Condo Blues

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

How to Fix a Garage Door Opener

My automatic garage door opener works fine in the summer but never in the winter. When I push the button on the wall or the remote, the garage door opener does one of two things:

  1. The door goes down and pops back up when it reaches the garage floor.
  2. The door doesn’t go down at all. The light blinks and that’s it.
Turns out that these two problems are common with garage door openers in winter. The cold weather causes the metal tracks of your garage door to expand ever so slightly which can knock the sensors and force of your garage door opener out of position just enough so the opener will not work properly in winter.

Fortunately, both issues have very quick fixes and take a less time to complete than a TV commercial break.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sew a Quickie Cloth Camera Strap Cover

I’m going to Blissdom. I want something to identify my new black DSLR as mine because it looks like everyone else’s black DSLR camera. I don’t want someone to accidentally pick up my precious and get weirded out about the crazy amount of dog photos on my camera's memory card. What can I say? Blitzkrieg loves the camera.

I always meant to buy a wider camera strap for my Minolta and regretted it. Its thin webbed camera strap digs into my neck – ow! My Cannon has a wider strap – yay! But it’s webbed material – boo! I suspect more digging into my neck – ow!

Hey! A cloth camera strap cover would solve both of my problems. Let's do it!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Dried Sweet Potato Dog Chew Recipe


Blitzkrieg rested comfortably after his knee surgery, well, as comfortably as you can with your leg bandaged up from your hip to your foot. He’s making very good use of the little gift basket of meat flavored baby food his dog cousins gave him for Christmas. I hide Blitzkrieg’s pain medication in a spoonful of baby food and he gobbles it up as a low calorie treat. It’s important to keep his weight consistent as his leg heals. Also, he wants to keep himself svelte for da ladies


My little dog is resilient. Three days after the surgery, he was running, climbing stairs, and jumped on the sofa with his leg in cast - all against doctor's orders. It's been a stressful time for all of us. I hate hearing Blitzkrieg whimper in pain and be frustrated that he can't be the independent dog he wants to be right now.

Ow.
Yesterday Blitzkrieg got his bandages off. This surgery has pushed every fear button we all worked so hard to conquer from his abused stray days. I need to give him a positive distraction from licking his stitches before they dissolve on their own. Our favorite yuppie puppy pet store did not have dried sweet potato chews (they had no idea it was an emergency) so I made them myself – and saved a bit a cash. Yay!