I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish today but did not get most of them completed.  I am trying to make purchasing decisions and get products and materials ordered so I can get some projects done and checked off my list.  It wasn’t a wasted day, as I gathered additional information, but it was frustrating to not get orders placed for things that I thought we settled items.

Based on a recommendation from bus buddy Butch I had decided to order a Cyclo 5 dual head orbital polisher.  I had looked at them before on Amazon but on closer inspection discovered that there is a Cyclo 5-Pro and now a Cyclo 5 Mark II and Cyclo 5-Pro Mark II.  The Mark II models are the current ones but much of what is for sale on Amazon are the previous generation.  Not only that, any one of them comes in three different configurations, two of which appear to duplicate one another.  I finally figured out that the Pro version has a variable speed motor.  The configurations have to do with the style of buffing pads and how they attach to the tool.  It turns out that whatever I get I can order the other parts if needed, so which one to order comes down to which pad attachment method I think best suits my needs.  That means more research before I place an order somewhere.

I have also decided to finally install a cellular booster system at the house and identified the TopSignal 5-band system as the one I probably wanted.  I have always been partial to Wilson Electronics, but the company has changed ownership in the last year and rebranded everything for the consumer market as WeBoost.  The redesigned “consumer” website is less informative than the old one and the company has been slower than other companies to bring products to market.  The model I would want is listed as “available soon.”

I called Cellular Solutions and talked to Paul.  They sell the WeBoost and TopSignal products but he steered me towards the SureCall Fusion5s, which is similarly priced to the TopSignal and more expensive than the WeBoost.  It is also a 5-band/multi-mode (3G/4G/LTE, etc.) transceiver so it will cover almost all cellular carriers including Verizon, without locking us into any specific carrier.  I was also going to call PowerfulSignal, who sells most of the same products, but there was no price difference based on the information I had and Cellular Solutions is a Michigan-based company.

We also need an Over-The-Air TV antenna so I started revisiting the website for AntennasDirect.com.  I spent some time looking at their website while we were in Quartzsite, Arizona but never ordered one.  One of the links on their website is to AntennaPoint.com.  This website shows the direction and distance to OTA TV towers based on your ZIP code.  It turns out that we have broadcast antennas in all directions but most of them are at ~104 degrees (Detroit) and ~270 degrees, plus or minus (East Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek).  The ground rises to the west from our house so the Detroit metro stations will still be our primary ones.  Even so, the closest tower in any direction is 27 miles away and the farthest is 58, so we will need a serious antenna to pull these in.  (Antenna point.com only display towers up to 60 miles away but that covers everything we would care about.)

I have been trying to catch up and dispatch these kinds of lingering projects so I can work on plans for the bus barn and get started on our bus projects.  At this point I am no longer confident, however, that we will ever build a barn.  No matter what approach we take it is just going to cost more than we want to spend and it looks like dealing with the permitting process may be a hassle.  Added into this mix are several major projects on the bus, the need for a new roof on the house, and the need (desire) for a new car.  Ugh.

One of the bus projects is the remodeling of the seating in the front half of the coach.  As part of that project we want to remove the old carpet from the front and the bedroom and the black ceramic tile from the kitchen and hall, and probably the bathroom.  We did some online research and liked the look and quality of Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl Tiles.  These tiles come in a 16″x16″ and a 12″x12″ size and a few of them come in 8″x8″.  From the website I determined there was a dealer, Lynch Carpet, close to us with an excellent selection of Alterna samples.

We made an errand run, stopping at the Howell Library to return a DVD, do some car research in Consumer Reports, and check out a few children’s books for Madeline’s visit tomorrow.  We stopped at the Howell branch of First Merit Bank to make a SLAARC deposit, and then drove to Lynch Carpet.  Clint worked with us and we took four samples to look at in the bus.  Once we saw them with our cabinetry the one we liked best was the La Plata Crème Fresh.  It has a faux stone, low luster, textured surface that is mostly off-white but has distinct milk chocolate brown veining.  I was thinking we would install the tile diagonally (as diamonds instead of squares) but that would probably result in more cutting of tiles, so more work, more time, more waste, and more cost.  The more I thought about that the more I liked the idea of a simpler layout, but that decision is far from made.

The rest of the day was filled with the usual things; a load of laundry, working at our desks, fixing/eating dinner, reading, games, and online research, the last three typically done on our iPads while curled up on the living room couches.