Project month kick off, water woes, fair fall-off

As mentioned earlier, I declared February as project month. We started out this weekend strong, tackling three projects. The projects were redoing the rose bed border with landscape ties and raise the bed so it isn’t underwater during wet season, double the size of the garden and rip down the shitty vinyl gutter in the back corner of the roof and replace them with aluminum ones. While Ali cleaned Saturday morning, I took the truck to home depot to load up. The truck was filled to the gills with top soil, compost, gutters, landscape ties and mulch. It was so full that I had the 10 bags of mulch in the cab with me. The truck was riding very loooow.

I didn’t get back until after noon so we didn’t get to start until 1 or so. Everything went well, despite getting rained on a bit. By the time dark fell I had the rose bed done, the garden done and had the roof portion of the gutters up. We had pizza delivered and took a break. Now I had a choice, either leave the gutters to be finished up in the morning or do it now. Of course I chose to put on a sweatshirt and finish up the gutters by floodlight. I was done by around 7:30 pm. Both of us were very tired and dirty. Nothing would feel better than a shower. One small problem, the damn well pump was dead again, no water!!!! Argh. This happened a few weeks ago and it simply reset itself after awhile. So we waited, waited until 10 pm. No luck. So I placed a call with the well company for a service call and called the neighbors to see if we could use their shower. They said sure, no problem. While Ali was gathering shower supplies I had a brainstorm and connected the neighbors water system to ours via a long hose. Doing so allowed us to fill our storage tank and have water! It would make do until the well company showed up. So we cleaned up and hit bed after 11, exhausted.

Sunday morning I checked the equipment and the water pressure was back, just as before. However this time I did not cancel the service call as I wanted it checked out. The tech called at 7:45 am and was at our place before 9 am, a rare example of good service in Florida. He told me what was happening was the well pump was overheating from cycling on and off repeatedly when I use it for irrigation. He showed me how to reset it if it happens again and was on his way. Add reevaluate irrigation system to the project list.

On Sunday it was cool, in the low to mid 60’s and very windy. However it was sunny so we decided to break down and go to the fair, it was the last day of the 10 day run. The had 2 choices for admission. 5 bucks to get in or 10 bucks if you wanted to ride any rides. This allowed you unlimited rides. Well I wanted to do a few but Ali didn’t want to do any so I got the magical pink elephant wrist band that got me on the rides and Ali’s wrist remained bare. We checked out the animal exhibits first, lots of fancy chickens, along with other farm animals. I always feel bad for the animals being in cages too small for them to even stand up in. Next, it was on to the rides. I was psuedo-pumped to wring every last bit of value out of my wrist band that I paid an extra 5 bucks for.

First off I decided to go on what looked to be a nasty, gut twisting contraption. You had to go 2 at a time so there was a young boy that had noone to go with so we teamed up in the front car. The compartment was super tight, I had to squeeze in and my knees and head were wedged against the walls. The ride spun like a spit while the cars went around the perimeter of the track. The little boy loved it, by the time I squirmed out my stomach already felt unsettled. Not good. Undaunted, I pushed on and looked for the next thrill filled ride. I spotted a big vertical loop that has the cars just simply going around and around, in both directions. Again it required going in pairs so I got teamed up with a zit faced teenager. This ride couldn’t end soon enough. First it rocked you back and forth, then the cruel ride operator would hold the car at the top of the loop so your head felt like it was going to pop, then as the finale we got to fly around the loop forwards and then backwards. By the end my yells of excitement were replaced by silence as I concentrated on the seat in front of me in an attempt to control my nausea. I wobbled down the steps, now feeling truly sick after only 2 rides, pathetic. I proclaimed no more spinning rides for me. They had one of those drop rides so I hopped on that for a quick thrill and I was done. 3 rides was all I could stomach. I am not sure what happens as you get older that makes you less tolerant of this sort of motion. When I was younger it seemed like I could go forever on rides. Maybe it just seemed that way, I don’t know. We both grabbed an apple dumpling, walked around a bit and were out of there within an hour and a half. The best parts of the fair were the animals and the dumpling, pretty lame otherwise. I dropped close to 40 bucks for that crap, ugh.