Anyway....

Let's get that rant off the top of my blog page, shall we?

Here are some parts of our vacation I never got around to blogging...robots and huge train layouts and submarines and oh, the view of the Falls is always better from Canada.

I'll let you imagine most of the stories, but the fact that I got us over the border was a triumph. At one point my daughter was sobbing on my shoulder on a bench in a tiny park on the NY side, stomach churning because of taking tooooo much migrane medication, while Mr. Carly and D went wandering off for blocks looking for ice cream. She wanted desperately to go back to a hotel room that we had checked out of.

My triumphs so far today are small, but they are victories nevertheless:

• went to sleep before 11, woke at 2 am for only about 15 minutes, then slept until 6:30. I call that a BIG victory. I don't feel like my head is encased in cement today
  
• dinner is already made, in my brand new "it's only $16 at Target so I will buy it to make sauce like the Boyfriend does" crock pot. (Slow cooker, if you don't like the phrase "crock pot", which my daughter has some peculiar aversion to....). For the record, I am trying "chicken pot pie" today. I was cutting and browning chicken at 9 am and wondering how exactly a crockpot will save me time, since I was still spending 1/2 an hour prepping ingredients and cleaning up.
  
• I have fixed my thermostat.

No really, that needs much more rambling.

I have been fighting with said thermostat since the heat wave started. (detour here: IT"S SUMMER. IT'S FINALLY HOT AND SUNNY AND IT'S summer!!!!!) When we put the addition on our house last summer and switched to gas heat, we got a programmable thermostat. Which would be swell, I suppose, if (a) I actually worked out of the house 9 - 5 like "typical" people, and (b) didn't take aspirin every day and consequently bruise and somehow freeeeeeze all the time.

The thermostat is designed to save energy, by making the house less comfortable when you're not there and awake to "enjoy it". So the day is divided into random periods of morning(6-8), day(8-6), evening(6-10), and night, with a temperature set point for each.

The wizards that programmed Thermy decided that it's really ok to let the house get to 78* at night. Um, no... it's not THAT easy being green. Everyone in my family has a peculiar affectation for having a blanket on their bodies in the dead of summer, so 78 really doesn't work. Thermy is also convinced that I wouldn't mind having the house be 83* all day long. Again, not so much true since I am here at home.

There is also no way to bypass Thermy's evil intentions. Oh sure, I can temporarily move the set temp up or down.... until the next setpoint time starts. Then he goes right back to what he was doing before I asked him nicely to do something different. Just like a man. So that's annoying. The extended Hold doesn't seem to work either, even though I made SURE it's not set to "24 hours" but to indefinite. I am a computer geek. I have the manual. I read the manual. This thing doesn't do what they say it will do.

So today I went through and set EACH period to 74*. Dammit. Yes, for every day of the week. Buttons, buttons, buttons. So much fun.

I'm off to eat lunch and apply for a job I may or may not be qualified for, that sounds really fun.