6 day work week, the show that wasn’t, Minions, first run, new blades, rubber and oil
My alarm clock went off at the normal time for a weekday on Saturday and it wasn’t by accident. I needed to get up and into the office for an after hours server migration. The server I was working on is the document imaging server for our office so it is both crucial and huge. I did the upgrade in tandem with a tech from the software vendor who was on the phone and connected via remote control. Like is always the case with this sort of work there were a number of obstacles that had to be overcome during the migration. By the time I got everything working it was a few minutes before noon.
I hurried home because Cindy and I were going to try to go see another car show I saw listed in the paper. It was being held at Mercato from 10-3. So after driving home to pick up Cindy we headed right back out in the SSR. We managed to get to Mercato about 1:45, leaving us plenty of time to still see the cars. Well there was one problem, there were no cars there. When we couldn’t obviously see any car show Cindy looked it up on her phone. On there was a cancellation notice, the forecast of rain was enough to postpone the show to another date, damn it. Well that’s a bummer.
We figured since we were there we would at least walk around a little bit. We ran into a ex-neighbors of Cindy and their two dogs, one of which was a 9 week old poodle/golden retriever mix that was absolutely adorable. While Cindy caught up with them I spent most of the time just petting the dogs which was fine with me.
I was tired when we got home an didn’t have any interest in going back out Saturday night if we didn’t have to. Luckily we had another Netflix rental on hand, Minions. Everybody loves the minions, it is nearly impossible not to. It was a cute and funny way to spend 90 minutes and a solid B+ rental.
Sunday morning I wanted to get out and do a run. Well I didn’t really want to but I felt I needed to. I had not run since before my illness more than three weeks prior, I needed to prove to myself I could still do it. We decided to go park at Dunkin Donuts and run the nice path along the canal. We wound up running right around 3.5 miles at a very mundane pace of a little under 10 minute miles. As expected I didn’t physically feel great during the run. Early on my left knee, which is my “good” one was hurting me. After maybe 10 minutes of running the pain faded. After the run I immediately felt some irritation in my right IT band as well which is annoying since I have been doing daily stretching to prevent that scenario. When I run I have been feeling more frustration than relief. The frustration comes from being able to run significantly less and slower than I could a few years ago. Of course it’s easy to just add running to the old age write off list but I am still holding onto hope that I can regain some of my endurance level if I can stay relatively injury free, somehow.
After fueling up with coffee we headed to Home Depot for items for a number of different projects. One of them was a gate kit that I hope to use to rebuild the door to the chicken run. The 2×4″ and hardware cloth door I built originally is warping badly, causing it to not seal the run well and also make locking the door difficult. The gate kit I bought uses a steel frame as it’s backbone which you attach the wood to which should keep the door straight regardless of the environment.
I also bought a new rubber seal for the garage door. I replaced the seal twice before and it was definitely overdue. Over time the rubber flattens and shrinks, creating gaps on either side of the door for insects and other undesirables to gain access. I was able to pull the old seal out and get the new one 80% of the way installed into the track before I called Cindy out to help me pull it the rest of the way. It was nice to not see daylight peeking in through either edge of the door when it was closed after I was done.
We also bought a few castle stones to do a test on the border around the pool which is currently lined with one layer of the same stones. We are considering adding a second layer around the entire border as a way to prevent chicken mess. The chickens for some reason love scratching in the mulch around the pool, despite it being recycled rubber. The end result is they kick the mulch out onto the grass which looks like shit. My hope is adding another layer of castle stone will make a substantial wall which will catch most of the mulch, no matter how much they kick. Adding a second layer is going to take a lot of work. The existing stones need to be pressure washed and leveled better before another layer is put on top. I could easily see it taking a half a day.
I also got around to installing the new mower blades and changing the oil in the tractor. The contrast in appearance and size between the old beat up blades and the brand new ones is dramatic. While I had the blades out I took the time to blast the underside of the mower deck with the pressure washer. There was a cement like accumulation of dried organic matter that needed to get cleaned off. The oil looked very, very black so changing it felt much needed. I wound up working on these projects until late into Sunday afternoon. Cindy attended a surprise birthday party during the afternoon so I got to work solo which was fine.
Tonight we are planning to hit the county fair with Cindy’s daughter. It should be fun and entertaining as always.