Category: decline and fall

It was crazy hot yesterday and today should be the same. I’m not looking forward to that. If I wasn’t working I could take a dip in the lake when I got too hot. I have to settle for laying on the cool concrete floor while a fan blows conditioned air on me…

My next door neighbor is up this weekend and I’ve been trying to get together with him on the dock for drinks and a tiny fire. He goes to bed early and rises early, and I’m the opposite, so we haven’t been able to meet up. I stopped by his other lot on my way home from the hardware store. He had a 40×60 foot metal building built to use as a shop and storage area but he’s doing some of the interior build out himself.

I saw he was working and stopped to chat. He was really hot. Still sweating but minor shaking in his hands so I got him in the shade and talked to him for about 20 minutes until he’d cooled off a bit. He was focused on some underground plumbing issue in the sun and didn’t notice. This heat is dangerous in the sun, since the humidity and lack of wind makes it very difficult to stay cool.

I used to live in Arizona, and did plenty of outdoor work, rock climbed, rode my bike and motorcycle everywhere, and learned to be careful and hydrate… but the 3% humidity meant you’d stay cool if you kept drinking and sweating. When the monsoon season hit and the humidity went up, it was miserable. Houston is a swamp. RH was 84% today and the real temp had to be over 100F in the shade. In the sun it was so much worse.

Consequently my work went very slowly yesterday. I had a fan blowing on me in the garage, but it was still dangerously hot. I did make progress. I’ve got about half the insulation done, and I hung three sheets of plywood. Took a break when my buddy finally stopped by, and went over and helped him fix his flagpole so we could change out his ratty flags for the 4th. Chatted for a while with him and his wife. It was good to stop working for a bit.

Pot roast was very nice for dinner. I do love slow cooker meals.

Today I should put in the rest of the insulation and hang another sheet of ply. That will let me put one side of the garage back together. Depending on how that goes, I might stay up here for one more night. I am thinking about leaving Monday, and checking out the boats my wife wants me to look at on my way home. Whenever I leave, I have to do a thorough cleaning so when we get back on Wednesday the house is ready for guests. I’ll have to budget some time for that. Spiders and red dirt dust are a constant issue.

And dishes, I’ll need to do dishes…

Stack some time with friends, and some time by yourself for reflection and recharging your mental and physical strength. You will need both.

nick

Hot and humid. Really. I know you are surprised, but that’s the truth… and it was hot yesterday too. At least there was a nice breeze for most of the day. I still had to take several cool down breaks.

I did get the truck mostly unloaded and put away. I hung a light in the garage and moved some stuff. It was really stifling though so I was limited to how much I got done. Didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped. I did cut the grass in my lot and the HOA/park lots. Read several chapters of the next Kate Daniels book, which series I’m really enjoying.

Today I’ll continue in the garage, and maybe the shed. It’ll depend on the heat. I won’t be working on the dock if it’s sunny, but I might be able to do some more electrical in the dockhouse. The A/C is still working in there, trying to continue the drying out process. I’m grabbing some small tasks as I can as a break from the bigger jobs.

I’ve got a new ceiling fan for D2’s room that I can put up, and some other jobs that are mostly inside in A/C. Some bookshelves installed will let me bring some of my library up here. That will help me clean up at home too. 2X the win!

Time to start putting some of the stacks to use. Solar is next on the agenda… but I’ve got some reading to do first.

I’ll continue working to improve my situation, and stacking. You should too.

nick

Hot and humid once more with no chance of rain according to the national forecast. I continue to hope not, but we will need some sooner or later. It was well over 105F in my driveway when the sun was not behind a cloud. In the late afternoon, it was still 95F when the sun hid for a few minutes. You really didn’t want to be in the sun without a hat.

I did my pickups but the main one took hours. In their defense, they had to pull 66 items. The automated “appointment” app wouldn’t give me a time on Mon, or Tues, so they didn’t have a ticket pulled and ready for me. I did stop in on Monday and let them know I had to pickup on Tuesday, and the girl thought they’d be able to pull it, but they didn’t. Waiting sux, but I read on my phone and tried not to faint from the heat. I could have sat in the A/C in the truck, but I was trying to appear sympathetic by sharing their pain. Maybe didn’t help, but probably didn’t hurt. A personal relationship with the staff where you do business is a good thing.

After I got home I had a stack of stuff to do to get ready to leave, and it took a while. I still have stuff I should do. Which is what I’ll do today before heading out. I’ve got two or three things I can do that will make a big visual impact, so they are worth doing. And I’ve still got to finish loading the truck. I’ll be busy until I leave.

W wants me to look at a couple of things in a marina on my way through Conroe. I will if I get up there on time. More stuff to do in my day though. Hear me whine…

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Thought for the day is working on your relationship with the people that you interact with “out in the world”. Does the clerk know you? Will they help you resolve an issue or cut you some slack? Are you cordial? Friendly but not creepy? Do they recognize you when you show up? Do they seem glad to see you when you do business with them? Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and local means something. It’ll mean a lot more as things get worse.

Being a good customer who accepts mistakes with good grace, or helps make their day a little easier in some way could be the difference between getting something you need, and not. Besides, it makes the world a little brighter and we can sure use that at the moment. Be someone people are glad to see.

It WILL help you stack.

nick

Hot again. Humid again. Just standing and talking in the sun will soak your shirt. It’s that hot. Definitely in the 90s. There were some scattered dark clouds, but no rain where I was. And I was all over the place.

I had pickups in NW, NE, SE, and then drove home through SW Houston. I was in Kingwood, and Dickenson. Probably did about 150 miles? I’d have to look at the log. Lots of driving in a really big loop. Good stuff though for good prices.

I got home and started putting the garage back together. I’m going to have to rethink my plan though as some of what I want to do won’t fit. I’m thinking I might take one of the cabinets, and possibly the drawers, to the BOL for the workshop there.

Today I’ve got a couple of pickups I didn’t get to yesterday, including the honda genny. I’ll bring that stuff home, sort it, reload the truck and head to the BOL, maybe. Maybe it will all go to sh!t and I won’t be ready to head out until Wednesday.

Dog is at the boarder, and it’s very quiet in the house…

But it does let me do things like not worry about leaving the door open every time I go through it. Or tripping on a black dog with my hands full. There are tradeoffs to everything.

Restacking the stuff has been helpful. Found some stuff I was looking for, and some I’d forgotten about. It’s a bit like “shopping your closet” when you feel the need for new clothes. Look for the stuff you already bought.

Reassess, and rebalance, and stack.

nick

Hot. Very hot. Yes, and sunny too. My brains are baking in my skull when the sun hits it. Not much breeze either, and a lot of humidity. Summer in Houston, oh joy. And that was just yesterday. Today should be more of the same, but without the rain in the night.

I did get some stuff done. I picked up the chest freezer. Cleaned it, got it plugged in, and even moved some stuff into it. Of course it’s sitting in the driveway, not in the garage. I got about half the stuff out of the way. I’ll get the other half today. Did I mention it was hot and sunny? That slowed me down dramatically. I need to finish clearing a path to get the old fridge out, and the freezer in.

After that, I’ll move some drawers and shelves out of the way and move some metal cabinets in. They will be my new pantry. I’m tired of rats cr@pping on my canned goods. The drawers hold mostly supplies that I don’t need easy access to, so I should have moved them a long time ago. The shelves were my second tier of food storage after the kitchen pantry… some will remain, but the rest of the stuff will go into cabinets. It will stay a lot cleaner that way. Dunno what I’ll do with the drawers. They are still in good condition, and the stuff in them still needs to be stored, but I don’t have any place in mind yet.

Or my cunning plan could go to heck in a wicker basket. My wife might want me to go with her when she takes the kids to GS camp. There is a guy that has a boat for sale… and I am not involving myself in that transaction. She really wants a boat. I’ve already got enough stuff on my plate. I was willing to find one through my sources, but the universe wasn’t cooperating. We bid on one this week that looked great but it had a reserve higher than anyone was interested in bidding. Ditto for the three person SeaDoo. So she hit the internet and found one that looks nice and is in the right range of features, size, age, and cost. It’s got crazy low hours and was kept inside. Classic story of boat ownership- buy it, pay to store it for years, use it very rarely. I’d like to think that we’d put a couple of hours a month on a boat at least…not a couple per year.

This falls under the part of the rules where the BOL has to function as part of our lives, even if the big bad never happens. I’d like a boat too, I just don’t want to spend the money. It should be a good thing for the kids, and give them more to do while we’re up there.

In the mean time… I’ll keep plugging away at this pile of stuff here, there and everywhere. Change is progress, right? Sometimes you have to re-stack your stuff to remember what you have.

And then stack some more.

nick