More Home Improvement

Still messing around in the front of our place. I got 1/4 of our Simon-and-Garfunkel herb garden in a few days go:

The inside of our car and my work gloves have a wonderful rosemary scent to them now. I'll probably get some thyme started next. The sage may need to be grown from seed; I haven't found a local source for plants, which is usually an indication that something doesn't do well in the local climate. But I've found dozens of pages on the web from people who swear that sage does well in Florida's beach sand soil as long as you don't try to plant it in the middle of a bog. So as some point, I'll order some seeds and see what happens. I also got some aloe vera planted along the side of the porch. The stuff is like a weed down here, so that should fill in fairly quickly.

Today I finished up getting our house number and lot number painted on the posts and hanging all our Arcosanti bells:

Now our pizza delivery guy will have an easier time finding us, not to mention that we're now in compliance with the park rules.

That's pretty much all I've gotten done; we've been too busy socializing for me to get to all the things on my ever-growing to-do list. With Thanksgiving coming up, I don't expect to get much more done for the rest of this week, but if I do, I'll throw a couple pictures up here.

The Planting Bed

I finally got this thing finished yesterday. Right now, all I'm growing is dead leaves and grass clippings. At some point next week, I'll pick up a half-dozen or so rosemary plants and put those up against the porch. But for now, this is how it looks:

Eventually, the bed will extend for the full length of the trailer, but I need to do a little work on the skirting first. In the meantime, I have all the inside work - cleaning, dishes, bake some bread, etc. - that piled up on me while I was messing around in the yard. A woman's work is never done....

Carl Sagan's Birthday

I really need to get a calendar; I almost missed this again. Anyway, I've posted this before, but it's worth another watch:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

One Bruce F. Webster has put together an illustrated version of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings". Appropriate given certain events from earlier this week.

(For those, like me, who somehow avoided copybooks while learning penmanship, Wikipedia has a short article on them. The part that is relevant to Kipling's poem: "Other copybooks, however, focused chiefly on writing literacy and used maxims and sometimes Bible verses as their material. It was intended that students memorize not only correct penmanship, but correct morals as well, through exposure to traditional sayings.")

Anyway...

So yea. I made a wee little drive up to Michigan and back. While I was there, Michigan thought it was appropriate to remind me why I left by slamming me with high winds, freezing temperatures, snow, sleet and rain. I got the message, left as soon as logistically possible and have no desire to go back in any months other than June, July or August.

There were two goals for the trip: Take a small load of furniture up to Michigan to dump on others so we can quit living like one of those headcases on Hoarding: Buried Alive, and to help my parents pack up and drive down to Florida for the winter. Both goals were met in that I did manage to get a load of Stuff up to Michigan (nearly) intact and out of our lives while navigating a moving van for most of the length of I-75, and my parents and I are now back in Florida. We made it back late Saturday night. My parents normally take three or four days for the trip down, but I "missed" a couple of their non-expressway longcuts, my sister and brother-in-law that they normally visit were out of town, and I pushed pretty hard for them to not stop a few hours short of Zephyrhills just because it was dark. We met Debbie in Z-town at a local restaurant for a very late dinner about 9:30pm, then finally HOME.

After being gone two full weeks and a couple days, it took all day Sunday and Monday just to catch up on my daily reading and dig through my e-mail. Yesterday, I felt like I spent the entire day in the car, although I'm certain that can't be true. I started my day off with voting. I had considered skipping the whole sordid mess, but decided that while I was out for other things, I may as well drop in and color in a few ovals. I voted my usual pattern; whoever wasn't in office and was least likely to win. The result was typical as well, with not a single person I voted for attaining office. Works for me. In addition, Florida had 11 constitutional amendments on the ballet, all but one of which I voted against as they were measures that should have been handled in the do-nothing legislature rather than being amendments to the state constitution. The only one I voted for was a symbolic amendment making the key provision of Obamacare - the penalty for failing to have health insurance - unconstitutional. With the Supreme Court ruling that the penalty was constitutional, Florida can't make it unconstitutional, but the measure was left on the ballet as a non-binding referendum of sorts.

So the bottom line is that I am not in any way responsible for what happens in the county, state or national governments. I can piss and moan about it all I want because I did in fact drag myself to the polls.

So the underside of the bottom line is, nutin' new here.

The rest of the yesterday was spent driving around Florida's suburban hell trying (and largely failing) to cross items off my various shopping lists. I keep trying to "support local businesses", but they just don't have what I'm looking for. Even the big box stores have been a disappointment. I ventured out again today after we realized that we were out of paper for the printer. I found a few more things, but I finally gave up and moused another big order of random bits on Amazon.

Today, I did get a bunch of things that piled up while I was in Michigan checked off the to-do list, but for every item I checked off, I added two more, so now the list is longer than ever. I think I've discovered all the bits of neglected and forgotten flotsam of our lives, but there may still be something under the couch or in a corner covered in dust bunnies waiting to be discovered.

So I see on Yahoo this morning that Obama gets his four-more-years. Several people I've encountered today, including my parents, are in a state of mourning due to Obama's re-election. I'm sure today's Wednesday Prayer Meetin' at their church will be an hour of wailing and gnashing of teeth. This I do not understand. There is not one single thing that Romney would, or even could have done in office that would have been any different that what Obama will do, just as ol' hope-n-change followed right in Bush's footsteps in spite of all his rhetoric to the contrary. The banks will continue to run the country for the benefit of the wealthiest Americans and their enabling captives in Congress and the White House. Energy prices will continue their wild gyrations that are simultaneously pushing energy companies and consumers into financial ruin. We will come to accept that 8% unemployment is simply frictional unemployment, rather than a sign of serious economic problems. More and more of the middle class will be stomped down into the growing permanent underclass. The stock market will continue its long-term, random walk to nowhere. Various boogie men, including Obama, will be trotted out from time to time to take the blame for all of America's ills. Etc., etc., etc. In short, we will continue the long, bumpy decent we started back in the 1970's. And the rubes never catch wise.

Well, that's all I have energy for today. If I can drag my sorry carcass out of bed at a decent time tomorrow, I may have pictures of our new planting bed. I wouldn't bet on it, but it could happen, at least in theory.

The Housing Industry

I'll do a real post at some point.

Couldn't have said it better myself...

On the road again

Ric left this morning with a smaller Penske truck heading to Michigan.  We decided we really did not have room for a couple BIG things and could not get anyone down here to make an offer on them, so they are heading to a couple family homes that will appreciate them.

We timed this so after dropping the Penske truck off in Traverse City, he will be heading back with his parents as they make their way down to Florida for the winter.   This way he can help out with most of the driving instead of Don doing all the driving.   

They will do Halloween at Grandpa's, visit a "couple more days in Flint area" and then start working their way down to Zephryhills Florida.  I believe they will try to stop in Mobile AL area to see Teri/Gary before heading back over to Florida.   I should them after election day.

Rose Wiklanski, RIP

We received word yesterday afternoon that Debbie's Aunt Rose had passed.

This was today's Non Sequitur:

Goodbye Aunt Rose. Give a hug to Dad and Uncle Leo for us.

Tweak, Tweak, Tweak

So far, only one call-back to our roof dudes. The vent from our hot water heater was a bit too close to the rubber roof. Nothing damaged, but the heat had caused a bit of a ripple in the material, meaning that eventually, there would have been damage. A bit of flashing to divert the heat away from the roof and all is well. Naturally, since the work is all done, the rainy season has decided to vacate the state once again. We haven't had so much as a heavy dew since the roof work was completed, so we still don't know how much quieter things will be with the added insulation and a non-metal roof. It is definitely cooler in the Florida room with the max temp staying pretty even with the rest of the trailer. We still need some sun shades to hang from the new porch; there is about 45 minutes where the sun is low enough to sneak under the porch roof before it goes behind the trees. The heat film we put on the windows helps with that, but keeping the sun completely off the front of the trailer is better yet. The shades will also make the porch more usable in the summer, while still allowing us to let the sun in during our frigid Florida winters.

Anyway, we're done with big stuff for now. We'll be doing a great deal of tweaking that doesn't involve large amounts of money, but probably the only big-money project we will do in the short term is swapping out the windows in the Florida room for ones made of glass instead of shrink wrap. We're required to put siding on before next May, but I'm going to see if I can get that extended. The cushion is getting pretty thin; it would be nice to give our savings account a chance to build back up before we smack it again.

Yesterday, I started cleaning up around the trailer. It's always amazing to see the amount of debris even the simplest project can create. I hauled over 100 pounds of metal to the scrap yard, but only got about half the money I expected for it. I wrongly assumed the price/pound I got for soda cans would be what I got for all our aluminum scrap. I didn't realize that soda and beer cans are some sort of super-high-grade aluminum that gets almost twice the price of other kinds of aluminum. Shows what I know. I also had several pounds of something called "irony aluminum" on my scale ticket. I wasn't aware aluminum could be ironic. Whatever it is, it ain't worth much. In any case, I got enough to pay for our laundry for the next month or so, which is still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick found in a sewer and covered in blood from a mouse with the hantavirus. I also got the road swept clear so we don't have to worry about picking up any stray nails or screws with our car tires. After driving up and down the road numerous times, of course.

Today I tackle the oh-so-fun job of policing up all the bits of foam all over the ground. I have no idea what I'm going to do about the "snow" where the guys were ripping the foam sheets with a skill saw. I'll try to rake up what I can, but it may have to simply "disperse" as much as I hate to do that. Then the rest of the raking and trimming, and maybe, if I have time and umph, get a start on laying out walks, planting beds, etc. The joys of a yard.

I didn't bother to watch either the Presidential or Vice-Presidential debates. No one running for office this year will explain to me why Jon Corzine and the rest of his Wall Street golfing buddies are still walking around as free men, and until they do, I don't give a damn what else they have to say. It doesn't sound like I missed much in any case, given that the media is treating the whole thing like a cheerleading competition (with some damn-ugly cheerleaders). Does anyone remember when debates were about ideas instead of an exchange of insults? Or when the holders of high office could manage to conduct themselves with more decorum than a 12-year-old boy when the teachers uses words like "asinine" (Dude! She said, "Ass.") or bupkis (Dude! She said "Butt kiss.")?

Not that it matters much in my case anyway. I just realized that I probably won't be back to Florida in time to vote, and that I don't even care.

Well, off to fold laundry, work outside until lunch, then scan pictures until time to make dinner. Fun, fun!

Losing My Religion

For the first time in US history, Protestants are no longer the majority. The article gives a number of reasons why, but primarily it is due to 1/3 of those under 30 have no religious affiliation. Some of that is due to definitions; no religious affiliation just means you don't self-identify with the label "Protestant" or "Catholic" yet still attend church services and/or believe in God, pray frequently, etc. Baby Boomers give lip service to disestablishmentarianism, but it's Gen-X and Y who are more likely to be found in house churches or other non-traditional religious establishments. But a big chunk of that 33% is people who are simply atheists. And so a little R.E.M.:


About fifteen minutes ago, the last of the workers packed it in and left, and I gave a big chunk of change to the owner. I tried to take pictures of the roof, but without before pics, I'm not sure how much information they convey. While they were here, we also had them replace our back door with something that a) closes, b) stays closed when the wind blows, c) doesn't allow a cat to walk in under the door without crouching, d) locks. It's almost like living in a real house. Anyway:

Snow on an 80-degree day.

Snazy new back door. Only problem is the plumb door really shows how bad a job was done on the original Florida room. Inch-and-a-half difference from the top to the bottom.

Our new, gutterless roof line. Less work for me!!

Roofline on the south side.

And the fancy rubber roof already hard at work reflecting away the sun.

Last but not least, the completed porch:

Now we just have to wait for our savings account to stop making pitiful mewling noises, and we can move on to the next phase.

Details, Details...

Porch is coming along nicely. There isn't much left to do at this point other than railings on the steps and the last bit of the skirting around the bottom:

The next major step won't be anything that will show in photos. We are getting additional insulation up on the roof plus a membrane roof over everything that will hopefully take care of the leaks. It will be so nice to not have to walk around a bucket in the middle of our living space.

Sunday, we made a cross-state road trip for a ship inspection at Port Canaveral. We could see SpaceX's Falcon 9 sitting on the launch pad from one of the forward lounges. It was, unfortunately, the most interesting part of the trip. For me, the actual ship inspection isn't really all that interesting as I don't sell cruises. And frankly, if you've seen one stateroom, you've seen them all. I go for the free lunch on-board. Only this time, instead of the group having a private lunch in the formal dining room, we had to fight it out with the boarding passengers in the buffet. So, yea; fifty bucks in gas for sore feet and an underwhelming buffet on a rather tired-looking cruise ship. I've been on several ships from a couple of the "bottom tier" cruise lines, and either I'm mis-remembering my First Cruise Experience on Carnival, or these other guys just don't measure up. We have a Celebrity cruise-to-nowhere on their newest ship in December. "Overwhelmed" is probably setting the bar too high; I'm hoping for welmed.

Taking Shape

The porch and the roof are essentially complete. There is still railings, trim work, gutters, etc., but it is pretty much what it is:

The rainy season seems to have returned with 90 degree days and matching humidity, and thunderstorms in the evening. At least it isn't interfering with the work too much.

A Good Day

The weather finally cooperated and, combined with a much larger crew, resulted in significant progress today:

It looks like the work will bleed into next week, but not by much. At the latest, things should be wrapped up by next weekend.

A Bit of Progress

We were visited by a full-blown monsoon about two hours after our porch dudes showed up. They tried to shrug it off, but eventually it became dangerous for them to operate power tools. By that time, it had gone from rain to RAIN to holy-crap-I-can't-see. They packed it in so fast, one of them actually left his lunch sitting on our outdoor swing. The good news is that the worst is supposed to be over in a few hours, then back to the normal pattern of good weather most of the day with scattered rain in the afternoon. Here's where we stand at this point:

Work Begins

We got delayed by a day, but first thing this morning we received a pile of lumber and concrete blocks. Of course, just because we're trying to do something, rainy season decided to make a come-back. Once things cleared a bit, the guys got started by moving our current front steps around back. The iron steps that were back there when we bought the place had nearly rusted through, and they were actually too tall, interfering with opening the back door. So now the back of our place looks like this:

Wider and more stable are definitely both a big plus. The rail is on the wrong side, but it may just go away completely rather than going to all the work of moving it to the other side. It's not like the old steps had a railing, nor do most of the back porches in the park. If taking them off, cleaning them up and re-attaching them doesn't end up being a big deal, I may do it. Or not. I was born lazy. 

I also talked to the contractor about replacing the back door with something that is a bit more weather-tight so wind and rain will quit blowing into our living space. He said they have a basic door with no window that will screw right into the same hole. I said, "Do it." Because the guys are already coming out here, there won't be any installation charge, just the cost of the door. Can't beat that with an ugly stick cut from a tree you can't see for the forest.

The guys were able to get a rough outline of the deck going before the rain came back and ran them off for the day. Naturally, the instant they got everything packed up and got into the truck, it stopped raining. The weather liars say it will be like this for the next several days. Anyone like to bet that this will be the one time they're right? Anyway, here's how it looks so far:

Originally, they were going to do the roof first, then build the deck, which I thought was a little backwards, But I assumed something to do with hurricane codes meant they needed to anchor the porch roof before the deck was in the way. Then this morning, the contractor called and said they decided to do the deck first, then build the roof to the deck. I'm completely indifferent as long as something is getting done. With all the preliminaries out of the way, like moving the old steps and getting the leveling jack off the trailer tongue, I expect things will go faster.

With some luck, I should be able to post updates every day or two. Unless that lazy thing kicks in.

Stopping Point

For the last couple months, I've been working on scanning in every photo we've ever taken prior to switching to digital in January of 2003. At some point, I had started to get all our prints and negatives organized using a Light Impressions archive system. It looked like I was making good progress, then everything came to grief at some point in the mid-1990's. Today, I completed the organized stuff. That was 3,245 individual photos, covering October 1977 through October 1994, scanned in and organized into 223 folders. What a difference between film and digital. On our cruise-tour in 2008, we shot 2,112 photos over 12 days. After a little break, I get to start on the hard part; I have at least as many photos still in the envelopes the developer put them in, most of them without dates. Then I have several large boxes of undated loose photos when I get done with those. Fun stuff. I have a feeling that a large percentage of the scans from here on out will end up in a folder named Miscellaneous Undated.

A bit of dark humor from Yahoo News about how Americans when forced to choose between eating and digital masturbation on a smartphone are choosing digital masturbation:

Looking over the family budget on Sunday night, Mr. Boedie said, his wife marveled at how much of it was going to the phone company.

"It stinks," Mr. Boedie said. "I guess it's the cost of modern-day America now."

Apologies to Irving Berlin, but I can't figure out why any god in his right mind would bless America.

On a... ahem... lighter note, the sun threw a bit of a hissy fit on August 31:


 Just for some perspective:

 

And off to bed before I throw frackin' Blogger out the window. These idiots who just can't leave anything unbroken have just made the editor nearly impossible to use. Nice job Google. No wonder Apple told you to piss off.

Short Update

This will be quick because there just isn't a great deal going on right now. We're sort of on hold for the next month or so because of the Michigan road trip. I'll be driving up in a Penske the last week of October, dropping debris along the way, then coming back down with my parents, helping them out with the driving. In the meantime, I'm making a list of what I'm taking up and what I'm bringing back. (Koegel's!!! Serve the curve, baby!) Otherwise, it's more or less keeping busy puttering around with small jobs like cleaning out the gutters and trying to figure out why half of our electric is screwed up. I dug into the box over the weekend and did some fixin', but we're still having issues with running the laser printer and, oddly enough, the crock pot. The laser printer I (sort of) get as it's a high-draw appliance, but a crock pot? I'll be making a quick trip into town this afternoon for other stuff, so I'll pick up some fiddly bits from Lowes and see if the situation can be improved. If that doesn't work, we'll need an electrician dude to come out and tear into the power pole. That's supposed to be the park's job, but they flat out refuse to take care of it, so, as I'm not interested in being immolated in my sleep, we'll be paying to get things fixed.

Our only new news is that next week, we have contractors showing up to beef up our roof and add a 10'x20' covered deck to the front of our place. The roof should be done in a day; the deck will take two or three days to finish up. So in a week or so, our little place will have a rather different look. We were only going to redo the existing roof and extend it out the front, then worry about building a deck under the extension at some future date. But the price we got on the roof was far less than we expected, and we couldn't buy the deck materials for what they wanted to extend the trailer roof and build the deck. So it all gets done in one big bang, then we sit here broke for the next year or so until we can do the next thing. But at least we'll have a roof that doesn't leak, more insulation so our electric bill won't be in the stratosphere, and a shady spot to sit outside.

And that's pretty much it. I'll post some pictures as the work progresses next week.

And Another Week Slips By....

First, some good news: We got "our" new fence and it looks pretty good, especially compared to what was there before.

The "however" is that it likely won't stay good looking for long. It's the cheapest grade of fencing you can get and there are no plans to attempt to preserve it in any way. I give it five years max before it starts looking as crappy as what was here to start with. Florida is tough on wood, even when it's well-cared-for. If history is any guide, this won't be. On the other hand, who knows what part of the world we'll be living in five years from now.

Rainy season continues. The first couple years we were in Florida, the rain started to taper off in September, but this year it's still going full bore halfway through the month. I don't know if moving across state is the reason or if things are getting back to normal after several years of "drought". (Most places in the US would start building arks if they received the amount of rain Florida gets in a drought year, hence the scare quotes.) Our recent yard work is hold up well to the onslaught, although the bare areas haven't started filling in like I had hoped. No matter; this is Florida. Something green will take over in no time.

We went through the last pile of bins over the weekend. It's all Christmas stuff that we've been carting around for 20+ years, most of which has never seen the light of day. It was a little depressing; after most of a day's of work, we still had the same pile of bins in our living space. We did get the stuff sorted into bins-we're-keeping vs. bins-for-yard-sale, but because the shed is already packed right to the door, we have to leave it all in the Florida room for now.

Which brings me to more news. I'll be driving a moving van full of left-overs to Michigan sometime between now and the end of October, unless a last-minute buyer jumps up on Craigslist. I seriously doubt that will happen given that everything has been listed for over a month and we haven't gotten a single inquiry on any of it. As of right now we have for-sure takers for everything but the dining room table and chairs. I'm pretty sure I know where that's going, but if the person backs out, I have two or three alternatives. In any case, it all will be gone in a month or so. Then we can finally start to figure out how we're going to live in this place. The last month has felt like we're living in a storage unit.

We are also going to start working on the biggest project so far: a full roof-over of the trailer and Florida room. That will probably put a serious dent in our savings account, so we won't be doing much else for a very long time. But it's the one improvement that will save us major money on utilities by beefing up the insulation in our roof, plus giving us over-hangs that will keep a lot of sun off the walls. Our electric bill for August just came; $122.33. That's the highest we've ever had anywhere we've lived. My goal is to cut that in half next year. The positive news is that this place is built and insulated so poorly (like nearly everything in Florida), we can easily make huge improvements.

So off to start making phone calls and stimulatin' the local economy!!

Far, Far Away

Americans are often accused of being "extravagantly wasteful" or promoting a "throw away culture". I'm hardly going to argue with that given that several families were able to make a living digging empty beer cans out of the dumpsters behind our former apartment. But a couple of things over the last few days have made me realize that it isn't just a party-like-it's-1999 attitude, like some drunk trust fund baby in a bar setting $20 bills on fire simply because he thinks he has an unlimited supply of them. Rather it's more like a kid's belief in unicorns; that there really is a land of Far, Far Away. Only instead of a place of handsome princes and beautiful princesses (or in the modern version, a couple friendly ogres and a talking donkey having sex with a dragon), our Far, Far Away is a place where we send anything that we are unwilling to deal with ourselves. Something breaks? Throw it Far, Far Away. Something stinks? Flush it Far, Far Away. Get bored with some trinket after you realize that it isn't the key to eternal youth and endless sex like the advertisement promised? Throw it Far, Far Away.

Then we have the once-removed's like recycling. Not to pan on recycling as a concept; everything gets recycled whether it's us doing it or Mama Gaia (who catches everything no matter how Far, Far Away we throw it). I'm talking about Recycling American Style where you mindlessly set some of your trash to the curb in a blue tub, it goes Far, Far Away, and you get to pat yourself on the back for being so green. If you want to see the ultimate blank stare, ask your neighbor next trash day what happens to the stuff in the blue tub. I got one of those yesterday from one of the park maintenance guys. We're looking for topsoil to build some raised beds and wondered if the township or county ran a municipal compost pile. Most of those allow locals to haul away the finished compost for free or cheap. I ask him if the yard waste we set out went to a compost pile. "No, we just toss it in a roll-off." Yes, I understand that. My question is, when the big truck comes and picks up the roll-off it goes...? Blank stare.

I have no idea myself where that roll-off ends up, but I do know that in Flint, Michigan, yard waste was going to the same landfill as the rest of the trash for years after residents were required to set yard waste out in separate bags. That is also the fate of most blue-bin trash as the market for such things as old newspaper and plastic have been completely saturated since the 1970's. My school used to have an annual paper drive where everyone would bundle up their old newspapers and pile them in a rented semi trailer next to the school. When the trailer was full, it would get picked up and hauled to a paper recycler and the school would get a wad of cash. At least, that's how it worked until the last paper drive sometime in the mid-1970's; when we showed up with our semi load of newspapers, the recycler told us he had all the newspaper he needed for all eternity. Because he felt sorry that our fundraiser was already going to cost us money, he was willing to take our newspapers without charging us a dumping fee. Not much has changed in the 40 years since. In fact, about the only thing in all the millions of blue bins that nets income in curbside recycling is the aluminum. Glass and steel are about break-even with paper and plastic being a dead loss. That's not just in terms of money, either. Every study of curbside recycling has come to the same conclusion: it takes more energy and resources on net to run the recycling program than the program saves.

The problem is another fantasy that Americans have; that we can keep doing everything we've been doing for the last 70 years only more of it, year after year without consequence if we'll only do just a little itty bitty bit. Like throw our plastic water bottles into a blue bin instead of a trash bag, or change out all the incandescent light bulbs in the McMansion for compact florescents. Remember the green mantra from the 1970's? Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. The order isn't random. First step is to reduce. Everything. Buy less crap. Not buy even more crap, then think you're making it all OK by throwing 2% of it in a blue bin. Recycling is the last resort, not the magic cure-all that's going to let us keep our 5,000 square foot "starter homes" and 6,000 pound SUV's that you have to park in the driveway because the 4-car garage is stuffed with quad runners and jet skis and bins full of clothes that no one has ever worn and kitchen gadgets still in their blister packs. Of course, any suggestion that maybe it would be a good idea to cut back on the amount of crap we buy and hoard, and the best you can hope for is a blank stare. More likely, you'll get a punch to the head.

(And yes, we're as guilty as the next guy. In spite of a concerted effort over the last six or seven years to cut the crap pile down to a reasonable size, our home still looks like something off one of those hoarders TV shows, with plastic bins stacked literally to the ceiling and little narrow passageways to navigate through the stacks. And while our sissy SUV is way smaller than most of the monster trucks running around here, it's till way more vehicle than we need to haul our butts around, while simultaneously being too small to do anything useful, like moving building materials. We're going in the right direction, but the going is slow and we frequently backslide.)

So what brought up all this tree-hugging crap? This:

Ya know how they say that when the tide goes out, everyone knows who's swimming naked? Well, yesterday the park began tearing down the old, dilapidated board fence that runs between the park and the woods behind us, and there was a multitude of naked people. Nearly everyone who lives along the back fence tosses their leaves over the fence instead of bagging them up like they're supposed to. I'm not sure in what universe that it's easier to heave piles of leaves over a 7-foot fence instead of stuffing them in a leaf bag, but no one has ever accused humans of being overly logical. But the section of fence behind us is extra special. Not just leaves and branches, but plastic bags, aluminum foil, candy wrappers, flower pots, bottles, cans. It's all in there. The pièce de résistance was the 10 yards or so of dirt that had been tossed over the fence. That must have been done over a period of years, because digging through the dirt pile was like working a kitchen midden at an archaeological dig, only instead of animal bones and pot shards I was digging up Reese's Peanut Butter Cup wrappers and broken pieces of plastic flower pots. The irony of the whole thing is after all the effort that was put into tossing all that dirt over the fence, I plan to bring back as much as possible before the guys get here to put up the new fence, in order to level up some low places and stabilize the wobbly patio stones that have been undercut by run-off.

Anyway, the point is, Far, Far Away can be as much psychological as physical. In this case, literally out of sight, out of mind. If I toss my candy bar wrapper or a broken flower pot over this fence so I can't see it, that object must cease to exist and there are no possible consequences because it is now in the magical land of Far, Far Away. Of course, one person's Far, Far Away is someone else's property. I wonder how loudly the former residents would have screamed if the owner of the adjacent property had started throwing leaves, dirt and garbage in the other direction?

Anyway, not much of a point other than maybe we should start thinking about whose back yard all the stuff we throw Far, Far Away lands in and maybe throwing a great deal less of it.

Heat

Florida is giving us a last hurrah (or giant middle finger; take your pick) with 90 degree heat and matching humidity. Everything from Isaac has blown out and now we don't even get the couple hours of relief we were getting from the afternoon thunderstorms. I try to get outside every day and do a little puttering around the outside of the trailer, but there is only about a two-hour window between sunrise and when being outside is just too brutal to think about. So I sit inside scanning old photos.

That process has changed somewhat. I was originally scanning the negatives, mainly because 3x5 or 4x6 prints have a different aspect ratio than the 35mm negative, so something has to get cut off. Prints also seem to have more issues with color balance, and even though a print is many times larger than a negative, the scans didn't seem any better in terms of graininess. But the scanner software seems to want to fight me every step of the way. Yesterday, I had just finished up 500 or so photos that we had no negatives for (or they were something other than 35mm), and started back in on the 35mm stuff. The very first strip of negatives I grabbed came up in the software as color positive film. I was done with that. So now I scan the prints and screw the negatives. It involves more trips to the scanner as I can only do two or three photos at a time instead of an entire strip of negatives in one go, but the process is actually faster overall.

Yesterday, we had our first block party since we moved here. Our neighbors at the end of the street hosted an ol' fashioned potluck, so we showed up with our signature baked beans, which got a lot of comments. I'm hoping that we're not stuck bringing the things to every potluck forever; we have a lot of other things we like to make besides baked beans. In any case, we all ate too much and sat around for several hours acting like hooligans. We had fun and finally had a chance to meet a few of our neighbors. Nice change of pace from... well... pretty much every other place we've ever lived.

The Republican National Convention has finally ended. We avoided even looking in the direction of Tampa while the circus was in town, and of course there was no way we would waste our time watching any of it on TV. Personally, I'd rather scratch my eyes out with rusty nails. I heard a lot of yapping about this or that speech and something about Clint Eastwood playing the part of a stroke victim while talking to an empty chair. Why anyone pays the least bit of attention is beyond me. Whatever is said or done at the convention has absolutely nothing to do with what the Liar in Chief actually does while in office. The worst of it is that as soon as the holiday weekend is over, we get to start the circus all over again for the Democrats. At least that one is far enough away that we don't have to be concerned with road closures, blockades, protesters, riot cops, etc.

And I should get back to scanning.

No More Banana Flips (and other critical news)

We were out wandering around a week or so ago, looking for something else when we happened across one of those Hostess Bake Shop clearance places. There was one of these near where I grew up and I remember my parents buying car-loads of Wonder bread for something like 20 loaves for $1, then carrying sandwiches made with freezer-burnt bread until Thanksgiving when whatever was left got made into stuffing. Mmmmm. Good times.

Anyway, we're both big fans of Banana Flips (yea, yea; just stuff it, will ya?) and we hadn't been able to find them for several years. So we head in and no Banana Flips. We asked at the counter and were informed that Hostess had discontinued Banana Flips about three years ago. What?!?!? Holy crap! I must have stood there with my mouth hanging open for a full minute. How could a company that continues to make those disgusting, pink, coconut-covered balls of glop discontinue the very food of the gods? I don't think I said anything for the rest of the day other than mumbling "What in the.... How in the.... Who in the.... WHY!!"

Anyway.

Hurricane Isaac completely missed us. It rained for three days straight and we've had some wind gusts that were barely strong enough to ring our largest Arcosanti bell. The highlight was a flood warning that came over the Emergency Broadcast System for some minor little creek. (Most likely a man-made drainage ditch dug by some developer literally selling swamp land in some real estate scam, but I digress.) As always, these things break into the TV show right at the most critical point of the whole thing. So we're squinting at the TV trying to read lips while this guy drones on about how many feet above flood stage this immaterial body of water is. Then he goes on some tangent about "normal" flood stage vs. some other kind of flood stage. Then he launches into the entire flooding history of this creek, yapping on about how many feet above flood stage it was in 1957. Dude! You're not on some frackin' PBS special! Shut! the Hell! Up!

So that was the extent of our suffering and drama related to Hurricane Isaac.

It does look like Isaac is going to test whether anyone in Louisiana learned anything from Katrina. Isaac seems to have stalled just off-shore and is beating the living crap out of the coastline. We'll see now if any of the federal tax dollars that were supposed to repair and improve the levees actually did any good, or if it all ended up in Swiss bank accounts like most of the pre-Katrina levee money.

We're still in various stages of unpacking and trying to unload furniture on Craigslist that won't fit in our 600 square feet. Craigslist doesn't seem to work in Florida, likely due to the high percentage of con artists and grifters that live here (approximately 98% of the population). So far we've managed to unload exactly one thing. We'll try some other avenues and we always have Restore if all else fails. At least it won't end up in a landfill. We still need some major plumbing work done and the electrical is becoming critical. We talked to the park manager yesterday about getting our power pole upgraded, but she wouldn't commit to anything definitive other than having "someone look at it." Bottom line, instead of new windows and doors in the Florida room or a bathroom redo, we'll be rewiring and replumbing. woo. hoo.

And I'm still pounding on the new scanner. The hardware seems solid, but the software was written by coked-up chimps on a Friday afternoon. The automatic mode seems to do a decent job, except when it decides that negatives are slides. There is no way to override without going into one of the non-automatic modes (Home, Business, Professional), and at that point, gods help you because not even something as simple as a check box works correctly, and the scan results SUCK. So far, I've been able to work around the glitches, but they seriously slow down the process. I'm still trying to get through 1986. Only about 18 years to go.

Well, back at it.

Neil Armstrong, RIP

The first human to step foot on any planet other than earth is dead. Nothing really to say other than, "Godspeed, Commander Armstrong."

Dealing with Idiots

My life has been reduced to dealing with people who are in obvious need of adult supervision.

Case 1:

A few months ago, we were informed that our check for our gas royalty payments would no longer be coming from the company that had been handling them for the last decade or so. Chevron had taken over everything. Awe crap. We all know what that means.

We filled out the new forms with all our info for taxes and setting up our payments to go directly into our money market account. The last money we were supposed to receive from the old company dropped into a different bank account as it always had. The next payment would be from the new company and would drop into our money market account. A month later, money is deposited into the old account. I call Chevron and ask what's up. "We no pay you money," says the annoying Chinglish voice at the other end. "You check bank; money someting else." I check bank. Money from Chevron. I call Chinglish back. This time her story was, "We Chevron USA; money from Chevron Michigan. We no Chevron Michigan. We Chevron USA." Fine. But if the money is coming from Chevron Michigan, then why in the hell am I talking to you? "Chevron USA pay you from now on." Ah.

Next month, no one pay us money. I call Chevron Michigan. "Sorry. We don't handle disbursements. You need to call Houston. Here's a toll-free number. No one ever answers. Just leave a message. Good luck." Thanks. I call the toll-free number. It rings a dozen times, then a robot comes on the line. "The party you are trying to reach is not answering. Sorry it didn't work out. This call will be disconnected." Click. Dial tone. Sweet Mother of God.

We were leaving for Michigan the next day anyway, so I just threw everything on the pile of crap to deal with later and tried to forget about it. When we got back, one of the pieces of mail waiting for us was an EFT Statement from Chevron USA stating that they had deposited our money into our account. Only there was no money in our account. Now I'm pissed. They screwed up our direct deposit and either our money ended up in someone else's account, or it bounced back and the ass-clowns didn't bother to contact us. I try the toll-free number again and this time get the answering machine. "Leave a message; we'll call you back." I leave a message. No one calls back. Next day, rinse and repeat. All last week, every day, I leave a message and no one calls back. Monday, I start being a smart-ass on the messages, talking like Richard Simmons; "Hi!!! It's your good ol' buddy Richard calling you AGAIN!!!! Here's my account number!!! Here's my phone number!!!! I'd really like to hear from you guys!!! I really do miss you!!! .... Asshats."

Yesterday I finally made contact with Mario, who barely speaks English. It wasn't so much an accent as much as it sounded like he had his mouth full of peanut butter sandwich the entire time he was on the phone. Like it was just too much work to move his lips. He strung out the longest and most incoherent line of corporate bullshit that I have ever heard. "Computer problems blah somthin' working on it blah crap blah accounting blah blah your account shows we owe you money somthin' somethin' blah Friday." So I'll get my money Friday? "Processing on Friday crap blah somethin' not payment blah blah 28th." So I'll get all my money for two months on the 28th? "I'll confirm somthin' blah I'll call you crap blah you can call me anytime." Sure Mario. No problem. Now go drive you're damn cart off the Rainbow Road.

And I don't believe for one minute we'll see anything in our account come the 28th.

Case 2:

Our car insurance is due, so one of the things I did while out-and-about Monday was to stop by AAA and change our address and renew our policy. I checked in at the front desk then took a seat to wait for an agent to be available. I get Mario. No, seriously. You can't make this shit up. Mario is another English-as-a-second-language person, but at least he's been here long enough that I can mostly understand him. I tell him we've moved and we need to renew, so he goes through the entire quoting process which involves 20 minutes of detailed questions that have little or nothing to do with driving or owning a car. Finally it's over and the answer is: our insurance went up nearly $200 from last year to this year mainly because we moved from a high-crime area to a low-crime one. Um... wai... what? One problem is that we don't get the renter's credit because we own the trailer, but we don't get the homeowner's credit because we rent the lot under it. The other is that the insurance company considers old people to be a bigger risk than gangbangers.

OK, Mario. Whatever. Lets do this. I hand over my credit card, Mario does some type-type-type and tells me I'm all set and that my receipt will be e-mailed to me the next day. He could print it out right away, but that would take about 15 minutes. I don't bother to explain that 40 year ago, he could have written out a credit card slip by hand and run it through an impress machine in about 30 seconds. I just accept that millions of dollars of automation has resulted in a situation where I cannot get a credit card receipt in anything less than a quarter hour. Mario stands up. "We're all done here! Thanks for coming in!" Um, where's my policy? Where's my proof of insurance that Florida law says I need in my car? "They'll e-mail it to you! You should have everything tomorrow!"

So I walk out with nothing other than Mario's business card. I just spent $1,200 and have nothing; I couldn't even prove that I was ever in that or any other AAA office on August 13, 2012. You've probably already guessed what comes next. Wednesday morning and no receipt, no contract, no proof of insurance, no nothing other than a $1,200 crater on our credit card. I e-mail Mario telling him I have yet to receive my receipt, and asking if my contract and proof of insurance will be coming via e-mail or USPS, and when I can expect them. E-mail response #1: "I sent it. Check your junk mail." Follow shortly by e-mail response #2: "Travelers will e-mail you a copy of your policy."

Free tip. When I tell you I didn't get your e-mail, assume that something went wrong on your end rather than implying I'm too stupid to have checked my junk mail when I don't get an expected e-mail. It's called customer service, Mario. Of course, no sign of anything in my junk mail either, so I send a response to e-mail #1: Nothing in my junk mail; could you resend it? And a reply to e-mail #2: When? And will it include my proof of insurance? Our current coverage expires in three days. No response to either of those messages. Later Wednesday, Debbie logs into her e-mail account and lo and behold, there is our receipt, contract and proof of insurance in her inbox. I have no idea what sort of automated hell sent everything to her when the only e-mail address I gave them was mine. I'm sure at some point in the last decade we gave them her e-mail address, but why dig that up when all the current forms have mine? I sent another message to Mario saying we found everything in the wrong e-mail account. Mario, the King of Customer Service, never responded to any of my e-mails. Thanks for the giant middle finger, Mario; we'll be sure to keep that in mind next time our insurance is due.

There's oh so much more, but this is already getting long and you get the point. This is what I've been doing all day every day instead of unpacking and figuring out where we're going to put everything.

The one fun bit I've been playing with the last couple days is our new scanner. Debbie needed to be able to scan documents for work. The reason would probably qualify as Idiots Case 3: There are various forms she has to fill out, some of which are PDF's. Some of them can be filled out on the computer, but the dipshits have disabled the save function meaning they can't be attached to an e-mail and sent to the main office. So they have to be printed, then scanned back into a PDF file which can then get sent off to the accounting people. As stupid as that is, the upside is that we now have a scanner. The strange part is that straight-up document scanners start at around $300, while hi-res photo scanners that can also do documents, can be had for less than a hundred bucks. After poking around a bit for reviews and such, we settled on the Epson V330. About the same time the scanner was delivered, I had unearthed all our old photos shot on 35mm film. So I've been using the slick little negative holder thingamabob to scan up to five photos at a shot. Works pretty well and the results look good enough on a computer screen. While I'm sure a professional place could do a much better job (at enormous cost), this works good enough for family reunions, weddings, etc. I may flag the occasional negative for a good scan at some point in the future, but for now, this will do.

And I really need to wrap this up. Later.

Earth from Space

Just because I haven't done one of these in a while.

Home for a While

We're back in Zephyrhills to stay for at least a few months. Maybe that will give us enough time to empty at least some of these bins filling up the entire Florida room. Yesterday I finally had a few minutes to haul off all the scrap metal that has been piling up with all the renovations we've been doing. Thanks to the metal thieves, that is now a long, drawn-out process. I had to show my photo ID not once but twice, give make/model/year and plate number of my vehicle, be photographed, thumb-printed and have a complete physical description recorded in the scrap company's computer system. All for $10.51 and a tee shirt. Damn metal thieves. I started joking around with the scrap guy about how it was easier to open a new bank account that it was to sell off a few pounds of scrap metal, but it's only funny in a sick sort of way.

Today I had an early appointment for some more lab work for an up-coming doctor visit. I just about screwed the whole thing up royally. See, I still have some lingering doctor appointments and such back in Sanford trying to figure out some weird things that showed up in a couple of my routine blood tests. I'm keeping those appointments because of that whole not-changing-horses-in-midstream thing. But when I made the appointment for the labs, I decided to just use a local Labcorp office instead of driving 100 miles on Death Highway. The problem was that I had completely forgotten that I did that. For the last couple weeks, we've been making all sorts of plans for things that I would be doing this morning while back in Sanford. It finally hit me last night while setting my alarm for 4:30am cussing myself out for making the appointment so fracking early in the morning that my appointment was only 10 minutes from our house. I'm certainly glad I realized that before driving across the state.

Unfortunately, the 10 minute drive turned out to be more adventure that I thought possible due to the World's Worst GPS, otherwise known as a Magellan. I hadn't done a Google map like I usually do because of all the chaos with moving and traveling around the country, but I shouldn't need to: I paid a bunch of money for a crazy lady in a box. I'll use that. I would have had better luck throwing knuckle bones to determine my route. It tells me to make a left turn. I make a left turn. It screams at me to make an immediate U-turn. So I do. The screen literally spins around a full 360 degrees, then takes a full minute to re-orient itself, then crazy lady starts screaming at me to make a U-turn. So I do. More spinning around followed by the little arrow that's supposed to show my location going cross country through some woods. Meanwhile, the crazy lady is screaming at me to make random turns down non-existent roads. I decide that it will be easier to just drive to the general area where I think the place is, then call for directions. But the screen finally catches up to where I am, and after I start screaming back at the crazy lady, she finally shuts up. Maybe now this stupid piece of crap will work? At least the green line looks like it's going where I want it to even though crazy lady is now sulking and fails to verbally inform me of the next two turns. The problem is, the green line doesn't take me to Labcorp, it takes me past their road, then a boulevard left, dumps me in a Bealls parking lot, then out the truck entrance, back across Labcorp's road into their parking lot and finally crazy lady stops sulking long enough to announce that I have arrived at my destination. Good God. At least the blood draw was uneventful, as was the ride home with the crazy lady in a box safely unplugged, turned off, and stuff under all the other useless junk stashed in the Durango's armrest. I'm so glad we have all this technology to make our lives simpler.

Speaking of technology, I'm a little late with this because of all our traveling, but here it is:


The most complex landing ever attempted and it went off without a hitch. Sweet.

Meanwhile, mostly forgotten on another part of Mars, Opportunity continues to collect data and take fantastic photos:

Looks like the ol' girl needs a bit of dusting. But not bad considering she was only supposed to last 90 Martian days and just clocked in day 3,038. I wish I had that good of luck with cars.

In any case, I need to scream at stupid people on the phone, get some furniture on Craigslist and unpack what I can while Debbie is working. And trim the grass. And do some raking. And dumpster more useless crap left here by our predecessor. And... well... yea.

We're Here (sort of)

Debbie came and picked me up on Thursday and we made it back to Sanford in one piece (always a doubtful proposition on Death Highway, otherwise known as I-4). I spent Friday tossing everything into bins and doing a deep clean, with a short break to take all the equipment back to Brighthouse and shutting off our account.

[Interesting aside: Even though we have Brighthouse in Zephyrhills, it isn't the same Brighthouse we had in Sanford, so we couldn't use their move-your-service service. We had to get service installed here, then shut off service in Sanford. Because of the whole living-in-two-places-at-once thing, it actually worked out to our advantage, but I thought it rather strange when I called Brighthouse and they couldn't find any trace of our account.]

Saturday, we picked up the truck at 9am, started hauling everything out around 10am, rolled out of Sanford with a full truck by 2pm, made the 2 1/2-hour drive to Zephyrhills and had the truck empty and ready to return by 7pm. Sunday morning, we ditched the truck, drove back to Sanford to finish cleaning and turn in the keys, made it back here and collapsed in front of the TV. Monday morning was all about getting internet access working for both computers, then installing all the hardware and software that Debbie needed to be able to log into work Tuesday morning. We spent the afternoon at the bank, then the DMV to change our addresses, then Staples to buy a good chair and chair mat for Debbie's office. We wanted to pick up a file cabinet, but the Zephyrhills Staples doesn't carry large items in inventory: you pick what you want from the display models, then order it online and have it delivered to your house. Good idea if you don't have a way to transport something like a four-drawer file cabinet, but it means we have to wait a bit for the new file cabinet.

The trailer is completely full of bins and we're not real sure where most of it will end up. The only storage areas and closets we have are full and the entire Florida room is packed with more stuff. Some of the big items will be going on Craigslist later this month, but we simply have no idea where the rest is going to go. One thing is absolutely certain; we are not renting another storage unit. The space we have is the space we have and we need to learn to live in it and stop clinging to things. I know, I know; radical idea for someone living in the biggest hording culture in human history. We'll just have to be freaks.

And to keep from getting bored, we're heading back up to Michigan for the Wiklanski reunion this weekend. It will be a nice break from all things moving and unpacking. The problem is that all the work will still be sitting here when we get back. Ah well.

Another of today's fun little adventures involves trying to get our address updated with all the various places that insist on clogging up our mailbox. You would think that such a simple task wouldn't be that hard. You would of course, be wrong. If I hear one more person tell me that I connected to the wrong department, then either "accidentally" disconnect me when they transfer me, or give me a non-working phone number to call, I'm going to start blowing things up. And don't even get me started on the crappy coding on business and government web sites. These complete morons can't even get the basics right, as in here's a place to type an 8-digit number, but it only accepts five digits. Again, any place I worked back in the bad ol' days of COBOL and 24 lines of 80 green characters on a black screen, putting something like that into production was a firing offense.

Well, I need to get back at it.

Living in the First World

Bahr's Propane came by today, on time and with everything they needed to get all the work done so we would have a functioning range and running hot water. Again, I'm not sure why it's so hard for some people to do that. Anyway, I can at least take a hot shower this afternoon for the first time in a month. In celebration of having a functioning stove, I feasted on Ramen for lunch. It will be a while before I can stomach microwaved food again.

Anyway, that's all I have. Debbie will be picking me up tonight, tomorrow I tear everything down and pack it all up, Saturday morning we go get our truck, load it, and hit the road. We have the truck until Monday morning in case we need to make multiple trips or something goes sideways. With luck, we'll be out of Sanford for good no later than Monday. Woohoo!

We probably won't have time to update anything here until we are fully landed in Zephyrhills.

Blogging from Zephyrhills

Brighthouse came today, on the day they said they would, on time and with all the equipment and supplies they needed to do the job. One hour later, we have phone service, cable TV and internet, which I am using right now to post this. I could name a number of people who could learn a great deal from Brighthouse Networks. My purpose on this planet is not to spend every day sitting around waiting for people who never show up or call when they say they will.

Debbie drove over Saturday night after work with a load of stuff. The place is really starting to fill up and we don't even have a third of our crap here yet. I'll be calling Restore to pick up another load of left-overs from the previous owners and some of the pieces we've removed that are still in good enough condition that someone can make use of them. That will open up a couple good-sized holes for us to fill back up with bins full of things we have no idea where to put. I'm thinking "landfill" sounds good, but we'll probably try to find new homes for most of it rather than dumpster it.

One thing we had to get done before we moved was to get a hard-wire network connection for Debbie's computer. For poking around on the internet, her laptop's wimpy wireless connection was good enough, but for running a voice and data VPN connection so she can work from home, a 56K network connection just wasn't going to do the trick. I had peeked under the trailer to see just what would be involved in running a wire for its entire width. It was ugly. Seriously ugly. So I picked up a 50-foot fish tape at Lowes, dug out the Ric's Stuff box that has all my network cabling supplies and tackled the job while Debbie was here to be the second pair of hands. It actually went pretty smooth and we were all set in a couple hours. That was the only thing I had on the to-do list for the day, so we made the decision to make a round-trip to Sanford to get our bed.

Our bed doubles as storage, and for the last week or so, we've been kicking stuff from pillar to post here in the trailer that will ultimately be stored under the bed. I made the bed so it breaks down for easy transport, and I thought it all fit in the back of the Durango. I measured how much space we had to make sure. Seven feet. No problem. A queen bed is only like 80 inches, right? A hundred miles later, we discover that either our queen bed is eight feet long, or I need to practice more with a tape measure. So we grabbed a bunch of other stuff instead and headed back to Zephyrhills. We were making pretty good time, until we got to the jackknifed semi blocking all lanes. We were able to get off I-4 and go around the mess without loosing too much time, but it meant that Debbie would have to drive back to Sanford after dark. She finally got home around 9pm after a (thankfully) smooth ride home.

So yea. Not one of our more productive days, but at least at this point, we're about 90% livable. I'm waiting on one more phone call from someone who was supposed to call me Friday and promises on poor ol' Granny's grave that he'll call me today. If I can get his ass out here before Debbie comes to pick me up Thursday night, we can move in and actually be living in a legal residence. How first-world. I'm not holding my breath. But no matter what, we'll be living here by the end of July, even if we have to take our baths in a galvanized tub sitting over a wood fire.

Well, I need to call the Restore people and set up another pickup and set up the truck rental for this weekend. And wait for a phone call, of course. It will be so nice when we get past this.

Quick Post Then On the Road Again

I'm back at the ghetto apartment for less than 48 hours and then it's off again to Michigan for the Vargason Reunion. In some ways, the renovations at the new place are going well. In others, not so great. Anything that we're doing ourselves is fine. The one thing I hired done is, of course, a complete screw-up that has left us with no source of hot water, no oven or stove, no hook-up for the washer,  a scratched-up kitchen floor, and two open gas lines under the kitchen counter. It's the house in Alden all over again: incompetent "friends" who just wanna "help." Not this time. Their last chance to make things right was Tuesday before Debbie showed up to bring me back here. I was left sitting around with my thumb up my ass all day while they played the no-call-no-show game. Well, when you do that as an employee of Burger King, you are fired on the spot. So guess what, Steve and your little Merry Band of Men; You're Fired!

(I gotta get a picture of me in a bad toupee if I'm going to start using that line.)

So as soon as we're back in Florida, we have to get to work fixing the damage left behind. Working with gas lines isn't one of my favorite tasks, but I'll manage it much better than the last bunch of fools, it won't cost me hundreds of dollars, and when I'm finished, the job will be done. Unfortunately, because of the wasted time, we won't get all the renovations complete that we wanted out of the way before we started living there, but we can make do and piece-meal it once we're moved in.

Enough of that. Done and done. Lesson relearned: If Debbie and I can't do it ourselves, it just won't get done.

Here is what we did get accomplished:

Florida room: Lots of water damage out here, plus a wall with a non-functioning pocket door that led to a completely dysfunctional laundry/storage area. Getting the old vinyl flooring in the laundry room up turned out to be pretty easy. The underlayment was molded due to water leaking in under the back door, so rather than try to separate the vinyl floor from it, we tore it all up as one piece and tossed it on the scrap pile, then put down all-new felt and underlayment. We will eventually put down some kind of permanent flooring, but in the meantime, we went with some blue enamel porch-and-floor paint. One distressing discovery: The florescent fixture you can see in the laundry room in the first photo? Some bright boy thought the best way to attach it to the ceiling was by running screws from the outside through the roof. And not just a few screws; over a dozen screws were driven through the roof. The best part is that they were too short and were doing nothing to hold up the light. They're just making holes in the roof. We've been finding this sort of thing, or worse, everywhere we look.

Storage room: Originally, all that was in the storage area were two clothes rods that had been positioned too close to the wall for a hanger to fit, and a shelf over the rod. None of it felt very secure, and when I took everything down I found that it wasn't just a feeling. Any significant weight on either the shelf or the rod would have resulted in a loud crash, most likely late at night. The shelving attached to the door seemed secure, so we left it. Everything else went into the dump pile and was replaced by Closetmaid rod and shelf on one side, and pantry shelving on the other.

Bedroom: There was a narrow wall at the foot of the bed that was only there to provide a place for the 1970's-style folding closet door to attach when closed. We never closed it, and the wall was in the perfect spot that whenever I got out of bed at night, I would come around the end of the bed and smash my right foot and the right side of my face into it. Every. Single. Time. So it's gone. And no, I didn't leave the 2x2 stumps sticking into the room. I was taking intermediate pictures while I was working, then forgot to take one when it was complete. Living around old people must be rubbing off.

Well, off to do last minute packing (to move), packing (for the trip) and cleaning things up.

Power tools and ants

Hey All --- Debbie here. 

Ric is over in Zephyrhills working on things so we can move in the last weekend of this month.   I took last Friday off work and we were over there together working Fri/Sat/Sun.   We got to take down a wall -- finally figured out how to take up the old linoleum/wood floor in the laundry room  --  take down the old paneling in the Florida room and then start putting down new flooring in the laundry room and one place in Florida room back corner where rain damaged/rotted.   I got to use the power tool to take out screws from the old shelving and the old paneling.   (And I didn't hurt myself!  LOL)   The big surprise was when I was part way done with taking down the old paneling in the Florida room under the fake vinyl windows.   I started to take out one screw and a bunch of ants started running all over the place.   I stopped and just yelled ANTS ANTS ANTS! to Ric.   Of course we did not have any type of bug spray yet.    Ric told me to stop hitting them and they should go back to their nest until I could make an emergency run to get some ant spray.   They finally calmed down after I stopped hitting the wall with my shoe!    We found them in a couple places in the wall under the windows -- nestled in the foam or between the foam and the paneling.   Glad they all died with the ant spray!   The first bunch I kinda went overboard with the spraying and Ric and I ended up inhaling the fumes for most of the rest of the day.   Ric is busy while I'm gone with cleaning and figuring out how to reseal things so this does not happen again. 

Well -- clothes are ready to fold and get packed again to head over to Z Hills tomorrow after work -- I have the 4th and 5th off since I'm working Sat.