Archives 2023

Yesterday we finally had some drier air come into our area. Although it was still warm the lack of humidity in the air was clearly noticeable. Both during my lunch time pickleball session and my evening volleyball play my perspiration levels were significantly less than what I had become accustomed to.

Speaking of volleyball, I played pretty well last night, putting in some of my more consistent play in awhile. Although I enjoy playing with the core group I still am hoping to possibly play with some more consistently skilled players to help me elevate my game more.

I now have ceiling fans and a raised garden bed sitting by the front door in boxes. All of it will get installed by the end of the weekend. I look forward to both having modern, matching fans in all of the bedrooms as well as the ability to start growing some fresh veggies and herbs in the open spot by the corner of the lanai. Life is good.

On Friday after work I hit up happy hour with some of our pickleball crew something I don’t typically do, ever. It was a nice relaxing way to slide into the weekend. Later Friday evening I did a rather quick live stream. I ran out of steam pretty quickly due to poor sleep the night prior.

I did more purging this weekend. You would think with as much purging as I have done in 2023 that there would be little left to get rid of. That is not the case. My target this time was my t-shirt collection which used to stuff four drawers of the dresser.

I have gone through my shirts a number of times but this was the most significant cut of them all, filling a 30 gallon trash bag. I did very quick evaluations on each shirt which included recalling how often I had worn it in the last year. I also finally started using holes and other severe signs of wear as viable reasons to retire the shirts. The end result was much less full drawers while still having enough t-shirts that I could wear a different one for 3 months straight and never duplicate. It was an effort well spent.

I watched the Eagles game on Sunday. The Commanders were more competitive than I thought they would be. The Eagles made some sloppy moves at the end of the game. They were already in field goal range and could have kept grinding closer while running down the clock. Instead they threw into the end zone for a TD which is great, normally. However in these conditions it was not ideal. AJ Brown who caught the TD made it worse by taunting the defender which moved the kick off back 15 yards which in turn allowed Washington to start with great field position.

The defense allowed the Commanders to march the filed with only one timeout before scoring a game tying touch down with literally zero time on the clock. It was frustrating as hell knowing if the game was managed better and AJ wasn’t an idiot Washington would have had no chance to come back. Luckily in overtime the Eagles forced a punt and then were able to drive within range for Jake Ellliot to put the game away with a long field goal. The running game which had been dominant the last two games was not yesterday. Luckily Jalen Hurts picked up the slack posting what I think was his best statistics of this season.

The rest of my weekend was enjoyable and chill, a state of being that I am looking to indulge in more and more often.

I am in the process of migrating my work computer to new faster and better hardware. Being a geek the idea of getting a new computer is exciting. The reality is migrating from one system to another can be an arduous task. I have begun this task this week and am now using the new system as my primary box. However my prior system which is pushing 5 years old will still remain in my office and online for the foreseeable future as a safety net for anything I missed during the transition. During 5 years there are a lot of things that get installed/tweaked. Getting it all moved over cleanly the first time is unlikely.

This weekend has no big ticket tasks on the docket which suits me just fine. I have plenty of small ticket items to keep things rolling along. I am closing in on my goal of rewatching all of Game of Thrones. I am into season 6 at this point. Watching episodes in close proximity to each other has made following the story lines much easier compared to the original series release which would have huge gaps of time between seasons. I have really enjoyed it.

I caught this great rainbow yesterday during the dog walk. It was a beaut.

Yesterday the two new lights I ordered for the lanai showed up. I got them from Wayfair so I did not expect such quick turnaround but welcomed it none the less. I decided to waste no time and installed them which was a very sweaty affair in the thick humid air. The installation had a few hiccups that I was able to work through. If things went without issue it wouldn’t be one of my projects after all.

The new LED lights are much more modern than the original lantern lights they replaced. They also throw a surprisingly large amount of light, equal to if not more than the old fixtures. Next up will be the ceiling fans in the bedrooms. I have three new modern ones coming to replace the mismatched and rather blah existing fans.

Once the fans are replaced that should conclude my initial round of home upgrades. Down the line there are other things that can be done like the garage door, flooring in the bedrooms, building more storage in the kitchen and refreshing the master bathroom. None of these require immediate attention thankfully. I have not been keeping an accurate tally of just how much I have spent on the various home upgrades since I moved in in March but it is a rather large chunk of change. Once I get my mortgage “recast” it should move me back into a position of more financial comfort which I look forward to.

Last night was vball night. Unlike last week when we played over half of the games in rain, which sometimes was torrential, the weather was decent. My play was a little off and on. I had streaks of both good and bad play. I got a few good hits in which are like little shots of dopamine every time I’m able to get this old body high enough to clear the net. I am considering if I want to try to move to the group that plays at a higher skill level.

There are a number of players in this group that just don’t/can’t do the fundamentals real well. They carry the ball routinely, go over on one often and more or less play picnic-style volleyball. We have a decent amount of players that do have skill so we manage to have competitive games most of the time but it can get frustrating. I guess my thought is you play up or down to the skill level of the people you play with. I would rather angle myself upward with the limited court time I have.

I got to enjoy my second consecutive three day weekend in a row. Having that time allowed any must do’s to occur at a leisurely pace which I enjoyed. I spent some time doing so more organizing and decluttering. When I moved into the house a lot of stuff in boxes/containers got placed onto shelves or into closets without much attention paid to what was actually in them. I went through these storage locations and the items within them to both make me more aware of what was there and also do yet another round of cleaning and purging. It wasn’t a massive purge but I did fill up one 30 gallon trash bag.

I also did some work in the master bedroom closet which has a pretty nifty built in shelving/drawers configuration. I relocated a lot of the shelving to be better utilized while shifting around some of the clothing rods as well which is also configurable. The new layout should help maximize storage in there which felt good.

Ever since I moved in I have wanted to replace the two hanging lantern lights that are circa 1996 on the lanai. I just was not sure what I wanted to replace them with. Finally this weekend a replacement was selected, a cool modern LED set of lights that I found on Wayfair. They should arrive this week. I’m looking forward to getting them hung. Once temperatures finally retreat I am also looking forward to spending a lot more time out on the lanai on the outdoor furniture I bought months ago. The only other modernization that is on my short term radar is replacing the ceiling fans in the three bedrooms.

I watched the Eagles/Bucs game last night. Despite throwing two interceptions it seemed like Jalen Hurts was getting back on track. The defense also played very well in the 25-11 win. It was impressive after the Bucs scored a TD in the 4th quarter the Birds were able to kill the clock with a long sustained drive, it was nice to see. It’s a good sign that the Birds are 3-0 without hitting on all cylinders, yet…

It was a very enjoyable three day weekend. I look forward to having a lot more of them, regardless of length.

Last night as I drove towards Tuesday night volleyball I saw very ominous sky in that direction. I thought there was a very good chance that we would get rained out. Well I was right about the rain part, it was the outcome I didn’t expect.

About 10 minutes into playing the light rain started. Nobody else suggested stopping so I was good to continue, it isn’t like me to throw in the white flag so we continued to play. The light rain became hard rain. At several points the hard rain became wind blown nearly horizontal rain which was utterly ridiculous to play in, but we did. My shirt became water logged quickly so I tossed it on the bleachers. The wet sand encased my body, the ball and anything else it touched. It didn’t matter how hard it rained, we were all soaked already so we just played.

As you can imagine the conditions made for some very sloppy play. At times it was hard to even see as the rain was pelting our eyes. Towards the end of the session I felt like I lost my ability to focus as I was making a ton of errors on balls I would normally be able to handle. I was quite glad when the last game was played. I can only remember playing in similar conditions twice before, once at a Pottstown Rumble and once at a beach tournament in Ocean City Maryland. This ranked right up there. The shower last night afterwards felt more appreciated than normal.

I had a good three day weekend where I got to mix in getting things done with fun at a ratio that felt good. I finally wrapped up the side garage door moulding project, getting the painting and caulking cleaned up. Yes I shot a video outlining the project, for some odd reason.

I have not posted since the Eagles got their second win of the year against the Vikings. Despite scoring 34 points the team still did not feel like it was firing on all cylinders. The exception was Deandre Swift and the running game. The Birds piled up massive yards on the ground which was good to see. It’s so early that there is no reason to complain, a win is a win is a win.

I once again played pickleball Sunday morning which has now been a tradition going on a couple months. The group of people we play with at Talis Park seem to really enjoy playing with us “young” whippersnappers. Despite starting relatively early at 8:30 in the morning, by the time we finish up a couple hours later I literally feel like a melted candle. The heat and humidity is still at oppressive levels.

I took Monday off as well to utilize some of the PTO I have been building up. During the afternoon I took the Patton out for a new ride. I rode from my house out to Golden Gate city to the abandoned golf course. I have never ridden there from the house. Getting there was not too difficult and I covered the ground quickly since I was averaging 30+ mph for most of the riding. I did have one incident where my GoPro fell of my selfie stick, hitting the sidewalk and then rolling into the grass. Luckily it seems that there was no significant damage from the impact.

After this short week I have another ahead of me as I also took next Monday off as well. Needing to find days to take off is a problem I could get accustomed to.

Last night I dedicated to getting some stuff done at home. My garage door opener has not been working correctly for several days. The safety electric “eyes” had somehow become misaligned causing the door to be unable to close using a remote control. I was having to go inside, hold down the hard wired switch until it closed and then exit the side garage door.

I first took my measuring tape and laid it on the floor to between the eyes to give me a visual reference. I then loosened the wing nut and did slow changes until the indicator was once again a solid green, indicating a connection was made. I did various successful open/close cycles to test my work, all of them were successful.

I also did some clean up of the new garage door side moldings. I used some caulk to smooth out the nail heads and Goo Gone to clean up some discoloration on the soft rubber part of the moldings. This weekend I just need to paint them and then do caulking along the outside edge to finish the project up.

I did a quick wash of my Tesla, something I don’t get to do as often as I would like. I filled the rest of the evening knocking out minor to do’s. Getting things done always has a therapeutic effect on my brain.

Yesterday was a hot, sweaty and eventually sandy day. I played pickleball over lunch. Even though right now we are able to play in the covered courts the amount of sweat produced by the heat and humidity is insane. I am absolutely drenched by the end of the hour. Last night I followed up with playing volleyball for the first time in a couple weeks. I played pretty well and the team I was on won the vast majority of our games. It felt good to get back out there.

I have been trying to get two home related tasks rolling. The first one is getting the company I contracted with to do the hurricane shutters moving. They are lagging behind what was already pretty slow timeline. Supposedly they measuring step is supposed to take place today but I am skeptical if that will get followed through on. I might need to rattle the chains with the nice old guy that was my sales rep to get things moving again.

The other thing I am trying to get moving is “recasting” my mortgage. Because of the sequence of events with me buying this house prior to my closing on the sale of my old house I have not been able to use my home equity from the sale in the mortgage yet. I had to roll with the existing, extremely expensive mortgage for the last 6 months, waiting to do this recasting which basically means you are allowed to knock down the principal and come out the other side with a significantly lower monthly payment, in my case I could wind up paying around 25% of what I have been which would be great.

My mortgage contact who was great, has now flipped to another company however she has been willing to try to walk me through the steps to get this done. Unfortunately it seems the resources she is relying on at her old lender are not being exactly efficient in providing the information that is needed. I really need to get this in the pipeline as the mortgage payment as is has been applying significant financial pressure when combined with the various home improvement projects I have been doing since moving in.

Yesterday I took my buddy Don to go pick up his new Tesla. His 2016 Jeep has had a ton of repairs lately. Originally he was not that interested in the Model Y but with the federal tax credit being reinstated and a spiff he got for taking an existing inventory car he got a sweet deal. Just like when I got my last Model Y, delivery was paperless and took no more than 10 minutes. I gave Don a few pointers before he drove away.

Tesla has reinstated the referral program so Don used my referral link to buy his car. By doing so he got another $500 off the price of the car and I earned 10,000 Tesla spiff points that can be used on a ton of different things which is cool. When I was doing a lot of Tesla videos I had a number of people using my referral code. I need to see if I can get the Tesla content flowing a bit more to capture some referrals.