Do it now

I pretty much NEVER blog on a Sunday afternoon but things just work out how they work out sometimes.  Talk about work, Saturday was jammed full of it.  Before the work began Cindy and I headed to the track to get a run in.  We left the house around 7 but that was not early enough to offset the now firmly in place heat and humidity.  The three and a half miles we ran were hot and sweaty as you would expect.

When we got home I quickly jumped in the pool as a substitute shower before we jumped in the Prius to go pick up Sadie.  We went straight from Ali’s place to Rural King and Home Depot for our almost automatic weekly visit.  Sadie loves being able to roam the aisles of both stores like any other regular shopper.  I needed to get some stuff for a number of small projects.  I also bought a pretty big item, a Dewalt battery powered weed whacker.  They were running a promo where you got a free second battery pack when you bought the trimmer.  Considering these high powered batteries normally cost $100 each it was quite the deal.

My gas powered weed whacker still works although it is starting to have some problems.  I never would have considered a cordless trimmer several years ago but the advances in battery tech over the last few years means it is now a viable option.  The new 20V batteries are very expensive but with their cost comes long run times and power that rivals corded counterparts.

When we got home one of the many things I did was take the trimmer out for a test run in the yard since it needed to be whacked anyway.  It felt a bit odd performing the job that has exclusively been gas powered the last 15 years with an electric tool.  The power of the whacker was more than sufficient for my needs although I did have to pull out the second battery to finish up the last 10 minutes or so of whacking.

I was running around all afternoon fixing/installing things.  In the middle of it all we had a rather urgent problem to address.  Cindy had mentioned earlier in the day that she heard dripping in the AC return vent in our bedroom which happens to be right under the air handler.  When I was out in the garage I looked at the platform the handler sits on and saw something very disturbing, a very wet wall.  It was obvious the drain system for the handler had to be clogged.  Ironically we already had our AC company scheduled to come out for a PM this week.  Well this was a problem we had to address now.

I pulled the cap to the drain line and could feel some sort of organic material clogging it.  I went outside and attached my shop vac to the drain line to try to suck out debris.  When I had little to no success I took another approach and inserted my air hose from the garage side and tried to blow debris out with air pressure.  I had Cindy watching the drain pipe to see if anything came out.  She said some gunk did exit the tube.  I followed up with some misguided work with the garden hose that seemed to do little more than shoot more water around.

Cindy was freaked out by the idea of the moisture creating mold so she scraped away the very wet section of the wall.  We brought in a floor stand fan and pointed it at the wall to dry it out.  I appeared to have gotten the drain open enough to prevent more back up but we will need to the AC guys to really go over the system thoroughly.  I dropped some bleach in the drain line to hopefully kill whatever is growing in it. I am a bit annoyed that the sensor that is designed to shut off the air handler if water backs up appeared to not work.

After busting ass all afternoon I was beat but had one more item on my mental list to complete, cleaning the Prius thoroughly.   Not only did I wash it but I gave it a coat of Nu-Finish, polished the haze off the headlight lenses and applied tire glaze.  The end result was the nearly 10 year old vehicle looking about as good as it can at this stage of it’s life.

Last night we were both beat and were happy to stay home and watch our latest Netflix rental, Truth.  It is a movie regarding how Dan Rather was forced out of CBS News after 60 minutes reported on how George Bush’s National Guard service to avoid Vietnam was suspicious with allegations of him being AWOL during much of the time he was supposedly in the guard.

When this happened back in 2004 I recall the story but to be honest I didn’t pay tons of attention to it.  There was so much shady shit attributed to W at this time it was just another chapter in a very long book.  The movie was surprisingly intense and emotional.  I certainly did not expect it to be in A- territory.  Robert Redford does a masterful job of portraying Dan Rather, a role I would have told you he was not a good fit for prior to seeing the film.

This morning we did another trip to Home Depot with a DD pit stop with Sadie in tow.  When we got home Cindy got out immediately on the tractor to mow.  The forecast for the next couple days is a very wet one so we wanted to get the grass mowed before ponds once again appear in the yard. She got about 2/3 done before the rain came.

I also did my first day of the 22 kill pushup challenge, an ice bucket-ish thing where participants film themselves doing 22 push ups per day for 22 days.  The number 22 represents the average number of veteran suicides per day, so even though I am normally not a “me too” guy, a cause like this is worthy of my support.

My first installment can be seen here.

This upcoming week is going to be an unconventional one as I am doing at home technical training all week long.  In my past experience these training weeks are fun at first but lose their luster as the week progresses.  Regardless it will be nice to be sticking around the comforts of home all week long.