"You gonna get another job?"...

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
An alternate title for this thread would've been "Failure is *Always* an Option." If I ever write my autobiography, that's what I'll call it. Of course you kind of need to be a success for that title to work, so we'll see.

Anyhow, it's surprising how much this heat takes it out of you. Oh, I forgot: Today is The Dog's obedience class. At 5pm. On the other side of town. And the AC seems to be out on my car. So I did have a look at traffic before leaving and adjusted my route based on it. Then I had to wrangle her into the car. For some reason she's not a fan of the car. I don't know if it still smells like Old Dog, she doesn't like my driving, or she doesn't think I take her anywhere fun. But she does not like to get in the car. Of course from when I checked the traffic to when I was actually in transit, the traffic changed. I dunno if it was still faster than the other option, but I wound up being late. Still had to go because I paid good money for it. And I wanted her to get cooled off (and for traffic to die down) before the trip home. Shit, maybe she just doesn't want to leave her home. Because now that I think about it, she got right in the car after class.

Got home and tried my kalua beef experiment. There's a tasty Hawai'ian dish called kalua pork that is kind of a pain if you cook it traditionally, but you can do it dead simple and pretty tasty in a crock pot. I decided, for fun to try it with beef instead. It turned out amazing. I thought it would just be a baseline and then I'd tailor the recipe for the different meat but it worked almost straight up. I did add a little pepper, because you gotta add pepper to beef, but other than that no real changes. Next will be pulled beef sliders, but that's another story.

So. Dinner, local news, and "Jeopardy!". For some reason Teh Kitteh nommed on a leaf of the cabbage that serves in lieu of seaweed. Which finally gets me back to the point. Belly full, I decided on a short nap. Got up and decided to post my cooking experiment success to Facebook. Instead I saw a posting for a lost dog in my neighborhood that I'm pretty sure I saw. Possibly twice. Sometime. See, when you're out walking a dog, you run into stray dogs. The problem is, you're busy enough managing your dog that you can't do anything but avoid the stray. Especially if it is a pit bull with no collar. It was a fine, sweet doggo, but the dynamics of an unleashed doggo with no person and your dog on a leash are perilous, so the focus was on breaking contact. Some days later we were in the general vicinity and a guy had a dog tied up in the front yard and asked if anyone was missing a dog because this one just turned up. Should've maybe taken a picture, but then it would be on my phone with the phone number for another missing dog that I never saw but whose owner I ran into. Thing is, it's so long since we've walked in that neighborhood I couldn't even be sure if the timeline matched up. And what was I going to say? "Yeah, I think I saw this dog. Awhile back. Then I think I might have saw it again somewhere. At some guy's house. Awhile back." Not exactly helpful and then I'm set up as the person who failed to help them find their dog. Still... While it was a fool's errand, I had to, on principle, walk that street and see if I ran into the guy or the dog. Still 93 out, but at least the sun was down. I could sneak out without disturbing The Dog.

Yeah, right. So instead of a quick out-and-back, I wound up walking The Dog. Heat wasn't as bad, but still not fun. No luck finding the missing dog--no surprise. So now I'm home and it's approaching bedtime. And Yay! It's below 90. I mean, the humidity is, like, 66%, but at least it's below 90. :/
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I'd forgotten how time consuming and tiring it to have an active young dog. Mentally almost more than physically. I'd forgotten what it is like to get up, think "Today I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z, but first I've got to walk the dog!" and get done with the walk and just want to drink a glass of whisky and take a nap.

The Dog's patrol always starts with a beeline to a nearby bridge, then down under the bridge to where there are a couple groundhog burrows. From there it can unfold in a few different directions.

It hasn't gotten below 80 all week--with mostly brutal humidity. Today is the first day in the week that the heat index isn't supposed to get above 105. So I gotta get The Dog out for her walk as soon as I get up--have breakfast and coffee after. Today she stayed in the shadow of the bridge, next to the creek for most of the time because she found a groundhog hole that she thought was occupied and guarded it for, like, a half hour. Then she headed off along the bank we were on in the direction I don't enjoy. It goes toward a bridge a block away with an apartment complex along one side. I've already put my foot down on exploring past the second bridge because the terrain and vegetation is too heavy for me and it is far too easy to lose her there--with a pair of very busy roads. I also try to avoid the apartment complex--private property and all--but there are interesting smells there for her and on a hot day like today, the shadows of the buildings are good for minimizing the heat. So of course she proceeded to embarrass me by taking as long as possible to smell everything. I was getting the stink eye from a few people so I started moving her along. Sure enough, a woman with a clipboard headed our way. "Please stop walking your dog on our private property. We have a number of elderly people who live here who are nervous about your dog."

Really, there's nothing to say. I agreed, mentioning the challenge of getting her out during this hot spell as a "fig leaf" for being in the wrong as we headed off the property.

So, tiring day just from the logistics of walking a dog in this heat, made doubly--triply--tiring by essentially being told I was a Bad Person for trespassing, and because now we can't go on the property and The Dog will not understand why. Ah well, she'll forget quickly enough and get over it. But I'll still feel bad.

I'll never understand people who are afraid of dogs. My dog isn't particularly big and she certainly doesn't behave aggressively in public. She's always on leash when we're someplace like a sidewalk or street. And she doesn't tug at the leash or otherwise act scary. But I guess that's moot point. People are entitled to feeling how they feel and expecting to feel safe at their homes.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Oh, and so far I'm stalled on renting my old home. Possibly the accent walls are causing some people to balk and that is a bit frustrating. When I rented, I hated the generic beige walls so it's hard for me to understand people wanting generic beige walls. And my accents are generally neutral, in spite of being bold colors--an almost black blue on paneling on both sides of the white brick fireplace, and an olive on one wall of the beige master bedroom with vintage pine wood trim. The kitchen is a pumpkin orange/schoolbus yellow (I was trying for "harvest gold" to play off the retro cabinets) that complements the muted blue vintage vinyl floor. The backsplash is colored to tie in with the floor and appliances with black, white, stainless, and a kind of steel blue/grey. The least neutral room is the other bedroom. That was mint green with white trim when I got the place, so I went with a purple accent wall (I was actually going for retro colors when I picked them--harvest gold, avocado green, and eggplant).

I'm also a bit annoyed because I've always landed a tenant very quickly. Of course they've turned out to be less than optimal tenants, so maybe I need to trust my property management company. On top of that, my friend that I worked for doesn't seem to have any concept of how much work real estate investing is. "Isn't that place rented yet?" That was his constant question when I had a place come vacant while I was working remotely for him and working my other part-time job. "No. Because I've got maybe a week of stuff to do to get it ready to rent. And about 2 hours a week to do it. And then there's listing, showing, screening, lease paperwork. So no. It isn't rented. And it won't be rented while I'm working for you." But now this place too. "Isn't it rented yet?" "I only got it back the afternoon of May 1. And I wasn't remotely happy with the way it looked until almost the end of May." "Yeah, but I thought with a rental company, they'd get someone in there quick." That's because you don't understand real estate investing. Shit, I'm a novice at it and I've been doing it seriously for over 2 years and studying it and doing it on an amateur level for over a decade.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
This heat wave is brutal. Also, I forgot how unproductive you can be when you have a dog and a cat. The Plan for today was to load up stuff to fix up the laundry room (brushes, trays, stirrers, spackle, putty knives, concrete stain for the floor, ceiling paint, trim paint...etc) and then run to pick up a few odds and ends and then just bite the bullet and buy some rugs and curtains etc to help with staging. Home Depot, Lowe's, and Wal*Mart are all in a row on the same street--along with a plant nursery because I really want to replace the plant my idiot tenant's tree company cut down when I hired them to trim back trees that were overhanging the house and driveway. The Plan was, if Lowe's had the odds and ends I needed, I'd just pick up paint there too. If not, try Home Depot. If not, just get whatever paint they had at Wal*Mart. Well no joy at the hardware stores. And then the Wal*Mart I went to had a pitiful selection of rugs so I just scrubbed on the staging items and went back to Lowe's (because that was on the right side of the road). 4 guys in the paint section. 2 customers waiting. Everyone in the paint section wandered off, leaving the customers standing around the counter. Another guy wandered into the paint counter, did not make eye contact with any of the customers, and then wandered off to join his compatriots. So I got in my car and drove across the fucking street to Home Depot.

At Home Depot, there were NO employees in the paint department. After looking around a bit I headed over to customer service and had them page for someone. Headed back and loitered a bit but no one showed up. So I got in my car and drove BACK across the fucking street to Lowe's. Eventually got my paint. Oh, and I wound up picking up a little Japanese Maple at the nursery. Didn't have a shovel with because I hadn't really planned on buying a tree, but the place was out of the way enough that I didn't want to make another trip. And I couldn't just stop off at home for a shovel because this would confuse The Dog.

Got to the house and got as much done as I could (which wasn't much) and headed home. Got home and couldn't remember if I'd locked the door or not, so I grabbed the shovel (and a stepladder because the ceiling was too high in the laundry room to easily use the stool I'd brought for the purpose) and went back, locked the doors, and planted the tree. We'll see if it survives or not.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Oh, and my point was that, the implication of this thread (or at least the "Office Space" reference) is that I don't want to do a damned thing if I don't have to, but today I realized that isn't accurate, because I felt really bad about the idea of blowing off today so I went and TCB. So I guess I still want to do stuff, but I want to do what I want, when I want to, not be like "well, I've got work tomorrow afternoon, so I guess I won't get around to adding the 2nd coat of plaster until maybe Sunday."
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I am at an age where I wonder if I'm tired all the time because it's been so hot of late, after countless tick bites I've finally gotten Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, I have cancer, or if I'm just getting old and can no longer maintain the activity level I'm accustomed to and its all downhill from now on. Must've slept close to 9 hours last night. Took my afternoon nap, and still needed another nap when I got back from grocery shopping. Now I've still got plenty of time to do stuff. Or I could just drink whisky and fuck off online and go to sleep.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Just need to bitch a bit. You may remember, I work 2 nights a week at a factory. Been doing it for 2 years in August. Pay's good, it's part time, there's no responsibility, and I hate it, which is good incentive to make enough on real estate that I don't need a job (in theory). As a part time worker, they stick me wherever someone's sick or on vacation or whatever. Right now we've got a lot of people, but a lot of them are new. So they'll break a job into 2 (or even 3) parts and have several people doing it. Tonight I was doing a job I'd never done the entire thing on. And the line started up for the day before I had my cut-resistant gloves on (I was running late, but also they assigned me the position at the last second), so I started out a bit behind and the supervisor decided to split the position with someone.

And as it happened, that someone was a lazy turd who couldn't stop playing with his phone.

I generally try to hide specifics for whatever reason, but I'm too tired. I make dishwashers. So water comes out the bottom of the dishwasher into conduit that feeds it to the spinners that wash the dishes. The job entailed putting the cover on the part where the water comes into the washer, putting the conduit in place, and shooting a screw into the back wall to fasten it. One guy put the cover and conduit on and the other guy shot the screw. We switched off at each break. And it sucked regardless.

When I was shooting the screw...they have a lubricant that goes on the cover to make it easier to install. He would not use the lube. So he needed to use 2 hands to install the cover. Because he needed 2 hands, he had to wait until the washer was fully in front of him, leaving me about 3 seconds to shoot my screw. And of course sometimes he also had to fuck off on his phone, which further cut into my time. When he was shooting screws...fuck, I don't even know. He'd be fucking off on his phone or fucking with his shoelaces or sitting down for a bit or whatever and still wouldn't shoot the screw in time. So we kept stopping the line.

Now no one has ever given me the numbers, but I've SWAG'ed it and I think my guess is pretty good. I figure it costs $400 for every minute we aren't making a dishwasher. Throughout the day we caused the line to be down for over 5 minutes. The Big Boss was periodically coming to stand behind us and watch us.

Now I'll cover for and help someone who is trying their best but coming up short. But I'll Blue Falcon throw someone under the bus if they're not pulling their weight. So I made it as clear as I could that it wasn't me that was slowing things down. And I made no effort to help him out when he was behind because he was lazy and fucking off. And I know at least once the Big Boss saw him fucking off on his phone while I waited to be able to shoot the screw.

At one point when he was slow enough to fuck me on the screw, I happened to make eye contact with my boss, down the line and just shrugged helplessly. She came over and gave us a talking-to. And of course she had to scold both of us--even though I'm almost a rock star there. But this didn't help. So eventually we had to leave the station to go talk to the Big Boss in the office with the Union Steward. Of course Idiot managed to get lost on the way there and I made no effort to help him.

But I'm not going to full-on throw him under the bus. You just don't do that. Besides, I'm too passive-aggressive for that. So when they're scolding us and asking what they can do to help us be successful the most I can do is say that I think it would be faster to have 1 person doing the job because 2 people just gets in the way. At this point the Union Steward makes a speech about staying off your cell phone while working. Within 10 minutes the fucker was back on his phone and causing the line to stop. Oh, and he spent the last period of the shift wearing his backpack so he wouldn't have to spend 3 seconds picking it up when the shift ended. So I spent a little over an hour bumping into a backpack every 16 seconds. Then he needed to go to the bathroom 5 minutes before quitting time and wondered if I could handle things alone. I desperately tried to convince him I could, but he must've decided not to risk it--because if I couldn't, he'd look bad and if I could...he'd look bad--so he stayed.

I hate humans so much.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
My life doesn't scale well. Maybe my priorities don't work with productivity. Well, not maybe. My dog gets around 2 hours a day of walking. Playing with The Cat. Reading my stories online, playing some solitaire. Then I need to somehow fit in making money, getting my hair cut, replacing clothes as they wear out, washing my car, going to the movies or out to dinner, etc, and I can't fit it all in. 1:30 Tuesday afternoon and my breakfast dishes are still on the table as I try to get through all my online reading and figure out how to move forward with the rest of the day.

Part of it is that I still think of New Dog as Old Dog. I give her the level of attention Old Dog needed and truthfully, she is OK without that. That said, I also am respectful of not creating problems with her. Old Dog had some separation anxiety issues, but she was OK. Then one day I had to work on the other side of town with rotten traffic and instead of coming straight home I went to my Toastmasters meeting for that week and it created a level of separation anxiety that I had to battle for the rest of her life. Dogs' brains function like a human with PTSD. That's the natural way they are wired--a stimulus triggers a memory for them. And that puts them back in that moment. Very hard thing to fix once it is programmed in.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Just taking a quick break from Responsibility while hiding out from this heat wave. I hate people who aren't just honest and up-front with you. This house has come a long way since I got it around a year and a half ago and I really needed to show it off a bit. It has an extra bedroom and was appraised at about twice what I paid for it. About the only person I could think of who would really appreciate it was the Realtor I worked with on the deal.

Now I get that her time is valuable. And maybe she had no interest in seeing the place. She was the listing agent as well and I got the place for considerably less than they initially listed it for. But when I asked she said she'd be delighted to see the place. Only then she said she tested positive for the 'rona and I never heard from her again.

I'm generally of the philosophy that opportunity only knocks once so I never ask someone a second time. But I really wanted someone to see the place. And I wondered if maybe I was missing opportunities with this approach, so I reached out to her again. "Why yes, I'd love to see the place! When would be a good time?" I said I work Monday and Friday nights but any other time would be fine, just let me know. Nothing. So 3 days later I said "how about Tuesday, around lunchtime?" She asked if she could do Wednesday and I said it was on my calendar. She said she'd see me then. Wasted a day waiting around for her and she never showed. At this point I'm forced to conclude that "Yes, I'd love to see the place!" really means "I'm not that interested and have better things to do," which is fine. But why not just say that in the first place. Because where I come from "I'd love to see the place" means...that you actually want to see the place. Weird, huh?

What else? Going on 4 weeks since the party that I wound up bailing on because ticket prices went up like 25% from the one 6 months ago and there was no promotion on this one. The fact that there have been no photos or posts on social media from anyone about how much fun it was makes me think no one showed up. Well, I need to get going. 6pm. Still 97 degrees out, but the black dog HAD to go OUT. I thought she had to go to the bathroom, but she just found a toy [she barked at this point and I had to stop and go let her in] and refused to come inside, hanging out in the shade as long as she could.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Fucking touchpad. Forgot to turn it off again after the computer went to sleep and it just deleted out about 2 minutes of typing. Long story...no, fuck it, I'll just type it out AGAIN.

Nature is cruel. And/or stupid. A white rabbit showed up recently. It goes with the white cat that hangs out at the neighbor's. But it has ventured onto my property a couple times. One night The Dog went after it and it easily escaped. Tonight it was in my back pasture, chilling about 5' from the fenceline to the neighbor--that it can easily fit through. The Dog spotted it and began a stalk. He must have seen her but he waited until she started her charge. Then, instead of the nearby safety of the fence, he decided to go FORWARD, across my property to the far fenceline. This was also slightly towards the Dog as well. Happily, he looked like he would easily stay ahead of her--as long as he didn't get hung up on the fence--until he slipped in the wet grass. He recovered quickly, but The Dog gained a lot and there was a flurry and a rabbit squawk of distress at the fence. I ran up, expecting to see The Dog with a new trophy but he must've made it through the fence. Didn't see him anywhere nearby, so maybe he wasn't badly injured. I dunno. I guess I should've scared it off or kept The Dog from chasing it, but I figured it was perfectly safe and harmless. Nature is never perfectly safe and harmless.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I had a plan. No, that's not true. I've had MANY plans. Plans going back to 7th grade or so. Shit, kindergarten if we count "I'm going to be a fireman!" So far they've all failed for one reason or another. I wonder if that's the allure of "Pinky & the Brain" or Wile E. Coyote--deep down, at some level, we can relate. Anyhow, we won't dwell on the countless plans I've had that failed. We'll just go with the last one. That was a good, sound plan in 2017. It didn't work in 2012, so I amended it. By the time 2019 and 2020 rolled around, I had to make some pretty big changes to it, but it was working, more or less, as late as June or even August of last year; back in February of 2021 it looked like it was working really well. I was 2/3 of the way to my goal. Then it all came apart. I mean, not catastrophically. Not even to the point of being unrecoverable, but it definitely hit some bumps. I considered just chucking it on the heap with all the other plans, but thought I should at least see it through to that last 1/3--or find out getting there was impossible. But man, I dunno. Maybe it's time to realize I'm not cutout for buy-and-hold single family residential real estate. Only thing being, I can't think of a better plan right now. It can/should cash flow. And I need cash flow. Otherwise I need to get a job. And I don't think I'd like another job.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
Get a job and continue to purchase realestate. The co.ing Biden recession will be a good opportunity to find good deals. You will need good deals because interest rates are going to be high.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
The Dog just bagged a groundhog on the property. Officially earning her keep at the next level of varmint control. [details follow, stop reading if you don't want to hear them] It didn't seem that large, but my memory of groundhog size is sketchy. Anyway, it was stupid enough to get caught in the open with no escape route, but smart enough to put up a decent fight. She's a more skillful killer than Old Dog. Old Dog would regularly get bit--repeatedly--while fighting. She chased this one under the deck and came out with it in her mouth but it had...I think it had some part of her collar because its head was supported by its mouth but I could see daylight between the two. She managed to get it off. Apparently she'd broken its pelvis and/or back in the initial attack because all it could do was lay on its back and menace with its teeth and front legs. She would make quick feints and lunges until she'd get a hind leg and toss it. Eventually she got it face down and was able to come in behind and break the neck/crush the ribs. Not terribly pleasant to watch, but a lot more elegant and precise than her predecessor.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Don't entirely know where or how far this is going to go. Decent weekend. Fulfilling weekend. Usually I not only fail to check off any non-recurring chores--or go to church--I fail to get all the weekly chores done. But we've had dry weather (until tonight) so the grass hasn't been growing that fast and I got to avoid mowing the 1 acre yard for 2 weekends in a row.* So I actually found time to take The Dog downtown to the dog park instead of just to the creek down the street we go to twice a day. She doesn't like the car for whatever reason, but I think she had a good time. And I get tired of sitting by some overgrown ditch while she sits in it, out of sight, and tries to lure out a groundhog.

My neighbor is a bit like my Mom. But also not at all like my Mom. My Mom actively killed groundhogs when I was little. My neighbor is plagued by groundhogs digging under her horse barn. This morning The Dog got one. I told her. "Did she kill it?" Duh. Of course she did. What else is a dog going to do with a groundhog? ":(" This is why groundhogs exist: To be killed by foxes, dogs, and humans. It is also why they breed at the rate they do. Lesson learned. Just quietly do the dirty work and don't tell anyone.

Yeah. I guess that's about it. I do have a long screed about "Lightyear" bombing and "Atlas Shrugged," but I don't feel like unreeling it right now. But I will say, every day, I appreciate "Atlas Shrugged" more and more. And I get why Galt et al stood by--even helped--while society fell apart around them. I'm laughing at it right now. Fuckers. You got exactly what you wanted. Enjoy it.

*1/2 the yard is the back pasture. Still not sure what to do with it. I cleared it out to lawn with a dozen or so trees that were too large to be cut down with a machete. I could let it grow up into a parklike thing, in which case the trees are an asset. I could put some kind of livestock on it, in which case the trees would not be a liability. Or I could do heavy-duty part-time income level gardening back there--in which case I should cut down the trees while they're still small enough to not be a pain (we're talking 8' tall trees with trunks smaller than my wrist right now). Wait long enough and the decision is taken away from me. But if I don't want the work of a 1/2 acre garden and I cut down the trees, then I wind up planting trees. Of course it rained like a bastard tonight, so this morning the grass will probably be 6" tall.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
A quick, slightly gruesome note: After laying in state for 2 days, I just buried The Dog's trophy groundhog. She's decent at disposing of the bodies so at first I'd hoped she'd find some place to stash it and I could just know as little as possible about it. But that was not the case and it was just laying there along the fenceline near the garage. So I got out the shovel and found what I thought was a decent place to make a hole. Made a saving throw versus constitution to avoid D4 insanity points from the state of the body. Got it buried. Of course by this point I'd gotten The Dog's attention, so while I was putting ashes on the spot where the body had been laying, she was over, trying to dig up her trophy. Got the dirt back in place and found a, say 2' square heavy rubber mat that was laying around to put over the dirt and then put assorted rocks on that to hold it down, so hopefully we will not have any grave-robbing. :/
 

Oerdin

Active Member
I just wrote a cashiers check to my older sister for slightly under $122,000.: I disliked it but at least had solved my inherentace issues about equal distribution. I think she shall atleast invest that money, she is my sister after all, but her husband is a spendthrift so many it buys a sports car.

The truth is it is out of may hands.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
When my Mom died...shit, where to begin? I'll try not to go down the whole rabbit-hole. But she didn't have a will. And while it looked like she would die at any minute, she actually improved after I put my life on hold and came home to be with her. Lasted another 6 months or so--enough to use up all my work time off (and desire to be in Wisconsin). Trying to settle the estate from Oregon so I enlisted my brother as a...forget the term, an officer basically. He was able to act on my behalf. But my brother's solution to unpleasant things is to just ignore them and hope they go away, so I was making no progress in having an auction for belongings and selling the property.

Now my brother has a business (as we've discussed above). But he's a terrible businessman. So for literally over a decade my Mom kept shoveling money into his business to keep it afloat. She also loaned him the money to buy his (now) cluttered and run-down little house. SO... To resolve my Mom's estate I either had to: Quit my job in Oregon and move back to Wisconsin to close out the estate. And if I was doing that, I needed to figure out exactly what my brother owed my Mom and include that in the process--or just write it off and walk away. Since I didn't want to own a bar/bowling alley (that doesn't have a kitchen) in a town of 2,000 people that had 8-ish other bars and I didn't want to own a shitty, run-down little house that my brother lived at, I decided to just gnaw my arm off to escape that trap and write off my half of the house. I do not regret this decision overall.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
This is just an old drunk, digging up bones, so I'll skip putting it in a Wordforge Godforsaken Hellholes thread, but early in the Elwood era, when they still had an arcade, we were playing "Black Nova Traders," a kind of turn-based Monopoly/Galactic Empire game. I'd just moved from Oregon to Hawaii and was playing with people in Australia and Mainland USA against an informal team based in SE USA. Well, Ellwood.

Someone had found a secret Ellwood base with insane production values and wanted to attack it right away.

The challenge on games like this is getting all your ships to the same place at the same time--with enough firepower to get the job done.

Now having a military background, I kind of understood the basics of things like, you know, running a military operation. You want 3 to 1 odds if you want a decent chance at winning. We didn't even have even odds, IIRC. And it would be worse because we'd arrive piecemeal and they'd have been producing while we were traveling. So I argued against attacking immediately (even though his production made a delayed attack worrisome). I lost the argument--basically "shut up, I know what I'm doing." Briefly considered withholding my ships, but since I had zero chance of winning without allies and I couldn't persuade them to delay their attack, I went along. Unsurprisingly, we failed. And then we got wiped out.

Don't entirely know where I was going with this. I guess basically the frustration of dealing with people who don't know what they're doing that think they know what they're doing and refuse to listen to people who actually know what they're doing--and all this wrecking things for everyone. But hey. Open borders. New gun laws. Green energy. Abortions for everyone. What could possibly go wrong?
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Today was one of those days. I mean, I don't feel bad right now--other than that I don't feel like I got that much done--but boy...

Vacant rental got listed around...we'll say May 9. Lowered the rent last week. Since it was still on the market I'd been fixing what I could with the time I had. Laundry room was strictly practical. Made it a bit more cosmetically appealing. But I've been deferring a bunch of fiddly non-recurring tasks--things you could just bang out if you didn't have to plan your life around a dog: Get a new watch. Pick up mail from the UPS Store (Mailboxes Etc was a far better brand-name IMO). Get a haircut. Get a new Timex Triathlon watch. Get a mouse pad. Go see "Top Gun 2". So I decided I would NOT work on the vacant rental this week and today I'd bang out my little chores.

Then I looked at the weather and realized today was the last good day to mow lawn for some time, so I planned to mow my 1 acre yard. Then, after lunch, I got a call from my property management company that they had a renter and would be signing paperwork tomorrow. So I had to go get my stuff out of the vacant rental. I'd have liked to do concrete sealer on the laundry room floor. I'm sure it would look really sharp. And I *should've* painted the window trim in the laundry room. But I absolutely *had to* paint the ceiling touch-ups in the "hallway."

The hallway is quite small--just a kind of nexus between the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and 2 bedrooms. We'll say it's around 4x6'. And there's a light fixture, a smoke alarm, and an attic ladder in that space. But I'm getting ahead of myself. For whatever reason, the decorative ceiling plaster has been separating from the drywall so I've got a lot of patches on it. And for whatever reason, the "white" of the ceiling is not standard ceiling paint white (dirt, grime, cooking and cigarette smoke...maybe just that they didn't use white ceiling paint). Sometimes you've just got to go for "good enough" though, so I took a plaster chip from the ceiling out into the sunlight and mixed ceiling paint with "cookie dough" tinted paint until it looked close and then blended it as best I could--feathering the new paint out into the old paint as far as possible without actually painting the whole ceiling. I think it should work. I mean, it's gotta. Got cleaned out and headed home. Then I realized that there was a towel bar inside the tub shower area that I'd put some vintage towels from my parents' place on so I had to go back to get them.

Got home. Walked The Dog in 90 degree heat and got home in time for the local news, dinner, and "Jeapordy!" Dog wanted to go Out. (It was a few degrees cooler by now and the sun was down.) Could've run errands or got a start on the lawn, but I decided I needed a nap. This ran 33% longer than I'd planned on. Then I did some dishes, let The Dog in when she was ready, took a shower, and here I am.

I'm getting old. I shouldn't be as tired today as I am. When you're young the "Kindergarten Cop" "maybe it's a tumor" "IT'S NOT A TUMAH." is funny. As you get older, less so. Anyway, with all that said, if this lease gets signed tomorrow, I'm finally back to where I was in March 2021. Got a cat and a dog and 2 houses that are rented out. On the plus side the new cat and dog should be good for quite a few years, I've done a lot to fix up my place, the rent is way up on both the rentals, and I've got a property management company and a decent pile of money for the next investment. On the minus side, I've lost over a year on my Plan and I'm a lot less optimistic and energetic about it. I guess we'll call it a + overall.

Oh, and I meant to bring a Q-Tip and some alcohol when I was doing final prep on the rental. The bathroom fan is wired to the light switch so I got a fan with a humidity sensor. You can override the sensor by flipping the switch a second time to turn the fan on, but ordinarily if the humidity is over 65% the fan should come on automatically. But I think years of use and a year of having a smoker living there clogged the sensor so I meant to clean it but I forgot until a few hours ago. :/
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Humans exhaust me. The shower curtain for the rental matches the colors and style of the bathroom perfectly. And I don't think they make it anymore. So I wondered if the renter wanted it or not. Property managers said I should take it so this morning, after the dog walk, I headed over and picked it up. Wrapping up my breakfast and fucking off online when I get a call from the property managers, asking about the keys for the place. What key opens the back door to the kitchen? I told them I didn't have a key for that door because the door to the sun room has an iron grate over it and a deadbolt lock. "Well, I'm just wondering if the renter will feel safer if they can lock the kitchen door."

Why? The sun room door is more secure than the kitchen door. It's a metal door in a metal frame with a deadbolt. The windows on the sun room have metal screens that can't be removed from the outside. To break into the sun room you'd have to smash a window with something substantial enough to tear through the metal screen. If you're going to do that you might as well smash any other window on the house and get right into the house. For that matter, there's a big window between the kitchen and the sun room. And the kitchen door is a wood door with a wood frame, no deadbolt, and a big window in it. It would take far less time to defeat that door than it would to get into the sun room.

But I'm dealing with humans here, so I put my plans for the day on hold to go through my junk drawer for the key I thought I might have and then drive over to the rental to test it. So now if they want it, I'll have to get it copied and somehow get it to them.

[Also, why is this coming up on the day the lease is being signed? The place has been listed for rent for almost 2 months. At least 2 people at the property management company knew there was no key for that back kitchen door. Hell, that door was never even closed the entire time I lived there because The Cat's litterbox was out in the sun room.]
 
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