In the gutter, Father’s

So I wasn’t thrilled when I got a second email late Wednesday from the gutter installers saying that they still planned to show up Thursday but now it wasn’t until between 12-1 instead of 8-9.  The reason was I could see the now typical afternoon thunderstorms causing a problem with the install.  I crossed my fingers that things worked out as I was not going to take Friday off as well for this.

So I treated my day off as I do most weekends, meaning I put myself to work.  I headed outside somewhere around 8AM and did not return indoors until roughly three hours later as I weed whacked the property and tended to a bunch of other outdoor tasks.  I was beat and refreshed myself by doing something I hadn’t done in quite awhile, jump in the pool.  Sadie was very happy about my decision as it meant she got “splashy splash” which involves her running around the pool deck as I splash her excessively.  She just loves it.

I took the dogs for a quick coffee run as I had just enough time to get there and back before the 12PM install window hit.  The two man crew showed up closer to 1PM but they were ready to roll.  They said the entire job should take roughly two hours.

While they got busy I kicked off phase two of my physical labor.  I wanted to use the pressure cleaner in the chicken area.  The exposed decking edge needs to be re-caulked and painted but doing so required that the green scuzz that has accumulated on it needed to be blasted away.   While I was out there I also cleaned other items including the old chicken tractor which had a coating of black filth from being left under the oak tree for too long.

While I was out there Cindy was taking pictures and measurements of her RV awning for her insurance company.  On Wednesday she had the awning out during the day.  Some bad weather came in very quickly that was preceded by very strong winds, strong enough that they bent/snapped part of the frame.  Cindy was very upset about it as you can imagine but it seems that the insurance company she is using is very responsive.  She is hoping it will all be covered with her just paying a manageable deductible.

So the gutter guys were very accurate with their estimate.  They finished up in a little more than two hours and the end results were great.  The single piece gutters should not suffer the endless leaks my installation  from years ago did when I installed conventional gutters.  These are also big 6 inch gutters compared with the 4 inch type I bought at Home Depot.  They should serve me well for many years to come.  This was the very last step in my hurricane repairs, well it was, until Sadie ripped the hole in the pool screen the other day.

Despite a lot of labor already being invested into my day off, I continued my tasks inside.  I received a replacement for the print bed in one of my 3D printers which had a bend in it, causing issues with prints.  I swapped it with the new bed and all was well again, after the normal amounts of trials and tribulations.

I have an odd schedule the next week.  After coming back for a single day today, I work Monday and then have next Tuesday and Wednesday off.  I took those two days off to allow me ample time to evaluate the Ninebot Z10 EUC that is on it’s way to me from the NYC E-Crew.  I am really looking forward to it.

Sunday is Father’s Day so I thought I would take a second to reflect on some memories of my dad that have stuck with me over the years, some funny, some sad.

I have no question where my “once started, the job must be done” disposition comes from.  I recall clearly a time when my dad was out on the tractor mowing grass, in the dark, in the middle of a fierce thunderstorm. The headlights of the tractor and his silhouette lit up by the flashes of lightning are an image that stuck with me.  I have actually repeated this scene on my much smaller lawn tractor several times as an adult.

One of the more memorable activities of my childhood was when my dad would play King of the Hill with my brother and my friend Pete.  We had a rather steep hill along the driveway that lead into a drainage ditch below.  The game was simple, you tried to pull the King off the hill.  Well back then dad seemed like a massive giant to the rest of us.  We would try to drag him off the hill as a tag team effort but were never successful that I can remember.  The end result of this game was all three of us literally getting tossed down the hill repeatedly, sometimes with a lot of air underneath us.  I’m pretty sure it would be classified as child abuse nowadays but we loved it.

When my parents got divorced it was a pretty dark time in our relationship.  There were weekends we would be at the dumpy apartment he was renting in Reading where he would just be crying and miserable.  Neither myself or my siblings really wanted to go there on the weekends, it almost felt like punishment.

One of my most poignant memories of that time was around the holidays.  We had just been with my dad and he was transferring us to mom.  As we were about ready to drive away he stopped us and handed us some additional presents that evidently were from his girlfriend. (I remember zero about this woman)  Well without hesitation my mom grabbed the presents and hurled them back into the street and sped away.  It was a very powerful moment in my childhood, the look on my dad’s face as we drove away stuck with me for a long time.

My dad and I had roughly a six month period where we stopped communicating at all.  It was when I decided that I was willing to walk away from my college education and partial baseball scholarship because I thought I needed to be with my girlfriend at the time instead.  He was infuriated by my decision and looking back, rightfully so, but at the time I thought I knew best.

Dad has helped me out repeatedly and was responsible for eventually getting the base education I needed to get into the IT field after I spent 5 years or so stumbling around figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.  He footed the bill for my Lincoln Tech computer repair program that got my foot in the door as an entry level grunt at a local PC reseller back in 1992.

Dad is famous or infamous for his rants where he takes a hard ass stance against a person, product, business, or situation.  One of the earliest I recall is his vow to never buy another Sears product when the Craftsman weed trimmer (the old hand held style that was like motorized scissors) broke despite not being very old.  I remember the vow being christened by dad taking the unit and smashing it to the sidewalk, violently.

Another crusade of his was refusing to patronize any bank that had a “teller rope system” .  Dad hated the idea of being directed around like cattle by a series of stanchions and velvet ropes.  If he was in a situation where he HAD to go into such a place he would refuse to use the rope system and would walk around it.  There are countless examples of seemingly minor inconveniences that dad has adamantly opposed in not just words but actions over the last five decades.  I certainly have moments where I react in a similar way to situations but I am a minor leaguer compared to dad.

I think I owe a great portion of my drive to be physically fit to what I saw my dad do growing up.  He used to run, do push ups, sit ups, lift weights, and swim pretty regularly during different portions of his life.  It helped me install similar habits into my adulthood which are still carrying on today.  It’s hard for me to see dad struggling as much as he does nowadays with various physical ailments when I once viewed him as almost invincible.  But even with all of his aches and pains he still will grind himself to a nub doing physical work if he is in the “once started, the job must be done” state of mind.  He will just pay for it dearly afterward.

So my roughly 30 or so years as an “adult” made me reevaluate some of my experiences and thoughts about my dad as a child.  I realize that just like everyone else on the planet, dad is a flawed individual that did the best he could do to take care of us with the various circumstances he was in during his lifetime.  Having no children of my own means I never got to see how I would do if thrust into the role of fatherhood but I certainly know it is not an easy line to walk.

I love and appreciate my dad. He has managed to set all five of his kids off into the world where we are all enjoying different successes as competent, contributing adults in society.  Dad has and always will walk to the beat of his own drum, even if it is a little out of tune now and then.