Progress

PG and I have lived in this house since 1998, and now we are going through the possessions accumulated in this house over the past two dozen years, looking for that which we may donate, or at the very least, organize better. 

The latter applies to my collection of CDs.  I did that whole bit when burning your own CDs became a thing, hooking up the turntable and the amp to the most powerful PC we could afford in 2000.  But maybe I got carried away, because in addition to copying albums like What Price Paradise, Cupid & Psyche '85, and The Blues Brothers from the original vinyl, I accumulated concert bootlegs from my favorite band and put them on disc, too.  Using a proprietary program similar to Audacity was even fun, cleaning up the sound before loading a blank CD and hitting Record.  

And then everything sat for a decade or so while music rental via streaming overtook owning physical copies of the album.  But now, as I said, we're looking at downsizing before long, and that's all the reason I need to finally get the whole collection better organized.  

Before, boxes and boxes of CDs were piled in a closet, while others were stacked on small shelves and racks here and there in PG's PC room.  Finding something, as I learned when I succumbed to nostalgia and went looking for those old discs, was hit or miss.  Now, most of the pre-recorded pop, light classical, and new age we mostly bought twenty years ago -- the most recent appears to be Sunken Condos, from 2012 -- is shelved neatly in a bookcase in the corner of my office.  The rest, ambient music for pre-sleep, is in the bedroom.

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Other progress:  a burner on the cooktop burned out... well, longer than a little while ago.  Fortified by YouTube, I purchased a replacement burner and prepared to install it myself.  That determination lasted until I actually pulled out the entire range and started unscrewing the screws that held the cooktop in place.  Way too many wires, too many opportunities to mess it all up.  But with three other working burners, there was little incentive to find a pro to get the job done.  

But in the interest of keeping busy, last week I went looking on Angi for an appliance repair specialist, and found one.  Steve came out a couple of days later and navigated the whole weird agglomeration of wires and connections and installed the replacement burner in 75 minutes flat.  For that, he charged about two dollars a minute, which I put on the credit side of our Trump/Biden free money ledger. 

One more thing:  a bigger expenditure is on its way.  After talking to flooring and window replacement companies, PG and I have settled on the big outgo:  a replacement for the HVAC system that came with the house.  Presumably we'll get that cost back when we sell, and being able to point to a new Energy Star HVAC system will count for something at that time.  The cost will be more than the free money ledger can handle, but not more than our cash accounts will cover.  Investments will remain intact.