Happy birthday, msbelle!

I had great fun hosting my guests for the weekend, showing them around, eating tasty victuals and seeing Bowie show both nights. But I'm also glad to have the house to myself for a minute.

Unfortunately no more than a minute since my contractor, Landis, is coming with a crew to begin fixing our back steps. That'll be a fair bit of hammering and sawing for the next several days.

But needs must when the devil drives.

Hammering has commenced.

BUT, Landis thinks he can fix the garage door which would be a huge quality of life improvement.

Happy birthday, msbelle! Good luck with the repairs, Hec. My dad is reminding me of this quote from Peggy Hill right now. "Don't say 'communicate', Nancy. There are some things Hank just won't do." He helped me out with something yesterday and is now reminding me why I try not to ask. And it's too stupid to invite you in to take my side on it. Just, argh...

I was just on the phone with a medical scheduler who in taking my health history wanted to know if I still got my period, only instead of "menstruation" she said something more like "masturation," which gave me a moment of WTF before I figured out what she must've been trying to say.

Yesterday, Matilda took all the ornaments off the tree and packed them up, and removed the lights and coiled those up and we packed away Xmas, and put the tree out on the street.

This morning, as my contractor arrived to work on my steps, I hurriedly dumped out the tree stand and hauled it and all the ornaments and lights and stockings up to the attic.

Which was timely because the back stairs are all torn up now.

Then I vacuumed up all the pine needles (including the front indoor stairs), and Matilda and her friend Alison helped me rearrange all the furniture into the proper non-Xmas constellation.

I also trotted down to Haight Street to have them cut a copy of my side door key so the contractor and his guys can get in downstairs to work on the stairs every day. Came back and discovered I had the wrong key copied. El Estupido! Oh well, that's fixed tomorrow.

Now I'm sweaty and tired and drinking a Campari and Orange. I'll have to make one more short outing to get my steps in for the day but my phone counted all my dance steps for the two nights at Bowie, so I had 17,414 and 16,698 on those days.

Dance steps should double count!!

Dance steps should double count!!

My feet certainly think so, as they were thrashed, and I had blisters.

I think I'll get a pedicure and leg rub soon.

Harumph. I remembered to run water through my faucets for the extreme cold snap, but apparently that wasn't enough to keep the hot water line from the heater to my house from freezing up over the last two days. No signs of damage so far, and I've got water running through it again—will see shortly if it's warm enough for bathing.

Oof, that cold snap looks brutal! Single digits and negative numbers!

It's 55 in San Francisco so I suggest you all pop into you pneumatic tube and come on over for lunch.

Defining moment of this cold snap: my mustache froze up when I took the trash to the dumpster yesterday.