The Lawn Guy brought the money for the broken window today. Still haven't heard from the Window Guy but he said it would take 2-4 weeks to get the window so it shouldn't be much longer. Lately I have been forced to learn more about car apps and electronics than I ever wanted to. My husband likes Sirius XM radio because of the classic rock stations and of course... . He had canceled it a while back but recently got a deal for $3 a month for 36 months, so he signed up for that. I discovered that I could load the Sirius app on my iPhone, then use Apple CarPlay to stream Sirius in my car for free using his account. So some of this technology works to our advantage for a change.
But doesn't that chew through your internet allowance (meaning an XM subscription might be cheaper), or do you have unlimited? I get 15gb high speed through Verizon and then I get bumped down the priority list for high speed and may slow stream with the poors.
Well, I'm not in my car very much plus it has unlimited wifi. My phone plan is 15 gb and I seldom use any of that since we have high speed internet at home.
I usually don't listen to anything in the car much; I'd rather hear the "car sounds". Besides most of the local OTA radio stations no longer play my kind of music. I'm a classic rock fan all the way... no country, rap or any of the variations of hip-hop, etc. for me. So it's slim pickens on FM. You can rest assured that I would never pay for my own Sirius radio account, either. For that matter, the car has a free 3-month trial but I did not activate that; I don't want my phone number/email address bombarded with "SIGN UP NOW!!!" crap. I'm already getting the "extend your car warranty" crap and my car doesn't have 400 miles on it yet.
It just occurred to me that I have a small Bose portable bluetooth speaker. I can use that to stream Sirius in the house and use home wifi instead of cellular data.
I've had XM since the very beginning. The original unit had an adapter that plugged into your home stereo and one for your car (with either cassette adapter or FM transmitter.) I had an adapter I kept at the office and use a set of powered PC speakers for it. I've not used the streaming XM much (I don't have unlimited internet), but it has stations/programs that aren't available on the receivers.
The deal my husband got is for 400 stations, news, basic stuff. No Howard Stern, thank goodness. I wouldn't want to support that waste of oxygen. We used the service a lot while we were RVing. It's nice to drive hundreds of miles and not have the radio signal fading out to static. He has always enjoyed it but me not so much. I always liked a CD player in my vehicle which has gone the way of the dodo.
I recall my first trip with XM. I found it to be a little weird listening to the exact same thing I did at home. It was as though I lost the "local flavor" or being out of town, although not dropping signals was nice.
My new spare tire arrived by UPS today. I watched the young woman driver wrestle it out of the truck and onto a dolly, then cart it up the driveway. She cautioned me that the box is "very heavy." I wrestled it into the garage and unpacked it, then installed it in the compartment in the car by myself... not bad for an old bag I must say. Husband was watching a movie so I decided to handle this myself. It's the right size with the correct bolt pattern, and fits in the well perfectly. The jack and lug wrench are in a felt bag under the spare. People on the Cadillac forum have complained that the "floor" of the compartment doesn't sit flush with the spare inside, but au contraire it fits exactly right.
Finally. The window installer called today to schedule our broken window replacement for Friday. I will be glad to get that taken care of. I planted my mustard greens seeds yesterday and the stupid squirrels have made a mess of that little garden already. Mustard seeds are very small so I can't imagine why squirrels would bother with them, so the little pests must just be digging to hide their winter stash of acorns. A gaggle of unruly kids was on the street on Saturday, ringing doorbells and running away. There were about 5 of them, probably 10 years old or so. I saw them on the Ring camera so I was ready for them when they tried to sneak up on my porch. It's fun to freak kids out, lol. I knew that fake police badge would come in handy someday. I talked to my niece who lives in south GA earlier. She said they are still without power and probably will be for several more days. I know how frustrating that is, and even more so for them because they live in a rural area and don't have water if there's no power to the well pump. They are limping along with gasoline generators but a lot of gas stations are without power too.
Argh, this old age business is for the birds. The better half and I have been talking about putting a shade tree in the front yard for at least 5 years now. (We used to have 2 mature oaks out there but they got some kind of disease and had to be taken down several years ago.) So we finally found a pretty, well-shaped Monterrey Oak at the garden center on Monday and dragged it home with us. It took most of yesterday to get a hole dug for the tree. We used post-hole diggers, a grubbing hoe and an axe to break up the hard "gumbo" soil. The tree is about 9' tall but slender, so it took both of us geezers to wrestle it out of the truck and to drag it to the hole we dug. A couple of trips back and forth to Home Depot buying mulch, fertilizer stakes, etc. and we finally got 'er dun today. We used some landscape bricks to make a circular bed around the tree and to hold the mulch in place. The circular bed is about 8' across. And ta-da... In about 50 years we'll have shade.
I still say we can make a comedy about senior exploits. I loaded and unloaded about a ton and a half of landscaping block (sans husband) two years ago for a project I still want to accomplish. But since the block are 17 lbs each, I am not sure I can do more than 5 a day. And that does not include prep and finish work. Two years ago I still had only the one good leg but did that. What happened to the rest of me in the meantime.? Good thing winter is coming because that gives me a legitimate excuse to put it off--again.
My back and shoulder are killing me tonight and my lymphedema arm is swollen and hurts. My physical limitations are so damn frustrating.