So last night I had a dream, something I do quite regularly but also something I have not been able to recall many details from in recent years. However last night was different. I recall literally no details about what lead up to the event. All I can tell you is I am pretty sure it transpired as I was going down into the basement of the Gouglersville house I grew up in. I have detailed here before how the basement of that old farmhouse used to scare the shit out of me as a kid. I always felt like someone was watching me and I would never dare look towards the furnace until I pulled one of the drawstring lights as I was pretty sure that was where the eyes were coming from.
So anyway in the dream I was walking down the steps of that basement and at the bottom I made a left hand turn, towards the side the furnace was on. I was looking down as I normally would but I glanced up for just a second. I suddenly had the shadowy outline of a person right in front of me and slightly to my right. In a split second, in my dream I snapped my right leg out and up, delivering a blow to the side of the shadows head, dropping it. The dream ended right there as I realized I had actually kicked my right leg out violently in bed as well.
I was on the right side of the bed (as you lay on it) My right leg was only partially covered and easily shot into the air. When I woke up I realized just how hard I had kicked, my right knee felt the strain of going from sound asleep to adrenaline fueled, full force flailing in no time flat. It was pretty crazy.
I have had other flailing incidents in my sleep that Cindy has unfortunately been on the receiving end of but this kick was an entire new level of action. Thankfully I was so tired I was able to fall back asleep rather quickly with no further basement dreams corrupting my dreamworld.
Once again on Friday night I got out and did the weeding when I got home to give me one less to do for the weekend. The first thing that got done on Saturday was another run. The temps in the upper 60’s definitely helped make the session feel less miserable than normal. I again opted for 13 laps as I am actually doing a four mile “race” this upcoming Sunday so I figured more distance made sense.
I spent most of the rest of the morning mowing the grass. As I did I clearly recall thinking how nice it was that everything was now totally dry and the miserable days of standing water were behind us for awhile. Six hours later, it was back.
There was a fast moving tropical storm that buzzed by Florida that had no serious wind on our coast but dropped a shitload of rain. I am sure we got at least four inches. Neither Cindy or I were happy to see things underwater yet again, reenforcing that 2017 has been the worst rainy season since either of us have lived in the Naples area.
We watched XXX the Return of Xander Cage on dvd on Friday in bed. It has been sitting in it’s Netflix envelope for weeks and weeks. We just have not been motivated to watch it. That lack of excitement was merited, it was a C+ flick at best, oh well.
Saturday night we went to the Prado movie theater in Bonita, a theater I had been to once or twice but Cindy had not. Coconut Pointe was STILL closed and I did not feel like dealing with the crowds we had at Silverspot. The Prado is quite nice and less expensive than any other theater in the area, we will be going there more often I think. We saw “Thank You for Your Service”, a movie about the terrible toll many soldiers that come back from Afghanistan/Iraq wars are forced to pay. It was certainly a very sobering look at the reality of war and why the people that profit massively from international conflict should perhaps spend some time with their own boots on the ground. It just might change their perspective on things. It was an A movie.
Sunday morning after tending to the chickens and paying my bills we went to Veterans Park. Our plan was for Cindy and Elsa to walk while I rode my Msuper around a bit. Veterans has a dog park but we were bummed to see it was closed due to hurricane damage. A lot f trees went down and in the process damaged a lot of the perimeter fencing.
I never rode my wheel there so it was cool to travel the outer perimeter to see what was what. We didn’t spend much time there but it was nice to at least get out for a short while.
So in the past a game like the Eagles had on Sunday against the winless 49ers would be a trap game. There have been so many times over my decades as a fan where the Eagles would play down to the level of their competition and in many cases lose to team that they just should never lose to. For the first half of the game it looked like that may once again be the case with the score being only 3-0 as the teams approached halftime. However in the second half the Eagles really asserted themselves and imposed their will, pulling away to an easy win, moving their record to a much unexpected 7-1.
As a lifelong Birds fan I just never feel comfortable truly believing this could be the year the team actually goes all the way. They have been close so many times only to squash my hopes in the end. I still assume the wheels will come off at some point but it still has been great to have this sort of a start to a season, something that has not occurred since the Donovan McNabb heyday.
After the game I once again dug into my CR-10 trying to get it to print an ornate cross for Cindy. It has been desire to get this cross printed for her that has driven my many, many hours of frustration trying to get several printing issues corrected. Overnight that effort was finally rewarded when I woke up to a very clean print that more or less duplicated the cross Cindy had that broke when it was dropped.
The design work was done by my buddy Mathias in Norway. I sent him an overhead picture of the broken cross. Since the cross is symmetrical he was able to flip and reverse the unbroken portion to correct where it was broken and turn it into a 3D model. Cindy was very happy with the outcome and is looking forward to us trying to print it several times in different colors/filament styles.
At this point next week we should all be moved back to our renovated space in the office, ending what has been a nearly six month headache with a major hurricane thrown in just for fun. That’s good news but the bad news this project ends just in time for us to start getting very deep into another project where we are outsourcing the majority of our backend systems to a cloud provider.
The weather yesterday was simply awesome with high temps that didn’t exceed 75 degrees. I took advantage of it when I got home, jumping on my Msuper to ride it over to the school, just like the good old days. When I got over there I buzzed around the middle school grounds. A lot of that time was spent riding backwards. I bet a rode close to a mile in reverse in total. I still don’t get to practice as much as I would like but even so my reverse riding went pretty well.
It just felt great to be peacefully rolling around the school grounds and adjacent development, not having to worry about external forces affecting my moment. Riding my EUC is very akin to the feeling you hear bikers talk about, both human and gas powered, about the freedom you feel in those moments. It insulates you from whatever is negative in your sphere of existence, at least for a short period of time.
When I got home I also tried again to print a larger version of the ornate cross I had my friend 3D model for Cindy. I am still having some issues but at least they are not the jamming variety which started my long battle with the printer weeks ago. I think I can figure this latest problem out without additional expense and just a small expenditure of patience.
So for the first time in weeks I successfully completed a print on my CR-10. I can’t even begin to describe all of the things I tried, installed, removed, and repaired trying to get back to this point but it’s been a long list that has been filled with tons of frustration.
My successful print was the famous Benchy boat print which is used to test how well a printer is calibrated. My model turned out pretty damn clean. I tried to build on my success by trying to print a much larger model but ran into some adhesion problems I need to work on some more. Still, it was my first success after a long string of failures so it felt good.
This morning we woke up to something that had not been seen since probably late April or early May, an outside temperature that started with a 6. The thermometer read 69 degrees. It felt wonderful outside. The oppressive heat and humidity of south Florida feels longer each year, making the prospect of eventually moving to a more temperate climate in the future a very appealing concept.
So I finally got a call back from my insurance company, well to be clear, I got a call back from the company my insurance company sub-contracts out their claim handling to. I am less and less impressed with the way Tower Hill does business now that both the adjusters that did my assessment and the people cutting checks both are not actual Tower Hill employees.
So anyway, I tell this woman how the number they came up with was much lower than the estimates I have received from contractors. (roughly 5-6k) I told her I had emailed those estimates in earlier in the day. The conversation was very difficult to hear, she sounded like she was talking inside a box and there was a lot of background noise. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was intentional, making a call annoying makes you want to end it sooner.
She said that after looking at the estimates the only way she could authorize paying out additional funds was if she contacted these contractors to see why their quotes were more than the insurance company estimate. I laughed out loud at this as I knew it was utterly ridiculous. To think a contractor, who is already buried in work is going to sit there and waste their time on the phone justifying their quote to some insurance company call center minion is laughable. I indicated that this didn’t seem to make any sense but she repeated that was the course of action to follow. I gave her permission to contact them but I don’t expect her to get anywhere with it, but she already knows that.
The interaction to me was just very transparent. The entire goal here is to delay and frustrate the homeowner to the point where he just wants to get stuff fixed so they accept the initial offer. However in my situation I have the house and pool cage temporarily fixed enough that I can play a long game if need be. I plan to consult the public adjuster I spoke to initially and see what she thinks my best course of action is at this point.
I tried to give myself extra time on Saturday to work on the pool cage by getting the weeding out of the way on Friday evening. In a way it was sort of nice as the temps were in the low 80’s and dropping.
Saturday morning Cindy was helping out a friend with a 5K walk that supports cancer research. She suggested I get my run out of the way on Saturday so we could sleep in on Sunday. I took that advice and started running even earlier than normal since Cindy had a 5AM alarm. I took my first strides a little after 6. Since I pushed my run to 16 laps when Cindy showed up last week so I felt obligated to run more than my normal 12 times around the track so I added a 13th lap. I didn’t feel too bad.
After getting back and tending to the chickens I wasted little time before I started working on the pool cage screen. I first did my amateur seamstress impersonation, sewing up the sections of screen that had a gap. The end result is far from visually pleasing but I think it will do a half decent job of keeping unwanted critters and bugs out of the pool area.
I then grabbed my bag of 2″ Nylotec pool cage screws and replaced all of the screws in the 1″x 2″ header piece, most of which were completely rusted. These nylon head screws will basically never rust and make the cage look much better. I replaced about 30 screws and have a lot more to go. I have a kit to replace the smaller screws along the bottom and I need to get one more size to replace the real big cement screws which are the worst looking of all. Installation of the new screws is easy, back out the old screw and insert the new one, which has a slightly larger diameter, allowing you to use the existing hole.
Cindy was gone longer than I anticipated but when she got home I asked her to help me with the last and most difficult screen fix I had left to do, a roof section. I had a similar issue as I did with the sides, since I could not get screen rolls that were wide enough to cover it completely I was going to use a long four foot roll, overlapping two pieces.
Getting the strip of screen stretched across the opening was a difficult task in itself. I had the roll up on the roof with me while Cindy had the other end, trying to get it over the edge of the cage so it could be pulled over top. The gusting wind turned the screen into a sail, making the work even more frustrating. Eventually we got the first piece in place. I splined it in along the roof gutter and then came down and did my best to pull it tight and attach it on the other side. My best was not good enough as the wind ripped it out. I had to reattach it a couple times.
Getting the second piece on was equally if not more frustrating. Eventually we got it into place enough that I told Cindy I could take it from there. I was not pleased with the way things were. The one strip of screening had a fold along the edge that I could not reach. With the long strip only being secured at either edge I knew there was a good chance it would come loose quickly so I felt that somehow I needed to secure it more on top.
At first I entertained the idea of simply scaling the pool frame like a circus act however thankfully visions of me getting blown off balance by the wind and crashing through the screen to the concrete below made me reconsider the plan. I did come up with a plan B however. After I climbed back on the roof with the Gorilla ladder I proceeded to pull the ladder up on the roof with me. I then put one end of the ladder on the roof and rested the other end on a roof beam of the pool cage, creating a shaky scaffolding. I then carefully crawled out across it, some 15-20 feet in the air, hoping that my demise would not come from the ladder suddenly breaking in half from using it in an unintended way. I somehow managed to get some spline in a couple spots on top of the cage that hopefully will keep the screen in place for now. I was glad Cindy was not outside to witness this act of daring. (stupidity)
Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the Kingsman sequel at Silverspot. Unfortunately our favorite theater at Coconut Point is STILL closed due to hurricane damage. The parking garage was a bit of a mess coming in but a cluster fck getting out, reminding me why I prefer seeing films elsewhere. The movie was very entertaining in a different and bizarre kind of way at times, much like the original. It was entertaining enough for me to push into A- range.
On Sunday morning I had the idea to try to ride my Gotway Monster all the way to Ave Maria and back, a roughly 30 mile trek. It was much further than Cindy would have wanted to ride so she stayed home while I shoved off solo. I thought I would have absolutely no problems having the battery capacity to do it. I figured my 1600WH battery would be good for around 50 miles of riding. Well for almost the entire ride there I was going into a heavy headwind. When I stopped in town and looked at my battery indicator I was a bit shocked to see it was down to 50% after only going 15 miles. I had visions of running out of juice before I could get back home.
Luckily for me that headwind turned into a tailwind on the ride back, plus I tried to keep my speed down a bit. If you watch the video you will see I ramble about a number of different topics along the way. My calves and feet were completely numb by the time I pulled back in the driveway.
Cindy and I ran out to Home Depot and Rural King when I got back, taking the dogs along. They love to be in the car. Sadie loved going into stores too. Elsa gets more freaked out being around strangers but we keep trying to expose her to the environment to help her settle down.
I spent the majority of the rest of the day doing video production and again clubbing away at my CR-10 problem. I wound up buying a new hot end assembly but in order to install it I had to utilize my very poor soldering skills to splice the new end into place. I am worried that my connection will not hold up to the endless back and forth movements the printer makes but time will tell.
I put everything back together and my clogging problem seems to be fixed but I still need to do a recalibration of the printer to get it printing correctly with the new stuff in there. I shot some video of the process and then somehow proceeded to lose the SD card the footage was on. I must have set it down somewhere while cleaning up the mess I had on the desk but I spent a good 20-30 minutes looking everywhere for it to no avail. When combined with the frustration I was already feeling with the printer shit it was not a good time. If this latest round of attempted repairs does not work out I think I am just about ready to say F it and just wait to get a Prusa i3 MK3 which has similar print capacity with a whole less frustration.
So to my surprise I saw that Tower Hill did the initial processing of my claim. Since I have electronic document delivery I was able to see it instantly instead of waiting 5-7 days. I wish I was happier with what I saw. They accessed my total damage at just under $15,600 which is less than the lowest quote I received to redo the roof in three tab shingles. I also have an additional $4500 quote to repair the pool cage damage and rescreen it so to me, we are about 5k apart from what I would be satisfied with. When you factor in the $5100 plus hurricane deductible my policy has, the actual check I would be getting would be for around $10,500.
My plans to upgrade the roof as part of this process to metal make it even more important to get fair value in the claim to reduce how much is coming out of my pocket. I get to begin a new round of frustration today when I call them up to dispute their numbers.
Even though my knee jerk response was to go metal with the replacement roof the visit by the Home Depot estimator added some more fuzziness to that view. The prospect of architectural shingles seemed interesting as a stronger, better looking alternative to the three tab shingles that were on the house. Supposedly they have a version of these shingles designed to reflect heat much better than normal shingles. Architectural shingles are also far less expensive than metal roofing.
The sky high price of the standing seam metal roof quote by HD ($31k) makes me doubt the wisdom of going with the 5V crimp exposed fastener metal roof that I was quoted for about $19k from another place. There is a reason there is such a huge price difference between the two with the main reason being exposed fasteners over time have the potential to break down and allow moisture in. But at the same time does it even matter what the roof is even like in 30 years, I’ll likely be dead before that and if not, probably living elsewhere.
So I have a lot of things rolling through my head and a lot of issues to resolve. I can hardly wait till this time next year where all of the hurricane remediation and work related headaches will be behind me.
Forecast for the weekend, pool screen sewing, pool screen stretching, and hopefully some time for fun.
So as I expected, trying to trudge through hurricane remediation has been a pain in the ass. I have been patiently waiting for my insurance company to contact me with a settlement offer after they told me I needed to wait up to 14 business days for them to receive the information from the adjuster company. The adjuster was at my house on September 26th so this past Monday marked the end of those 14 days. So I still had not heard anything so I called.
The representative checked my case and said they still had not received back the information from the adjuster which seemed crazy. When the guy was at the house he told us to expect about a week until the stuff was sent in. They gave me a direct number to call the adjusters although I questioned why Tower Hill doesn’t do this themselves? Why is the customer responsible for making sure the claim is processed correctly….
So I call up the adjuster and tell them that I was told they had not submitted their information yet. She looked in their system and verified that it indeed was still not completed, it was waiting for review by their “desk adjuster”. I went on a bit of a rant asking why was I told a week and we are now three weeks out and it wasn’t done. The woman apologized and said they would get it processed that day and sent in. I asked for someone to call me back to verify it was done.
So the day passed and by late afternoon I still had not received a call back so I called again. A different woman told me that the system now shows the information as being submitted and I should hear something back from Tower Hill in 24-48 hours. I didn’t bother asking why no one called me to tell me this, I was just glad it was finally done.
So I waited another two days as instructed, hoping for a call but expecting to not get one. I pick up the phone and call back yesterday, 48 hours later to Tower Hill, once again asking what’s up. Imagine my delight when they tell me they STILL do not have the information from the adjusters. I told the rep she must be mistaken as the adjuster confirmed on Monday it had been sent. She didn’t know what to tell me but forwarded me to some “escalation” number that nobody answered and went straight to voicemail. I supposedly was escalated on Monday as well and received no follow up.
So, I call back the adjuster company again, telling them that for some reason the insurance company says they still don’t have the information. The woman on the other side sheepishly tells me that the info actually had not been sent yet. There was one more part of the process that had not been completed. I unleashed a barrage of anger at their incompetence, asking why they would tell me it was sent when it wasn’t, how can that be a hard thing to get right? I reminded her that their continued delays make my efforts to remediate my issues more and more difficult. Of course this woman just answered the phones but I had no one else to aim this frustration at. She assured me it would be transmitted today and promised a call when it was, to confirm it. Later in the day I did have a voicemail on my cell phone stating it was sent which I will be keeping for verbal proof. Now I need to wait another day or two to allow Tower Hill to digest it. I am already anticipating this escalation when after all of this delay, Tower Hill comes back with a lowball offer that won’t be acceptable. I can only hope I am wrong.
Last night after work I put my plan to “sew” together portions of the temp pool cage screen together. I threaded some fishing line into a big hook needle I bought and worked on the vertical seam near the one door. I stitched it every 5-6 inches which seemed to close it sufficiently to keep unwanted animals/objects out. It turned out well and I plan to use the same strategy to connect the half dozen or so horizontal seams as well.
This weekend I hope to tackle the open roof section using two 4 foot wide strips. It will be a two person job as I need someone to toss me screen while I secure one edge along the roof line.
So I used a vacation day yesterday primarily so I could make the famous chocolate birthday cake for Cindy. Although I had already bought a birthday present for Cindy I thought I would give her another gift of effort. Since Irma the pool cage area has been wide open to organic debris, bugs, and frogs thanks to the numerous missing screen panels. Cindy had commented repeatedly how she didn’t like the situation. I thought I would surprise her and make the situation better.
I left in the morning to Home Depot. I told Cindy where I was going but not why, just that it was a birthday present. For some reason I just assumed that by now pool cage screening would once again be readily available. That assumption was defective. Home Depot had very little screening and none of the wide rolls that are normally needed for pool cages. I didn’t want to give up on my plan so I headed to Lowe’s which was about 7 or 8 miles away.
Lowe’s didn’t have the real wide rolls either, the widest they had was five feet which I did not think was enough to cover the sections completely but I figured it would be better than nothing. I grabbed three 25 foot rolls of the stuff and headed back home. As soon as I got home I got busy. First I had to clean out any channels that had any old spline or screen in them which can be a pain in the ass to varying degrees.
I then used the small bit of wide enough screen I had left over to cover the two sections missing by the main door we use. I figured those two would be the best to be covered completely. I did not worry about making sure the screens were tight as a drum as it was all temporary. As long as they keep out debris, frogs, and bugs for the most part my goal would be attained. So as I expected the rolls I bought were about 6 inches too narrow. What I wound up doing was securing the top edge and then just get as much tension as I could on the sides which left a two three inch gap at the bottom. I then went back and cut smaller strips of screening that I affixed to the bottom to create an overlap. My plan is to loosely secure the two pieces together on the seam using a hook needle and fishing line, far from an elegant solution but hopefully effective.
Hanging screen by yourself is never much fun. I was pretty beat by the end of it but managed to get all of the side sections covered. The only remaining opening is a strip across the roof of the cage which I hope to cover by the end of the weekend. Mid-afternoon I mixed in cake prep with screen repair, alternating between the two as time allowed.
My day off was pretty much totally filled with work which I didn’t mind as the goal was to make it a good day for Cindy. She was surprised by the GoPro Session camera I got her as a main gift which should be fun to experiment with. I even made dinner to go along with the cake which Katie stopped by to enjoy.
So most of my Saturday wound up being consumed by yard work which consisted of weeding, weed whacking, and mowing. I worked into mid-afternoon trying to get the yard looking nicely manicured. I am hoping as we transition into dry season the need for me to invest so much time each weekend on routine grass maintenance can instead be used for other projects.
After I finished up we did a late Rural King and Home Depot run. When we got home I immediately spread the 20 bags of mulch we bought as well as throwing a dozen castle stones around the avocado tree up front. We also lost another tree on Saturday, intentionally. Well over a decade ago Ali and I bought a tree at a nearby home show that we planted near one of the front corners of the property near the road. I have no recollection of what type of tree it was or why exactly it appealed to us. Well the tree hardly grew since it was put in the ground. Perhaps it didn’t like sandy soil. The tree was not attractive with a sort of gnarled appearance with spike covered branches that did nothing but tear at the canopy of the tractor when you drove close to the tree.
Irma had pushed a westward lean into the tree, making it even less attractive than it was before. For years Cindy has expressed her dislike of the tree which I didn’t fundamentally disagree with, yet sentiment prevented me from taking it down. For some reason as I was mowing on Saturday that sentiment lifted and I told Cindy if she wanted to cut the tree down she had my blessing. She wasted no time, grabbing the battery powered Sawz-all and cutting the ugly tree down to ground level in a few minutes. She tossed the pieces into the huge debris pile on the other side of the road. I can’t say I have had much remorse since the tree was removed from the landscape, unlike much of the other landscape that bit the dust in the hurricane.
Saturday night Cindy went with Katie to some Halloween corn maze. (that they bailed on when they saw how long the line was) While they were out I went into hardcore geek mode, participating in a funny event in WoW. It was a “race” where you run on foot from one location in game to another which are far apart. The gimmick was people were encouraged to do this run as a gnome, an ethnicity that most people don’t have so like many others, I made one just for the run.
So to cover the distance on foot took a long time, probably 45 minutes. I died 7 or 8 times along the way as horde players looked at this as a perfect opportunity to “troll” the event, stepping on level 1 or 2 gnomes like ants. After I completed the course on my gnome I went back and did it again as one of my high level characters at a walking pace which took much, much longer. Not only did it allow me to take in the scenery and remember just how the game felt when I first got involved a dozen years ago, I also served as a body guard to other low level gnomes that were still running the course. If I saw horde nearby I did my best to kill them off before they could squash others. It was silly, stupid fun. Walking the course took MUCH longer, I bet damn close to 90 minutes.
Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed to go run the track. Cindy got up too but not to run with me, she was planning to run a nearby 5K with a friend of hers. As I was close to completing my planned 12 laps I saw Cindy’s car pull into the lot. I figured maybe she wanted to run a warm up lap with me or something. Instead she said her friend backed out last minute on the race so she figured she would just run the track.
I told her I was literally starting my last lap but Cindy started running with me. Well it didn’t take long for me to feel badly about not running longer with her so I told Cindy I would do an extra lap or two. That turned into a full extra mile which of course I had no expectation of doing. I am pretty sure it was the first time I ran four miles in 2017. It’s funny, if I was by myself for the entire run, the idea of tacking an extra mile on the end would have seemed close to ridiculous. However when you add another person to the mix those barriers get fuzzy. Sure I was tired as I kept pressing on but it didn’t kill me. It was a reminder how so many personal boundaries are self inflicted and why having others share your pain somehow makes it more bearable. I guess that is why running clubs were invented.
Cindy and I went for a wheel ride near Vanderbilt Beach late in the morning. It was fun as always but very warm. I had a steady stream of sweat running down my back most of the time.
During the afternoon I worked on several things, including more futzing with the CR-10 printer. I have a clear path to resolving my issue, I just have not worked out all of the logistics on how to get there.
Sunday evening we went out for an early birthday dinner celebration for Cindy. We met up with Katie, Daniel, Cindy’s mom and two nieces at Outback. It was funny that we got the exact same table that we had last time we were at the restaurant a year or two ago. We had a very enjoyable dinner followed up with ice cream cake at Cindy’s mom’s place afterward. We didn’t get home till after 9 which normally I would not be a fan of on a Sunday night however Cindy had a lot of fun which made it well worth it.
Oh I forgot to mention on Saturday the roof guy from Home Depot came out to look at the house. Their quote on shingles was in the same ballpark as the first quote I got. One option he presented which was interesting was “architectural shingles” which have a lot more overlap which makes them more durable than standard three tab shingles. They also have “cool” varieties of this shingle which supposedly reflects heat much more effectively. Their quote for metal roofing was sky high. Part of that gap with my other metal roof quote was the HD quote was for more expensive hidden fastener roofing while my first estimate had exposed fasteners. But even so, over 30k for metal seemed a little outrageous. I am hoping to get a firm answer from my home owners insurance today.
I have an odd week ahead with me taking off tomorrow, mostly to make the special chocolate birthday cake for Cindy. It will be cool to break the week into a one and three day chunk.
So I managed to stay up for the Eagles/Panthers game last night. Well I mostly did, drifting off mid third quarter but awakening with about two minutes left in the game. Beating the Panthers on the road was a pretty huge deal and may actually be enough to make me think the Birds actually could be a playoff caliber team this year. It’s a feeling I haven’t had in a long time but pretty much everything I saw last night, except for that dumb ass Mills at cornerback, makes me think the team actually has a shot. Hopefully the injury bug doesn’t hit too hard this year. It would be nice to have something to look forward to after the regular season.
Speaking of football, I neglected to mention that the Florida Tarpons, the local arena football team I had season tickets to for 4-5 years packed up their bags and relocated to Lakeland, close to two hours away. There was no warning for the sudden move which I found a bit annoying yet in the big picture I understand. Attendance was always pretty abysmal and after the end of each season I would always say there was no way they would be back next year. Well I guess I was finally right, sort of.
Today another piece of the hurricane remediation process takes place. A guy is coming out to do an appraisal on the house so I can reopen my home equity line of credit. I am hoping the blue tarped roof doesn’t cause a big issue but I can give him pictures of what is under there in case he needs it. The need to even have a formal appraisal in this situation, which I have to pay for, is sort of ridiculous. A simple search on our tax collector website reveals a value far exceeding the minimal requirements to qualify for the loan.
This weekend there is more to do, as always. Don’t get me wrong, although I do complain about my workload at home, 180 degrees in the other direction would not be good for my state of being either. Sitting around and basically doing nothing all weekend would bother me more.
