Diary, Sunday, October 1, 2023

by bill - 2023-10-02 10:10:34 ( in life, home-garden, blog, shopping) [php version] rebuild

Went to Home Depot today for one of those door-closer things for screen doors. I'd carelessly left ours propped open and the wind weakened its hinges overnight. When I pushed on it to close it, a bracket snapped and the door flew open instead of closing. I looked for a replacement at the Lowe's in Columbia after our regular Saturday morning visit to the farmer's market, but couldn't find one. The aisle had screen and storm doors, but no closers. Or, if it did, I never saw them.

Earlier, at the farmer's market as my wife Tara mingled with "her people," the farmers, I took our Boston terrier, Cleo, out for a walk along the Duck River. We ran into a golden retriever puppy and its 30-something woman owner. Cleo is unpredictable how she'll react to other dogs. Some she likes, most of them not so much. I think she wants to be friendly if they are friendly. Of course, being a puppy, this one was friendly, and Cleo was wagging her little tail as they came nose-to-nose. When she reared up and slapped her front feet on the ground, I was not sure if she was being aggressive, but she was just playing. The woman said something about her dog being skittish after their barn cats had attacked him on a regular basis. When I commiserated, she said, "No, he deserved it. He gets pretty rough with them, too."

At Home Depot the next day in Spring Hill, I found what I needed. It helped that Tara texted me the link from their website showing exactly where it was. Before leaving, I joked that I was going to hook-up with a girlfriend. "She just texted," I said, "telling me where to meet." Tara smiled and said, "Have fun!"

At the store, I had to choose from seven or eight varieties, eventually settling on the light duty rather than heavy or medium version, but now I'm wondering if I should've gotten medium. Ours is a glass stormdoor, not a wire mesh screen. We'll see... if I ever get around to installing it. By the time I got home, I didn't feel like doing the work, and went upstairs to work on what I call my "website image management system." Made it myself with PHP and MySQL. Nerdy stuff, but it keeps me out of trouble. I kept meaning to turn on the TV to have a football game on in the background -- I missed the earlier Titans game, assumed they lost, and hadn't missed anything -- but never got around to that, either.

Turns out, I was wrong about the Titans losing. They had a big win today, which reminded me that I'm one of those who has to miss the game in order for their team to win. You know the type. They've made commercials about it. I guess I'll be missing all their games -- catching highlights on YouTube -- all the way to the Super Bowl.

Back to my website's images, though, I've been fairly obsessed, writing VB scripts and DOS batch files to rename, resize and organize it all on my PC before uploading them to the website where I run the PHP files, but it's never quite right. I could buy software to do it for me, but I like the challenge. I've always been a do-it-yourselfer, and it kills me when I can't get it perfect. This morning I tried doing it all in PHP, directly on the website, and things are looking promising. Finally coming together. I told Tara I was happy with my progress, but she seemed unimpressed. "It is pretty nerdy stuff," I had to agree, to which she replied, "That's why Cleo is downstairs with me. Too nerdy upstairs."

Before I got home for that witty repartee, though, I stopped at the Walgreens for candy. Tara bought some at Kroger -- we don't eat a lot of candy, honestly -- but I've had a hankering for peanut clusters lately. I went straight to the candy aisle for those and a bag of Twix and brought it up to the cash register. There was nobody there, so I stood waiting what felt like five minutes but was probably less than two. The cashier eventually returned to her station from the back of the store where she'd been helping an older lady. The latter got in line behind me, and the cashier rang me up. I would've let the other woman go first but she wasn't paying attention. Snooze, you lose.

From behind me, I then heard her say, "I'm going home with him!" If I had a dollar for every time a woman said that about me, I'd have a least a couple bucks, but it was my pile of candy, not me, that she was so excited about. Oh well. I'm happily married and don't need any girlfriends other than the imaginary ones I joke about with my wife.