Photo-A-Day #2619

I got home from work today with a brutal pounding headache. I had one most of the night at work and am out of my stash of Advil, Tylenol, Generic Pain Reliever. So it wasn’t until I got home that I could take some. I got home and Allison was getting ready for the Strut Your Mutt event where she would be setting up her table and tent and her Barefoot Books display. Well, those books needed to get from the house to the car plus the tent, table and a chair, and the two kids. I got out of the car kissed everyone and began loading up. Table, four boxes of books, tent and chair loaded. All the while my adorable and excitable little girl wants me to play with her. I finally had to stop and explain to her what a headache was.

I tried very hard to remain calm as my head pounded and pounded. I asked Eva if she understood what a headache was. She’s 4 1/2 and I don’t think she has ever had one so she did not. I explained that it was a pain inside my head that I could not stop and everything made it hurt worse, walking talking blinking, everything made it hurt more. So I explained that daddy could not play at that time because despite all that daddy needed to do this morning before sleep he was junking it and going right to bed. That was after loading up the car, that had to be done but the other project that is looming over my head had to be put off for when I could better handle it.

That project was assembling the patio set that we picked up yesterday. It is for a Collective Bias Shoppertunity that I am doing with Kmart. The project was to go to Kmart and purchase a Patio set and then throw a Pre-Fathers Day party. That post will be going up at 9pm on Monday night because that is the deadline and that is the only night that we can have people over for a cook out to break in the new table and chairs. But before that can be done they have to be assembled.

I kissed the family again and wished them a good and fun day as they went off to dance class, playtime with cousins and to Strut Your Mutt. Right before sleep Eva asked me one last time if we could get two kittens instead of one. I relented and said okay. So in the next couple weeks James (Kitty America – formerly Alabama) and Torrun (formerly Alaska) will be coming to live with us. It is hard to say no to these photos.

Allison with Torrun and Kitty America

Eva with Kitty America

I just hope that Oliver will be able to handle these two. Eva will be learning a lot about responsibility with these two as well. She’ll be in charge of feeding them and making sure that they have water. I’ll still be on puke and poop duty though. But Allison has promised me that she will comb Torunn so that she does not get those gross matted patches that make me want to vomit when I pet a long haired cat. So look for more photos of these two in the next two weeks.

So I went to sleep. I slept hard and woke up at 1:45. My headache was gone so I gave myself an hour and 15 minutes to get going on assembling the table and chairs. I got dressed and headed to the garage. I’m glad that I cleared out the garage before this past winter and so I had a nice wide area to work in.

Some Assembly Required

I got out the directions and started trying to figure them out. I’m a big directions guy and I make sure that I read through all the directions before I get going. I also stopped often to take photos and tweet to Kmart. They even tweeted back to me so that was fun.

The directions for the chairs could have been more helpful. They were decent enough in that I could figure out where all the screws go and which ones I needed to use. I would have liked to have seen more diagrams in the directions so that things were clearer. The directions were only four pages. However inside the was a coupon for 25% off a patio cover.

The Directions and a coupon for a Patio Cover

I liked that the nuts and bolts all came on more card and there were some tools included like flat wrenches and Allen wrenches. It is good that these were included but I decided against using the flat wrenches because they were awkward. Instead I took out my Craftsman mechanic’s toolset and got a socket wrench to help me assemble. I had to figure out which size because the sizes were not on the directions. I finally found the 10mm socket worked best.

The hardware set including tools

The Hardware out of the plastic and organized

10mm Socket wrench and Allen Wrench – Only two tools I needed

I assembled one chair and didn’t tighten anything. The second chair took a little less time to assemble. Once that was done it was almost time for me to finish up. I had only given myself an hour and fifteen minutes because I had to get some more sleep before work. I had twenty minutes left to tighten up all the screws and bolts. This is where the socket wrench and Allen wrench came in handy and the flat tools pretty much useless.

Use the ones on the right.

You can use them but they will slow you down big time. I finished up the two chairs and will save the rest for tomorrow. I hope that I don’t have a headache again in the morning. I’m pretty sure I can crank through the remaining chairs quickly.

Miles to go before I sleep. Sleeping anyway.

So look for the post on Monday when everything is assembled and we do our Pre-Father’s Day party.

Speaking of Father’s today is my Dad’s birthday. We called him at dinner so that Eva could sing him Happy Birthday. Then we called back to get his voicemail so she could do it again. He’s now got the past three years of Eva’s Happy Birthday song.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. I’ll be writing a complete post on Monday about the shop that I did. It was compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™. I don’t have to write these additional posts, just the one on Monday the 11th but I like to give insight into what I do each day and assembling the patio set was what I did. Opinions are 100% my own. #CBias #SocialFabric