It's a Holiday Weekend But I Got a Lot Accomplished

As usually is the case with me, I don't have written plans for each day. I might have some things in my head that I am wanting to do but let me tell you, I hop all over the place once I get started. Luckily this weekend I finished what I started before moving on to a different project.

Yesterday I had my very first Craig's List sale. I probably gave those spare BMW Z4 rims away but I was to the point I didn't care ... get 'em out of here. I had an offer when I woke Saturday morning, I agreed to it over coffee and the buyer drove 75 miles to get here and took them away by 1pm. In the mean time I had decided I was going to trim one of the large plants on the north side of my house. I am not sure what it is, at times it will show medium size pink flowers. Anyway I trimmed it ... better than burning it to the ground like I did 17 years ago by accident.  lol

With the 100' electrical cord stretched out across part of the front yard, I decided on the spur of the moment to go ahead and for the first time, trim the Yews that I planted a couple of years ago. It was much easier than I had imagined.

Since I was on a roll, I decided to get rid of the 3 spruces on the south edge of my property. Last year my neighbor (no brains), caught my bank on fire (100' long) and in the process burnt the south side of my 4 spruce trees. He claimed when I asked, that he knew nothing about it and had no idea how that could have happened. It's a long story that I will not go in to, but here are a couple of photos from last year after they were fried. In the 2nd photo noticed the burnt grass close to my pickup truck. From that point to the base of the bank is 15' ... must have been a heck of a wall of fire.

April 2013

I had hoped when I saw some new green growth last fall, that all of them were in the process of making a comeback but by this May all of them had died. They turned brittle and brown. I tried to help them last fall and this spring with water and fertilizer but without success.

November 2013

I cut all of them down to ground level and tossed them on the pile to be burned in the fall with all the other brush, tree limbs etc.

That was my Saturday. I was in the mood to do that type of stuff so I thought I'd better take advantage of my surprising motivation while I had it.

My CL buyer was running a little late, so I backed the FJ and Mini Cooper out from the carport, floor brushed out what dirt had collected from the winter and spring winds. I stretched out my hose and did one of my favorite things ... hosed down the concrete getting everything clean. There is just something about high pressure water getting dirt out of concrete that I enjoy ... weird ... similar to watching the grounds crew at professional baseball games hosing down the infield dirt before the game.

Sunday morning while drinking coffee I decided I would take down my old tv antenna and steel pole that had been mounted to the north side of the house trim next to the crown of the roof. That antenna (worked perfect pre-HD tv days) and pole probably had been there for 40 years.

At first I thought I would dismantle it from the top, first taking the antenna off the pole while I stood on the roof and then unhooking the U-bolts holding the pole stationary to the house trim. I imagined after all of these years the antenna being there, that the pole must be in concrete. After climbing up to the roof I decided that wasn't the way to do it. I unscrewed 4 nuts to take off the U-bolts off the wood it was mounted to, told Sadie to get out of the way and gave it a shove away from the house. The pole was in the ground deep enough it barely moved but did sway a little bit. It moved enough to get away from the house where I could pound, pry and anything else to get those two pieces of wood off of the trim.

It was quite a "gun decked" piece of work by whoever installed it.  After climbing down the ladder, I was able to pull with the coax cable, hard enough to get the antenna and pole leaning toward me. As I kept pulling, I realized the pole was not set in concrete like I thought it was but after all of these years, was only buried in the ground. Easy stuff.

I disconnected the antenna from the pole, dismantled the antenna and broke it down enough where it will be taken away by my garbage collector Wednesday with no problems. I am going to cut up the steel pole and take it to the recycling center this week.

That led me to sanding, priming and painting that top center end piece of my house trim. While waiting for the primer to dry I remembered my mailbox pole also needed painting. So I primed that, then waited to apply two different coats of paint to the mailbox pole and house trim.

By the end of Sunday afternoon, I had taken down the antenna, a 30' steel pole, painted the north end house trim, the mailbox pole, the gray utility boxes up next to the house the same color as the house. I did this while managing a psychotic bloodhound that wanted out every time I left the house but wanted back in the house as soon as I would get to my ladder on the opposite side of the house. She's crazy!

A successful weekend ... except what is waiting for me under the house.  It's suppose to thunderstorm on Monday and Tuesday so it looks like Wednesday before I can get under the house to finish that project dragging out 40 yr old insulation (it was legal then) and spraying and killing any visible mold. After that will be laying 1000 square feet of 6 mil plastic on the dirt floor. I don't have to craw under the house, the crawlspace is deep enough that I can stand bent over. Still I can stand and not having to craw on my hands and knees to remove the insulation.

During all of these hours of doing house stuff this weekend, I thought of what it would be like with no house duties lurking around the corner. Do you get bored hanging out in beautiful country? I know you can move when you get bored but I just wonder how those days traveling would be spent, camping in one spot day after day. I may have a hard time getting started on projects but once I do, I enjoy them more than sitting around like I have the past couple of months just reading books or looking at the computer. Makes me wonder.

I do have 'hitch itch' though and nothing to travel in.

The hounds and I are waiting for the temperature to fall a few degrees before the daily dog walk. It looks like it might be one of those 8:30pm walks since we are back into the 80's today. They aren't really waiting, they are sleeping but will be excited when I say the word "walk" after they wake up.

Smooth Blog Merger

The merging of the two blogs went pretty smoothly until I made a major mistake and didn't back up my old blog. It was simple to transfer the newer blog posts and comments, by exporting them and importing that file into the old blog. It even sorted them by date without changing any formats of the older blog. I chose the option of posting the new blog posts automatically.

The mistake was made when I didn't back up my old blog, then tried something different for the blogs I follow on the left side. I thought I would have 'traveling bloggers' and a separate section for 'retirement bloggers' that I had moved from my new blog. It looked ok but I decided to even merge them into one section because it would be hard to see both sections due to the amount of blogs I have added.

With a quick glance I thought I had the correct section that I wanted to delete but I didn't see that the newest section 'retirement bloggers' was at the top when I added the gadget. So without a blog backup, I deleted all of the blogs I have been following for 2+ years, of people RVing. It took a while but with the help of other blogs I follow and using their blog lists I remembered most of them I think. Other's I found by typing their blog names and having my browser memory bring them up automatically.

I think this is a good move getting back to one blog. It will be easier for the readers, myself and will follow what I said I was going to do last month ... blogging about the three subjects in the title. Which you will notice I did a slight change to the blog title.

One post that you may not have seen on my other blog, will show why I have had a hard time trying to decide over the years to move, sell out, stay part of the year, etc. This blog post and photos will give you a good idea what at times I have a hard time deciding what to do.

You can read about it here: Some things that keep me here.

I will say I have not looked at any RV sites recently nor Craig's List for something to buy ... but I have thought about traveling off and on. With only 2 hands available and the DNA of the hound breed, I still feel it would be too hard to travel with 3 hounds.

Tonight on the daily walk was a good example as 3 deer hopped out of the woods that border the field we walk through, totally unexpected, while Sadie and Heidi came close of pulling both leashes out of my hands as they were taking off to catch the deer. Even when I held them, I could almost feel the retractable leash break with the strength that Sadie was pulling. The leash held up but it was a struggle to keep 2 of the hounds from breaking away. Winston in the mean time was walking his slow pace and with eye allergies I don't believe he saw the deer.

Still, some short trips will be made locally with the hounds.

Thinking of Migrating Back to One Blog

It looks like what I wanted to do worked and it was a simple process. So there are some new posts, in date sequence and for those that have not read them, if you are interested, keep scrolling down and you will see them. They will continue to the second page.  

Some of you may know that I started a second blog not quite a month ago. I was planning to stop blogging here completely but I still post on occasion when it deals with 'rvs' or 'hounds' .. lately mostly hounds. Originally I was going a whole different direction with the other blog and no connection to this blog.

That whole different direction never happened.

What did happen, I started writing about life in general. From the comments, some emails and some added followers, on that blog I saw where some of my readers here moved over there ... some, reading both blogs because I continue to blog here on occasion.

That seemed to be working out ok until a few minutes ago after I had finished getting caught up on my blog reading. I started thinking why have two blogs with similar readers, in some cases the same readers. Sure, some people that are retired are not into the RV lifestyle but there are some RV followers here that are retired and might find some of the new blogs I follow interesting, some retirement information or even some of the every day mundane stuff that goes on here in the "tropics" of southern Indiana enjoyable to some.

There are some blogs I follow where they travel part time, maybe only a few months out of the year and the rest of the time they are blogging from home. A few have retired from the road, but they keep blogging and it's enjoyable to read what they are doing, even if it local travel.

Even with everyday mundane activities going on, the mind and subconscious is still working and in my case that is always a dangerous but interesting thing to see. At times it has become a pretty enjoyable read to some.

So what I might be doing the rest of the night is migrating some of the posts from my other blog over to this blog. I will have to read some blogger help section or google questions, to see if I can do what I want to do. If I can't, I'll post some of the posts from the other blog over to this one, in the same sequence as I wrote them. I'll just schedule them to post daily starting tomorrow until I'm caught up.

I've posted 15 times over there.

This will keep it simple for readers, simple for me, simple for the hounds and simple for my Google+ profile.

Stay tuned.

Back to Reading Books

Maybe it was weather dictated. Maybe it was the problem under the house. Maybe it was just an urge to do something I had not done in a very long time... reading books.

Before the internet I use to be a huge book reader.

After a few trips under the house to view and start the removal of mold, I lost enthusiasm for that job quickly. The outside temps were really hot and the humidity was even higher. I had bought everything I needed and started the process. The thought of that "itchy" pink fiberglass insulation that needed to be removed also was a 'buzz' kill. I'll post later on the whole removal process, hopefully with some photos. Now, I will just say the mold issue is not as bad as I was led to believe by the words of the internet dish installer. It should be an easy fix and nothing to be concerned about.

Last week sometime, I decided early evening I would get off the computer for a while and read an old ebook that I had in my kindle app on my iPad and iMac. I had started this ebook more than a couple of times in the past years, but like with all other books I had bought at the store, I would read a few pages and then never finish. Consequently I have a whole "library" of books sitting around that I want to read and now probably will after finding my old hobby of reading.

That night I couldn't stop reading. This book is the first in a series of five mysteries. They are all easy reads and I finished that first book in a few hours of reading. I had to force myself to go to bed to keep from starting the second book. I'm a night person and at times I could stay up all night without a problem, especially if I have something to do.

I basically have spent every day and night since starting that first book, reading these books. I have not stopped and picked up a different book to read at the same time like I had in the past. I read just one book at a time. I did take a break from reading one day because I needed to buy something out of town.

I had to make a trip to Bloomington for some 6 mil 10'x100' visqueen plastic for the crawlspace dirt floor so I can replace the original that had been destroyed over the seventeen years I have lived here. That may be part of the problem under the house. It was something a blog reader suggested and something I had not thought about. Right after my return home though, I was back into the reading.

Along with the high temperatures and very high humidity, I didn't want to spend that time outside working under the house ... so I continued to read throughout the day, take an occasional nap whenever I felt like it. The hounds and I would take the daily dog walk around 9pm due to the hot temps. When we got back, I'd pour a tall glass of water and get back to reading. As of today I am into the fifth and final book of the Bud Shumway series.

Today the temperature has dropped to the high 70's and the humidity is back down into the 50% range ... still, right after this post, I'm going back to finish the fifth book of the series. I have emailed the author and she is wrapping up the sixth edition, that will be available soon. The link above is just for the kindle editions so if you are into the paperback versions, you can do a search on Amazon for the "Bud Shumway Series" and all the options will show up.

That is nothing more than an Amazon link as I am not an affiliate, trying to increase my commissions.

I have a lot of other books that I have bought in the past that were never read. Anything from athlete's biographies, dogs, travel, financial and food. I look forward to reading them as well. That brings up the question about what is preferred, electronic books or the hardbacks you can buy online or at the local book stores. I believe right now, I like both. There is something about reading a hardback book and at the same time it's pretty neat to have a lot of books loaded in my kindle app on my iMac, iPad and iPhone.

I am becoming more and more comfortable with my retirement lifestyle. I realize that I am doing what I pictured years ago when I would ask myself "what would you do if you retired and stayed here?". Basically my weekends have turned into an everyday style. I comfortable with what I am doing and the changes from those days that I worked a job. I have no urge to go running back to any kind of job. I have lost not all, but a lot of my urge to travel since I have come to terms that my hounds are not "camping compatible" based on their breed. That is another story in itself.

So, things are pretty slow here in rural southern Indiana, but enjoyable.