Sign of the times

Since my Land Rover has bitten the dust (long story), I'm without transportation. Aside from going to Kmart to get bulk cleaning supplies like paper towels and toilet paper, etc., I don't really miss having it. I walk into town to get groceries and I enjoy the exercise. So I tried an experiment. I wanted to see if I could have those big items delivered. I went on Target.com and ordered 4 big boxes of paper products to see if it would work. Sure enough two days later the boxes came and shipping was free. Hooray.
When the postman delivered the boxes however, he just left them on the front steps, despite me giving explicit directions to Target for them to be left INSIDE the screened-in porch. I guess the US Postal Service doesn't get those memos. :(
That led me to my next project. A little sign to leave by the porch door the next time I'm expecting a delivery:

"PLEASE LEAVE PACKAGES INSIDE SCREEN PORCH. THANK YOU!"

I cut it out of wood, painted it the house trim color and hand lettered it. It will hang from a new little hook beside the door. Let's see if the mailman gets the message next time. Stay tuned.

Verizon on the horizon

My sister is coming to live with me for a few months starting in June. I will detail more of this in upcoming posts. One of the things I had to do to prepare is make sure she is able to work on her computer via a direct plug-in to a modem. She works from home and will use my upstairs home office /bedroom as her Command Central. The problem is that room didn't have a phone jack for my current modem to plug into (it's been plugged in DOWNstairs in my bedroom's phone jack).
So a call with Verizon to install a new jack upstairs was in order.
We figured the best place to put it was on the wall with the shelving unit behind the desk since there's an electrical outlet close by.

The new jack and modem

The technician had to drill right through the wall, through the sheetrock and outside shingles, and run the cord across the outside wall, down the corner of the house, and into the basement to join the main phone lines. All fine...except the cord was WHITE and it looked pretty ugly against the dark blue trim of the house.

Luckily I still had a small bit of the blue exterior paint to cover the wire. Now you can't see it at all. Problem solved and read for Sis to move in!

"Look Ma, no wire!"