Mom’s computer started acting up. The symptoms indicated she needed a new CMOS battery, but the computer was only 3 years old. I tried pretending the problem would go away, but it wouldn’t. So I removed about 25 tiny screws of 5 different sizes, removed three major components, manipulated dozens of plastic snaps, and inserted a new CR2022 (about $1.25 retail). I’m out of practice, so it took a few hours and some intense language. The good thing is, Dell puts their service manual on the web. Thanks to having the manual, I knew exactly what I had to do. Everything is working.

We have a black couch/sleeper in the basement with a pleather covering. The pleather was not very good. It shed zillions of BPBs (Black Pleather Bits) even when nobody touched it. There were always BPBs around. We finally found and ordered an acceptable replacement. With a new couch coming, it was time to disappear the old. 1-800-Got-Junk. Came to our rescue, leaving a trail of BPBs behind. As soon as they left, I got the vacuum out and vacuumed intensely. Then we emptied the play room. I waited until Danita was going to be gone for a few hours, then I Bruced the floor. Twice. I made sure there were no BPBs anywhere. The next day, I went downstairs to do some stretches and found 4 more BPBs. Danita is highly allergic to Bruce. But Danita was out for several hours and everything would have been fine. If she hadn’t fallen asleep in her TV chair. She wasn’t feeling the best the next morning. Today, Danita is better and I haven’t found any BPBs for several hours.

We had fun getting rid of the couch. Our neighbors had some chairs they wanted to get rid of. We sat down and called Got Junk together. Apparently very few neighbors get together to call Get Junk. Everybody we talked to was very accommodating, but it was clear they had never done this before. For example, the driver couldn’t figure out whether he should call our neighbors while is was parked outside my house, telling them they would be there within a half hour. In the mean time, our neighbors came out to find out why they hadn’t been notified the truck was on the way. We had lot of laughs throughout the process.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.