"You gonna get another job?"...

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
In a bit of a funk today. A little bit Sisyphus. A little bit Charlie Brown. If I hustle, I can *just about* get my weekend chores done today. And then I have to do them again in 5 days. Still working on getting the sheds ready. And in getting the sheds ready I'm trashing the basement. Literally and figuratively. I'm lugging stuff down into the basement that will just eventually be thrown out when I have space in the trash can. All the vehicles have varying degrees of electrical problems. The Mustang has a short in the power driver's seat that keeps blowing the fuse. Gotta hunt that down. The motorcycle...well, I never get around to riding the motorcycle anymore, but it hasn't charged right since 2009 or so. Could be the stator, but it could just be that the wiring harness is so old that it has cracks in the insulation, corrosion, and "micro" shorts all over. I found a mechanic who I don't think is an idiot but haven't gotten around to dropping it off. Alternately, I could replace all the incandescent bulbs with LEDs and see if that helps. And the van...initially I'd give you even odds that the wire between the alternator to the gauge on the dash was the biggest problem, but the other day the battery tender (I've got one on the bike and one on the van) started showing an error. Turned out the tender was fine but the wires got partly dislodged from the battery. Problem is, apparently when I put them back on, I also caused a short somewhere else because now the battery shows needing a charge even if I disconnect the tender for more than a few seconds. So I've got to track that down...when I find the time. That's the theme: when I find the time. Days and months fly by but the year seems to be dragging. I feel like I've had this dog for at least 9 months (in a good way; we've got good routines and a decent rapport), but it's only been 6.

Stayed up too late last night. Drank too much. But woke up on time. Decided to sleep another 90 minutes but for a change I didn't actually fall back asleep. Just lazed around until The Cat decided it was time for me to get up. He makes this happen by knocking stuff off the nightstand until I have to take action and murder him. By then my adrenaline is going enough that the only reason to stay in bed anymore is to spite him.

Well, enough blathering. Got to try to get some stuff done.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Oh. Forgot half the stuff. Well maybe not half, but a couple things: The flapper in the toilet stuck open Friday night when I got up to use the bathroom. Lucky I noticed it and got back up to check and fix it. Then it worked fine. Until it was time to take The Dog downtown for her afternoon walk. Used the bathroom before heading out. 2 hours downtown. Then dropped The Dog off and ran to get groceries. Got home...and realized the flapper had stuck open again and the toilet had been running for basically 3 hours.

Also, we're having a kind of Indian Summer thing so these things that look like winged ants that smell like citronella when you squish 'em had come up out of the drains and were everywhere (this happens to varying degrees every fall for the past 2-3 years and the pest people say it isn't particularly worrisome).

Finally, the goddamn cat. He likes to be Out. And has no respect for the property line. He won't just go in the neighbors' yards, he'll go to the neighbors' neighbors' yards. And won't come back In until he's ready. Today he actually stayed in the yard when I took The Dog for a walk. But he wouldn't come back in so, since it was nice, I started opening up windows so he could come In himself if he wanted to. At that point he seemed to want to come In, so I opened the door and he came in. And promptly jumped out a bedroom window. But he seemed to want to come In again, so I came out and collected him and put him in the front porch while I closed windows far enough that he couldn't get out them. He started meowing, but since I only had a couple more windows to close--ones he NEVER jumps out--I let him out. He promptly went over to the last one still open and jumped out it. I eventually got him back in and for the moment, life is ok, but man, it's tiring.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Got everything done for the weekend. Only through sheer stubbornness. Managed to get The Cat to voluntarily come In for the night. Eventually. With a lot of work. In getting everything done, I had a late dinner so I missed a good chunk of "Star Trek." It was that S3 Frieberger episode where the children, led by some soulless ginger take over the Enterprise by making jack-off motions at people while scowling. I'd finished dinner so I almost didn't watch the TNG cold open but I forced myself to.

Luckily.

It was "All Good Things." (Part 1)

TNG was the "Star Trek" of my formative years. Well, and the TOS movies. Watched "Encounter at Farpoint" as a freshman on the dorm lounge TV. Even at the time we thought it was terrible. But it was new 'Trek after all these years, so we stuck with it. And enjoyed a lot of the series. A lot of it hasn't aged very well, but that's another thing.

The point is, I missed the series finale.

That was my rite of manhood. At the time, I'd Planned to work in theater. And I'd gotten a gig for a local production. I forget what. A little of everything. I did the props. I helped hang lights. I might have run the lights for the show. Nothing came of it. But the bottom line is that the show ran on the same night as the series finale of TNG. And I did the grown-up thing and showed up for my job (even though the pay was lousy). I can't remember if the VCR broke or what, but I missed the series finale. Eventually I guess I got to see it. I remember the whacky fucked-up kit-bash Future Enterprise. But I remembered very little of the first part. So watching it again, it held up surprisingly well. Some of the better storytelling Rick Berman managed.

Well, tomorrow I get to work more on the carriage house. I'm insane and OCD, so I've been cleaning bamboo out of it, among other things. I started sweeping the walls and then the floor. The idea was to get out decades of cobwebs and dust. Originally it had a dirt floor and, after pouring concrete, I keep finding more dirt that needs to be swept out. And a fair amount of lime is coming off the concrete each time I sweep. Eventually I'll probably mop, but for now I want to see if sweeping ever gets all the lime dust. But yeah, the bamboo. Like I say, there was a huge pile of bamboo stalks in front of the carriage house when I bought the place. Like, enough to easily hide a car behind. I burned anything that was outright crap (bamboo burns really fast and messy) but I saved a bunch of it. I stuffed it up into the rafters of the carriage house. And when I ran out of space in the rafters, I filled up the old bathtub I ripped out of the house. And when I ran out of space in the bathtub, I piled it on a shelf in the carriage house. And when I ran out of space there, I wound up sticking it in the rafters of the overhang on the front of the tin shed. So now that I'm fixing up the carriage house I'm taking all the bamboo that was piled on the shelf and stuffing it in the rafters of the tin shed because it looks like I'll have enough space. Then I've got to get back to cleaning out the "empty" 2 car bay. Made a lot of progress on it last week, but still a lot of work to go.

And I really should get the spaces listed. Then I can keep working on them but if they rent out as is, so much the better.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Worked on cleaning out the shed again today. And cleaning out the bamboo on the shelf in the carriage house. Also swept the new concrete floor again. It's finally starting to turn grey so it may be time to mop it soon. (I keep sweeping out the white lime dust residue.) Walked The Dog at the start of a good rain. The first real rain we've had in over 45 days. I'd forgotten to grab an umbrella and didn't want The Cat to get out by going back in for one so I just walked in the rain. I latched onto the part about it being in the 70s at the start of the walk and not the part about it being damn near November so by the time I got home I was getting close to hypothermia. The Dog got a groundhog on the walk. I'll save that to the end, as it is pretty horrible.

My house had low water pressure when I moved in so I turned the water heater way up so I could run a lot of cold water with the hot in an attempt to get a nice shower. Then a few months back it just fixed itself and I had normal water pressure. Earlier this week I turned the water heater down; too far down, and as I was watching my blue-white fingers turn pink again I was wishing the water was hotter, so once I got warmed up, I went town and adjusted the water heater temperature. Should've checked for leaks too but I forgot that. I did go out to check that the gutter downs were draining properly (they were), see if the carriage house roof had any leaks (it did not), and see if my efforts to repair the leaks in the tin shed roof were successful (they were not). So I grabbed a piece of chalk and drew a circle around each puddle on the floor so that I can take another shot at stopping all the leaks.

OK. Now I'm going to talk about the groundhog. It's pretty disgusting so you may want to stop reading if you're squeamish. But if you're interested in dog behavior and/or groundhog anatomy, read on.

The Dog got a groundhog halfway through the walk. So I spent the second half of the walk standing around in the rain like the lookout for a hitman while The Dog worked on the dead 'hog. She's a clever dog. She's gotten around 4 groundhogs "open" after killing them. One, she ate its intestines up to (and maybe, I forget) and including the stomach. Since that was mostly poop, she promptly puked it all back up again. The next one she got, she opened up at the chest so she could feast on tasty organs. The next one was again from below, but this time she let me disembowel it so she wouldn't get sick again. This time she opened it up fairly high, but still managed to pull out intestine. And this time I didn't even have to stop her, she waited for me to pull a poop bag on like a glove and pull out all the intestines. Then she got to work on the ribs and organs before managing to pull the stomach out (I moved that out of the way, next to the rest of the bowels) at this point she worked her way down and started eating the legs from the inside. Got the bladder out and ignored it while focusing on the tasty meat. I swooped in with my plastic "glove" and got the bladder out of there for her. She made pretty good progress on the carcass before we ran out of time and had to go home. And she didn't resist when I put the leash on her.

I'm of two minds about this whole thing. Groundhogs are horrible pests and she couldn't kill enough of them to even make a dent in their population. According to Wiki, dogs, foxes, and humans are the groundhog's greatest threats and since I don't kill any, she has to make up for that. And she really doesn't need to eat them, but it has been part of my upbringing that you don't kill for sport, you kill for meat, so if she wants to eat her kills, I feel kind of like I need to endorse this behavior as much as I can.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
One of my mentors who I loved dearly once said something very important that I will always remember (and have been ignoring of late--possibly to my detriment). For reasons that are embarrassing to explain, I wound up with a minor in theater for my undergrad. To get this, I had to produce and direct a 1 act play. Being smart I picked the easiest play you could possibly do: A monologue that was perfect for a great actor we had. No real lighting, costuming, nothing. Of course the teacher wouldn't let me do it. Not having a Plan B and having been involved in it years before for the same class (only as cast) and enjoying it, I said "An Actor's Nightmare," by Christopher Durang. Of course he immediately agreed.

"An Actor's Nightmare" is literally that. The lead character is an actor who moves from play to play ("Waiting for Godot," "Private Lives," etc) where he doesn't know his lines--and the other characters do unexpected things. It's very funny. And has lots of characters. And scene and costume changes and sound effects and light cues. It's a bastard. Of course he immediately agreed to let me do it.

And of course at some point I chickened out and tried to get an incomplete. "I just don't have the time right now." He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said "[Fox]...You'll *never* have the time. So you might as well just do it now." And he was right. So right. I miss him.

Anyways, I've been procrastinating on listing my storage spaces. In my defense, I had some valid reasons. I needed to read the terms for the site I plan to use. I wanted to get everything cleaned up. Now I'm thinking about moving my cars to different bays for various reasons that have some merit. Well today my realtor pinged me about a great deal on a property. Literally too good to pass up.

Now this is worrisome because I wound up quitting my j.o.b. They moved us from 8.5 hours with a 30 minute unpaid lunch and two 10 minute paid breaks to 8 hours with paid 10 and 20 minute breaks. I even was going to give this a shot. But then they sent out a letter requiring mandatory 1 hour overtime for the rest of the month and I tapped out. Right now I'm drawing down the rainy day fund because when I leased my empty place I had to spring for new HVAC (I expected this but it still wasn't fun). It was cool in that my rents covered (just) the system. But this also meant no income from rent for a few months.

Where was I? Oh. So yeah. Getting these parking spots rented out could mean another $600 a month in my pocket. But I've been farting around and procrastinating on that. And the HELOC I'm planning to use to buy my next place...it had a 1 year introductory rate before becoming variable--in November. And we've all seen what interest rates are doing these days. Anyway, the house looks to be a steal. Although that means I'm probably going to have to offer over asking price to get it--even though the market is finally cooling off. I lost out on the last one, which went for $5K over asking price. Looked at the assessed tax value on this one and it is almost twice the asking price. I'll often go with "but the assessed tax value is only $[X]" as a bargaining point, but this time the tax value is so high that I can't even really use it as a benchmark for how much over asking to go. I mean, I'd probably get it at that. But then I've got to get it ready to rent in as little time as possible, sell off some stocks to boot, and really not have any reserve for if things go sideways. But if I get it, that's probably it--I don't need to work anymore (as long as I get it renovated and rented ASAP).

On an unrelated note, people should've been fatter in "Star Trek: TNG." Because it's times like this that I crave a big plate of egg foo young. But I don't have it because: 1) I haven't found a place that does a good egg foo young (I've only tried once, so I can't complain too much about that) and B) the logistics of getting a plate of egg foo young into my belly at 10pm on a Wednesday night in Louisville Kentucky for a price I'm willing to pay don't pencil out. Probably much like this house I'm going to go look at tomorrow.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Humans are interesting. Annoying. Frustrating. But still, I'm fond of them at times. My neighbor is like my Old Dog: stubborn. Opinionated. Thinks she knows what's best for people. She used to throw her horse poop into my back pasture until she decided she liked me. She does NOT like the neighbors behind us. To be fair, they are...interesting. They're Mexican and have a huge lot. They have goats and chickens and roosters and guinea fowl and at least one dog. Recently they added a horse. Bony, miserable looking thing when I first saw it, but it seems to be fattening up and doing nicely with them and they've added about 3 more horses. Well my neighbor doesn't like them because of the roosters. She thinks they're doing cockfighting. And to be fair, they probably are, but that's not my problem. I likes me some delicious chicken and what happens in a cockfight is probably more humane than what goes into my chicken.

Anyways, over a year ago I was walking Old Dog and saw a guy walking his Percheron around the neighborhood. Technically, he was driving it, because he had it all harnessed up and was controlling the reins, even though he didn't have any kind of wagon or plow or anything behind it. Well last week I saw the guy again. This time he had a little tiny Belgian and a fancy white Cinderella carriage. So I took a picture. My neighbor had asked me to take a picture if I saw the guy again so I sent it to her. We chatted a bit and she closed with something like "I thought I was the only person with horses around here so it's nice to find out about other horse owners." I figuratively bit my lip. I kind of wanted to tell her the neighbor behind us that she hates so much and keeps saying she's going to call the cops on for various offenses she hasn't actually seen has 4 horses. But I know that won't change her mind. If anything, next she'll want to call the cops on them for mistreating horses--even though I see how much better their first horse is doing than when they brought it there.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Well I finally stopped procrastinating and listed my storage. Waiting for it to be approved now. Used their "smart pricing" tool, which suggested I should start at $83 a month per spot instead of the $150 a month that I estimated. Of course it was challenging, adapting their tool to what I wanted to do. You want to rent out a garage? Great. Simple. You want to rent out 4 out of 5 spots in a shed? That's a bit trickier. Obviously, you're not going to want to make someone rent all the spots, so I wound up doing 4 separate listings. This is basically all I accomplished today. Oh well, time to walk The Dog.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
"I'll take 'Potpourri' for $500, Alex."

Ordinarily, I leave the icky stuff to the end so a gentle reader can skip it, but I want to get it out of the way. The groundhog The Dog murdered awhile back is an interesting study. Especially compared to the various roadkill this fall. This has been roadkill year. In the 5-ish years I've lived here I've seen one juvenile racoon. This fall I've lost count of how many dead raccoons I've seen on the shoulder of the road in front of my house. (Having a dog exposes you to horrible things you'd never have otherwise noticed: "Why are we stopping he...Oh. OK. Ick. NO! LEAVE IT! FUCKING LEAVE IT! DO NOT ROLL IN THAT!") When the bugs get a carcass, it is completely different than when scavengers do. You get a black spot where the body was and a hollowed-out, kind of mummified skin with intact fur. Bones and maybe even some organs remain inside the skin. It's pretty horrible and disgusting.

Now when you get a varmint that was killed by a predator (like my dog) and scavengers get to it, it is completely different. As I mentioned upthread, she learned not to eat the bowels so I got to pull a poop bag over my hand and pull them out the opening she'd made. Later the stomach came out too so she could feast on the liver, ribcage, hind legs, and assorted other delicacies until it was time to go home. Next day something had continued to work on the hind legs. Once carnivores get inside the hide, they eat from the inside. It had also eaten all the guts off of the poop. The poop was there, but the stomach and intestines that surrounded it was gone. Well after a week or so, we happened on the carcass again. The limbs were completely stripped. The head, hide, and fur were gone. All that remained was the fat on the torso, hips and shoulders. You'd think the fat would be desirable to scavengers, but apparently not.

OK. Horrible disgusting stuff out of the way, I've listed my storage space for rent. Waiting to hear from renters so I continue working on it. You have to move back and forth on what is a priority. There's the shed that is mostly up for rent and the carriage house I've moved my car to. Carriage house, the concrete needs to keep getting swept to remove lime from the surface. Walls and a shelf on the back wall need to be swept to remove decades of dirt, dust, and other horrible crap (literally). At some point I want to stain and seal the concrete and treat the wood (or whatever) walls and put down bricks/pavers for the last 16" or so that is outside the concrete pour. But since I've decided to move my car there, it SHOULDN'T be as big a priority as the tin shed I'll be renting out.

For that, I need to clean up the last of the crap along the back wall--5# dumbbells, rusty spraycans, rotten wood, etc. I need to trim to size a rubber belt strip in the corner. I need to continue to mop the rubber floor until I get up all the mud and crud. I need to treat the interior wood with linseed oil to help prevent rot. But I also need to (not that it has rained so I have some data points) try to mitigate roof leaks.

Finally, there's net worth. And cash flow. Both were helped by Biden's incompetence. I got a big bump towards being a millionaire (which is my retirement benchmark--sort of) from inflation. Property values and rent prices helped on both. But the recession has bit into my stock portfolio, so I took an involuntary step back on my march toward retirement. But my math was literally "back of the envelope" so I may have missed something and I'm in better shape than I think. But probably not. I dunno. We'll see. I need donuts. Mmmm...*DONUTS*...ghahghgaghahhahgggh...
 

Oerdin

Active Member
I have raccoons and skunks in my backyard all the time. Luckily both the dog and the cat have learned to ignore them. The dog just was smart enough to leave them along while the cat only learned after a racoon bit him. Luckily he has all of his vaccinations. He did hobble around on three legs for a few days though and the vet said to just give it time to heal.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
The Readers Digest DiY manual says you need a "knife" blade on your sawzall to cut rubber. I can't say if that works, but I can say the standard blade is only the least bad way I had to cut a 3/4" thick rubber belt with cotton reinforcing. 2nd least bad way was probably a hacksaw. 3rd least bad was a Cutco serrated kitchen knife. 4th least bad way was the big conventional blade hollow ground French Chef. The sawzall just burned through the belt like a tire during a peel-out. Eventually I dialed the blade speed way down and got through it.

Should probably stop work on the carriage house, since it is pretty much squared away and is only to store the Mustang and focus on stuff for the spaces I'll be renting. I'd like to keep mopping the floors, but we've finally had some rain so I should probably move my priority of work to fixing roof leaks. I suspect tin shed roofs are a variation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: efforts to fix roof leaks will only create new and unexpected roof leaks. There's so much stuff that needs doing that it's hard to prioritize properly. Tempting to do fun, appealing stuff and skip boring but necessary stuff.

The Dog is on a jag about the vacant lot across the street. It was going to be a housing development around 2008. Instead it is some streets with 2-7' tall grass growing around them. She's murdered a few groundhogs there so she likes to range around aimlessly in it, following scent trails while I stomp through the brush and curse. Old Dog would alert, go into a bush, and come out with a tennis ball. New Dog alerts and comes out of the bush with a dead rabbit. What kills them? Coyotes? You'd think there wouldn't be a body in that case. They'd just eat the whole thing. Hawks? The last one was missing its head. Would a hawk eat a head? Who knows?
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
The best laid plans of groundhogs and men...

Today's tasks: Wash dishes, take out trash, burn brush. Real estate investing: Get my spaces rented out and buy another rental. Work on the shed: Oil the door springs, mop the floor, fix roof leaks. Hit the hardware store for some items.

Managed to book a 9am Friday viewing for a property. Then I had someone who wanted to come by to look at garage spaces so I had to defer the hardware run. Probably should've done some dishes but instead I went out to do what I could do on the garage without hardware. Or I was going to. But then I saw the big evil old bastard groundhog that lives in my neighbor's horse barn, out under the chestnut tree, so I got The Dog riled up to go Out.

Now he's a smart bastard and has gotten away from her on more than one occasion. And I probably shouldn't have given her any help because he was a big one--and fattened up for winter, offering extra protection from crunchy mouth hugs. But I took off running for his location and by the time I was there The Dog had caught up. So then we played some hide-and-seek, where he tried to keep the carriage house between me and him (the dog was still oblivious at this point). Eventually he made a break for the fence but he only got to the part with chain-link instead of the more open holes of the wire mesh before The Dog spotted him. And it was a savage battle but she eventually won.

I felt a *little* bad. But the bastard digs holes in the yard and eats the neighbor's cat food for her barn cats. Anyway, there'll be another one in a few months.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
The Dog guarded her hard fought trophy for about 4 hours. I finally convinced her to come inside. In a perfect world, I'd have a friend that I could get to come over and dispose of the body before tomorrow.

Homeownership...Life?...whatever... is just nasty and unpleasant. Along with the groundhog, I uncovered a mouse while working on cleaning up my shed. Did what was required. Stomped it to death. Hornets, ants, groundhogs, mice, moles...you name it. They're just doing their thing and trying to live as well as they can. But when you're doing it on my property and creating health, safety, and even structural hazards, you gotta go.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
*sigh* And that was good for a half hour, until she sought me out, crying and whimpering to be let out. I caved, on the off chance she needed to use the bathroom, but when I checked after a suitable period, she was nowhere to be seen, so she's almost certainly back out with her trophy.

Tomorrow I gotta get up early to go look at a house--early enough that The Dog will have to be walked after. Then I'll have to walk her before my garage renter shows up. And I'll have to make sure I've been paid before he shows up.

On a semi-related note, I have been looking forward to finally seeing a check for rent income from my property manager. A new HVAC didn't require me to write a check, but I also haven't seen any money for longer than I like to think about. If both my renters are paid up, I should get a nice check soon. Unfortunately I also just got my tax bills, which will just about eat up my entire check. Oh well, maybe in December...
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Today's adventure is going to be getting this groundhog away from my dog before it starts to stink. Like I said, yesterday she laid next to it for around 4 hours before I was able to coax her into the house. But that only lasted a half hour before she started whining and crying and I let her out again. Next time I checked on her, she was near the back door and came in with some coaxing. But wanted to go out one more time. Ultimately, she wanted to come in for the night before I had to go get her.

This morning things made more sense. She'd dragged her trophy up where she could keep an eye on it from the deck. It had dirt on it (and she had dirt on her nose last night) so I assume she tried burying it. I went and got a shovel and contemplated where I could bury it that she might approve of. Thought I had a good solution but she promptly picked it out of the hole and took it back to where she'd had it, so I guess not. As it stands, there is not a big bloody dead groundhog laying right by the steps to the back deck of my house and The Dog is laying inches from it, staring lovingly at it while flies buzz around it.

I know what the answer is going to be. I'm just going to have to take it away, bury it, and maybe put a big rock over it so she won't dig it up. I know the way dog brains work, she'll then forget about it, but I'll still feel like a dick for doing it.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Thought I was off the guilt-hook with The Dog. When I got home from errands for the afternoon patrol, she was so excited to walk that she'd forgotten all about her (missing) trophy. ...until we got home. Then she was like "OH! YEAH! GROUNDHOG! WHERE MY GROUNDHOG? IT WAS HERE JUST A MINUTE AGO. WHERE GO?" But what are you going to do? In a perfect world I'd have it taxidermied so she could keep it forever. Or at least let it rest in state until her battle scars are healed (it was a big mean bastard and a majestic fight), but we've had temps around the '80s, so even if a bloody, dead, dirt-covered 20# rodent, laying next to my back door wasn't off-putting, it soon would be as Nature got to work on it.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
This is just gonna be all over the place. Had some relatively interesting dreams last night, but they're gone before I got them down. Guy who's renting garage space came over to work on his car today. Stayed up later than I should've last night and of course just about the time I was winding down I 1) found 30 minutes worth of interesting stuff on YouTube and 2) had my friend call me up and want to talk forever. I missed his call earlier because I was already trying to do 5 things at the same time so I eventually called him back on Google Voice so that I could talk over the speaker while doing stuff on the computer. Got the machine. And when he called back, of course the computer was lagging and I had to take the call on the phone instead. I don't like how big phones have gotten--IMO, cigarette packs and playing cards are a certain size because that's what works. It fits in a pocket. That's the size I want a phone to be. But I couldn't find that so I wound up getting a Unihertz Jelly, which is really too small to be fun to use. Not by much, but just enough.

So anyway, I capitalized on the DST shift, but the guy texted and asked if he could come by 30 minutes earlier and I figured he might as well.

Now, The Dog does NOT want strangers in her yard. And she can be skittish and unpredictable around people. So I'm starting to regret renting out space to someone that wants to use it to restore a hobby car. But we'll get her there. And it will be good for her in the long run. But for now... The guy showed up before I got to shave or have breakfast. So once I got him settled in I took The Dog out to socialize and adjust to having someone in her territory before heading out for the morning walk.

Back from our walk and with food in my belly, I find myself thinking about Old Dog and how, as crazy as she could be, her personality was so well suited to mine. Because I'm sitting here, feeling guilty that this guy is out in my shed, working on a project and I'm sitting around screwing off. Old Dog could NOT just lay around if she realized I was working. If I was working, she wanted to be working too. So for many years, mowing the lawn took a lot longer because I had to throw a tennis ball the entire time I was doing it. Like, every 10 seconds or so. As she got older, she only needed to fetch for part of the lawn and was content to supervise from the porch for larger and larger chunks of time. Eventually she would just supervise the whole job. Even when we went to the dog park, we played catch, not fetch. She'd stand 6' away or so and I'd toss a ball for her to catch. So again, because someone else is working, I feel like I should be working. But I do kind of want a nap. Because I ate after my dog walk. And I usually eat lunch after my morning dog walk and then take a nap. So the fact that the walk was before breakfast--and a lot earlier--my mind doesn't care. Also the whole DST and my friend calling last night and shaking up my usual routine has me a bit mixed up too.

Well, that's the main thing that was on my mind--once in awhile, even with a new dog for the next phase of my journey, I still sometimes think about Old Dog and get sad and miss her. She was a good dog and (for better or worse) I would not be where I am right now if it were not for her. Literally.

Whoops. Now I remember the other thing: I'm in a kind of a state of flux right now too, because theoretically I have positive cash flow, but in practice it seems a lot harder to get my hands on the cash that is supposed to be coming in than it is to get cash to the people I owe it to. I finally should have the new HVAC paid off and should see a check from my property managers but of course I also got my tax bills from the county sheriff and they more than gobble up the expected check. There's also the information lag. In Olden Dayes, if a renter didn't pay the rent, I knew that by midnight on the 1st. Now I don't find it out until about 5 weeks later. I get a monthly statement so the month has to end before they can generate it and send it out to me. So I don't know if I have a problem until a lot later. I mean, I'm paying the property manager to solve those problems, but as a control freak it still bothers me a bit.
 
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Volpone

Zombie Hunter
And I'm realizing the whole "work ethic" thing is a good part BS. I feel bad that I'm not working because I don't like being in reactive mode. If I screw off or take a nap, just about the time I settle in for a nap, something will happen that will require my attention and I'm stuck being reactive instead of proactive.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Wasting Daylight Saving Time, drinking, and pondering the weekend. Composing a FB post and realizing it is too big and meandering for FB. Easier to do the set-up here. Took The Dog downtown tonight. It went well. Didn't have a specific dinner lined up so I resolved to stop off at the Bandidos Taquiera, which does a surprisingly decent version of a San Diego carne asada burrito. Got to thinking of the basically, the Michelin Guide to my life. Although you need a time machine for some of the recommendations.

Wisconsin and Minnsota: An Anchor Burger at the Anchor Bar in Superior. Prime rib at Staples Lake Bar in the late 20th century. 21 shrimp at the Poskin Lake Bar. A Lalapalooza at pretty much any Bridgeman's Ice Cream Parlor. Virginia at the end of the 20th century: Anything at the Silver Diner. (Last time I went to one, in the 21st century, it sucked. Some foody had gotten ahold of it and ruined it.) San Diego: Carne asada burritos. Go to pretty much any place that ends with "...bertos." Alberto's, Aiberto's, Eriberto's, etc. Awesome. La Cave in Costa Mesa. Never actually ate there, but the menu looks impressive and the place is great. Get a Spanish Coffee at Huber's in Portland. And a Dungeon Burger with a Terminator Stout at a McMenamin's. Hawai'i, is La Mariana(?) Sailing Club, pretty much any poke'. Seriously, buy a tub at the supermarket deli. It's fine. Pretty much any North Shore shrimp truck. Ringside Steakhouse in Portland. Sayler's Steakhouse in Portland. Rib Shack in San Bruno, CA, just south of San Francisco in the early 2000s.

Sadly, I haven't had that many dining experiences in Louisville. The Hot Brown at the Brown Hotel is a signature dish, but it is underwhelming. I haven't had a mint julep yet. Mack Brother's BBQ is the best ribs I've had here to date. I should probably get out more.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Reposted from FB:
Interesting building maintenance. Sloped roof tin shed. Over the years, wear, rot, etc, caused the top of the back wall to poke out from under the roof just enough to create water intrusion (which of course speeds up rot on the bracing). At some point, someone did what I probably would've done: Installed a drip edge to extend the roof past the back wall. For whatever reason it really wasn't working. I've done makeshift repair attempts (replacing rotted timber (firring strips?)) that also wasn't working. So today I got some serviceable timber for the roof and replaced the rotten and makeshift parts and started screwing everything down again. This actually pulled the wall back under the roof. So now I'm taking out all the drip edge. Will it solve things? I won't know until it rains. [/repost]

Finished up with tightening screws and replacing bad timber. Patched unused screw-holes and suspect rusty spots. Did some work with a broom and a leafblower, cleaning stuff off the roof. Then I had to walk The Dog. After walking The Dog, I had to coax The Cat back In.

Blew off a call from my friend. But that may be another post. He's really been annoying me lately. But I don't feel the need to lay out all the details right now--other than that he calls when he is killing time. He'll have me on the speaker while he's making dinner or driving. I'm usually trying to hold a phone to my ear while trying to control an active dog on a leash and holding a bag of poop.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
OK. Sure, what the hell. So 2 days ago he texts me a picture. He has bought a larger than cat-sized sand person and a smaller than cat-sized stormtrooper. (They were in a picture with his cat for scale.) This is a guy whose house if filled with crap to the point where you need to take a board game out of the bookshelf to get to the board game above it, you can't do anything in his kitchen without knocking something over, and I had to move...fuck, I forget what, off the desk in the guest room to have room for my laptop. Obviously I can't answer his text, because the only possible answer is "WHY ARE YOU BUYING CRAP LIKE THAT WHEN YOUR HOUSE IS ALREADY BURSTING AT THE SEAMS WITH CRAP!?" Or: "Why didn't you put that money into a 529 plan for your teenage daughter's college?" Next day he texts me a picture of a building we climbed in college with "How did we get onto the roof!?" The answer is that, not long after we climbed up the fire escape, they took the ladder to the roof down and/or fixed the fire escape so you couldn't get to it from the street. I was out walking The Dog and I finally got to a place where I could take her off-leash, so I had my hands free and decided to reply to his text (since you can't really blow off 2 texts in a row from a good friend). Of course in the middle of this, The Dog decides to take a dump. So I'm cutting the reply short so I can get out the poo bag and maintain control of an off-leash dog. And just as I'm getting ready to tie off the bag of poo, the phone starts ringing. Fuck it. I know what this is. Yup. It's him. I get the poo tied off and thrown in the surprisingly convenient trash can with enough time to take his call. He, of course, won't take my "they changed the fire escape not long after we climbed it" answer and tells me to look at the picture. And I'm like: "I can't. Because I'm walking my dog. And the screen on my phone is 1.5"x2.5".

Eventually I had to snap a leash on The Dog while we're talking. And eventually, with no sign of the aimless conversation ever ending, I realize I'm supposed to be home in 8 minutes or so and The Dog has literally led me halfway to the next state. Wound up getting home 15-20 minutes later than I planned on. So when the phone rang while I was out walking The Dog tonight and it was him I let it go to voicemail.
 
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