Like most things in the world Covid 19 has become weaponized as a political tool. Those that try to be conscientious of others by wearing masks, limiting social engagement and things of the sort are now “libertards”. Those that could care less about taking measures to limit their ability to infect others are hell yea maverick ‘mericans! Freedom!
My opinion on the subject as it is often the case, falls on both sides. Does it seem clear to me that there has been a bunch of conflicting information put out via mass media regarding covid 19? Yes. Do I think there have been efforts to inflate covid 19 numbers to generate both fear and revenue? Without a doubt it has. The medical industry has been extremely generous attaching the covid 19 code to hospitalization cases and especially deaths because it results in significantly more payment being sent to them by the government. George Floyd will go down in the books as being a covid 19 death even though he was asymptomatic and had a police officers knee on his neck for 8 minutes and change. Do I think that the affect of covid 19 is drastically more deadly than the yearly flu? The numbers say only slightly so, at best. I think the higher mortality rates at the beginning of this were reflective of a poor understanding of how to treat it. It seems like putting someone on a ventilator, which was initially described as life saving was actually in reality more of a death sentence.
On the flip side, do I think it’s a bad thing for people to wear masks to knock down their personal transmission radius? No of course not. Do I think that making steps to practice social distancing and increased personal hygiene is wasted effort? Nope, in fact I think some aspects of this will become the new norm, at least for the foreseeable future. There are still a lot of fuzzy facts regarding covid 19 and until we have a clear picture, asking people to practice these admittedly somewhat inconvenient actions is not the end of the world.
Mis and disinformation in our society is so rampant that developing an opinion based on actual facts is increasingly difficult if not impossible to do. It seems like most people skip the fact finding effort all together and rely solely on internet memes to both entertain and inform themselves.
Cindy has been looking for a used armoire for our bedroom for a little while. She found one that we targeted for pickup yesterday after I was done working. These massive pieces of furniture are infamous for being miserable to move because of their size and weight. Luckily this piece has a top and bottom section which made the process more tolerable.
I thought Cindy and I were going to have to load the piece in the truck but the husband, who was older, was still willing to be the other half of my hoist team which I appreciated. We got both pieces into the back of the Tacoma without issue although it was a tight squeeze. Cindy and I switched vehicles for the drive home with her hopping in the Tesla and me in the truck. If something happened to the furniture I wanted it to be my fault.
We were very fortunate to avoid now typical afternoon rain on the drive home. Unloading the pieces was a little tougher and instead of furniture sliders we used the hand truck to wheel both pieces into the bedroom. We carefully placed the armoire in the spot Cindy had cleared out. The sketchiest part was lifting the top piece into place but even that went relatively well. I escaped the move without any new injuries. Unfortunately the knee and lower back pain I entered with remained after the task was completed.
Yesterday Lowes, joined the ranks of Miguel the landscaper, Echelon Bikes, and a few other individuals that are unable to follow through on what they say. The new tractor I ordered from Lowes supposedly was going to be delivered to the house today. Yesterday Cindy got a call that instead it would be delivered to the store on June 29th, assembled, and THEN a delivery scheduled sometime after that. I mean this is nothing new in our world. I am constantly running into individuals and businesses that put little to no importance on meeting expectations they set themselves. As much as it happens you would think it would bother me less.
Saturday was one of those days where I wanted to get a lot of shit done and no excuses were going to stop me. It was hot and humid as hell as soon as the sun got above the horizon, making outside work, which I exclusively had scheduled, shitty. After doing the normal extended Saturday chicken clean up and weeding the property I headed out to Home Depot and a few other stops. After lunch the work began in earnest with me changing the oil on the Tacoma, Cindy’s Ioniq, and the tractor for good measure.
I had an annoying incident while changing the oil on the Tacoma. I misaligned the oil catch basin underneath the drain plug. The end result of this was hot oil bouncing off the edge of the pan and into my hair. I quickly shoved the pan over to catch the oil. When I did that I realized my second mistake, I forgot to unscrew the drain plug so the oil was just collecting on the top of the container. Luckily the flow slowed before it overflowed the capacity. I had to grab a needle nose pliers to fish into the hot oil and spin the plug off, it was comedic.
After the oil change fiasco was done I decided I needed to mow the property, despite ominous clouds quickly gathering overhead. I was able to get through a little more than 3/4 of the mowing before it started to rain, hard. Short of a direct lightning strike I had no intentions of stopping. I parked the tractor after completion soaking wet but happy to accomplish what I set out to do.
Deb came over Saturday night. We had a fun time as usual getting some PEV riding in as well as watching Cold Pursuit another Liam Neisen revenge film. I have lost count of how many he has made at this point. Despite being in his late 60’s he still does a good job in that role. The movie itself was sort of funny, it almost had a Quentin Tarrintino feel to it. Being drunk definitely helped my enjoyment of what was a B film at best.
Sunday was Father’s Day. I called and left a message for my dad early, he called me back later in the day after he discovered his phone was not ringing. Although I am not a father to a person I do have a lot of animals that look at me that way. Cindy got me a card from Elsa and the chickens which was sweet. Later in the morning I took my OneWheel Pint out for a quick ride. My lower body is still really in bad shape with left knee and lower back pain that is not getting better very quickly.
When I got back to the house DJ was there, we were babysitting him for a few hours while the kids went to the beach. As soon as he sees me he reaches out with both arms, for whatever reason he really likes being held by me. The funny thing is he refers to me as “mama” which seems to be his catch all phrase for people he likes. I had a number of things I needed to get done yesterday afternoon so I felt bad trying to do them when DJ wanted my attention.
Cindy made a big effort to handle any and all chores around the house on Sunday herself which was nice but at the same time made me feel somewhat lazy, which sounds odd but true. I had another flood of 3D EUC orders yesterday. We have been getting Cindy involved in processing the orders lately so yesterday was a very good practice session. I have already smashed my prior months best in sales with 8 or 9 days to go. Right now supply is not keeping up with demand, despite me having 3-4 printers more or less running around the clock. It’s a nice problem to have.
It’s nice having a two day work week as I have been ground down to a nub from my hectic S18 riding/filming schedule over the last several days. Today I was going to drop off the big box with the wheel to ship it out and had a frustrating experience. Normally I drop these off at the Fed Ex ship center that is sort of on my way to work. It opens at 7:30 AM so the timing works out, well it used to.
So I pull up at 7:28 and see no lights on yet which is not unusual as the clerk normally only shows up right at 7:30. So I wait and it’s now 7:35 and no action yet, weird. I decided to get out of the truck and look at the door. A sign is posted with their new covid hours, they now open at 9AM, shit. Ok so I knew there was a Walgreens across the street and that they are now supposedly a FedEx drop off center. I drive over there and walk in without the box at first just to confirm I can drop off stuff there. They say yes, as long as it already has a label, which it does, great!
I pick up the large and heavy box and pack mule it inside to the rear wall of the building where the FedEx stuff is. The guy scans the label and tells me the box is too heavy to be dropped off at Walgreens. WTF? He apologized but said they are only allowed to accept boxes up to 40 pounds for some unknown reason. I grumpily picked the box back up and waddled back out to the truck with it. I now have to head out of the office later today and try to drop the box off at a nearby location. It’s been a pain in the ass start to my Friday.
Speaking of pain in the ass, I sent one final text message to Miguel yesterday regarding the sod. I told him I wasn’t sure why he never finished rolling the sod but I wanted to know if he still intended to finish the work. I told him I have had a check written out for the balance sitting on my counter since the day the roller was dropped off, when I assumed that meant he was going to actually do the work. I asked if he could let me know if he planned to complete the work or not so I would know if I should cut up the check or not. I finished with, if you choose to not respond to this text message as well I will assume that means you aren’t going to finish the work.
I sent the message nearly 24 hours ago. If I don’t hear anything by the end of the weekend the check will go in the shredder and I’ll just let mother nature and the elements smooth out the sod over time. It’s so aggravating dealing with people that over promise and under deliver.
This weekend I have normal menial tasks to attend to that don’t require much planning or preparation. I just shipped my 600th order from the 3D store, crazy.
So in what seems a blink of an eye my 5 day weekend is over. I’ll do my best to recap it in an abbreviated fashion. I wanted to get most of my weekend work done on Saturday as I was supposed to drive to the east coast to pick up the KingSong S18 demo wheel on Sunday. Some of that work included mowing the grass, weeding, and the other normal chore tasks. When we went out to run errands one of those stops was Lowe’s. I finally decided to officially pull the trigger on buying a new lawn tractor. I ordered a Husqrvana TS 242XD.
It’s a 42 inch deck as I have now. I intentionally chose a shorter deck because it allows me to access certain spots on the property which would be a huge PIA with a bigger deck. This unit has the high quality Kawasaki engine, an electric PTO, LED lights and a few other features. The biggest reason I went this route is I wanted a tractor with a welded, fabricated deck that utilizes stronger and thicker metal. All my prior mowers have had shitty and thin stamped metal decks that fall apart. This mower is not stocked so it is supposed to be delivered next week. Cindy’s military discount really paid off as it saved me nearly $300 on the purchase.
We left after lunch on Sunday in the Tesla to pick up the wheel. When I mapped out the ride ahead of time I was surprised to find out that they put in a supercharger at the Indian rest stop that is halfway across Alligator Alley. The drive over to Pompano Beach was quick and easy, the car drove itself for most of the alley. When we arrived Mickey gave me some quick pointers on the wheel as we did a fast ride to Dunkin Donuts which was right around the corner. Hopping on the S18 for the first time felt foreign but in a good way as I could feel the suspension helping to absorb bumps. We didn’t stay very long as we had to drive back across the state where we stopped at the Ochopee super charger which gave us enough juice to get home in less than 15 minutes, less time than it took to use the bathroom and go into the gift shop.
The period of Sunday night through Wednesday evening was a non-stop blur of EUC riding, video production with a few chores thrown in while the wheel was charging. For example on Monday we picked up 30 more pieces of sod to throw on the front house mound. We got it at somewhere other than Home Depot which was actually quite nice. The sod was better quality and about a buck per piece cheaper. I also found the time to weed whack the property which was getting jungle-like in certain spots.
As far as the EUC part of those days, feel free to consume as much of the 9 videos that I produced as you can tolerate. My time with the wheel included riding to Dunkin Donuts, riding through the swamp, jumping the wheel in the back yard, and taking it for a long nearly 35 mile ride out to Ave Maria and back. The whirlwind schedule has left me sore and tired but with the realization that an EUC with suspension is not a novelty but instead a real improvement in the riding experience.
I have little time today. I finally got to talk to my dad on the phone last night, the first time I have done so since Maggie passed away. Even though a week has passed the pain from loss is still very present, as expected. Dad broke up a few times talking about Maggie and how hard it was to see her go downhill. He said he had her remains cremated which I expected. What I didn’t expect was dad’s plans for the remains. He is going to drive cross country to spread some of her ashes at each place she lived, meaning Flying Hills, Marienville, and the two places in New Mexico.
I appreciated the thoughtfulness of the plan. Although to most it would seem like a very large endeavor to pay tribute to the passing of their dog, I hope a side benefit will be the journey helps dad come to grip with the loss. I told him on the phone I knows how he feels as I have had similar crushing emotional reactions to the loss of pets. Hell I get wrecked when one of our chickens die. Only time helps dull those wounds.
We have a jam packed weekend ahead. Tomorrow we need to pick up more supplies for Cindy to finish pond scaping. While we are out I also want to stop at Lowe’s to order my new tractor. I am mowing on borrowed time on my old Craftsman YT4000. I am going to buy a Husqvarna TS 242XD, the most upscale tractor I have ever had. It has a bunch of nice features but the biggest thing I wanted in my next tractor was a welded deck which is made of much thicker and more durable steel than the shitty stamped decks lower priced tractors come with.
The three mowers I have had since owning the home all had stamped decks and all three of them have fallen apart. They rust easily, develop holes and just suck all the way around if you are using your tractor is a pretty serious way as we do. We have a lot of property to mow. With the 242XD the deck should last the life of the tractor. It will by far the most I ever have spent on a tractor, hopefully it’s worth it in the long run. I have replaced a BUNCH of parts on my Craftsman over the years and I am trying to unload it before a full deck replacement is required.
On Sunday Cindy and I are driving over to the east coast to pick up the demo EUC that I will be evaluating from Mickey, who currently has it. I then have taken off from work through Wednesday to give me time to thoroughly test the wheel on a compressed timeline. I did something similar once before with the Ninebot Z10. It was tiring but fun and gratifying at the same time. I am hoping for a similar experience this time around.
I had a long live stream last night where we talked about a number of subjects, especially the recent rash of EUC fires. The most dramatic case was one rider on a modified Gotway Monster where it burst into flames as he was riding and then went off like a bomb. That ride also unfortunately broke his leg as dove off the wheel awkwardly as it combusted. The other two cases appeared to be the system boards failing while the rider was in motion, once again causing injuries. I generally don’t try to focus on wheel failure possibility that much but it is a big reason I have focused more and more on wearing proper safety gear over the years. The stream was another three hour marathon but I enjoyed it.
I am looking to take a few days off next week to facilitate my reviewing another demo EUC that I will hopefully be picking up this weekend. It is one of the new wheels that includes an active suspension which should be really interesting to test out.
So once again Miguel has decided to ignore my request for him to contact me to arrange to finish up the work he agreed to do. I have had enough and finally decided I would call up his father who has done work for our neighbor for years and years. It was his dad that connected me to Miguel. I asked if there was something going on with Miguel that I didn’t know about as I have not been able to get responses from him. I told him about the bizarre drop off of the roller on Saturday only for it to be picked back up on Monday without the work being done.
Jesus is pretty hard to understand person to person because of his accent, it was even tougher for me to understand clearly over the phone. What I made out was he would talk to him to find out what was going on. He said something about Miguel spending a lot of time with his girlfriend which is something he mentioned before when I had a problem. Evidently the girlfriend seems to get priority over anything else it seems. Who knows if my call will result in anything changing or happening. I’ll just be holding onto the check I wrote out on Saturday, when I foolishly assumed he was actually going to do the work then. I just can’t believe this kid is running his own business. There is absolutely no way he could keep customers if this is how he normally handles communication.
The sales on the 3D store have continued to skyrocket. Last month set a new record in sales with over $1500. This month I am already over $1000 only 9 days in. It’s crazy. The new rear bumper model has been selling quickly, I literally can’t keep certain items in stock. It’s a good problem to have.
Last night I had a normal nights sleep which was a good thing. I was walking around most of the day and evening in a zombie-like state after only getting a couple hours of sleep the night before. I wouldn’t say I feel well rested today but I feel at least human.
So the sod roller had been sitting at the house since Saturday when it was dropped off and used briefly by Miguel. I had been waiting for him to come and finish the work and sent him a couple messages asking when that would happen which again went unanswered. Yesterday afternoon I got a message from Cindy that a guy was there loading the roller back up on a truck when she got home. I asked if it looked like the sod was rolled and she said no. What the f?
Cindy talked to the guy. He said he was just there to pick up the roller he didn’t know anything else. I sent another text message to Miguel asking him to call me ASAP. Of course, I got no response. At this point I just have no idea what is wrong with this guy. He goes through the trouble of getting the roller there, let’s it sit three days and then it gets picked up with no work being done. I guess he really doesn’t want to get paid. Today I plan to call his father and ask what the hell is going on with his son. I just want the work he agreed to do completed so I never have to speak with him again.
As I was out doing chicken duties bright and early on Saturday morning I heard the sound of a running motor. I looked up and saw Miguel on his sod roller pressing down some of the grass in front of the fence. I continued finishing up my work, I planned to check in on him when I was finished. As I was still working I realized I no longer heard the motor running. I once again look the same direction and still see the sod roller, this time parked, turned off, with nobody on it. When I was done in the chicken area I walked over there.
Miguel was gone. It looks like he rolled about a 20×40 area and then took off. I figured he had to do something and would be back. Nope, the roller has sat in the same spot all weekend. I texted him yesterday asking when he was going to finish up. Of course I got no response, unreal. Maybe I’ll fire up the roller and do the work myself.
On Saturday we started work on ripping out the old disgusting pond. I filled two wheel barrows with sludge I shoveled out of the old dry rotted pond liner. Standing in there was treacherous as the sludge felt like ice. After sufficient sludge was removed I was able to rip up the old liner with whatever organic material was still in it.
The pond is two tier design. The upper part is a plastic molded pond. The lower part used to a plastic mold too until a mini-tornado ripped it out of the ground somewhere around 15 years ago. After that happened was when I bought a pond liner and threw it in there instead.
When I pulled out the old liner much of it cracked in my hands from years of exposure to the brutal Florida sun. The shape underneath the liner still more or less had the shape of the original plastic pond which had an uneven surface. I decided I would like to dig out the bottom a bit to make it equal depth. Well that was easier said than done.
The overgrown areca palms that started out as three foot high potted trees have filled every square inch of ground around there, including under the pond, with roots. Just digging out the relatively small section so it was equal depth took way more effort than I first anticipated.
Next up I had some pond liner blanket ready to go in the shed. By putting this down first you protect the liner from getting holes poked into it from below. I then drug out the new liner. The piece I bought was big enough that I could fold it over in half and still have enough material to cover the pond, another nice bonus to increase life and durability of the reborn pond. After giving the liner a rough trim we pinned it along it’s edge with the big heavy castle stones we already had. After another trip to Home Depot we loaded up on large, round river rocks to cover the bottom along with smaller pond pebbles to be used along the edges.
I set up the new fountain pump I bought a few weeks ago to circulate water from the bottom to the top tier where it waterfalls back below. At that point the majority of my work on the project is complete. Cindy is planning to do some cool landscaping around the pond. The end result will be us having a water feature that we actually enjoy looking at instead of wet, muddy, black hole that we ignore.
So when we came back from one of our Home Depot runs on Saturday Cindy and Deb walked into diarrhea which evidently came from Sadie. I had forgotten to walk her before we left so it was my fault ultimately. However ever since we picked her up on Thursday she had been acting like she had the runs. Instead of looking to poop a couple times a day, every single time we would go outside she would go shuffle off in poop position. If there was anything coming out it had to be minor because I could not see much of anything from a distance.
Well this behavior continued throughout the day on Sunday as well. She was just acting like she constantly felt unsettled in her gut. Sadie has had GI issues her entire life but this was abnormal, even for her. So last night I took her out right before bed. She actually only pee’d at that point so I thought that maybe the feeling of poop urgency was finally waning for her. Boy was I wrong.
My first wake up came at 12:30 when she was sitting by the bed making noises at me. At least she lets us know. I took her outside and I heard some wet farts but nothing else really going on. She circled around for awhile before feeling safe enough to come back in. Ok now I can finally get some sleep, not. I got another wake up at 2AM and the same thing occurred outside, circling, some noises, but nothing much I could make out under the light of a full moon. I was very conscious of not wanting to wake up Cindy so I made a command decision to stay out in the main living area with Sadie.
At first I thought I would just work on stuff and maybe play some WoW. I did get a couple stand orders processed but after I read my email I was utterly exhausted. I decided to try out my Secret Lab gaming chair as a sleeping apparatus. The high end chair is comfortable, fully reclines and has a substantial pillow. I turned off the screens to my PC and reclined the chair back. I closed my eyes and stayed there until a little before 6AM when Sadie had to go out again. I slept maybe an hour or two out there but it was miserable sleep if I got any at all. I was constantly listening for any signs of intestinal distress from Sadie who was laying on the floor next to me. I was also chilly as I was only in my boxers. My only “blanket” was crossing my arms over my chest. It wasn’t an experience I am looking to repeat anytime soon.
When I got up I looked up side effects of the NSAID based medicine Sadie has been on for a couple weeks. Of course the side effects are vomiting and diarrhea. Oh I forgot to mention I stepped in Sadie’s dinner which she threw up in the bedroom during the night. I told Ali about the listed side effects and said I don’t think she should keep taking it.
Cindy dropped Sadie off this morning. Hopefully after a couple days without the meds will get her feeling better. She looked absolutely miserable this morning before I left for work, I felt bad. I felt especially upset considering what happened with Maggie. Sadie is starting to slow down as well. Her back legs have been giving out now and then. I really want to make an effort to keep getting her out to the house as much as I can since she has much greater freedom of movement on the property.
As I mentioned briefly Deb came out to visit Saturday evening. As seems is always the case, the three of us had lots of fun and laughs along the way.
The weather all weekend was overcast with an abundance of rain, curtailing any formal EUC riding. The only content I posted was a brief test of the water shedding capabilities of the 3D printed mini-mudguard I started selling on the store last week.
