Yesterday on my lunch break I once again played pickleball with some friends/co-workers. We were just warming up smacking my red pickleballs around. The balls come in several colors but the “official” color you see in tournaments and organized play is sort of a neon green shade.
The first pack of balls I bought were this color. I tried to identify them by putting my name on the balls in permanent sharpie but found it wore off very quickly during play. So when I bought my next pack of balls I decided to try one of the non-mainstream colors, amber red or something like that. I figured it would make differentiating my balls significantly easier since most used the neon green.
So anyway, as we are warming up some old guy comes up to the fence. He tells us we shouldn’t play with the red balls since nobody ever uses them. He was so adamant in his belief that neon green was the only option he tossed us a neon green ball. I was a bit dumbstruck that the color of our pickleballs was enough of an irritant for this guy that he felt the need to address it. We were laughing at the oddity of this situation as we accepted the free ball and started smacking it around.
I never knew that pickleball prejudice was a thing, until yesterday. Condo cop mentality is alive and well, even on the court.
My morning routine is like a well oiled machine ever since I started cleaning the chicken coop before work. When that alarm goes off at 5:35 AM I have very little time to waste. The sequence of events is clean the coop, make Elsa and my breakfast, pack my lunch, take a shower, get dressed and then head back out to the coop one final time. During that second coop visit I put the mats back in and give Kathy some additional treats. I can tell how am I doing time-wise not by a clock but by a door.
The automatic chicken door I have on the chicken run opens automatically at 6:55 AM. If it opens while I am out there I know I am pretty much on schedule. If it is already open when I get out there I know I am running behind and if somehow I get finished while the door is still closed I am surprisingly ahead of schedule. (or the door is broken) It’s funny to me how something like a door could become a time keeping tool in my world.
When I got home last night I got the urge to fire up the weed whacker. I saw the area under the solar panels was getting taken over by weeds once again. Weed whacking this area is not welcomed by my back. Trying to get the whacker into the low section of the angled panels requires an awkward bent over position while simultaneously holding the machine in front of your body. I took a few moments during the task to stand up straight, like that did anything. Once I did that area I figured I may as well do a speed run around the house, not knocking down everything I normally would but anything around the immediate house region. I figure it was one less thing less to put on the list for next week’s staycation that I am already building.
You may wonder why I don’t put more in here about the state of the world. Overseas we have the Ukraine war which seems like it is destined to have a horrible outcome one way or the other. Putin’s sanity really needs to be examined at this point. Within our borders inflation is raging with a pile on mentality. No matter what service or product you sell you can jack your prices and blame inflation, whether it is valid excuse or not. That is a very dangerous mindset to fall into. The reason I don’t rant and rave more is because over time I have drifted towards caring more about what I can directly impact or control. I can make energy conscious decisions for myself, I can choose to be a decent human being, I can hold myself personally responsible for my actions. Trying to save the world from itself is far beyond my scope of possibility so I have retreated from trying to do so. I don’t want to spend however many years I have left on this planet being angry.
I think I mentioned in the past the ridiculous increase of my homeowners insurance for the upcoming policy year, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%. Well I got another letter in the mail from Tower Hill that ticked up my degree of anger a few more clicks. The letter states that thanks to some organization called the FIGA (Florida Insurance Guaranty Association) my premium will be going up even more.
Basically FIGA is designed to be a safety net for an insurance company that goes insolvent. Recently St John’s insurance went that way. So based on this agreement FIGA assumes any outstanding claims of St Johns and assesses policy holder of every solvent insurance company a fee to cover this expense. So if you run your insurance company poorly, no worries all the other homeowners in the state will prop you up, sigh….
Property insurance in the state is a huge problem for everyone. It’s so bad I heard they are trying to schedule an emergency session of the state legislature to try to get things under control. Insurance companies across the board are all reaching for a cash grab at the same time, leaving homeowners little choice but to bend over and take it. There are many contractors that basically advertise they are willing to commit insurance fraud on your behalf. It’s this type of abuse of the system that hurts the rest of the population that isn’t looking to deceive for personal gain.
I reached out to have someone give me an estimate for window replacement next week. The windows in the house are low quality and non-impact rated. A couple of them have broken internals that don’t allow them to stay open or in some cases open at all. The house does not have a ton of windows so I am hoping the quote I get is not too heart attack inducing. I do plan to get several estimates to weigh against one another. I scheduled it for next week because I scheduled another week long staycation.
I am not sure why this popped into my head recently but it did. I was thinking about how despite my being very analytical in some regards, much of my life is done by feel. I have often talked about how many of my projects were fluid in nature with plans that were not on paper but in my head and subject to constant change based on feel. When I meet certain people I quickly get a feel for them. With my most recent hire for our department, even though she was only the second person I interviewed, I almost immediately knew she would be a great fit, because I felt it. Hell even when I was an avid bowler growing up, I did it on feel. Instead of utilizing the arrows on the lane that were maybe 10 feet away to aim your ball I always looked right at the foul line when bowling. I knew how the shot was supposed to feel coming off my hand.
Of course there have been times in my life where my tendency to act based on feel has not always served me well. It can lead to impulsiveness or just poor end results as some situations deserve more examination than just acting on a feeling. As I said I’m not sure why this thought tangent was even present but it was, so here it is.
Last night I took Sadie back to Ali’s place. They weren’t back yet from their flight so I dropped her off. Elsa was disappointed that Ali and Shugs were not home. I didn’t get up there to drop her off until almost 9PM because of running around the house tending to tasks. By the time Elsa and I returned we were ready to hit the sack.
I may be imparting my feelings onto my interpretation of how Kathy has been since Fiona died, leaving her solo, but to me, her little noises she makes when I am out there sound sadder. When I was at the bar Saturday night I was going to turn off the coop light remotely, I figured Kathy would already be on the perch but I checked the inside Ring cam. She wasn’t there. I checked other cams and saw her standing by the front fence, staring in at the house, despite it being dusk. I immediately felt sad, thinking she was waiting for me to come out to put her to bed.
Wow, this weekend was just stuffed with things. I got out on the bike Friday after work. The cold front had dropped the temps and humidity to fantastic levels which is great. The cold front also brought very windy conditions, which was not so great. The long leg after the turn around spot was especially brutal. I just tried to keep my body as low as possible to reduce my wind impact area. Even with doing so I was hard pressed to keep my speed over 15-16MPH on that segment. By the time I got home I was pretty beat. Combining some pickle ball and road biking on the same day hits me pretty hard nowadays.
In the last 10 days I have been slammed with 3D store orders. I spent a good portion of the weekend trying to keep things flowing. Some of the orders I could fulfill out of stock but some I had to do on the fly. I am very conscious of trying to turn around orders as fast as possible since I know that is how I like transactions to go. I have sold the most in a short period of time in probably a year, it’s a nice problem to have.
It was beautifully cool on Saturday morning. After doing my morning chores I loaded Sadie and Elsa in the truck. One of my stops was Trader Joe’s. There is no better place for me to find good tasting and decently healthy single serving frozen meals. I loaded up enough to last me a long time. We also made a stop at the local feed store for chicken supplies. With only one chicken left I need to try to scale back the food appropriately. It’s hard to accurately do so because so many wild birds come and snack on Kathy’s food throughout the day.
During the afternoon I got started on a BUNCH of small to do’s. When the new vent fan receptacle showed up mid-afternoon that jumped to the top of the priority list as I had an empty hole in the bathroom ceiling since the previous week when my install failed.
I first had to splice in the new receptacle. I did my best to make sure the connection was secure and locked together with a wire nut and electrical tape. After snapping the new part in place I carefully attached the new fan and plugged it into the new receptacle. I hit the switch to verify juice was flowing, it was. After some awkward finger work I finally got the two spring clips in place and pushed the new fan flush against the ceiling. It looks good and throws a ton more light into the space which I like. I again mentally kicked myself in the ass for not taking on this task many, many years before.
By the time I finished up all of my to do’s it was getting later in the afternoon. I came up with a Saturday night game plan of parking at DD, riding, and then going back to Brooks Burgers for another meal while sitting at the bar. I again took the OneWheel GT and I again really enjoyed my ride. During the 20 minute plus video I got sidetracked into conversations about non-PEV topics like my overall sense of well being, my recent chicken loss, and why I am more comfortable talking to a camera than most human beings.
The trip to Brooks was uneventful. There were actually less people there than the week prior. The same two guys that were singing last week were there again which I appreciated. For a good portion of the time it was just me and some other old dude at the bar. Later a few older, presumably married couples joined us but I just sat there and chilled. I only drank a couple Bud Lights during the meal.
Sunday morning was again a glorious crisp and cool morning. Sadie loved just sitting in the yard and chilling out. Her mobility is getting more and more limited, especially after she has been laying down for a prolonged period of time. Her desire to be close to me at all times has her getting up and down constantly in the house to be in whatever room am in. It’s very endearing but also very sad for me to see her struggle so much to just do the simplest things. I can tell her mind still wants to run around and play like she did for so much of her life but now she is trapped inside of a failing body. It sucks.
I spent a ton of time at the computer Sunday morning between paying my bills and processing orders. We didn’t get out on the road for our coffee run until after 11. I had cleared my afternoon schedule because my buddy Matt was coming out to the house for the first time ever so we could install a towing hitch onto his 2019 Tesla Model 3.
Matt showed up about 1:30. After giving him a brief tour of the property we began the install. He had found an installation video for the hitch that we both had watched prior. I saw nothing in the process that looked out of my capabilities. Matt wanted to add the hitch to utilize with a platform to increase his cargo capacity during his annual summer road trips.
I brought my laptop out to the garage so we could follow along with the video. I also brought my Sony camera out on a tripod thinking I could film the process for content for my channel. Well that idea did not last for very long. The initial steps of the process went relatively well. Tesla’s utilize snap together construction for a lot of the car. To install the hitch you take a lot of stuff off the rear end including the tail lights, bumper cover and bumper crash bar. There is also a rear belly pan which comes out.
At first we thought we didn’t need to put the car on ramps but we eventually did. It’s a good thing because there were certain things we could not have done without the car being elevated. So we were moving along steadily. We got the car ripped down to the point where the bumper crash bar was removed. This part needed to be installed onto the new hitch assembly. In the video this looked stupidly easy. You put some carriage bolts through the one side, which will line them up with the other side. Snug them up and you are good to go. Well this is where the install hit the wall.
I have taken on some pretty major, to me, projects in the past. Many times these include those walls, the point in the project where you aren’t quite sure how you are going move forward and the idea of going backward seems impossible as well. So for whatever reason the bumper crash bar was not aligning as it should to allow us to cleanly get a socket on the nuts to tighten them. If we aligned one side perfectly the other would be off and vice versa. Matt and I spent at least two hours fcking with this thing in every way imaginable to get it lined up. In the video the guy was using a 2020 Model 3 which had a different looking aluminum bumper crash bar. Matt’s bar was painted and looked more like steel. Tesla is infamous for making changes in the middle of a model year. I developed a theory since Matt’s car was an early 2019 model, they changed something later in that model year, namely the bumper crash bar hole layout, which was the root cause of our frustration.
We could not get the crash bar aligned 100% and we had to make a decision. It was now around dinner time and the availability of daylight became a concern for me. We had two options, reverse everything and admit defeat or be good enough with getting less than 6 bolts snugged up. We chose the latter. I was able to get 5 of the 6 bolts very tight. The crash bar had nothing to do with hitch strength or stability so Matt was ok with rolling ahead as is, thankfully. I know if it was my car I would like everything to be exactly as they say it should be but we had to improvise if we wanted to make this work.
We weren’t in the clear yet. With the older Model 3’s there is no convenient hatch built into the belly plan for a hitch. We had to create our own with a metal snips. Getting the belly pan reattached to rear bumper cover and then getting that big clumsy assembly over the trailer hitch was frustrating as hell as well. I had to do some additional cutting to make it work. Finally, finally we got the hitch popped through with the bumper cover in place. We slowly worked our way backward. My work area was a lot more chaotic than I normally like where I keep fasteners logically sorted and organized. To attach three belly pan bolts you had to slide under the car which was extremely tight. It made a MRI chamber or a coffin feel spacious.
Finally somewhere around 7:30 or so the car was back together. The predicted 3 hour job took almost double that. I was so freaking dirty. It felt like I had greasy dirt mashed everywhere, including my hair. I had Matt take the car for a quick test drive to make sure no mysterious noises or rattles were present. He came back with an all clear, thankfully. We were both beat to hell from a long session of climbing, crawling and sliding around on a concrete floor. My “video” consisted of maybe 5 minutes of footage before we hit that wall.
We washed our hands thoroughly and Matt and I enjoyed the special beer he brought. I forget the name but it was good, coming in a wine size bottle, complete with a cork. I had not seen Matt in person since probably 2019, which is crazy but not an uncommon scenario in our new covid reality. We just hung out and talked for a little while, which I enjoyed. Matt and I align in a number of areas, including age, he is 54 as well. A little before 9PM he headed home. We both agreed we should hang out more in the future, without a major automotive project as part of the schedule.
I was really, really tired. However even with as frustrating as the install was, there was a small part of me proud that I still have the ability to grind my way through a really tough situation and still find a path to the finish line. There were multiple times during this Matt and I took turns just shoulder shrugging as to what to do next. I think having both of us working towards the goal kept either of us from throwing in the towel.
I had an email this morning saying that my PEV Live Stream/Podcast was ranked number 29 in the electric vehicle podcast list. It was unexpected but cool. 🙂
Last night I was eating dinner at the table and I hear a knock at the door, the back sliding door. It startled the F out of me. I pop out of my seat and see Shugs walking back to the screen door to let in Sadie. I totally forgot I had Sadie duty this weekend, I had it my head it was next weekend. Evidently he knocked on the front door but I didn’t hear it. Sadie looked happy but super gimpy which unfortunately is the new normal. I talked to Shugs a bit, this trip is to South Dakota, another in their long series of random destinations. He told me the house in Babcock now has the electrical wiring done and has piles of drywall on site. As always it was good to see Shugs, even briefly.
There has been a sudden resurgence in my 3D store sales. It’s directly connected to a shipment of wheels that finally arrived from China. As a direct result I have four of my printers running round the clock with a backlog of things to still build. It’s a pleasant change as in recent months the revenue stream was almost as dry as the Colorado river.
This weekend I need to try to get that new vent fan working in the master bathroom after I “professionally” splice in a new receptacle for it. I have a lot of 3D store related tasks to keep moving and I may just find myself sitting at a bar alone on Saturday night again, who knows?
I was pretty down in the dumps after losing/burying Fiona in the early AM hours. One of the things I was concerned with was how the lone surviving hen, Kathy would react to being by herself. I have read/heard multiple times that barnyard animals are communal beings and do not react well to being alone. I did something most would see as crazy as a result, I bought a fake chicken.
This chicken was on Amazon and was roughly the size of a small bird. My thought process was I could move it around the yard and put it on the perch with Kathy at night to give her semblance of company. I may be delusional and just imparting my own emotions onto a chicken. Maybe she won’t care at all. I guess we will find out when the fake fowl arrives in several days.
Last night I felt like clearing some of darkness in my mind related to Fiona and a few other things. I grabbed my Z10 and Elsa and headed to the park. I gave Elsa a choice if she wanted to walk which she declined so I just let her sleep in the truck while I did laps around the park for maybe a half hour.
Getting out on a PEV definitely has therapeutic qualities for me which is why I should make the effort to do it as much as possible.
Yesterday after work I came home expecting to find Fiona dead in the chicken run. When I walked out there I saw she had moved a few feet but was not moving, I thought she was gone. However as I came over to her I saw she was still with us, barely. I scooped her up and carried her inside the coop. I grabbed one of the unused nesting boxes with wood chips in it and placed it on the floor. I gently placed her in it, trying to place her in manner that looked comfortable. I sat on the floor next to Fiona for awhile, just talking and petting her, she was too wiped out to even open her eyes at that point.
I went back inside and decided I needed to keep busy. I grabbed the second new bathroom vent fan that just arrived and figured I could get it installed in the master bathroom in 15 minutes or less, as advertised. Well once again the home builders half ass sub contractors were on display. The cage for this vent was poorly installed as well. When I unplugged the old fan the receptacle itself fell apart in my hand, great.
After examining it I saw a small plastic tab was broken off. For a few minutes I entertained the idea of trying to rig it using electrical tape to hold the plug together but thankfully common sense kicked in. Half ass solutions where electricity is involved is never a good idea. I grabbed the receptacle and headed to the local hardware store although I knew the odds of them having it were slim to none. As expected I struck out. When I got home I did find the part on Amazon which I ordered. It will be here in a few days but in the meantime I am also stopping at Home Depot on the way home to see if they may have the part. Just like the guest room fan, the old unit was disgusting, covered in gray fuzzy material.
When I went back out to put the chickens to bed I thought Fiona might have passed but again she was still holding on by a whisper. After some tearful moments I told her goodbye as I was certain she would not endure the night. This time I was right. When I went out to the coop this morning she was indeed gone which of course made me sad but also relieved that she was not suffering any longer. I decided I wanted to bury her immediately despite it being pitch black. I grabbed a flashlight and my shovel and carried her corpse to the burial ground in the far rear of the property.
The funeral went as they always do for me, tear/sorrow filled. Each time a bird passes I feel a weight of responsibility that I can not escape. Because of the burial my normal morning routine was streamlined greatly. I slammed a couple pop tarts for breakfast and kept moving at FF speed. I somehow managed to arrive at the office a few minutes early which was unexpected. It’s going to be a somber sort of day. Kathy is officially the queen of the Royal Rumble, the last standing bird of a flock that at it’s maximum included 13 birds.
So I have been getting comments from different sources recently asking if I had lost weight, the most recent of them coming yesterday from a woman at the gym that I had not seen much of in a few months. The answer I give out is yes, I have lost some weight, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-9 lbs. I actually saw a 7 as the second digit of my weight for the first time after my road bike ride on Friday. I haven’t weighed in the 170’s in forever, the last time after the brutal colonoscopy “cleanse”.
For the better part of the last 5 years I recall mentioning I wished I weighed closer to 180lbs instead of 190lbs however it seems that a lot of the weight loss shows up first in my face, making people think there is something wrong with me. (maybe there is) As far as the reason for the loss I am sure it is multi-faceted. The most obvious reason is Cindy was a good cook and made sure I had a steady caloric flow. Some of the stresses I have been dealing with surely play a role as well and as I said, I have had a general desire to lose a few pounds as well. My strength levels at the gym have stayed similar mostly to what they were at a heavier body weight so to me that is a win. However if I keep getting commentary asking if I am ok I’m not sure if I need to start pounding more twinkies or just deal with being seen as skinny.
So the news with Fiona has been going downhill. Over the weekend I got her interested in eating with some melon and corn I bought at the grocery store but by the time I got home last night I could tell she was fading fast. She didn’t even try to fight me when I tried to clean her rear end. When I put her on the perch last night I placed her in the center section where there is lots of support. When I went out there this morning I found her on the floor near the side of the perch. Evidently she moved and then fell off. To be quite honest part of me wished she broke her neck during the fall to end her misery.
She was really out of it at this point. I gently carried her to the chicken run and let her sit there. She did not move an inch and started tucking her head under her wing, a visual I know all too well. I fully expect to come home after work to find that she has passed on. It’s crazy to me how a week and a half ago she was still more or less normal and now she is a faint shadow of herself.
As I mentioned, of all of the chickens I have had, Fiona is one of the least friendly birds and I never really felt close to her. However as she has fallen ill and I have tried to help her the feeling of closeness comes back as one living creature tries to help another. When you raise an animal from birth basically (1 week old) through their death it is a very difficult thing, especially for someone like me. I can only hope she passes peacefully. That will just leave Kathy and me, ironic.
I got back out on my bike Friday night once the AC guy left from doing the PM on my system. It was the first time in two weeks. There was a strong headwind after the turn around point that sapped my energy pretty significantly. I pulled back into the driveway and checked my numbers, I still managed to keep the average pace over 17mph, barely. I counted it as a win.
On Saturday I tended to a minor list of to do’s. Late in the afternoon I found myself with some time until I was scheduled to start live streaming at 8:30. On a whim I decided to head to Brooks Burgers for dinner, by myself. As far as I can recall, I do not think I have ever sat at a bar alone to eat/drink. When I mentioned this on social media some people were in disbelief.
The experience overall was good. I just chilled out , drank a few beers and enjoyed my meal. About half way through three attractive women whom I would place somewhere between 40-50 sat down next to me. Of course I did not try to shoehorn my way into their conversation, it’s just not in my DNA. They had some live music going on which added to the overall feel good vibes. I walked out of there pleasantly surprised with the experience and will likely be repeating it more often going forward.
So thanks to the few beers, when I got home I was revved up and ready to start the live stream. I actually started it a half hour early, just because. During the three hour plus live stream there was a lot of good energy. The stream was initiated by my reaching 12,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. As part of the celebration I consumed the very last Zima I had in my possession which was somewhere around three years old at this point.
Even though the Zima taste has now been altered with time to something that is undoubtedly gross, I still felt a bit of sadness realizing this may very well be the last Zima I ever drink. Zima is no longer in production and unlikely to come back. I continued my Zima tribute by wearing my Zima t-shirt Cindy made in Sunday’s video. Instead of going into the recycling bin I washed out the bottle and put it on a shelf as a reminder of an important chapter in my personal alcohol journey.
I in addition to the Zima I drank more alcohol which had me pretty loose on the broadcast which I think is pretty apparent. I didn’t get to bed until way too late.
I woke up Sunday morning feeling pretty shitty from the drinking and late bed time. By mid-day I had shaken off most of the cobwebs. Mid-afternoon I decided to head out in the truck with the GT despite skies that were overcast and potentially foreboding. I wanted to take the GT to the old Golden Gate golf course, a place I had been to several times but not for many months. I brought along my Skydio as well, hoping to get some cool aerial footage. I did get some footage but only a very limited amount. The drone was acting buggy from the get go, unable to get a GPS lock and losing sight of me repeatedly. I’m not sure what the issue was.
I had a good ride but when I got back to the truck I decided I wanted to do more. I drove another 5 or 6 miles to the Naples Greenway and rode there for the second time in as many weeks. During both rides I took pictures, a lot of them, posting them to my Instagram (@duf67) I guess I was feeling creative. Grabbing my afternoon DD on the way home made for a near picture perfect sequence for me.
It was a good weekend for me, better than what has become par for the course the last few years. I can only hope the trajectory keeps pointing upward.
Yesterday on my lunch break I once again played pickleball with some friends/co-workers. We were just warming up smacking my red pickleballs around. The balls come in several colors but the “official” color you see in tournaments and organized play is sort of a neon green shade.
