So We've Been a Little Busy....

We didn't fall off the earth or anything; it's just been a little hectic around here with multiple projects going all at once, keeping me off the internet and outside mostly grubbing in the dirt.

Working on the neighbor's place. He's using a walker now and fell at least twice on the uneven patio blocks last winter. I decided to surprise him by leveling everything up and tying it all in to our blocks.

The ground goes every which way; trying to make everything match up.

Locking everything in around the neighbor's shed with concrete.

The patio blocks for the last four rows of blocks on our neighbor's side all stacked and waiting for me to get to it.

In addition to that, we finally got our siding put on and new, shiny white skirting. It really makes the trailer look like someplace someone would want to live.

Starting on the south side. The stuff goes up quick and as much as I dislike vinyl siding, I guess it looks pretty good.

Tricky part in the back; one big reason we hired this done.

The shed had to be rolled out then rolled back into place. It sounded hard, but actually went pretty smoothly.

We took a short break from projects over the weekend to pick up my niece and her husband at the Tampa airport, hang with them Friday evening, then drop them off Saturday at the port for their five-day cruise. It took all our collective willpower to not get on the ship with them.

Courtney and Joe

Getting to the port Saturday morning was a bit of an adventure. We'd been there before and we had found it simply by following signs; no AAA Triptik, no GPS, nothing. And no problem; we drove right up, parked, got on the ship. Easy. This time, however, was a problem. First, we were coming in from the hotel we spent Friday night at instead of I-4, so we picked up a AAA Triptik. Big mistake. The Triptik got us off the expressway one exit too early, but sometimes that turns out better. Not this time. The big issue was a little thing called Comic Con that was happening at the convention center. Our Triptik took us right past the front door. You would think people who do such things for a living would be aware of a major event in their city, but I guess that's expecting too much. But we got through that part without too much damage other than taking over half an hour to drive less than a mile. Then the Triptik just went off the rails. We never could find the turn it wanted us to make. After another wasted half hour circling around trying to find a non-existent road, we pulled out the GPS. And then another problem: We had no address, and the Port of Tampa wasn't pre-programmed in. Luckily, one of our passengers was able to dig up an address on their smart phone and off we went. The GPS took us down some fairly weird places, but we ended up right where we needed to be. Score one for the crazy lady in the box.

After we dropped off the lucky stiffs who were going on the cruise, we headed back out following our GPS. We made one turn and we knew exactly where we were from our last trip down. There was zero Comic Con traffic and we were on I-4 and headed home in a matter of minutes. We've been using AAA Triptiks for decades and have never had an issue with them before. I have no idea why we got so screwed up, but lesson learned. From now on, we don't leave the driveway without a physical address to plug into the GPS which will be the primary direction-giver with the Triptiks as a backup.

Oh, and because we didn't already have enough going on, I decided that while I was loading up scrap metal into the Durango, I would go ahead and ditch the old patio swing and the gazebo that were left here by our predecessors. The swing had no cushion and a new one would have cost over a hundred dollars. We found a swing for $150 at Lowes that we really liked, so we'll pick that up later this week after some of the other projects are done. The gazebo frame was in pretty bad shape and wasn't properly anchored, but the canvas was in good shape. We thought we could get a few years out of it, until a tree limb took out one side a couple weeks ago. So down that came today. I like the result; it really opens up a space that looked kinda junky. We'll plop the new swing out there along with a couple big planters full of plants and make it all purty.

OK, so still a little trashy. And all those patio blocks look like work.

Well, it looks like the siding guys are wrapping up for the day, so I should make sure they're all set.

And yes, the awnings now look even more hideous than before. We'll get to those after the rainy season.

Revisiting Old Themes

One of the things about having a blog that has been running more-or-less constantly for over nine years is that going back through the archives, I can see where I get stuck on a theme for a while, then drop it and get onto some other track for a while, lose interest, rinse and repeat. Some subjects get revisited from time to time, like education, which I never seem to get tired of bashing endlessly. If anyone pays attention to our reading list over there on the right, you would notice that I have been on that kick again, thanks to the Underground Grammarian. It's always fertile ground; the root of so many of our other problems. It's the "gift" that keeps on giving.

Anyway, that's not the theme I'm revisiting. Instead, evolution, a theme from way back in the dark ages, resurfaced in a completely unexpected place. In July, 2005, I finally came out publicly with something I had figured out several years earlier: the church denomination I had belonged to for nearly all my life was just flat out wrong. I went on for over a year about how evolutionary theory was right and young-earth creationism was not. Then I just stopped because, a) I got bored with it like I do with everything else; b) anything that could possibly be said on the subject has already been said (see here and here); and c) if logical arguments worked, no one would play Powerball, let alone drive the jackpot up to half a billion dollars twice in three months.

Then John Michael Greer had to go and write three brilliant posts as part of a larger discussion on the decline of the American empire:

The Quest for a Common Language
On the Far Side of Progress
Not Written in the Stars

If you read those and feel like you're jumping into the middle of a conversation, you are. JMG's current series started on February 15, 2012 with his post, The Nature of Empire. There's a mere 75 posts in the series running in the 2,000- to 2,500-word range, if you wish to get the full picture. (Seriously, if you have the time, it's worth doing.) Or you can wait for the book to come out. JMG's blog is his first rough draft of what becomes his published books. Or you can just read those three posts and live with the feeling that you're missing something. Or go play Candy Crush Saga.

The point is that those three posts have prodded me to look around at some old web sites and do some thinking about things I haven't thought about in a long time. I'm not sure that they will result in posts (other than this one) given that I doubt I could ever come close to JMG's level of writing, but don't be surprised if something crops up from time to time.

Other than that, nothing to really report. We're both down with some sort of summer crud that is stealing sleep and sapping energy. I was going to bang out some landscaping today, but instead ended up doing inside work and reading more books on how bad our schools suck. Maybe I'll get something accomplished tomorrow, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

Little Anniversary Trip

We decided to take a break from all things RV park and spend a few days over on the Gulf coast at Madeira Beach:

Not much to report other than three days of sitting by the pool, walking the beach, playing in the waves and catching up on a truck-load of reading.

Now it's back to reality: lawn needs mowing, gardens need weeding, grass needs trimming....

Ugh.

More Yard Work

The rain has slacked off a bit, so I was able to get the rest of our first load of 100 patio blocks laid:

The siding guys are supposed to be here next week sometime, so that will put an end to my patio block laying until they get done. Just as well; messing with this has meant neglecting everything else for the last few weeks. Them being in my way will give me a chance to do some cleaning on other areas that really need it.

Well, dinner ain't gonna make itself.

Rain, Rain, Rain

I know this is the wet season and all, but this is getting silly. Normally, the mornings are dry and the rain comes sometime in the afternoon when I'm ready to quit playing in the dirt anyway. But the last couple of days, the rain has been starting at 9am, trapping me indoors. I had hoped to have the patio under the clothesline done by now. This is the most current photo I have of the work so far. I managed to get a bit more done on Monday, but I every time I get the camera out, it starts raining again. Anyway, here is the small bit of progress from last week:

I was able to complete the partial rows, but that only puts me at a bit less than half done. I'll need another load of blocks to finish it. (A hundred patio blocks sounds like a lot until you start throwing them on the ground.) After I bought the last load, I found out the place I get them from has a different way of selling them that will save me about 15¢ a block. That doesn't sound like much, but by the time I'm finished with everything, I'll have close to 500 patio blocks in neat little rows.

Because it has been so wet, we've had a bumper crop of mushrooms. This was next to the herb garden when we got up Sunday morning:

 Everywhere these pop up, the ground keeps sinking, so I'm assuming the 'shrooms are busy feeding on the roots of trees that were cut down at some point.

Other than that, not much to report other than it's still raining. On the plus side, at least we have time to plow through all the books we checked out at the library last week. We were a little off our annual pace of book consumption, so a few rainy days will help us get back on track.

Unproductive Week

I'm not sure what happened this week, but I didn't seem to get much of anything done. I had one thing after another come up, and it's raining even more than usual. Then we took a wee mini vacation and stocked up on books, so I have the added distraction of a to-be-read pile that we have to take back to the library in a couple weeks. So no real progress and thus, no pictures as the only sign I'm working at all is a pile of wet dirt. I'm not sure what our plans are for tomorrow, but I doubt it will be out scratching in the mud.

We did manage to get a quote for siding on the outside of the trailer. We decided that it's a go, and I'll be giving them the green light first thing Monday morning. There is a good amount of work already queued up in front of us, so it won't be anytime real quick, but I'm hoping the new skin will be on by the end of August.

I did stumble onto a couple tidbits while stuck inside. The first is a new world record for a domino spiral:


Oh, and the little thing about Detroit declaring the largest municipal bankruptcy in history. Which should be absolutely no surprise to anyone. This has been building since the 1970's. We'll all be Detroit sooner or later, so pay attention.

Well, probably ought to shuffle off to bed.

Education

If you want to know why our schools are hopeless, look no further than the Underground Grammarian. You can read his newsletters, published from 1977 through 1991, and a few of his booklets and essays for free at the sight. His four published books are readily available at AbeBooks for cheap: I just scored the lot for less than $15 delivered to my door. If you can't find the time to read anything else, at the very least, take a few minutes and read his essay, What to Do till the Undertaker Comes. There really isn't anything I can say that he doesn't say better.

On a completely different topic: Russia is not a place that has ever been on my list of places I'd like to live. Visit, absolutely. But even with Communism nothing but a distant memory, I still don't think I would enjoy living in a country where the president can set aside the constitution at will, military tactics are used on the citizenry, the rule of law is, at best, capriciously applied and then only to the weak and politically disenfranchised, where basic government functions are turned over to for-profit corporations who operate with no oversight or accountability, etc. I mean, what must it be like to live in such a joke of a democracy?

Ahem.

Anyway, on the plus side, Russia doesn't have Political Correctness. Here we have a Tampax commercial, Russian-style:



Now I want you to imagine the response if that commercial were to air on American television.

Sprucin' Up Langley Lane

We've had a solid 36 hours without rain, so I ran outside and worked on my tan:

I ran out of umph yesterday and had to finish up today. I used to be able to walk behind a mower for 12 hours straight regardless of the heat, but now it's more like four or five. But I got all the mowing and trimming done by around noon today. Doesn't look half-bad if I do say so myself:

The park is supposed to be mowing and trimming everything but our lot and the lady's next door, but as they've only made it down Langley Lane three times this summer with the mower and have yet to make a showing with the trimmer, I'm doing our's, the lady's next door, and the front of the other two lots. I have no desire to live in squalor, so I take care of what I have to look at when we sit on the front porch.

When we bought this place, there wasn't anything but bare dirt between us and the fence. We didn't plant anything, and in fact we plan on making the whole area into planting beds or patio. But Florida seems to have other plans:

At least it helps keep the dust down a little bit. Some of it is grass, but most of it is these tiny little trees. I have no idea what they grow up into, but anywhere in the park where there is deep shade, these things grow instead of grass. The nice part is that I only need to mow this every other time that I mow the rest of the lot.

All of our herbs are taking the summer heat in stride except the parsley. The tomato plant is getting all leggy as well. Now that all our black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars seem to be in their chrysalises, I'll cut all the parsley back to the ground. Parsley, like other carrots, is a biannual, meaning it comes back after the winter freeze and puts on seed. I have no idea how that plays out in a place without real winter. I won't dig up the roots just in case it comes back in the fall, but even if it does, I have no clue if it will set seed or just be parsley again. The tomato had a few blossoms on it, so I'll give it until the end of this week to set tomatoes. If I don't see anything, that goes bu-bye as well. Here's how it all looks this week:

Today, I made a couple runs down to the local cement place and picked up 100 patio blocks. They will go under the clothesline in a (probably vain) attempt at keeping mud from splattering up on our clothes when Mama Gia decides our laundry is in need of a second rinse. I don't mind having our stuff rinsed in rainwater, but I can do without the gritty feeling of sand in our towels. I've already done some of the prep work, so it should go fast. As always, I'll post photos when there is something to see.

Well, I need to get dinner started. Later.

And, "The Art of Asking"

While I'm posting random TED talks, here is one from alt-rocker Amanda Palmer:


Anyone who has plans to make a living as a writer, musician, photographer, etc., you need to watch this and then ask yourself just how am I going to be paid and by whom? The old business models are completely broken, especially for someone just getting started.

"Waiter, there's a gene in my soup!"

Someone making sense about genetically modified food crops. The comments go off the rails, just as you would expect.

Simon and Garfunkel Garden Update

I realized this morning that I haven't posted a recent picture of our Simon and Garfunkel herb garden:

Everything is thriving except the parsley and the tomato plant. Parsley may end up being an annual as the heat seems to be thoroughly baking it. Parsley worms (what they call the caterpillars for Black Swallowtail butterflies around here) are also munching it pretty heavily. I can live with that. We don't use parsley that much and we like having the butterflies hanging out around the deck. I'll just let this batch do whatever it's going to do over the summer, then replace it come October. I want to switch over to just the flat-leaf variety in any case and do some relocating. The tomato plant is also on its last legs. I'm leaving it in for now as there are still some scattered blossoms on it, but I'm afraid we've seen the last of the tomatoes until fall. By then I hope to have a better place for tomato plants than crowding up the herb garden.

I called about getting some siding on the place back on Monday, but I haven't heard anything back from them. I need to stay off the phone until afternoon (some blah-blah thing about the parents), but as soon as that is over, I'll be touching base with them again. I'd like to get that done as soon as we can make it happen so I can at least call the outside of the trailer "done". That will free me up to do landscaping over the fall and winter months, then move back indoors next summer.

We had a pretty decent little storm blast through here last night. There are limbs all over the back half of our lot that need cleaning up and I need to check the roof. I didn't hear anything that sounded big enough to do damage smack into us, but it never hurts to take a quick peek. The water was just in time to keep me from having to drag the hoses out. With nothing but sand, everything starts looking wilted if it doesn't rain for two or three days. I keep adding stuff to the beds, but it will take years to get enough material dug in to make any real difference.

I need to wrap this thing; getting close to time for that blah-blah-parent thing I mentioned.

Woo Hoo!!!!

Western civilization is saved!!!

In other important news, it's hot and humid in Florida. Who knew. All it takes to be drenched in sweat is walking out on the front porch. I'm working on getting out earlier in the morning to do the yard work, then spending the afternoon hiding indoors.

We made some progress yesterday on the interior work. There is still a lot of small bits here and there, but all the big stuff is on the walls. I need to find someone with a truck to haul leftovers back to Home Depot. The guy I used last time is out of town. I could rent the Home Depot truck, but that would take big chunk of the returns. Regardless, whatever money we end up with will immediately be used to buy a load of patio blocks for under the clothesline, and maybe the beginnings of a new planting bed. Now that all the snowbirds have flown north, I should be able to find plenty of seconds at the concrete place.

A couple quick shots of how things stand:

We still need to piece in around the windows and back door, and I can't do anything behind the hot water heater until all the plumbing gets relocated. The other "hole" next to the TV will be a large, built-in cabinet with book shelves facing the living area, storage facing the laundry area to the rear of the Florida room, and a place to stash all the computer bits and pieces to get them out of the way. The entire room will get a 90° twist with the TV going on the outside wall and the couch going against the trailer. Once the cabinet is built, the giant, hulking bookcase that doesn't fit anywhere goes on Craigslist. That will basically double the space in the Florida room and make it much easier to navigate. Eventually, the TV will end up hanging on the wall, but for now, it will continue to sit on its current piece of furniture. I may shove some furniture around at some point this week just to try things out.

Once the last of the plywood is up, I'm calling it quits for a while on the interior. We need to redo the water and waste lines on the inside and finish up a number of outside projects first, then we'll finish up with drywall, trim, paint, etc. There are some tricky bits I need to mull over thanks to the fact the the outside walls change thickness several times which will make the drywall and finish work a nightmare. The cabinet/bookshelf will disguise one of those transitions, but I still need to deal with the slider, windows and back door areas. I have a basic idea what I'm going to do, but I need to stare at it a while to get all the details set in my head. Setting patio blocks and making planting beds is something that will give me plenty of "mull time."

Meanwhile, our "guy" is supposed to call me to set up a time to come out and talk to us about getting our siding on the trailer. The park requires us to get that done in a year; technically it's been over a year since we bought it, but less than a year since we officially moved in. No one has come down here and jumped on us yet, probably because the new management is still settling in and cleaning up the debris left by the previous administration. And because we are literally in the furthest back corner of the park; most people that have lived here for years have no idea we even exist. In any case, with some luck, our place should have a pretty new skin on the outside in a few weeks.

As usual, I'll toss some pictures up here once things start to happen.

We're Ba-ack

Queue creepy little girl (and oddly, Coach):


Anyway, we made a fast dash up to Michigan for Debbie's nephew's graduation open house. Even though we were never within a hundred miles of the place, Atlanta managed to screw us up coming and going. On the way out, a storm in Atlanta held up our pilot for two hours, then on the way back, a storm in Atlanta held up our plane for an hour. I suppose it beats driving. Barely.

The open house went great, weather was nice, lots of people showed up, enough food to feed 10,000, etc. The only problem was how little time we had. On Friday, we flew into Detroit, then spent the next 6 hours or so on the road up to Alpena. Open house was Saturday, then driving back down as far as Birch Run on Sunday. We had Monday free, so we spent most of that driving out to the US/Canadian border to visit one of Debbie's nieces who couldn't make it to the open house. We made a new friend while we were there:

Then Tuesday, we started for Detroit around 3pm and got back here to the trailer at 1am Wednesday. We slept late Wednesday, then worked around the house catching up on all the stuff that didn't get done while we were gone. I swear the grass grew two feet in the five days we were away. Gotta love Florida.

We did something (sort of) new on Wednesday. We'd gone to the local Moose Lodge a couple times with some of the people here in the park. Well, I gave in and paid for a membership. I'm now an official member in good standing of the Loyal Order of Moose, Lodge 2276. (I initially typo'ed that as the Loyal Odor of Moose....) Wednesday was the first time I was able to flash a card with my name on it. I did a short orientation about some of the things Moose International does, but I'm less clear on what exactly the local lodge does other than eat and drink six nights a week. So Tuesday I'll head up there for the weekly meeting and see what's what.

And that's about it. I should be finishing up the last bits on the inside of the Florida room over the weekend, then on Monday, we start looking into getting some siding on the outside of the place. Pictures when there is visible progress.

"Wonder, wonder, who..."

With apologies to The Monotones:



It's now been two weeks, and still no word on who in Zephyrhills won $600 million. Everyone seems to have a theory, but people I know seem to fall into two camps. The first groups says that $600 mil is a serious bunch of money and the winner is still in the process of putting together a legal/financial team. Maybe. That would be showing a very high level of intelligence, and this is Florida. I have a hard time imagining it. I lean more towards the second group: the winning ticket was purchased by one of the same morons who wander into the tax office where I work after having lost their W-2's, Social Security cards, drivers license, and pretty much everything that I would need to do their taxes, then get all pissed off when I can't do it. In other words, the second largest jackpot in history will never be claimed because the ticket is at the bottom of a landfill wrapped inside an empty Doritos bag.

[Because the universe has a sense of humor, the holder of the ticket came forward a few hours after I posted this. So:

]

Meanwhile, the deliberate targeting of conservative political non-profits by the IRS looks to be a much bigger deal than those in charge are trying to convince us that it is. I like one comment posted over at Dr. Jerry Pournelle's site: "Liberal politics, statism, the primacy of the regulatory state: it’s just the water these people swim in." Of course a government worker who owes everything he is to those who look favorably on an ever-expanding federal government would view anyone holding an opposing opinion as the enemy. It looks to be an interesting summer.

I always get a chuckle at any headline that proclaims to know the "real" reason for something that involves millions of people making decisions independently of one another. Paging Dr. Rorschach. But I had to laugh out loud while reading The Real Reason Millennials Don't Buy Cars and Homes. Umm, lessee: They're flat broke, unemployed and are on average carrying $27,000 in student debt. That if they somehow manage to find a job, every penny left after taxes will be going to pay said debt. That a fair-sized chunk of them are still in college or even still in high school. (Millennials are currently 16 to 34 years old.) So after treading through the painfully obvious, the author tries his hand at comedy:

Once millennials find their financial footing, however, they might just turn into materialistic spenders who love cars and other costly things — just like their parents.

“Millennials are not going to buy cars? That’s hogwash,” Dorsey said at the Ford panel. “You’re going to see those big purchases starting to happen but they’re just not there yet.” Maybe living with their parents and saving money is just what millennials need to do to become the powerhouse purchasers of the future.

Why will they do this? 'Cause that's what the Myth of Progress says they must do, that's why!! (giggle, snert)

And I'll wrap up with yet more evidence that Patrick Stewart is made of awesome:

The Rains Arrive

June 1st is the official start of the wet/hurricane season here in central Florida. It blew in with a vengeance today. The sky started clouding up around five in the afternoon and by 6:30pm, it was full-on monsooning and kept at it for over five hours. At least I won't need to worry about watering plants for a while.

Meanwhile, I've been making steady if slow progress on the Florida room. The front two-thirds is nearly ready for the final layer of plywood/insulation prior to hanging drywall. All that's left to do is the final caulking and taping to seal everything up:

The rest of the Florida room will involve cutting fewer pieces of foam, but they will all be much more of a pain to install. I'm figuring another week to get that ready for its final layer. After that, we will be returning our focus to the outside of the trailer. We have to get the wooden parts of the porch cleaned and treated, and we need to get "the guys" back out here to hang siding on everything. After that, we'll likely take a break from the big projects and get back into building planting beds.

We had a visitor while we were eating lunch on the porch around the middle of the week:

The picture sucks mostly due to being taken with the zoom at 400 mm, hand-held, then cropped down to around 600K pixels. He was hiding himself and his mate from a hawk, possibly a red-shouldered hawk or Coopers hawk. We didn't get a good look at it, but we've seen both hanging around in the woods next to our place, taking out other birds. That's one of the primary reasons I haven't bothered with a bird feeder; it would end up being a hawk feeder.

Well, off to bed.

Towel Day

I meant to do this first, then the other of today's posts second so it would be on top for a while. Maybe Blogger will let me do that. Probably not, but you never know. If this is on top, then be sure to scroll down a bit.

Anyway, today is Towel Day!! So wherever you're going today, don't forget to take your towel.

Other miscellaneous news items:

It's near the end of May, so that means it's time for the annual Worst Hurricane Season Evaaaaaar! full-blown, global-warming, we're-all-gonna-die panicky news story. Depending on how you define "worst", there are numerous contenders for the worst hurricane to hit the United States. If you measure them by cost, then the most current hurricanes are indeed the worst in our nation's history. Five seconds of thought will tell you why that has nothing to do with global warming. If you are looking at wind speed at landfall (something which would be linked to global warming), then all the worst storms are in the past, with the most recent Cat 5 being Andrew back in 1992. But nothing sells like panic, and so panic is what we get.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure of the United States continues to deteriorate with yet-another bridge collapse. Engineers may still be trying to determine the cause for the collapse, but anyone who routinely drives on the freeway already has a pretty good idea. But never fear; the bunny inspectors are safe. See John Michael Greer for details.

Last but not least, another writer comes out and says what is becoming painfully obvious: College is yet-another scam to separate the middle-class from whatever wealth they may have left. I know mine has been a monumental waste of money, but at least I enjoyed the process. I see people every single day hating every minute, racking up massive debt, and all for a degree that will at best get them a part-time job at Starbucks that won't even make the student loan payment.

And on that cheerful note, I need to scrape off a few layers of dried sweat and get ready for dinner with Debbie and a second cousin twice removed. Or maybe a third cousin once removed. First cousin thrice removed? Dunno. A relative. Leave it at that.

In Memoriam

Tony Boris: February 9, 1944 to May 20, 1992

Leo Boris: April 11, 1938 to May 25, 1992

It's hard to believe it has been over 20 years; it still seems like yesterday. The pictures of Dad and Uncle Leo are of them doing what they always loved to do more than anything else: Dancing with all the pretty girls.

First Fruits

Not technically the very first, but Debbie grabbed and ate the first one before I had a chance to get the camera:

Fresh from the garden and still warm from the sun.

Turns out that tomatoes are difficult to photograph. At least with our camera. The stupid thing refused to focus for some reason. Out of a dozen shots, this was the best of the lot. It worked fine the last time we had it out, so I likely need to take an hour or so and check every button, knob, switch and menu setting to see what the deal is. In any case, we have our first-ever home-grown tomato for Debbie to munch on.

When I'm not pouring gallons of water on our tomato plant in an attempt to keep it alive, I've been working on the insulation in the Florida room. I had to pull out the old, moldy, insect-infested open cell foam, clean up the black mold, seal up the hundred-and-one places I could just look outside through the wall, and remove most of the electrical wiring. But it's all in and already making a big different. I'll be putting in some wood so I have something to hang drywall from, then adding another inch-and-a-half of polyisocyanurate in the wall cavities. That will give me R-14 walls. Then some plywood in key spots to increase the odds that the place won't fall over in a wind storm, level up the rest of the wall with still more polyiso, then the fun stuff: Drywall. Ugh. Might hire that done....

Here is what it looks like so far:

The worst part was working around the hot water heater. I told the installers to leave me some room, but they were a bunch of skinny kids. I should have specified that I needed old, fat guy room. It took a lot of gruntin', sweatin' and cussin' to get that foam back there.

Oh, and if you wonder what happened, I've already deleted my Facebook account. It took about a week for me to remember all the reasons why I got off the worthless thing in the first place. The kicker was when it wouldn't let me log on until I retracted friend requests that had been out there "too long". I know this may come as a shock to a monomaniacal douche-nozzle like Mark Zuckerberg, but not everyone lives on Facebook 24/7. It could take two or even (gasp!) three days for someone to acknowledge a friend request.

In any case, I'm done with it. Again. Movin' on.

And those of us that are considered outcasts in our park have formed ourselves a little club. This should be fun. Most of what will be at that site will only make sense to the half-dozen year-rounders that live in the Evil Corner, but feel free to take a look.

We made a quick trip over to Epcot today to trade in our old-school paper-with-mag-strip annual passes for the ultra-modern, high-tech plastic-with-proximity-chip cards. Now we can get in line with the cool kids. It was about 90° when we got to the park, so after a couple trips through the single-rider line on Test Track: Tronitized Version, we decided we were done and headed for home. Now its nap time.

...and the Drama Continues

I think I started something. It needed to be started. The kerfuffle now involves about a dozen of us back here in the Sweetwater Evil Corner (SEC). Dale continues to pile lie on top of lie trying to cover his ass. The SEC Club had a meeting this morning going through e-mails and such to much hilarity. Good times.

We had our own bit of adventure yesterday trying to get building materials from Home Depot to our house. When we pulled into to parking lot, the rental truck was there. Being a Sunday, there was a pretty good chance that it wouldn't be, so we did a little happy dance, ran into the store and proceeded to buy $550 of building materials, none of which would fit in my stupid soccer-mom "SUV". When I went to rent the truck, I was informed that the truck was broke down. Crap. I asked about the van, which was also in the lot when we got there. Someone had just rented it and wasn't going to be back for at least 4 hours. Double crap. We had some other running to do, so we took what we could with us and left the rest at the store as a will-call. After we were done with our other running, we swung back by on the off-chance that the van had been returned early. Not only was the van not back, but the "broken-down" truck had been rented out. WTF?!?!?

So we got back here to the trailer and called up a fellow member of the SEC Club to see if he had time to run me up there in his truck so I could get my stuff home before Home Depot closed. He did, so we did, then a couple other SEC'ers came back and helped to unload everything. So it all worked out and now I have everything I need to get the Florida room ready for drywall. Today I had to take a break from inside work to mow the lawn around our place and the neighbors, but I should still be able to make some major progress over the next week.

That's it. Once I've done something visible, I'll post a couple pictures.

Tried to Meet the New Park Manager...

We've been without a park manager since the last one disposed of her replacement, then retired and left the state on vacation. Carefree found someone to take over and they showed up sometime this week. One of our neighbors went up to the office to say, "Hi," and found out that there was a meet-and-greet with free food yesterday at 4:30. The person, lets just call him "Dale" for now, who was supposed to tell us about it had failed to, which is part of a pattern. See, we live in the "evil corner" of Sweetwater RV Park, according to Dale, so we didn't think much about not being invited. As we had been invited by the park manager herself, we went anyway. Well, this is what Dale posted on the park's Facebook page this morning:

81 carefree bingo players from Zephyrhills welcome our new manager at bingo night May 9th,2013. Despite an additional 14 non players (95 total) there was still plenty of food and drink. We welcome Kate Pierce to our park.

First of all, only about five of the bingo players were from any of the three Carefree parks (notice the capitalization, Dale), of which Sweetwater is one. Everyone else comes in from all over the county just to play bingo. They pay, so that's not a problem, but why would the park manager of Sweetwater want to meet a bunch of bingo players from outside the park? And why are the "14 non players" (guess they haven't invented the hyphen yet where you're from, eh Dale?), every last one of whom was actually from Sweetwater, being treated like a gang of gate-crashers when we paid for the damn food?

Here is my response on FB. I'm sure by the time you read this, Dale will have deleted it:

Sorry we crashed your little private bingo party, Dale. We thought as it was a meet-and-greet for Sweetwater's new park manager that it would be nice if there were at least a few people that, ya know, lived in the park? That and the insignificant fact that Kate herself invited us. But if we were soooooo much of a problem for you and your little bingo clique, I guess you can take it up with Kate.

If all this sounds like middle-school drama, you're not far off. Some people seem to regress mentally and emotionally as they age. Good times.

Northern Michigan Time Lapse

Spock v. Spock

For any nerds out there:


Neither of us have felt well this week, so it's been a bit slow around here. Debbie is at the doctor today, and I'm supposed to be running electrical in the Florida room. Instead, I'm watching internet videos....

Yep

Living in Florida, you deal with this multiple times every day:

Men are generally stubborn and it only gets worse with age.

Edited to add:

Updated Pics

I haven't posted a picture of our Simon and Garfunkel herb garden (plus tomato plant) in a while:

Looks good except I planted waaaay too much parsley.

So far, everything is doing well in the Florida climate. Summer may be a different story.

And a couple pics of the inside of the Florida room, which still looks like a construction site:

Finishing up on the inside so we have something to hang drywall from.

Cutting and fitting all those little bits of wood is a real pain; it takes forever and doesn't look like you've accomplished anything. But it's finally done. I still need to sort the electrical out; it should only take a day, but I'm sure there will be surprises. Big, ugly, nasty surprises.

We'll get settled some day. Maybe.

From the if-there-is-any-doubt-the-universe-has-a-sick-sense-of-humor department: Just because I was whinging about how dry it has been here, it has been raining pretty much since I posted that. Not a bad thing for the garden, but I need to mow the lawn again after just mowing it on Sunday. I'll be happy when there are more beds and less lawn.

Another Week Slips By

I'm not sure what we did last week. My entire to-do list is still sitting here with all the same stuff on it. I spent some of the week at work digging out from the mess of tax season. There is a ton of work to do, and I could work pretty much as many hours as I want to, but I think the boss-man doesn't want to pay me to do it. When I left Friday, he just said he would "call me and let me know." I hope he doesn't think I'm just going to be sitting here in my office clothes waiting by the phone five days a week for him to call and tell me someone wants a tax return done. (I've already had several such calls since the 15th. Sorry dude; I have a life.) He mentioned something to me about working for a percentage of the returns I do in the off-season. Sounds good as long as when I'm there, he isn't expecting me to stick around all day doing his filing and dealing with pissed-off customers. Anyway; it will probably all come to a big nothing like most other things. Everyone is very excited to have you work for them. Their enthusiasm noticeably wanes when you make it clear you expect to get paid. Which would be fine; I could use the time to keep working on the Money Pit we live in.

I did manage to get all the stud work scabbed in on Thursday. At this point, there isn't anything that needs to be done before the siding goes up. Other than hitting the Lotto so we can pay for it; that whole people-expect-to-be-paid-for-the-work-they-do thing again. So it's only financial roadblocks at this point rather than logistical roadblocks. And our bathroom carpet sporting a permanent wet spot for the last three or four days probably isn't going to help rid us of that financial roadblock. The bright spot is that I've been looking for an excuse to rip the carpet out of the bathroom since we moved here. I hate carpet in a bathroom. That has to be the most disgusting thing a person can do in a house. Understand, I lived for several years with a composting toilet; I know disgusting. That isn't even in the same ballpark as carpet on a bathroom floor. So first thing tomorrow, out goes the carpet so I can a) find where the water is coming from and b) stop getting sick to my stomach every time I walk in there.

I should probably take some photos of the planting bed out front. The herbs all seem to be doing well so far. We'll see how much Florida heat it takes to burn them down to the ground. It ain't helping that we're in the middle of a Phase III Extreme Water Shortage. So far, the "wet" season has produced a single rain storm while the temps are spiking up to 90 every day. We're only allowed to water with the hose on Friday's before 8am or after 6pm. Other days, we have to use a watering can, which takes over an hour. We added a single tomato plant last weekend to see if I can make fresh tomatoes for Debbie. It's still alive and has a half-dozen-plus green tomatoes hanging on it. We'll see if they ripen up, if animals/bugs will leave 'em alone, if they taste like something other than cardboard, etc.  If I can get some yard work done this summer, we may try tomatoes again at a somewhat larger scale in the fall.

Well, Debbie wants to go for a bike ride now that the heat's died down a bit.

Nailed It Again

Scott Meyer has been on a roll lately:

Still trying to catch up from tax season. I've been either on the road or sitting in various waiting rooms all last week. Except when I was working; I got more hours last week than I did for the last week of tax season. As of right now, our bikes are fixed, our car is fixed, I've been lab'ed and doctor'ed until I look like a pin cushion and our bank account wiped out. Today was the first time in over a week when I didn't have an alarm set for some ungodly butt-crack-of-dawn time. I celebrated by sleeping for more than twelve hours.

Today is more catch-up: planting Debbie's poor tomato plant that's still in its plastic pot, mowing the grass, trimming, raking (if it will stop raining long enough to accomplish any of those), and continuing to pick away at getting all the stud work done in the Florida room so we're ready for siding. If I can slow down my work schedule, I may actually start feeling somewhat caught up sometime next week. Assuming nothing else breaks or goes sideways either here or at work.

And I'm off to make bread.

Paolo Soleri, RIP

Paolo died on April 9th at the age of 93. He was the designer of Arcosanti, where we lived for a year after completing the workshop program. While we were there, Paolo could still be occasionally seen on the end of a shovel, but a while back, we heard that he had been ill and had stopped all involvement with the project to "focus on his writing." I assumed then that his passing couldn't be far off. I couldn't imagine Paolo hanging around for any length of time as a semi-invalid.

We had the chance to talk to Paolo several times during our stay at Arcosanti, but we can't really say that we knew him or much about him. I'm not sure anyone really did outside of a very small circle. But I can say that he was certainly a unique human being with a gift for pissing people off. I haven't met many people I would label "genius"; Paolo was certainly one of them.

I just went to Amazon to see if I could scare up a copy of his book, Arcology: The City in the Image of Man. No new copies available, but a used one in paperback is a mere $438.19. That didn't take long. I hope they do a reprint of the hardcover edition (the paperback was crap and fell apart the first time you opened the cover). I wanted to get a copy while we were at Arcosanti and never got a round tuit. It would be nice to have a copy, but not for the price of a used car.

Paolo was buried next to his wife on the Arcosanti property. I remember one of the times Debbie and I were wandering around when we were there for the workshop. We had crossed the Agua Fria River and climbed to the top of the mesa next to the one Arcosanti is built on, when we came across a small, fenced-in area with a padlocked gate. Inside was a bench and a badly-neglected garden. Everything was long dead other than native pioneer weeds that had reclaimed the spot. By then we had gotten used to stumbling across odd bits that someone had invested time and money into only to have it abandoned to the elements. We found out later that it was Paolo's wife's grave, the closest thing to a sacred site at a militantly atheist project. I assume it was spruced up a bit for Paolo's arrival. Or possibly not; he was never had much use for formalities.

One of the reoccurring conversations we had as residents of Arcosanti (and something I was asked about on every site tour I gave), was if the project would survive the death of its creator. On paper at least, there should be no problem. Paolo has not had an active role in Arcosanti or the Cosanti Foundation that supports it for many years. The day-to-day operation has been run entirely by others, and there is no logical reason for there to be the slightest hiccup with Paolo's passing. And yet I can't help but wonder if interest will wane in continuing to build out the site, with what is already there becoming a Monument to a Visionary, preserved in amber like Taliesin West. I may not have known Paolo all that well, but I'm pretty sure he would have hated the very idea.

I will close with this: Our lives were certainly made richer by Paolo's little experiment out in the central highlands of Arizona. In fact, Arcosanti probably saved our marriage. Thanks, ol' man, and Godspeed.

Latest Work

The latest bits we've sunk into the money pit:

We moved the slider that was originally between the trailer and the Florida room onto the front of the Florida room. The original door didn't fit right and the screens and plastic "windows" were in pretty bad shape. In other words, the whole thing was pretty much for show and didn't keep out wind, rain, bugs, stray cats....

The Beast. The $4,500 Beast. The good news is that we'll make that back in no time with all the money we'll save having a new, more-efficient AC. The salesman said it, so it must be true.

The Florida room more or less ready for siding and some new skirting. Maybe in May or June.

Only four days left to tax season. I think I'll take a couple days after April 15th to just sleep.

Pizza!!

In my role as kitchen goddess, I made a pizza for dinner:

The crust has been pre-baked for about 20 minutes with a good slathering of butter and garlic. Then sauce, a couple pounds of various meats (pepperoni, sausage, ham and bacon), all topped off with a pound of mozzarella cheese. Heart-healthy it ain't, but ask me if I care.

Deep dish pizza without the deep dish.

Fresh from the oven. The cheese could have stood a bit more time to brown, but we were hungry.

I've been experimenting with the crust for a while; wetter or drier dough, pre-baking the crust, seasoning the crust, etc. I think this one was just about perfect. Now if I can just remember what I did....

And a bit of geekiness:

That's one of a couple dozen computers that made up the SAGE system back in the 1950's and 60's. SAGE was a computer network that linked radar installations, interceptors and missile batteries. Data was displayed on GUI workstations that even had a sort of touch screen interface. Each computer ran dual 32-bit CPU's (not in parallel; they ran the second as a redundant backup) with 256K RAM. The computer hardware weighed 300 tons and burned 3 megawatts of juice. All that to crank out 75,000 operations per second. For comparison, an iPad can do something like 1.5 billion operations per second. If you care, you can read more here.

Well, the sun is up, so I need to get my butt outside and do some work.

Nailed It

The Universe Hates Us

Yea, it's been one of those couple weeks. First it was car trouble, although I can't really complain about the Durango. Since I bought the thing used back in 2005, I've done absolutely nothing other than change the oil, tires and brakes. Not bad for a ten-year-old vehicle with over 150K miles. It was more to do with the timing, being in the middle of tax season and all. It wasn't even a major breakdown; the water pump crapped out. No big, right? A couple hours in the shop and back on the road.

Not.

See, Dodge has a special kind of water pump that doesn't just start leaking like every other water pump on every other car ever made. No, the Dodge water pump fails catastrophically and takes out everything on the front of the engine block and usually the radiator as well with flying debris. We actually got lucky and only had to replace the fan and fan clutch in addition to the water pump. Of course, we had to wait for parts, which meant bumming a ride to work for a week from my daddy like I was 15 working my first job at Burger King. The good news is that it's fixed and it didn't cost us our life savings.

That cannot be said of the second little problem. But first, I have to talk about the weather. It's been just plain weird with several days of 80 degree highs, then several days where it barely creeps up into the 60's. On one of the 80-degree days, I decided to flip on the AC just to make sure it was working after sitting unused since the end of September. As you probably have guessed, it wasn't. No big deal; we have a maintenance contract left over from the previous owners and the temps were due to swing back into the 60's. I called and scheduled a dude to come out and look at things figuring it will just be a bit of Freon and we'll be good to go. Then I get The Call at work. The system is completely empty. Just finding the leak and refilling the Freon (the old banned kind that costs several hundred dollars a gallon) will cost $1,000. If the leak is in the coil (which it most likely is), add another $2,000. And after all that, you will have a system that maybe will last another year or so.

I've been around the block once or twice, so I know where this conversation is heading. Me: "Cut to the chase, Dude. What's a new system going to cost?" Dude: "$4,500." Me: "When?" Dude: "Today." Me: "Do it." I do have to say that I was impressed at how fast these guys moved. Debbie handed Dude our credit card around 2:45PM. We had a new system installed along with a new thermostat, all new duct work, new electrical with lightning protection, and all the old stuff cleaned up and gone by 5:30PM. It was almost too fast; for $4,500 (which was our life savings) I would expect there to be enough work to keep a crew busy for at least an eight-hour day. The silver lining in all this is that now that the temperatures have cycled back into the 60's during the day and the 40's at night, we have heat. The old system was just an AC, so we've been relying on electric heaters to keep us warm on those cold, frosty Florida winter nights. Now it stays all warm and toasty by magic.

Work continues on the Florida room. Last weekend, my dad and I tore the front off and installed the sliding glass door that had been between the Florida room and the trailer. I have everything more or less sealed up at this point. This weekend, we'll be working on more of the detail work like insulating around the new windows, getting the stud work done so we can get the siding up on the outside and insulate the walls and hang drywall on the inside, and going nuts with the caulking gun to try to seal up all the places where you can look outside that you shouldn't be able to look outside. We're not sure where the money for the siding is going to come from now that our entire life savings went to a new central air unit, but at this point, we need to get that done, probably shortly after tax season is over.

And that's our life. And it's 57 days until Towel Day. Don't panic.

Quicky

Just to let people know that I'm still kicking, I thought I'd post some photos:

I finished up the back corner connecting the two new planting beds. I may do more with this in the future, but for now, I'm calling it done.

We started final prep for new siding by replacing half of the plastic windows with dual pane glass windows and eliminating the other half.

I had some unexpected work when I realized that I couldn't take out the window I wanted to get rid of without taking out the small one on the porch. That was supposed to be a later project, but now it's done. The rest of the wall will be replaced with a sliding glass door.

Sorry for the short updates, but I need to head off and get ready for work.