Category Anything and Everything

My buddy Jeremy has been working for the state of Florida for close to a year now.  He reached out to me because he was in SW Florida, far away from his home in Tallahassee.  He was assisting with a state initiative to provide Starlink systems to those in need in our area.  Well in this case he was supposed to be dropping some off to various out of state emergency response teams.  It was already after 7:30 when I left the house but I thought it would be interesting to see this all in action.

I almost did not get to see Jeremy at all as the approximate time he said he would be on site came and went.  It was funny because one of the things I have always given him a hard time about is his lack of being on time.  Despite it being close to 10 years since I had seen him, things hadn’t changed.  To be fair he had some issues that held him up at the prior site.  He had also been present at the governors press conference earlier in the day regarding the hurricane relief efforts.

So initially I tried to get into the JetBlue Park (Red Sox spring training facility) before Jeremy arrived and was greeted by some military personnel. I explained I was there to assist in Starlink set up however when they called it in they could not verify it so they didn’t let me in.  I told them I would just wait for my buddy to show up.  So Jeremy and his son arrived.  He flashed his credentials and vouched for me which got me in.

The parking lot had been transformed into a huge mobilization center with tractor trailers and tents that looked like yurts, complete with AC.  It was an amazing display of just how many resources were being put into this recovery.  I had no idea that so many other states sent personnel in.  We set up systems for teams for three different states.

I never set up a Starlink system before.  You could definitely tell it was an Elon product with stupidly simple set up which took less than 10 minutes to go from cracking open the box to pulling down data as fast as 150MBS.  It was pretty impressive.  It was interesting and cool to help with the process even on a very limited basis.  It was also very cool to see Jeremy and Connor again.  Jeremy and I agreed we need to get together sooner rather than later, a decade between face to face interactions is a bit much. By the time I got home it was after 11 and by the time I fell asleep it was technically Thursday morning.  Despite this I woke up today feeling surprisingly ok.

I was checking all day yesterday in my online patient portal hoping CT results would be posted.  There were no updates and none this morning either. I would love to get some news sooner rather than later.

My commute to work today was awful.  At the county fairgrounds there are hundreds upon hundreds of utility trucks staged.  Every morning right around the time I leave the police are there blocking traffic to allow large groups of the trucks to exit.  So once I get past that the road is now bogged down by these hundreds of trucks.  Today schools reopened which added to the traffic causing huge delays at every major intersection.  However that was not the worst thing, I am used to shitty traffic.  When I was a mile from the office I almost was involved in another accident.

So I am heading into an intersection with a green light, following some guy in a Mercedes.  All of a sudden he basically locks up his brakes and simultaneously I hear a police siren.  There were two police vehicles that were entering the intersection from the left road.  It appeared to me they had their lights on but never hit the siren until they were right at the intersection, which is dangerous and dumb.  The guy in front of me either didn’t see them or was trying to beat them across the intersection before he slammed on his brakes.

So the warning siren in the Tesla fires off and I simultaneously slam on the brakes as I feel the anti-lock system kick in.  At first I thought I hit the guy but I apparently missed him by inches.  I was already frustrated by the quagmire I had been driving through, to have this happen at the tail end of the commute was the perfect infuriating cherry to put on top.  After the near miss the guy in the Mercedes put his hand out the window and waved, which I took as a “sorry I slammed on the brakes thanks for not rear ending me” acknowledgment.

Yesterday I had my chest, abdominal and pelvic CT.  Prior to going I had to down two sizeable vanilla flavored barium “milkshakes”.  I should have read the fine print, assuming there was some, indicating they will cause severe gastric distress.  On the way home from work it felt like somebody pumped me like a balloon with colonscopy prep-like bathroom sessions later.  It was awful.  The test itself was a piece of cake, taking all of 10 minutes.  I have had chest CTs before when they were trying anything back in 2019 or so to diagnose my mysterious fatigue I had off and on for almost 18 months. I hope to have results today but I’m not sure if that’s realistic or not.

The receptionist at this place who seemed sweet and friendly gave me a bit of a mental jolt on the way out.  As I was walking out after the test she says to me in a very friendly manner “have a good day and good luck!”  I know she was trying to be nice but I wondered if she had any sense of how that sounds to someone who was being screened for signs of a tumor, or anything else for that matter.   Generally speaking if you are getting a CT it is not for anything you want to find.  Bottom line is I knew she was trying to be nice, it was just weird.

I finally was able to coordinate with someone on FB marketplace to get the chicken equipment I was giving away last night.  Before they showed up I wanted to start the process of getting the portable coop and run out of the chicken yard.  I knew the four foot gate was going to be a problem.  I pulled the coop to the gate and after trying a couple angles realized it was a no go.  I had to not only remove the gate but also the hinge pins that are screwed into the post to hold the gate.  After doing this I was barely able to get the coop out with it cranked to a side angle.

As I was pulling the coop up front they showed up.  It was actually the woman I was dealing with daughter and son in law.  I was worried that they would not bring a truck big enough to hold everything.  I was relieved when I saw them backing into the driveway with a flatbed trailer being towed by a full size Ram truck.  It worked out better than expected, not only did they take the portable coop/run they took everything else I was giving away which included the inside perch, portable perch from the run, the nesting box stand and the outdoor water shelter that I built.  It was great.  The only negative was I tore a big chunk of skin off my middle finger helping load that bled like mad.

As you could expect it felt somewhat strange to have all of this stuff gone, much of it having been built by my and Cindy’s hands.  I did however come up with an interesting idea to repurpose the coop.  I could turn it into my EUC shed , storing my wheels out there to eliminate the risk of a lithium fire inside the house.  I’m not sure how viable the idea is but it’s something I plan to explore.  I have utility and solar power out there which could be used to charge the wheels.  My question is the negative impacts of storing wheels in the non-air conditioned shed.  We will see.

So with owning chickens for so many years all of the birds in the neighborhood have reaped the benefits of the treats and scratch grains I would put out in the yard.  They would even fly into the run before I got there, waiting for me to put out food.  Since Kathy died I don’t have the need to continue putting food out but I do anyway for two reasons.  First I have chicken food/treats left over, there is no need to waste them.  Second, I like it.  Even when I run out of the chicken food I can see me still grabbing bird food to put out there daily.  Squirrels and rabbits have come to count on the leftover food as well so I would feel badly pulling the rug out from under them.  I am sure Kathy would have appreciated my effort to keep her friends fed.

Last night I was buzzing around the house doing my normal Monday night duties as well as washing the Tesla which was getting sort of cruddy.  Later at night I recorded a quick video announcing I wasn’t going to the LA EUC tour as well as two more “Shorts”.  I think my theme with shorts is how to do things in 5 seconds, perfect for the average attention span of many humans.

I rescheduled my CT for today.  It will be good to get it over with.  I get to chug two barium milkshakes prior to the visit.  I am curious what the side effect of this will be down the road, if you know what I mean.  I am crossing my fingers that the imaging shows an all clear and I can move forward without further health distractions, there have been a lot of them recently.

As I tended to the relatively minor issues around the property this weekend I almost felt survivors guilt. Yes there have literally been people that have died in the storm but my guilt was just more connected to the total devastation so many people suffered.  Seeing pictures and videos of what Ian transformed the coast area to were horrific.  I had been to many of the locations that have now been destroyed, it’s a very weird feeling in an awful sort of way.  Repeatedly I internally recognized just how fortunate I was to escape relatively unscathed.

I did have a lot to deal with related to work.  I went into the office Saturday morning to investigate what appeared to be a total outage.  It was that but not just for us.  The outage impacted multiple carriers, even shutting down the county 911 services.  Luckily by mid-morning most services were restored.  The explanation I got was a major network colocation facility had a generator failure turning it and everything connected to it, dark. I was also communicating back and forth with management of our office all weekend, trying to determine our ability to open branches on Monday.  Surprisingly it appears that we will be able to open every branch but one, the branch in Marco Island that had standing water inside the building.  This is a far better outcome than I was expecting on Friday when almost every branch was offline.

On Saturday afternoon I dug out the Halloween decorations.  I only got the blow ups for the yard as I didn’t really feel like decorating inside.  When I opened the container I saw two brand new boxes.  I had totally forgotten that after Halloween last year I bought two more inflatables that were on sale.  You will see the new items, the black and white spider and the ghost in the foreground of the picture.  Last year I recall having internal struggles regarding if I wanted to put out Halloween decorations at all since I had always viewed it as something Cindy and I did together.  This year I don’t have that struggle as I recognized I put them out because I like them and that is all that really matters.

Later Saturday afternoon I road my new Begode T4 over to the park to play pickleball with a co-worker who lives down the road from me.  It gave me another chance to ride my new wheel which I am still adjusting to.  I think once I get a few things worked out I will be happy with it.  I also produced a video going over my initial thoughts about the wheel which are not entirely positive.

A good portion of the night I watched an arm wrestling PPV event that I really enjoyed.  I am a big arm wrestling fan for some reason.  This event had some incredible matches that were worth the price of admission in my book.

My Sunday felt sort of lazy by my standards even though monitoring work issues was an off and on thing all day.  After paying my bills and grabbing coffee with Elsa I spent some time tending to little nagging things around the house that have been back burnered for one reason or another.  It feels good when you get to squash some of those small visual annoyances.  As I did this work I listened to the Eagles/Jaguars game.  It started out poorly with the Jaguars who are coached by ex-Eagles coach Doug Pederson, jumped out to a 14-0 lead.  However the Eagles stopped the bleeding and scored 29 points before the Jaguars scored a late touchdown.  The Jaguars are much improved this year so it was a solid win, keeping the Eagles as the ONLY undefeated team in the NFL.  I can’t tell you the last time that happened.

I made arrangements to meet up with Monique for a bike ride.  Well she rode a bike, I took my T4. On the way there I wanted to see if I could finally find a gas station that did not have a line at least 15 cars deep. I managed to do just that on a hunch.  I drove up to Bonita Springs to a Racetrac that is just east of I-75. During non-hurricane times this station usually is not super busy.  I was able to pull right up to a pump with no waiting, unheard of for the last 10 days.  Once again I felt fortunate.

We rode over to the Greenway.  When we arrived they had a gate in front of the two entrances but one of them was pulled partially open.  I assume they didn’t want people on the path yet but after riding the full length into Baker Park I’m not sure why.  Other than some minor damage and debris on the path, there was no problem getting by.  In total we were out for at least two hours.  I always enjoy my time hanging with Monique and this was no different.

I expect this week to be rather hectic as we deal with the aftermath of Ian.  Keeping calm when the pressure is on is an attribute that has helped me in my job over the years.  I will be leaning on it this week.

Yesterday was the first day post storm.  It brought with it horrific pictures of the destruction.  This was truly worst case scenario thanks to the storm surge.  It made me feel all the more fortunate to only have some minor landscape damage to deal with.  Mid-morning I drove into our main office with Elsa along. The drive was challenging as almost every traffic light was out.  It seemed about 50% of the drivers were aware of the “treat like a 4 way stop” rule when signals are dead.  I also got to see some of the mess ranging from downed trees to roads with lots of debris from when they were underwater.  I needed to see what was and was not working.  Everything at the main office was good to go but most of our branches were offline.  The branch at Marco Island was totally flooded out, meaning it could be a very long time until it resumes operations, if at all.  I got the information I needed for now and headed home.

The few gas stations that were open were being pummeled with lines reaching a half mile or more.  I had between a half and three quarters of a tank left in the Tacoma so I deemed it good enough.  When I got home I decided I wanted to get started on some the issues in the yard from the storm.  The first and biggest issue was the avocado tree.  The winds late in the day yesterday combined with the saturated ground resulted in the avocado tree leaning hard to one side.  I used a ratchet strap attached to the Tacoma to help pull it the other way.  I then used some old metal temporary fencing posts on the opposite side to keep it there.  It doesn’t look beautiful but it seems to be doing the job.  I also cut several of the low hanging branches to even things out.  The storm and my pruning resulted in a ton of not quite ripe avocados falling to the ground.  I am going to give some to Monique and keep a few for myself, hoping they ripen up.

I also cut up the bird of paradise that fell.  I felt lucky that it did not fall into the pool cage.  I did several runs back to the fill pit with the tractor to dump debris.  At spots I was rolling through standing water approaching a foot deep in the back yard.  I was glad I did not get stuck.  I also did some work in the chicken area.  I took down almost all of the corrugated plastic roof panels that I had attached to the run for rain protection for the birds.  They looked like shit and weren’t needed anymore.  I also disassembled the temporary shelter I made a few years ago for them to reclaim some lumber for future use.  Doing this invoked emotions of sadness in me, undoing what I did on their behalf, but it needed to happen.  I have more undoing in there to do this afternoon hopefully.

Later in the afternoon I was excited to realize my internet service was restored.  I was limping by with my limited access on my phone but it felt nice to be hard wired once again.   I was talking to my buddy and former boss Don.  He had no power yet.  He came out last night with Lucky to watch the Dolphins/Bengals game on Amazon Prime. (he is a Fins fan)  The quality of the broadcast sucked with pixelation of the picture the entire time, something that evidently has plagued every game Amazon has streamed so far.  I am surprised that Amazon can’t get live streaming figured out.  The Dolphins lost the game but it was nice having Don and Lucky there.  They slept over, being the first to use my guest room in it’s latest iteration.  Don said he slept well.  They headed out bright and early this morning.

Today we woke up to glorious weather with low humidity and temperatures in the 60’s, something we have not experienced in close to 6 months.  I opened the windows and really enjoyed stepping outside.  Mid-morning I headed to another branch to do some troubleshooting of our connectivity issue.  I got the ball rolling with our WAN provider and as a result we now have a half dozen more sites that have come back online which is awesome.

This afternoon I plan to change the oil in the Tacoma and try to figure out why my windshield washer now trickles out washer fluid like an old man urinating.  It seems that this issue developed after the windshield was replaced.  Hopefully it’s something simple.  I plan to continue my clean up of the chicken area removing/repurposing whatever I can.  I am hoping that now that the storm has passed I can actually respond to the avalanche of FB marketplace messages I received about the stuff.

I also have decided that I am not going to be going out to LA for the EUC event mid-October.  The storm has postponed my CT until an undetermined date and I am going to be needed to facilitate whatever comes up with post storm logistics at work.  I actually have already come up with another idea which I prefer, just going out there sometime before the end of the year and meet up casually with a much smaller group of people I know in the area.  It will be a much more relaxing pace for me and more enjoyable.

Here are the various videos I produced over the last few days.

Our office decided to close at 1PM yesterday due to the threat of Hurricane Ian.  A couple days ago the forecast path kept sliding west however in the last day the track had reversed, sliding more and more east which is bad news for us.  Once I got home I put a few more things away but put my trust in my new hurricane impact windows.  A number of people put up hurricane shutters last minute.

The rest of Tuesday was spent watching the rain pile up outside, the property was already flooded before the sun went down.  I watched a lot of the local news coverage of the storm but also took breaks to watch some “normal” stuff.  There is a limit to how much of the fear stoking broadcasts I can watch at one time.

When I went to bed it was still raining hard but not horribly windy.  I got awakened several times during the night by Elsa.  One time she crawled all the way up to my head.  I pulled the blanket over her and covered her with a pillow as well.  Despite my efforts she was still scared.  I was then worried that she had to go to the bathroom so I walked her outside into the storm in my underwear.  It didn’t seem like she had to go urgently.

I finally fell back asleep and didn’t open my eyes until 8AM.  When I looked out the window it was extremely dark with standing water everywhere.  The trees were now getting whipped consistently by the wind.  I looked at the latest NOAA graphic and couldn’t believe the max wind of the storm had exploded to 155MPH, a couple ticks below category 5.  It was still off the coast with the eye almost even to the house.  What a shit show.  The projected path would have it make landfall somewhere close to the Lee/Charolette county line.  The property in the path of those core winds are going get smashed, however that might not be the worst of it.  This afternoon the storm surge from the storm is going to start pushing onshore and it is predicted to be as much as 12-16 feet in some areas.  In the Naples area there could be substantial surge as well which can be absolutely devastating.

For me, being 17 miles inland is a good thing with this storm.  I don’t think I will see hurricane force winds here although there have been some very strong gusts already.  Flooding is a given so my biggest concern is power outages.  Irma 5 years ago resulted in almost two weeks of no power madness.  I am crossing my fingers I can avoid a similar situation this time around.  The story of this storm is not going to be completed for at least 18 hours.  It is going to be a very long day.

The predicted path for Ian still is pretty favorable for our immediate area.  The center of the storm is predicted to be pretty far west when it passes Collier County.  Despite this schools have already closed for today and tomorrow.  The Clerk of Courts has also closed.  I’m not sure if our office will close tomorrow or not, if it does it would likely only be if other local county agencies did first. I went outside and did very minor prep for the storm, pushing pool deck furniture close to the house, untying one side of the solar shade in the rock garden and putting away a few loose items.  When Cindy lived with me the deck had a lot more stuff on it so that alone took awhile to secure.  I guess there is an advantage to the minimalism I have outside the house nowadays.

My latest wheel arrived yesterday.  Despite just doing a live stream two nights prior I decided to do another unboxing stream last night, they are normally fun.  I did something that I tried multiple times to do in the past unsuccessfully, run a two camera set up.  I set up my laptop and connected it to the stream so it could point at my table that had the wheel on it.  I think it turned out well other than the onboard camera on the laptop being sort of low quality.  The stream went a little over two hours and was actually more viewed than Saturday night’s stream, with less notice.  Maybe Monday nights are a better slot to stream since most normal human beings have plans on a Saturday night.

Last night and this morning felt very different.  The absence of the night time “putting the chickens to bed” routine felt weird.  When it got dark the thought flashed in my head for a moment how I needed to go out to the coop, just like it has for the last 8 years or so.  I then realized that is no longer the case.  This morning was even weirder.  For the past year I have been marching out to the coop at 5:30 in the morning to get everything done before leaving for work.  Today I was able to sleep an extra 25 minutes and still get to work on time which is a net positive for my overall quality of life.  There is going to be a lot of adjustments to the new state of things but if I am being honest, it will be a good thing overall to be able to live my life without the chickens being at the forefront of many decisions.

After dinner last night I felt like going out for a ride on a wheel.  I grabbed my S22.  No camera gear was included, I just wanted to get out to clear my head as it had been an emotional day.  After cruising around the side streets on the other side of Immokalee Road I headed into the park entrance.  It was pretty dark at this point.  I had pulled off the road to check something on my wheel.  When I was ready to go there was a line of 5 or 6 cars coming so I waited for them to pass.  So as I am ready to pull out I all of a sudden barely see another vehicle, some old shitty Honda with no lights on.  The exit road has absolutely no street lights so the guy was almost invisible.

So as I pass him I see his window is down and say “Turn your lights on dude…”  Without a split second notice the guy yells “f u” and other things I couldn’t make out as I was rolling away.  I thought to myself how this individual must be highly educated to lead with obscenities when he was the one that was driving lights out.  Sure if I replaced “dude” with something like idiot, asshole or another similar insult, I could understand the flash anger response but as is, it was dumb.  As I kept rolling I checked my rear view mirror to see if Mr FU would be dumb enough to turn around to pursue things further.  He wasn’t.  I’m not the type to initiate aggression but if you place it on my doorstep things might not turn out the way you hoped.

The predicted storm path is still tracking west of our area but there will likely still be significant impact to much of the state.  The biggest concern here is potential storm surge since will be on the east side of the hurricane which is the business end.

The drive home from work Friday revealed that full blown panic had ensued, spurred on by a NOAA potential storm path graphic that showed what was tropical depression 9, slicing across Florida in our vicinity on Wednesday.  All it takes is one of these predictions, regardless of how unreliable they are this far in advance to start lemming madness.  Every single gas station I passed had long lines of vehicles, desperate to fill up, 6 days early.  Think about it, more than likely many would need to get gas again during that time period but seeing cars in line spurs something primal in human beings, also known as FOMO. (fear of missing out)  I heard reports of people raiding stores, desperate to hoard as much bottled water, toilet paper, and other food items as they can.  It’s the same thing that happens up north as soon as a substantial snowfall is predicted.  Panic mentality has always bothered me.

My Friday evening was busy again.  Despite playing pickleball at lunch on Friday, my third time in two days, I decided to jam my evening with more action.  I got on the road bike and put in my 10 mile course.  My time and overall average pace was better than I have logged in a long time, for some reason.  When I got home I immediately slapped cargo shorts over my biking pants and weeded the property.  With less and less daylight, doing this one-two combo on a Friday is getting more challenging.  Pizza prep only begun once I returned inside, sometime after 7:30.  I slept very soundly Friday night.

Thankfully on Saturday morning the revised storm path had shifted considerably west, making it pretty unlikely that we would receive a direct slap from Ian, although we will likely get some effects from the storm. The revised path showed immediate results at the gas stations and stores.  I did my grocery shopping at Walmart without major hassle.

Saturday morning when I went out to the coop Kathy’s energy and alertness had taken another turn for the worse.  The best I could do was get her to poke at some tomato I cut up for her but she had next to nothing left.  I moved the chicken tractor to the front of the chicken yard and put Kathy in a nesting box inside of it.  She basically did not move at all once I placed her there.  I knew the end was coming.

I kept busy throughout the day, weed whacking the yard wearing my boots to combat the mucky sections of the property.  It again was brutally warm and humid.  I was dying.  When I finished I jumped in the pool, fully clothed, turning it into a YouTube Short.  The short generated the most views of any so far, amassing, almost 30k views in a short time period.  Having an interesting title is crucial in Shorts performance.

I decided late in the day to do a live stream.  I had been texting Gladys’s sister Monique about Kathy’s decline, saying I would not be surprised if she passed during the night.  Monique suggested I bring her inside with me, an idea I rejected at first but then reconsidered.  Years ago we brought Lucy inside as she was dying but I have never done it since.  Every chicken that died did so out in the coop.  Well the more I thought about it the more I softened.  I had some concerns about Elsa being weird with Kathy inside but decided I would take the chance.  I laid down a big cover and brought Kathy in, still sitting in her nesting box.  She was very out of it, I’m not even sure she knew she was on the inside of the house she only knew exclusively from the outside her entire life.

I showed Kathy a couple times during the stream but did not want to talk about the situation much because I knew it would make me emotional.  Elsa was an angel, seemingly sensing Kathy’s illness, she never did anything threatening.  When I was done I brought Kathy into the bedroom with me.  Before I went to sleep I told her once again how I loved her and how it was ok to go.  I was almost positive that when I woke up Sunday morning she would be gone, she wasn’t.

I could hardly believe it when my groggy eyes focused and saw Kathy was still with us, barely.  At this point her head was hanging over the edge of the nesting box and she was breathing deep and slow.  When I got out of bed  I laid down on the floor by her for quite awhile, petting and talking to her.  I really thought she could pass at any moment, but she was still hanging on.  I started doing some of my Sunday morning things.  I was sitting on the computer paying bills when I heard a noise from the bedroom.  When I rushed in there I witnessed what is described as death throes, something I never had seen a chicken do and hope to never see again.  She was making these noises and at the same time her body was spasming.  I quickly reached down and tried to hold her still until they subsided, which they did. I watched her take her last breath, with tears streaming down my face.  Elsa was right there behind me sensing something was going on that made me very sad. It was a rough few moments.

I let Kathy be for a couple hours until I went about the task of deciding where I was going to bury her.  For years I have been burying the birds towards the back of the property to not attract predators that could try to dig up the remains into the chicken yard.  Well since there are no more chickens to threaten, I decided to bury Kathy in the chicken yard, right in front of the Kathy Mae plaque Cindy made for my mom years ago.  The plaque now has dual meaning.  Burying a hen has always been a gut wrenching thing for me but Kathy was especially tough because she was the last, it signified so many things to me.  It was an end of an era that stretched damn close to a decade.

If I think about all of the time, effort, energy, emotion, and money that I have invested into the hens over the years it is staggering.  I couldn’t even begin to list how many things I did on their behalf, just because I felt responsible for making sure they had a good existence.  Every direction I turn in the chicken yard there is a different story about this thing or that thing, it has been a very, very long saga.  Initially this was seen as primarily as a cool way to get fresh eggs and little more.  It morphed into something much more consuming.

Kathy’s death is bittersweet.  As horrible as it was to watch her finally succumb, it also signifies the end to a responsibility that quite honestly has had considerable negative impact on my life.  Ever since becoming a chicken owner I have felt extremely hesitant to do anything that would take me away from their care because of some hard to explain sense of responsibility for them and a hesitancy to saddle somebody else with their well being, as it could be not fun.  When Cindy moved out I had to swing my schedule even earlier to take care of the birds before leaving work which was difficult.  All of that has now come to an end.

I have a bunch of things to undo in the chicken yard.  I’m going to be selling or giving away pretty much anything that was hen related.  I have a bunch of things I did exclusively for their protection from rain/sun/predators which will be taken down.  I have a half a dozen Ring cameras out there for surveillance which aren’t needed.  I will repurpose as many as I can.  Of course the solar system and some other tech will remain in place out there but the vast majority is no longer needed.  I fully expect this process to be filled with sad thoughts as well, as removal of something makes you think of the memories of when you installed it in the first place.  I don’t have any immediate plans to repurpose the chicken yard/run/coop.  Having an area like that ready to go might be attractive to a potential buyer down the road, maybe.

Sunday afternoon I listened to the Eagles/Washington game while mowing.  Carson Wentz had a dreadful first half, taking a ton of sacks, fumbling and basically being inept.  It made me remember why he frustrated me so much when he was our QB.  The Eagles did all of their scoring in the second quarter and won 24-8 but the game wasn’t really that close.  Jalen Hurts had another big day.  It’s been a pretty perfect 3-0 start to the season so far. I had some ideas about doing a tire change on one of my EUCs but decided later Sunday afternoon was not the time to do it.  Instead I took Elsa with me to grab some coffee  and then do the mile loop around the park.  Both her and I were quite bothered by the heat and humidity which was oppressive, again.

This week we will have to see what sort of collateral damage we get from Ian.  Otherwise I am going to be slowly working on getting a number of things out in the chicken area as they will be going forward.  I have my CT scan this week so I am hoping to get the final answers I am looking for in that area of concern.

Yesterday I did something that I paid dearly for several weeks ago, played pickleball twice in the same day.  I played at lunch, some singles with Kerri, who improves every time we play. After work I rushed home, did the chores and then went to the next door park to play 4 or 5 games of mixed doubles with the crew I have been playing with for a few weeks.  It was good fun.  The last time I pulled this stunt I paid a pretty steep price physically as I also played the following Friday at lunch. (which I am doing again today)  I could hardly move at that point.  Knock on wood, my soreness and pain this time around is much more manageable. Heck I even have ideas in my head of doing the 10 mile bike tonight AND weeding the property, crazy.

So Kathy is still hanging in there.  When I got home from pickleball last night she had once again made her way up into the coop and was sitting in the nesting box I have on the floor.  She is weak, frail, and light.  However up until recently she was still talking.  With many of my chickens when I would talk to them they would respond with their own unique noises.  Kathy has always been one of the chattiest, especially when I present food or say her name.  The sounds have stopped, which again based on my unfortunately extensive experience with chickens means there isn’t much gas left in the tank.  Regardless when I am out there I pet her a bunch which she still seems to like.  Every time I leave her I tell her she is a good girl and that I love her.  I never know if it will be my final opportunity to do so.

We have had two days of minimal rain.  As a result I hope to be able to get something accomplished in the mucky yard this weekend.  I also may be going on a shopping trip to Sam’s with Monique and some of her family.  Evidently they have not been to Sam’s in a few years so I figured since I am a long standing member I could give them a fresh tour.  I have a number of other things on my radar that are swirling around with no particular priority order.