Friday night I did something very out of the norm for me, went to a high school football game. Christine’s oldest son was playing. The team they were playing was supposedly pretty good but the final score did not reflect it. Her son’s team won easily 42-7. It was very interesting being in that environment, the most interesting part might have been observing what current day teenagers are like. It’s a whole new world.

On Saturday I tasked myself with replacing a small 5000 BTU air conditioner that is in the back room of Christine’s place. Normally it would be an easy task. This was not so. The old air conditioner was not in a window but instead in a dedicated cut out on the back wall. Apparently after the old AC was installed they put trim pieces around both the outside and inside walls around the old unit to help secure it and make it look more finished, I suppose. Unfortunately when they did this they were not considering the difficulty that would arise if the unit failed.

I wound up having to pry trim pieces from both spots to get the old AC out. Doing so did some minor damage to the wall that I still have to address. Once the old was out the new slid in rather easily. I reattached the trim pieces and flipped on the new AC which made a pretty significant difference in the overall feel of the house.

On Sunday Christine and I drove out to Ave Maria to ride the One Wheels. Despite driving through some torrential rain to get there the weather mostly held up for the ride. Ave Maria is a great place to ride, I had not had a One Wheel out there in a loooong time. We had a pretty steady flow of Cayman Jacks to keep the fun flowing.

If it seems like there has been less blog entries and less to chew on inside of them I apologize. Like many things in life there are ebb and flow to it. Both the ebb and flow are on the lighter side lately.

Last night I did my first live stream in a couple of weeks. There has been a lot of news in the EUC space to talk about. There have been a few new wheels recently announced and a big drama revolving around two riders that rode for “pink slips”, meaning the loser gives his wheel to the winner. Well the race went down but no wheels were exchanged.

Last night after work I picked up a small TV stand from a seller on FB marketplace. Buying something off marketplace is not all that unusual but the transaction logistics were. I first did the standard negotiation managing to get $15 off the posted $85 price (that was dropped from $100) I asked the lady where she lived, she told me, but then the twist came.

She told me the stand would be out in front of a two story tan garage with a coffee can. She said I can just put the cash in the coffee can, and take the stand. This was a first, a FB transaction based on the honor system?? I told her that was fine without letting on how weird it seemed.

After work I drove to the house which was on the edge of the Estates. The long driveway that wound through trees had a house off to the left and the tan garage as promised to the right. Out in front of it was the stand with a plastic coffee container on top. There was nobody around although it is possible I was on a Ring video feed somewhere. I opened my wallet and realized I was going to have to scramble to come up with the $70. The payment included two 20 dollar bills, five 5 dollar bills, four 1 dollar bills and 4 quarters. Yes, I had to dig in the truck to find those 4 quarters. I put the collection of currency in the container, screwed the lid on tight, grabbed the stand and was out of there in 5 minutes. I found myself enjoying the honor system transaction more than I expected.

I rarely remember dreams but I have the vague outline of a weird one I had last night. I was cleaning up debris and trash at my new house. For some reason I decided the old fill pit at my old house would be a smart way to dispose of the debris, despite my not owning the house any longer. I drove out to the house and without notifying the new owners I walked into the storage shed and grabbed the wheelbarrow. I then loaded up my debris and walked it through the back yard to the fill pit at the very back and started unloading it.

As I am doing this I hear noise towards the house. I look that way and I see a horse running towards me and the owners chasing the horse. The owners are yelling, “Duf, help us stop her!” I am surprised but drop my debris and start moving towards the horse that is sprinting and has a wild look in it’s eyes. I try to move in front of the horse. The owners yell “don’t let her go into the water!” referring to the fill pit that is filled with rain water. I try to move to my right to cut the horse off but it was too late. My dream ended shortly after the horse jumps in the water but evidently is able to swim. I have absolutely no idea what would inspire such a crazy dream, I wasn’t even drunk last night.

Friday night Christine and I rode the One Wheels down towards Tin City. We had dinner at a place named River Walk. I had never eaten there before. We had a nice meal out on the dock and had a couple margaritas. I was also packing Cayman Jack margaritas in my cargo shorts. The combination of these made us both pretty “happy”. We also rode down to the coast where we enjoyed the peaceful beach as sunset was approaching. Christine snapped this picture of me on the way back as I waved to no one in particular while I had a Cayman Jack in my right hand. It was a fun night.

On Saturday I had a few small things to do. One of the LED recessed lights in the kitchen went out recently. I wasn’t quite sure what was involved in replacing them, but it appeared that you just throw out the old one and put in a new one as you can’t change the LEDs themselves. I took the old light to Home Depot with me as a reference so I could get something as closely matching as possible. I found one that seemed like it would work, it had the same type of power connection and was also 6 inches in diameter. I was able to snap it into place in less than 5 minutes.

I also bought a bag of brushed nickel cabinet knobs. My intent was to replace the old white wooden knobs that are on the closet doors of the house. When I went to do the first swap I had an immediate problem. Since these knobs were technically for cabinets the bolts that are included are too short to be used on a closet door. I made not one but two trips to Ace Hardware to address this. The first time I bought bolts that were too long, doh. I do like the way the new knobs look and feel.

Sunday morning I played pickleball with my buddy Juan once again. I had been a couple weeks since I had my last Sunday morning session. The heat was incredibly oppressive. My cotton t-shirt by the end felt like it weighed 10 pounds, soaked with sweat. When I got home I had some sort of rash all over my back, presumably from the heat as well. I love playing but man, doing it during Florida summers is not easy, at all.

Yesterday I headed over to Christine’s place armed with my electric chainsaw. There is a banyan tree next to her driveway that had a number of low hanging branches that were hitting the vehicles. I had tried to address this previously with my power trimmers, knocking off small branches that were low. It was a stop gap fix.

Armed with a ladder and my chainsaw I cut the offending branches back closer to the trunk to prevent a recurrence of the problem anytime soon. Despite being battery powered the Ryobi chainsaw does a nice job of zipping through medium size branches easily. In the span of 15 minutes I had cleared the driveway of any low hanging foliage. During the work I utilized clearly dangerous techniques to reach some of the branches, working the saw with one hand, far above my head. I survived.

This weekend I have a few issues in the house I need to get addressed, none of which should take more than 15 minute blocks of time. When I was doing the work at Christine’s I told her how I used to spend an entire day trimming the 26 trees at my old house. Saying that reminded me of how much I hated that chore and how fortunate I am to be able to refer to it in the past tense now.

Last night was volleyball night, something I continue to do despite knowing the pitfalls it could have for me physically. I played pretty well in the thick humidity where gnats were a constant nuisance. My passing was pretty consistent, I made some defensive plays I would have still been proud of 15 years ago but I only had one clean hit all night. I didn’t have any consistent setters on my team so that makes it tougher for me. In order for me to get in a position to hit nowadays I need to commit early with a strong approach. When I have no idea where the sets are going to be it derails that ability.

A lot of times for convenience after playing I will just drive thru McD’s and grab a fish sandwich. Christine was nice enough to make me a meal instead which I happily consumed on my way home.

I wore my ancient Eagles sleeveless t-shirt last night to play. The thing is literally falling apart at this point with holes popping up everywhere. This style of shirt is not very popular anymore but I am desperate to find a replacement. I like what I like.

On Saturday morning I knocked out the few weekly chores I had because I wanted to get over to Christine’s place to help with some lawn maintenance both at her place and her grandmothers. When I moved out of my old place I forgot to grab the electric weed whacker I was going to bring. So Friday night I went and bought another Dewalt unit to help with these tasks. Christine mows her own grass but didn’t have a weed whacker. Her grandmothers place also badly needed some weed whacking. Even though it was relatively early in the day I sweated my ass off. The heat here in Florida, like pretty much everywhere in the country is just oppressive.

During the afternoon I got back out on my Patton to do a second speed test. My numbers were lower than I expected for the first run so I made a few tweaks, including unlocking a mode on the wheel that allows for higher top end speed with the drawback of being less safe. The change was noticeable. I topped out at 44.4mph and could have gone faster if I wanted to step a little closer to the edge.

Saturday night I went to the movies with Christine. For the first time her two boys went with us which was cool. We saw the new Teenage Mutant Turtle movie. It used a pretty cool animation style that reminded me a bit of the Spideyverse movies. The movie which I would give a B wasn’t bad but normally I would watch something like that at home. It was fun to have the boys along.

Before the movie I got to walk the mall as some school shopping was needed. I was amazed that the mall was actually busy. I am so used to malls being ghost towns anymore but the place was legitimately busy, I was a bit shocked.

On Sunday I made plans to drive up to Plant City with Christine in the Tesla to go watch her one son play football. Plant City is a haul of a little over two hours. The Tesla made for a comfortable drive as always. The comfort ended once we stepped out into the scorching heat and humidity. It was rough just watching as a spectator, I can’t imagine how hot the kids had to be playing, just brutal. We only stayed for the first half because the start of the game was delayed due to storms so by the time we got back it was around 8PM. Despite the heat the day was a lot of fun and as often is the case the weekend felt like it flew by much too quickly.

I have been taking some steps recently to try to clear my head and be able to course correct towards a direction where things make more sense and the fog of uncertainty can start to dissipate. I need to lock the rudder in place and keep moving forward towards things that serve my happiness and away from things that do not.

Last week I mentioned in a blog entry how Christine and I had decided to move on . Well you can scratch that ( I literally deleted that entry) After a lot of honest conversation we have been hanging out and enjoying each other’s company. She makes me laugh all the time and her honest and hardworking approach to most everything she does is a trait not found in many nowadays. Let’s see if I can try to not write any more novels in wet sand.

A new thing that Dunkin Donuts and some other chains that use drive thru’s are doing is automatically playing a recording when you pull up. The recordings ask a question typically. In DD’s case it asks if you are going to be using their rewards app. For whatever reason I find this practice very annoying. Of course I never reply to the recorded question but I do find myself wondering just how many do.

Yep, that’s all I got for you at the moment.

Yesterday I had my dryer vent cleaned. Clay, a friend of mine who is an avid One Wheeler also owns a vent cleaning business so I asked him to do the work since I had no idea when this important maintenance item was last done, if ever. He pulled out a massive vacuum that is designed for this type of work as well as a holster filled with various brushes and extensions.

I let him get busy but then came back into the garage later in the process. What I saw was pretty nasty, a pile of lint and debris on the floor that could almost fill half of a wash basket, it was bad. Clay said it was a good thing that I had it cleaned, it was dangerously filled. Not only do vents like this create a potential fire hazard, it also makes your dryer work much harder to dry clothes, consuming more electricity.

Clay asked if I used fabric softener after looking at the filter in the dryer. I told him I threw in a Bounce dryer sheet with every load. He advised me not to do that for two reasons. First the softener dissolves and accumulates on the dryer filter, clogging it over time. Second he said fabric softener has known carcinogens which are very bad, well damn. I am going to start drying my clothes without bounce and see if I notice an appreciable difference. Imagine the lunacy of coating your clothing with chemicals and then having that clothing sitting on your skin. I also found out the laundry scent balls which I have used for a number of years are filled with similar chemicals.

So I was standing out in the garage with Clay talking for maybe 15 minutes. Although I was just standing there by the end of those 15 minutes I was soaked with sweat. The heat and humidity is that oppressive. I wound up putting on a new shirt before returning to the office, it was that bad.

Last night I returned to volleyball after missing last week. Based on sweating through my shirt standing in the garage earlier in the day I knew it was going to be rough playing in those conditions. I was instantly covered in sweat and sand after a couple dives. Overall I played pretty well including a couple clean hits I would have been ok with 15 years ago.

When I got home the sky looked like it was on fire. I took this picture from the street when I got home. I like my new location, a lot.