Plongs in the Office.

Monday night a while ago (01/18/2010, in fact), I finally got around to fixing the mantel clock that my neighbor in Unit A gave me to sell in the garage sale my mom and I had in September of 2008, right before my shoulder surgery, but since it basically worked, I had opted to keep it and try fixing it. The only thing that was wrong with it was it had a “freewheeling” hour hand that just dangled and could not be moved by the clockworks, so although the minute hand would keep time, the hour hand was always at 6 o’clock.

It had been sitting patiently on my dining room table ever since until finally, the spirit moved me to schlep it into my office where I could put it under my magnifying light and take it apart. As I suspected, the hour hand had simply “jumped the track.” I only had to take it apart 3 times to get it working right (third time is charmed!).

After I put the hour hand on track and got it back together and got it working, it was striking 10 minutes too soon because it hadn’t occurred to me that the clock would need some way to tell when it was time to strike. I had noticed some marks on the center post where the hands attached, and I realized then that I needed to align the hands to those marks, so I had to take it apart a second time and do that. There were two possible ways to align the hands to the little marks and, of course, I chose the wrong way.
It wasn’t hard to take the clock apart. I just had to unscrew the two screws that secured the “chimes” assembly to the case and remove them. Then there were 4 screws that affixed the clock face to the front of the case. Once I had those out, I could lift the whole shebang out of the case and get to the hands. It had instructions pasted to the inside of the back panel and in reading them (!), I discovered the clock has two settings. One setting chimes the quarter hours and strikes the hours during all hours of the day and night. The second setting only strikes quarters and hours between “waking hours” and does not strike at all between “sleeping hours” (i.e., between 10:30 pm and 7:30 am). So then I had to figure out how the clock “knows” whether it is AM or PM, which fortunately did not require taking the clock apart again. It runs on a D cell battery.
Quite a nice little clock now that it works. It’s still sitting on the table in my office where I fixed it. According to some denominations of feng shui, a chiming clock is a good remedy for the 5 Yellow flying star which is in the SW this year, which is where my office is. Apparently, the metal on metal chiming is the equivalent of metal wind chimes. The kitties are still trying to figure out where that noise comes from. They still alert every time it goes off, although they have since decided that it is no reason to scramble the troops. Its chiming evokes the parental abode. They have a mantle clock (which is why my dad made the mantle) of which this one is a cheap, battery-powered imitation. M&D’s is the real thing, run by clockwork that needs winding. The chimes are the same though. They have that clock, a grandfather clock with chimes, a cuckoo clock and four or five talking clocks. In that house, there is no excuse for not knowing what time it is.

I have acquired several nice items from “A” — She evidently is a big fan of the home shopping channels and periodically gets the urge to redecorate. The last piece I got from her was another rug, which I put in my kitchen. (The Wal-Mart special it replaced only had two colors, and wasn’t nearly busy enough). That’s Ms. Stormalinda Phogg–Foote traversing it. I learned pretty early in the game not to waste $$ on kitty accouterments from Petsmart. They have played happily with the cardboard box from Amazon.com for months now, which was not only delivered to my door but was also full of books I hadn’t read yet. . . Stormie lies in the box flipping her tail about while Jaks hides under one of the flaps and ambushes it. I also notice that when they are playing kittie tag, inside the box appears to be a King’s X zone.