Monday, Packing Bottles

Mom had (well, Dad had) a complete 32 piece set of Chess men in the form of whiskey bottles from Old Crow. I sold them on eBay, and today packed them up for shipping. There were a set of Frito-Lay boxes in the storage room, and they fit perfectly in those. I ended up with 4 boxes. Each of the Frito-Lay boxes holds 4 Chess men per layer. However, Dad actually had 33 pieces, not 32 -- there is an extra light Knight. So I ended up with 8 layers, plus 1. I sent the buyer a link to our list of bottles and she picked 3 others that she wanted.

One of these was an Old Crow figurine bottle of their mascot, an old crow, in a tuxedo, with red vest and white spats, and a top hat. The top hat was actually the cork. Turns out the cork had broken, so I wanted to wrap the top hat separately for shipping. In trying to find something to wrap the hat in, I noticed a drop or two of brown liquid. Great, they apparently did not drain the bottle well. I take it into the kitchen to remove the cork, and ... the bottle was still full! The cork fell down in the whiskey. I poured it into a Pyrex measuring glass; more than 2/3 of a quart. Rinsed out the bottle and put it in the sun to dry. Filtered the whiskey thru a coffee filter to get out the cork bits, and put it in a plastic water bottle in the fridge.

The boxes, once packed and ready to ship, weigh 144 pounds altogether. There are 4 boxes, weighing from 28 to 50 pounds each.

I got the first coat of polyurethane on the piece of plywood that I want to use to replace the step down from the Sun Room to the outdoors.

We heard back from Replacements.com about the plates I sent to them. They should be sending us a check for $185.

I installed the latest version of AOL, version 9.7. This seems to have cured the problem we were having with AOLDial.exe not quitting when we tried to shut the computer off.

I spent some time at Home Depot, and have a new plan for shelves in the utility room. I bought the basic pieces and will try to install them tomorrow. I returned the previous shelf units. Of course, the new plan will be about twice the expense of the two shelf units.

Mom had a simple gold wedding band, but lost it when she fractured her hand in one of her recent falls. They put her hand in a cast and said she needed to take off all her ring for the duration. So she wants to get a new one. But not a "new" new one, a used new one -- so that it will have "history". We stopped at a couple of pawn shops, but no one seems to have just a plain gold ring; everything has diamonds and other stones.