Tuesday night

"Maid Green" will be coming Monday to clean while I'm at work. I'm paying $160 for a more thorough cleaning. They'll do their best with the vertical blinds. They'll be bringing a large canister vacuum, to clean the louvered closet doors, etc. I think there will be at least two cleaners. This place hasn't had a really good cleaning since before the kitchen work, which created a lot of dust. (And I did my part with my sander, even though it has a dust trap.)

Regarding Joe Lieberman's threat to the health care bill, see here ("Time to lay down the hammer, Harry").

My answer is that the public option's best bet remains with a power play, and that means either pursuing reconciliation or calling the the bluffs of senators like Lieberman by coming down hard on them if they don't get in line.

First and foremost, coming down hard on senators like Lieberman means being willing to publicly condemn them as obstructionists if they join a Republican filibuster. Remember, as much leverage as they may have over Reid, he -- and other Democrats -- have leverage over them, by threatening to make them accountable if they choose to obstruct health reform. Even senators like Lieberman don't want that label applied to them. Coming down hard also means stripping them of chairmanships, and in Lieberman's case, being willing to kick him out of the Democratic caucus, which would severely hamper his 2012 re-election hopes.

See here and here (includes video) too.

The Maid Green guy arrived a little late this morning (after calling and waking me up to say he'd be late) and then we walked through the place and made the deal. Before he got here, I tried to get a handyman from the condo to come in and undo the ceiling fan in this room so I could change the dip switches inside. (I don't have a ladder and the fan is heavy besides.) Handyman wasn't available. The fan is on a remote control, and I need to change the dip switches so that fan can't be turned on (or off) by a neighbor (or neighbors) who also has a fan on a remote control (which had been happening). (I know my next-door neighbor has one, but other neighbors could also.) Now, before I leave for work and also before I go to bed at night, I cut the power to this room at the breaker box to save on electricity. I used to come home from work and the fan would be running after I'd turned it off (or I'd wake up in the morning and the fan would be running).

Sometimes at night, when I'm sitting here, the fan will go off, and I get into a little remote-control war with someone. I turn it back on, it goes back off again, I turn it back on, etc., etc. until finally it stays on. I need to change the dip switches both inside the fan and also inside the remote (to match). (As you can see, fan needs cleaning, too. I made the grime prettier.) (I cleaned it not long ago -- it gets a lot of use.) (The fan was going in a blur when I took this picture -- the camera is good, no?)