So this weekend our first real cold front is supposed to finally arrive which will push our overnight temps well into the 60’s and deliver highs in the low 80’s. I can’t tell you how much I have been looking forward to a break in the Florida summer which this year has run basically from May to almost November. The bad thing is I see the cooler forecast temps and one of the first things that pops into my head is work.
Specifically I am referring to the annual trimming of the 25+ trees that I undertake each year. Each year this task gets more and more daunting because the trees are another year taller and I am another year older. It is physically the most demanding chore I do around the house, followed by when I do full scale pressure cleaning which is due as well. I always try to time the tree trimming with days with cooler temps because it is such grueling work. Sometimes the weather just doesn’t cooperate. I don’t plan to throw myself into it this weekend although I will surely feel some degree of guilt for not doing so. I do have a self imposed deadline of making sure the work is done before Thanksgiving weekend.
Instead I will keep busy with smaller tasks as is normally the case. I would really like to get some quality riding time is during the break in the weather, that’s for sure. My Sunday will be odd with the Eagles playing at 9:30 AM due to them being pegged to play in one of the stupid annual London NFL games they put on each season. I just don’t get the point.
So you know you are officially old when you are making calls to financial advisors to discuss retirement which is what I did yesterday. With my job, one of the benefits is a retirement plan. That benefit used to be strictly a pension plan for all employees. Well sometime in the early 2000’s they made an investment plan as an option where instead of a defined monthly benefit from the point you retire until you fade away, you have money thrown into a retirement account that you have full control over. When you retire you them have this big chunk of change to do with what you want.
So when this option became available all employees had to decide if they wanted to stay in the pension plan or move over to the investment plan. At that point I wasn’t all that sure if I would be at my job until retirement, plus I liked the idea of having full control over that money if I did have a change of careers. When you are in a pension plan you get that benefit at retirement age and that’s that. So at that time I decided to move into the investment plan with the understanding that I had one opportunity to “buy” back into the pension plan during my career.
So turning 50 was a good reason to start reevaluating my retirement options which at this point are unbelievably only about a decade away. I called into the Florida Retirement System and talked to an advisor that was very helpful in explaining my options and how it all works. We ran a calculator that estimated my retirement income if I went with a pension versus the investment plan. The numbers it returned were shocking to me. The monthly benefit with the pension was roughly 35% higher than I would expect with the investment plan if I figured on getting a moderate return on my money.
The other positive news was I had more than enough money in my investment plan to cover the buy in cost to transfer back to a pension plan. I actually would have a nice chunk of change left over in that account to go along with the larger chunk sitting in the 457B account I also contribute to. So the conversation made it pretty clear to me that at this point in my career, with more than 18 years under my belt, switching over to the pension plan makes a lot of sense, assuming I manage to stick around for awhile after retirement age.
I am hoping the market rebounds a bit so I can initiate the switch with my investment plan as fat as it can be. It seems surreal that I am at the point in life where I have to even give these things serious consideration. It seems like only yesterday that my biggest concern was what flavor Pop Tarts I was going to eat while I watched Saturday morning cartoons.
So yesterday was the first day of business at the branch we moved over the weekend. As I hoped everything went smoothly with no emergency trips to Marco Island necessary. I love it when a plan comes together.
After work last night I set up the new big Westinghouse generator. Prep was easy, I just had to attach some feet, the wheels, and add gas and oil. The push button electric start is pretty cool as well as the automatic choke system. It’s almost like starting the Tacoma. It even has remote key fob that allows you to stop and start it remotely, although I’m not quite sure when that would ever be necessary.
I like the built in monitoring screen which can show output voltage, output frequency, and total run time. Despite being larger than my other generator it seemed to run quieter. Despite it’s nearly 250 pounds of weight, moving it with it’s large leverage providing handle with solid rubber tires that never go flat, was relatively easy. This weekend I want to hook it to the RV and see if it can handle the AC without popping a breaker. I suspect it will swing it without sweating.
Speaking of sweating, I have been doing a lot more of it consistently at the gym. With my weird side pain I have really cut back on the heavy lifting portion of my routine. I also have been adding 10-15 minutes of cardio to each session to try to get some extra caloric burn to help drop those 5 pounds or so that I have been looking to get rid off for the last year or more. I still do not feel normal physically but at least I haven’t been feeling the side pain lately and I can function within my daily routine which is good enough for now, I guess.
So yesterday I was back at our branch office in Marco Island which was just remodeled. On Saturday I had most of the network connectivity issues sorted out so most of the day yesterday was spent just physically setting up desktop equipment, printers, and lugging stuff around. I did not return to our main office until almost 4PM. I was beat. I was too tired to even bask in the glory that I was finally at the end of a two year tunnel of non-stop projects which started with remodeling our main office, ripping out and replacing our entire back end software systems, redesign and launch of a new web site, and finally the remodeling of this branch. Of course peppered in there were other smaller projects, just to make sure I didn’t have anymore than a week of normalcy. It’s ironic that the start of tax season next week, which used to be the BIG thing around here is now looked at as a rest period. I am hoping I can enjoy some smooth sailing in the months to come.
Yesterday the new monster generator was delivered. It is large both in size, at nearly 250 pounds, and capacity, supporting 7500 watts of continuous load, almost 2000 watts more than my current, 13 year old Troy Bilt model. This Westinghouse unit also has cool features like an output/run time meter, push button start, and even a remote control for those days you really feel lazy.
Last night I was lacking the enthusiasm to fully unbox and set up the new power source but I did pull out the instructions to read them before bed. Tonight after work I expect to complete the process and turn it over for the first time. My plan is to give my old generator to the neighbor across the street if she wants it. I know during Irma she did not have one so if that is still the case, getting one for free is always a good thing.
As I mentioned several times this past week, I have been in the midst of a shitty week at work. To compound matters, Cindy has been having her own stress from trying to do the majority of the double bathroom vanity project herself. It has just been a lot of shit going on. On Friday I left the office a little early so I could attend to some chores at home, since I had to work a good portion of the day Saturday. I also needed to bring home materials needed to do the last prep work before Ray came in to install the new vanity on Saturday morning.
Cindy had made a ton of progress during the day, redoing the drywall box behind the tub, so that it now can accommodate the full 60 inches required for the new vanity. She had been busting her ass all week since the vanity showed up. I felt badly she worked so much on the project with only minimal assistance from me but had my own battles at work I was dealing with at the same time.
So Saturday I was out the door around 8 and did not get home until close to 1:30. By the time I walked in the door Ray and Doug had just about finished up with the install. Taking a look at the plumbing work they had to do made me glad I did not elect to tackle this project myself. The vanity looked good in it’s new home and of course the bathroom felt entirely different.
So despite working at the office for half the day, I had to turn on the reserve gas tank to help Cindy get things back in order. As you can imagine a project like this requires a lot of tools and creates a lot of mess. Hell I spent 30 minutes just cutting up all of the cardboard from the work outside. We diligently worked our way through it and eventually got things mostly back in shape. There were two things that needed to get done, glue on the backsplash and hang the new frameless mirror. We got the back splash glued up Saturday night. The install could really use two side splashes as well but we haven’t really figured out how to make that work yet thanks to the horrible workmanship on the walls in that bathroom. Not only are the corners not square, the back wall has a nasty bow in it.
Saturday night we watched the last 50 Shades of Grey movie. It may have been one of the worst written movies I ever saw. Of course they tried to prop it up by inserting sex scenes every five or six minutes. The origin story for the villain in the movie is laughable. I’m glad the series is over. C+
So this morning we wanted to get the mirror on the wall. Like I said the bowed surface meant we already knew the mirror would only be glued in place on the high spots. We helped offset the poor adhesion surface by making sure the bottom edge of the mirror was on the backsplash, to help shed weight. I applied large amounts of adhesive to the wall and then Cindy and I pressed the five foot mirror into place. After holding it there for a little while Cindy applied some painter’s tape to keep it against the surface to cure. Later in the morning I miter cut a piece of floor molding to replace one that was removed during demo.
We are both happy with the end result. There may be a few minor tweaks remaining but it is 99% there. Despite dealing with a lot of hand pain from all of the gripping, Cindy plowed through the project and got it done. As always I am appreciative of having someone in the household that works as hard as I do.
We did get out for a brief ride in the morning to Max Hasse park. We never rode the area before. It was small but scenic. I had a good time rolling around on my One Wheel while Cindy was on her MiniPro.
The Eagles game was a throwback, a throwback to how the team has played more often than not the last 10 years. After amassing a 17 point lead going into the fourth quarter I thought the team would be able to close out the Panthers. That was a key difference with last year’s team, they knew how to close out games. That skill set seems to be missing from this year’s squad.
The defensive mindset is maddening where they rush four and drop seven in coverage. However most of these seven players are not in actual coverage, they are just standing around trying to read the play, which they seem to be pretty awful at doing. During the Panther’s three straight touchdown drives, time and again I saw guys standing there flat footed as receivers easily ran free around them. I think this scheme blows or it at least blows with the personnel the team is putting out there. The fourth quarter was basically prevent defense the entire time.
I just don’t get it. Last year the Eagles flipped the script in these situations and continued to be aggressive, even when carrying a lead. Why Pederson seems to be willing to abandon what got them to the pinnacle of the league last year is very confusing and annoying to me. The team desperately needs at least one quality cornerback out there and needs to realize this front four is not getting enough pressure by themselves to be relied on so heavily.
It takes a special kind of suck to blow a 17 point lead in 15 minutes. Grats to the Eagles for finding a way to do it.
The blog is hitting the streets tonight because I once again have a jam packed day ahead of me tomorrow. The good news is that if I get through the next 24 hours things should be more or less back to normal through Christmas.
So for some reason I have failed to mention a project that we started a few weeks ago when we ordered a new vanity online from Costco. For a long time Cindy has asked about putting a double vanity in the bathroom (and Ali before her). I had resisted all this time for a very logical reason, the amount of times that our schedules coincide that we need to use the sink at the same time are very, very small. I didn’t see the need to undergo the hassle and expense of replacing a solution that worked fine 99.5% of the time.
Well I finally relented but I gave Cindy some financial parameters I was willing to work inside of and I wanted her to find someone to do the work inside of those parameters. I just did not have the time or motivation to take on ANOTHER task at this point. So we ordered the vanity and it arrived via a freight carrier yesterday, which also happened to be Cindy’s birthday.
So the understanding I had was Cindy’s neice’s boyfriend, who works for a plumbing company was doing the work, all of the work. Well it turned out he only agreed to do the plumbing and vanity install but not all of the associated work that was required, like making the physical space available. You see, when the builders did the house, for some stupid reason they made the opening 59 inches, instead of the 60 inches typically required for a double vanity. So in order to make this work, a small section of the more or less useless “box” behind the tub was going to have to be demo’d and redone.
So Cindy looked into the prices of having another contractor do this part of the project but got some ridiculous quotes to do so. Without my knowledge, she decided to try to do the work herself. When I came home last night it was to a demo’d bathroom. She did an impressive job, exposing the top surface, removing the problem drywall, relocating the metal framing, and buying the supplies needed to rebuild it.
She was extremely proud of what she accomplished courtesy of watching videos online and some direction she got from one of the contractors she talked to. After work Ray and his friend Doug showed up to complete the removal of the old vanity and start on redoing the plumbing to support two sinks.
My biggest contribution last night was getting the old mirror popped off the wall, in one piece no less, and prepping a small section of the floor where I will need to insert a small piece of ceramic tile. The problem is Ray is coming back Saturday to finish the vanity install so all of the prep work we have to do needs to be done by then. The fact that I have to work late tonight at a branch office makes Friday evening my only window to accomplish this as on Saturday I have to work once again at another branch office for a good portion of the day.
The new vanity is really nice and should make a great addition to the bathroom. I just feel a lot of anxiety having so many balls up in the air between this project and my work commitments. As I said a few days prior, hopefully this time next week the crunch should be over and I can get back to business as usual.
This project reemphasized the corners that were cut during the home’s construction. The corner we are working on is not square and the drywall behind the mirror has a HUGE bow in it. We never realized that the old mirror on one side was about a half inch off the wall from the wall curve. There is a lump behind the mirror drywall that Cindy is going to cut into to see what it is. I guess when they were building houses in three months back in the early 2000’s, quality took a back seat to speed.
So part of the plumbing work required turning off all water to the house for a period of time. While I was out there I wanted to show Ray the reverse osmosis equipment that is housed in a storage box. When I pulled open the lid I was stunned as I was attacked by wasps, instantly I felt a burn on my finger and neck. There was a sizeable nest being built on the underside of the box lid. The neck sting was particularly painful as it swelled and red discoloration extended down my chest.
Last night after Ray and Doug left I took Cindy for a late dinner for her birthday at The Warehouse which is only 9 miles from the house. Katie, who was working joined us for the tail end of meal which was nice. I felt like a zombie by the end of it. I am running on fumes this week. I hope the next 72 hours passes by quickly.
So this was a different sort of weekend. Cindy had two of her girlfriends she used to hang with in the early 2000’s staying at the house for a girl’s weekend. I decided to give myself a break and not mow grass. It looked only mildly shaggy at this point so I decided to leave well enough alone. After going to get coffee mid-morning I returned home to find her friends had arrived, Carrie and Pida. They both seemed very nice but I had stuff to attend to so I kept out of their hair.
One of those things was replacing the bushings on the front wheels of the tractor with bearings. I had replaced the bushings a few months ago and one of them had failed already. Supposedly these bearings were a better long term solution that didn’t require steady reapplication of grease to keep functioning. The first side I replaced went very smoothly. The second side did not. The inner bearing was getting hung up on the spindle and would not slide all the way on, despite my hammering the shit out of the wheel via a 2×4 and hammer.
When I pulled the wheel off the bearing remained on the spindle and it was jammed on there tight, I couldn’t get it off. After about 20 minutes of hammering and prying with various objects I finally got that bearing off but the process wrecked it so I put one of the old bushings back on the inside and a bearing on the outside. It will be interesting to see how that combo works out.
The girls left for most of the day to go cruise around Naples, Carrie and Pida moved out of the Naples area a long time ago so they wanted to see how things changed. While they were gone I worked on various things. One of those things was really frustrating me, the generator. All three of the girls planned to stay out in the RV over night. I hooked up the big generator to the RV late morning so it could power the AC to cool things down in there. It was working as it should.
Well when I went out there later in the day to check on things the generator was still running but when I went inside the RV it was hot, meaning it popped the 20A circuit breaker on the generator. I reset it a few times only to have it pop within 60 seconds. Damn it. So later in the day I came up with an alternative plan to try to power the RV AC via home power, using the 110V well equipment circuit which is beefier than the other home circuits. To do so I had to do all sorts of makeshift extension cord runs to other locations to power the well equipment and the chicken coop.
So after I was done I hooked up the RV and it seemed like it was working, however by the time I walked out to there to verify, the breaker had popped already. I was getting really frustrated as I felt like I HAD to get this working so the girls had a comfortable place to sleep that night. I then did some more thinking about why it was popping as I have successfully run the RV on generator and house power before. I then realized that when I hooked up water to the RV via 250 feet of garden hose I also turned on the electric water heater. That had to be the difference.
So after turning off the heater I once again reset the house circuit breaker. This time when I walked out to the RV the AC was still blowing strong, I had finally got it working. But, I was still not sure why the generator was not doing the same job. So during my trouble shooting of the generator I wound up bringing out my volt meter, I was curious what numbers it was putting out. When I hooked up to one of the 110 outlets I was reading between 150 and 160 volts! WTF??
Back during the hurricane last year when I tried hooking up the generator to the coop circuit it smoked the UPS out there. I never gave it much thought as to why but now it was coming together. I think the generator has been outputting this type of voltage for a long time and I have just been lucky that the devices connected to it could tolerate it. When I checked the 220V side of the generator it was reading 300 volt+, geez. Ok so this is a problem.
So my knee jerk reaction was to just say f it and I bought a higher capacity Westinghouse generator that can support 7500 continuous watts, a full 2000 more than my old Troybilt. My thought is with my new Generlink interface to the house bigger is better. Plus this model has a bunch of cool features not found on 13 year old units.
Despite buying the new unit I was still interested in finding out how to adjust the voltage of my Troybilt down in case I wanted to sell or give it away. I found it has no voltage regulator like some units do, instead the output is solely controlled by engine speed. Later in the weekend I ripped it apart and through some repositioning of a tension spring and adjustment on a set screw I was able to get the output right around 120 volts. Basically the generator was just running too fast but as I said, I think it has been that way for a long time. One of the nice things about the new unit is it has an output meter display built right into it.
I did get some time on Saturday to go out for a ride. It was a fun time on my little Mten3 that concluded with me following a car around the park that was exhibiting odd behavior. However the end result of what looked like shady behavior at first, circling the park repeatedly with intermittent stops, I think was actually two lazy people playing Pokemon Go.
On Saturday night Cindy made a nice dinner that we all enjoyed. I split my time between hanging with the women and my computer, consuming four Zima’s along the way to help my social interactions. Somewhere around 10:30 I headed back to bead while the girls headed to the RV. I felt a sense of calm that they were able to sleep in a climate controlled environment.
On Sunday morning I headed out for another ride, this time from home on the 18L. I wanted to take my new wheel into the swamp, which is always a tough test. I knew the swamp would still be pretty wet but we had not had consistent hard rain for awhile so i thought it wouldn’t be too bad. Wow was I wrong. The swamp was a wet, muddy, and overgrown mess. I only ventured maybe a mile in before four foot high grass and thick patches of mud made me turn around.
During the morning Cindy and her girlfriends had fun in the backyard doing an impromptu workout. I later put the video clips together for a video that is on Cindy’s channel.
The girls headed out early afternoon. Cindy and I did a quick run to Rural King to add some semblance of normalcy to the weekend. The rest of the day I kept myself busy until our 8PM EUC live stream that was without audio/video problems for the first time in a month.
Last night for the first time in a long time the Eagles were part of a game where the outcome was not decided within the last 5 minutes. They beat the Giants handily 34-13. Despite the large margin of victory the defense still exhibited why they are the weaker link of the team, allowing the Giants rookie running back to amass over 200 yards of offense. Jalen Mills once again got burned for big plays multiple times as well as exhibiting shitty tackling ability. But hey, at least the offense finally got some consistent production for the first time this year. We just need to play the Giants every week I guess.
The next ten days are going to be very busy for me from a work perspective with two large projects coming down within three days of one another. However once I get past this point the rest of the year should just be normal daily maintenance, something I look forward to.
This weekend I have some bearings to install, some weeds to pull, and some electric transportation devices to ride somewhere in the county. Sounds good to me.
Cindy finished up painting the monster skulls. Check it out here.
Last night was not a very restful one. After waking up with a full bladder at 3AM I rolled around a bit until I fell back asleep, briefly. I was awakened a half hour later by a bright flash followed by particularly ferocious sounding thunder. It was the beginning of a hellacious storm that included moments of dump a bucket on your roof rain. I could feel Elsa shaking in fear on the bed so I pulled the bed spread over her body to help her feel safe. Cindy later got up and got Elsa’s sweater and put it on her. The combo of our efforts seemed to help her and thankfully the storm eventually passed by. I awoke this morning feeling like shit, as one would expect.
I saw some of the footage from Hurricane Michael. It brought back the memories of our experience last year with Irma although the winds with Michael were maybe 20mph higher at the top end. I know the type of slog those people are in for in the months to come and it will suck, badly. Hopefully they get power restored in a timely fashion but man, that is going to be a tough job based on what I saw. With the accelerating pace of global warming we can expect this to be a more and more frequent occurrence.
So just last week Cindy and I were saying how we were looking forward to the end of hurricane season which officially is November first. Normally weather agencies are all over hurricanes for days if not weeks in advance, well not this one. Out of nowhere, a tropical disturbance that was given next to no chance of amounting to anything is now a 145mph cat 4 hurricane that is poised to hit the Florida panhandle this afternoon.
It’s pretty disconcerting to see just how quickly this all came about and how late in the year the potential is still there for devastation. Of course back in 2005 Hurricane Wilma beat the shit out of us in mid-October as well. Since having gone through two major hurricanes since moving to Florida I can relate to the anxiety and dread people in that area are feeling right now. It’s going to be ugly.
I shot a video last documenting the monster print I completed on the Chiron over the weekend. I still am amazed every time I see the thing.
