hang out with them all day. It'll be fun!  This evening was election official training, this time at the auditorium at the middle school to provide lots of social distancing room. I have been to training several times before, but this is the first time I've gone to the advanced training. For this election I've been tapped as the procedural specialist for my precinct, which means I am responsible for reading the manual better than anybody else so that when weird stuff happens, I know what to do. This is especially important in regards to provisional and absentee ballots, which are usually not a big deal but may well be a HUGE deal in this year's election. Apparently nearly a third of the active voters in our county have already voted this year, with three weeks of early voting still left, so we will likely not have the huge surge in election day voters that a presidential election usually brings. But there are 4000 absentee ballots that have been sent out and not returned yet, and each of those is a potential hiccup on the big day.  Even back in June during the absolute nothingburger of a Republican primary that we had, we got a couple of people trying to bring in their absentee ballots, or vote despite getting one and not bringing it with them. Virginia has taken the sensible step of making every voting precinct also a drop-off point for absentee ballots on election day, so people will be able to hand-deliver with no problems. But a lot of people don't understand that once they get their absentee ballot, that's it, that's their ballot and they can't have another one unless they give back the one they've got. If they really want to vote in person, they can, but they have to bring in their absentee ballot and spoil it (fill in all the circles) and then give it to us in exchange for an in-person ballot. So if somebody with an absentee ballot comes in to vote without their ballot, they will have to vote provisionally, and I will be in charge of making that happen. I'll also be working the pollbook again, which means face mask and face shield. Ugh. I had been hoping they were going to set up some kind of barrier system, but apparently not.  Anyway, I've read through the most salient parts of the manual already, but I'll be doing most of the rest in another ten days or so. I can become an expert on just about anything, but the expertise doesn't last very long before it is overwritten with new information. I'd hate to learn all that stuff only to forget it by November 3. 

#quarantine #election 2020 #recipe #furniture disassembly #you think that is bad? #one of my first apartments we used a sawzall to chop my sectional sofa into four pieces #so we could fit it into four different dumpsters at my apartment complex #which did not allow any trash that didn't fit in a dumpster #it was a little messy but it worked