What to do on a hot, sweltering, sultry summer day in August in Florida?
Here’s a hint.
More to come.
Category Archives: Life in general
Work in progress
When it all comes down to it, life is just a series of small steps on the way to somewhere else. It’s never as simple as, say, telling someone you’ve bought a house. What you’ve really done is saved up the money for it, decided what you want, scouted properties, negotiated the deal, signed a thousand pieces of paper, taken the keys, packed and unpacked, sorted things over, and then started the things you want to do. But it’s much easier to say “I bought a house.”
In the same way, it’s easier to say you’re improving the soil on the property. What has actually happened is that you’ve looked over the soil, discovered that fill dirt and sand from other lots was dumped on yours, dug down a foot or so in various places looking for the real soil you know is there, tested the soil, brought in a ton of topsoil and compost, and sweated your way into what is the beginning of returning the top layers of nothing to a form that is rich and loamy and beautiful for growing Stuff.
Simplify, simplify
I’ve seen this show on from time to time called “Simplify your life” – ironically, on satellite, which probably does not fall into that category – but haven’t actually watched it. So, I’m not sure if it’s some hippie return-to-nature thing, or something a bit more practical about cleaning up some of the loose threads you might have lying around. I could simplify my life a great deal by selling off the business for a lot of money, but in the end, I really don’t want to do that. I do enjoy my work quite a bit, even with the frustrations posted here. I like solving problems. I like seeing people do whatever they need to do online, as long as it’s legal.
Big sky, little town
Today is a gloomy, gray day, with rain threatening, and completely unsuitable for working outdoors. Of course, since we are getting into the rainy season, each afternoon has been turning dark and stormy, with rain coming down in amounts anywhere from sprinkles to downpours that result in visibility reduced to halfway up the front of the property.
When the rains came after a couple of months of no rain at all, we were happy. It saves the trouble of watering, and the ground definitely needs it. But there are Issues, as we say. And we’ll get to those. First, we’re going to back up a bit, and wander back into May.
It’s a (very) small town here. Small enough that the actual town in which we live doesn’t have its own post office. The nearest PO is in another pretty small town.
Spring flames
Usually, things don’t start bursting into flames down here until we’re well into the summer months.
Usually.
Grunt work
Like people, animals have their idiosyncracies.
Home, sweet home
Welcome home.
We discovered that our suspicions were true: the neighbor behind us had dumped most of the crap onto this property, including a bunch of giant creosote poles. The builders finally got them removed – by the neighbor who dumped them in the first place. Now that side of the property looks even larger than it did, although there is still more junk to be removed, courtesy of the neighbor.
The yard tractor also arrived yesterday. It’s lovely.
And moving can be very painful to those with sensitive skin due to medical routines.
I have a matching set on the other arm, plus bruises up and down my legs and on my hips. If I only had a jacuzzi now…
The weather is here, wish you were fine
Wait, that’s the other way around, isn’t it?
This weekend has been spent hauling things out to the estate – we’re calling it the estate to differentiate it from the current house, since otherwise when we’re not together and someone says they are “at the house” it saves the time we would ordinarily be asking “which house”. So, the estate it is. I have bruises up and down the inside of each arm from toting things, because for whatever reason since treatment, it seems that I can bruise even with the gentlest of touches. And hauling boxes is not a gentle process when half your upper body is quite a bit weaker than the other half and you can’t really lift one arm the way you can the other. It makes for a little offbalance moving, but since we’re all a little offbalance, I suppose that’s fitting.
In any case, after a full day of back and forth on Saturday between the estate, the house, Home Depot, and the NOC a couple of times, with work in between each, I settled in and tried to sleep. Sleep, for me, has never been consistent and I can’t remember the last time it was ever really a good sleep (not including the times I was drugged up, of course, but a drugged sleep isn’t all that natural). Another fitful few hours later, and it was Sunday, so I got up to do it all over again. One trip to the NOC to crawl around and trace a power line that was mislabeled (by moi), and it was off to the races. Our dear friend Brutus showed up to help sling some boxes and see the house, but then things slowed down and we sat outside by the pool, enjoying the quiet, the breeze, and the beauty of the new place.
They completed the sod around the pool area and a line around the house, so I’ve been working to keep that watered since Mother Nature isn’t cooperating by giving us any rain.
While I was taking the second shot, a crazy person – aka, my mother – decided that she wasn’t going to let a little thing like 72 degree water stop her.
My sister also took a quick dip a little later in the day. Me? I’m cold enough as it is. I’d turn into a human popsicle if I climbed into that water.
In the meantime, the movers will be here on Tuesday now instead of today, but that’s fine. We’ll have satellite and the remaining two phone lines installed today, so those guys will be out of the way when the moving are bringing things in. That works out well. That also gives us another day to tote more of the little stuff over and gives me the chance to test the dialup out there and to start working on some of the outside landscaping/gardening things.
Ciao for now!
How was your day, dear?
Well, I gotta tell ya…
Good. And bad. And good. And seemingly neverending.
The pool is lovely, bright, and deep.
After a very restless night and very little sleep, I bagged it, got up, and did some work to clear a few things off my list. All the while, I seriously contemplated the distinct possibility that I might wind up puking before going off to get a cashier’s check for closing.
But I didn’t puke, I did get the check, and did head off to sign my life away.
Naturally, in the midst of signing all the papers, one of the servers went down and would not come back. A bit of misinterpretation by one of the guys equaled an issue that lasted quite a bit longer than it should have. I wound up blasting out to the NOC, at the beginning of rush hour, to run some commands on the server. While working on that one, another page from the monitor: another server has bitten the dust. Fortunately, I was already there, as that server, after a reboot, needed a disk check as well. With that running, but before the final reboot to bring that one back online, yet another page: another person has crashed their server (but this one does this on a fairly regular basis). That one, of course, came right back after a power cycle, as it was the one I was least concerned about. With all the disk checks done, everything back online, and the monitor all clear with all services green, I could finally enjoy the moment.
Just the tiniest taste for me, since alcohol and my tongue are still not yet approaching being even the most distant of friends.
Back on the road for more work, then back on the road to return to the HQ. Ding! Yet another server issue, and it’s the same one that went off earlier today as I was working on server number one. Criminy. Manage to get to a safe spot, get logged on to the reboot port via my phone. Ding! Recovery notices. In the five minutes or so it took me to do that, the user has rebooted the server (although, I believe that if you can get into the server, 99% of the time it isn’t necessary). Back on the road, finally to the HQ, settle back in to work.
Only to consider that perhaps our habit of answering tickets almost instantly is something we should rethink, as a user is demanding to know why someone hasn’t answered a ticket in 30 minutes – a ticket related to that very server, in fact. That could be because my vehicle, sad to say, does not travel at the speed of light, it’s impossible for me to answer tickets on my phone, and I’m the one covering tonight. Ergo, no response to that ticket or any other in the preceding 30 minutes.
Take care of that, whip through the other few tickets that have arrived, and then receive a real winner: someone complaining about a charge for domain registration, telling us they have no account with us and to remove it. Well, genius, it would help if you could give us some kind of hint as to who you are, when the charge was processed, what the domain name was on the invoice, what the invoice number was, or perhaps what the last four of the credit card were. You know – any sort of information whatsoever that would let us know which of the numerous charges we process on any given day would be The One.
Oh, and this is what greeted me when I got back to the old house.
What used to be a pillow was now a collection of small fluffy islands in the foyer, living room, and office. And no, Newton was not the culprit. But he did pose nicely.
Mickey had wisely decided to take his ass outside after laying down on the floor at my feet, knowing that he’d been bad. Damn dogs. Good thing they’re so cute.
The first couple of loads of stuff is at the new place. Tomorrow will bring more work and more back and forth between the old and new houses. It will be a rather exhausting weekend, I can see this already.
Foiled again
A step back, a step forward, a step back, and what do you have?
The hokey-pokey, of course.
Or a very real delay in closing on your new house, courtesy of the fence guy, who let us down by not showing up yesterday to hang the gates, thus delaying the final pool inspection, thus delaying the closing.
Curses!
So, we’re off until Friday morning at the earliest, which means we can’t get the movers until Monday.
Drat!
We’ve decided that we’ll start moving the plants and other outside stuff this weekend, to get it out of the way. Hell, I might even start throwing boxes in the car each time I go out there and just leave the big stuff for the movers. Or round up a few people, get a truck, and move the big stuff ourselves…