A day of odds and ends

--We all got up early on this Saturday because we wanted to have breakfast together and the new car was scheduled for FREE! routine service this morning at 8:00AM

--Surenna wanted help with uploading videos to her blog. In the past we would upload to YouTube and then embed from there, but recently Blogger has added a tab for directly embedding. But, Safari doesn't have that tab. So, I installed Firefox on her Mac and as you can see from her blog, if you go there, she has been embedding video non-stop.

--Vaishali had promised Surenna a trip to the mall as a reward for doing Summer academic work, the other two girls wanted to play at grandparent's house and I needed insulation for the attic--I was up there a few weeks back and was appalled at how little insulation there was. So, I figured on taking the truck: Drop the two girls off at grandparent's, drop mom and daughter at mall, pick-up insulation and then retrieve the shoppers and head home. Eh, didn't work out that way.

I was in the Home Depot insulation section and they had rolls of R30 packaged in 6-roll bales. Each roll had a little more than 30 square feet of coverage, so I figured one bale would do around 200 square feet. While I was figuring out how much I needed, I noticed a guy there with his teen-aged son--also looking at attic insulation. He was cutting open bales to get at the individual rolls and asked if I wanted him to cut open some for me. I replied that the bales seemed like a nice neat and compact packaging solution as they were. He seemed incredulous that I would need a whole bale! And started out instructing me on how to measure area--take the length of your attic and multiply by the width...Yes, I know! Each bale of 6 rolls only does 200 square foot, so I will need 4 or 5 bales.

The guy continued cutting open bales and ended up cutting into the roll packaging, leaving greatly expanded bats of fiberglass swelling around the openings. I don't think he ended up buying anything. I stacked 4 bales onto a dolly. Another guy, this one not a clown, helped me lift the 4th one to the top of the stack. These 4 bales filled our Yukon XL! There is about 3 feet behind the 3rd row seat and I had to put down the 3rd row AND 2nd row seats to fit it all in. I couldn't bring the ladies home from the mall unless Surenna sat on her mom's lap. They didn't want to do that and agreed to the great hardship of staying at the mall for an extra hour of shopping while I ran the truck home and came back in another car.

--Once home the girls took the dog for a long walk while I mowed the lawn.

--Grandparents brought home the girls and stayed for dinner along with a relative who comes out from Brookline on weekends sometimes to visit.

--Vaishali made Chicken Tikka Masala, Aloo Ghobi, Tandoori Chicken and a few other things. I played Scrabble with her parents.

--Next, real soon, brownies made by Surenna. Yum!