Category Anything and Everything

I just heard back from my insurance agent, the one that recommended I get a wind mitigation report because it would be required by any new carrier.  Instead of getting the good news about lower premium options from other carriers I got the opposite.  He said he got quotes from five other carriers and the Tower Hill rate was still the lowest.  WTF.  I responded and asked if across the board all carriers have jacked rates tremendously?  He said they have, some by as much as 50%.  Welcome to Florida.  It was a disappointing outcome but I have little choice but to bend over and take it.

Speaking of bending over I have my physical today.  I am very much looking forward to it being in the past tense.  I universally dislike being an examination subject.

This weekend I am live streaming with Ulf from Germany.  I had him on once before.  The funny thing is this time he will be in Thailand.  He is in the middle of an extended vacation but agreed to come on anyway.  There is a 12 hour time difference between us so when I start the stream at 8:30 PM Saturday night it will be 8:30 AM for him.  I’ll be drinking beer while he drinks coffee.  He has a lot of technical knowledge so I will be asking a lot of questions while he provides the answers.

The latest news out of Ukraine was dangerous with Russia evidently bombing a Ukraine nuclear plant which is the largest in Europe.  That sounds like an extremely reckless and ignorant act.  It’s becoming increasingly clear that Putin really may be losing touch with reality.  The call for his removal, one way or another are going to get very loud, very quickly if things don’t change direction soon.

I wasted little time yesterday taking action towards giving my home insurer, Tower Hill the heave ho.  I had a guy out at the house doing a wind mitigation survey which is required by any new insurer.  He told me he needed access to the attic to do the survey.  In the past this would have meant I would have had to drive my ass all the way home to let him in.  However thanks to the wonders of my new smart garage door opener I was able to have him text me when he arrived and left.  When he did I was able to remotely open and close the door as well as view the live feed from the camera attached to the opener.  Just for safety sake I also flipped on the camera that is inside the house to monitor if anything weird went down. (it didn’t)

Tomorrow I have a physical, the first one in more than two years, probably closer to three.  I am hoping they forget about the DRE but I could only hope to be so lucky.

When I got home last night I had the unwelcome feeling of soreness in my throat.  Many times in my life that has been the precursor to illness so I was hoping this was not the case again.  I have heard of multiple people having strep throat in our area. Cindy told me she had a sore throat last week and several people at work have been out with it as well.  I gargled my listerine for awhile to hopefully kill whatever I was feeling.  Luckily I woke up today feeling mostly normal so I’m hoping it was just a false alarm. During Covid there have been multiple times where I felt like I was getting sick to only have it fade away, weird.

Yesterday was a busy day with it being my first official day as department director.  I feel like I have a lot of loose ends that need some tying up.  The ironic thing is I also have a dump truck full of PTO time that I need to start using up.  That doesn’t align well with the feeling of having a lot to do.

So I got a letter the other day stating that my home insurer Tower Hill was becoming an insurance “exchange” in Florida.  I am no expert but it basically is almost like a co-op where the thing is self funded.  Whatever the details, it is really just an excuse to raise premiums.  I got a projected premium for my next policy period that was 33% higher.  To add insult to injury I got another letter from them with a “consumer report” from Lexis Nexis.  Somehow this report was supposed to be additional justification for the higher rates, it listed my “insurance score” as 806.  The scoring range is 200-997 with a higher number being worse.  I found this very confusing and annoying.  As far as I knew no one should be able to run a credit report on me as I have my credit frozen with all three major credit agencies.

Evidently it isn’t frozen with LexisNexis.  In the report it listed some negatives like the number of accounts established, insufficient information on department store accounts (I don’t have any I know of), number of open installment bank accounts, and the percentage of accounts reported in last 24 months compared to total accounts.  My credit score is pretty golden the last time I checked so I found it really annoying.  So I called my agent today and am going to get the ball rolling on looking for another carrier, f them.

So yesterday was my boss/buddies last day at work of his 30 year career.  We had some cake for him in the afternoon and we gave him the print I had made up for the occasion on Etsy.  It was pretty low key, if it was up to him we wouldn’t do anything at all.  After eating the cake a small group of us just sat around and talked, sort of like we did at South Street the day before.  During that conversation I told him that I never have worked with someone for as long as him, some 22 years plus at this point.  At the end of the day I helped him load his personal belongings into his car.  It didn’t take long as Don is an amazing minimalist.

For the last 22 years our routine would always be to walk out of the office together, exchanging thoughts on whatever was on our minds.  Knowing that yesterday was the last time that was ever going to occur sort of struck an emotional chord with me as I got in my car.  It was just another example of loss in my sphere of existence.

I’m not sure if the retirement had anything to do with the lousy sleep I got last night.  I felt like I was awake more hours than I was asleep.  I am sure as the day goes on I will be paying the drowsiness toll in spades.

One of my big plans for Saturday was I wanted to get a real bed for the guest room.  I already had bought the used bed frame last week.  My plan was to go to Sam’s and buy a king size box spring and gel foam mattress.  So I walk in the place and survey the bedding area.  They have no box springs at all that I saw, odd.  The king size gel foam mattress I found online was not on the shelf either.  Grrr.  What they did have were all in one hinged queens size platforms as well as a queen size model of the mattress I was looking at.

So I decided that the room will now have a queens size bed instead.  In some ways it makes more sense, it’s a ton of bed for one person and enough for two for short durations, what you want in a guest room, right? The smaller size also makes the room feel larger, another plus.  I loaded the two big boxes on the mattress cart and pushed it out to the truck.

Shortly after getting home I set it all up.  The platform is quite nice although costlier than a conventional frame/box spring set up.  Yea remember that used frame I drove an extra 40 miles out of my way for?  I curbed it.  It only cost me $20 so no big loss.

I made a video of me opening the vacuum sealed mattress as some comedic relief.

On Saturday night I watched Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds.  I seem to enjoy any movie he is a part of and this was no different.  I thought the movie was very funny and entertaining.  The video game theme of course resonated with me as well.  It’s a solid A movie for me all day long.

My Sunday was abnormally busy.  I drove to Veterans Park to meet up with Rich for another weekend pickleball match.  Unfortunately I pulled into a jammed parking lot with tons of people on the courts, none were available.  Rich was still en route when I got there, I told him we had no shot of getting a court there.  Evidently Sunday morning is prime pickleball time.  I suggested we could try the new park by me again, he agreed.  I was concerned that one could be packed as well.  Luckily it wasn’t, only two of the six courts were being used.

Rich and I played 5 long games, there was a lot of siding out going on.  I lost four of the five which I wasn’t thrilled about but I still enjoyed playing.  The last couple games we both were really minding the heat.  By the time we left near noon it was closing on the mid-80s.  I can’t imagine playing in the heat of summer.  After I took a shower at home I felt wiped out.  I would have taken a nap if I didn’t have a party to go attend.

The party was at South Street, an old stomping grounds of mine when I was socially active in the running club.  They reserved the back room for our group.  I arrived about a half hour after the official start time.  There was a solid turnout of 30-40 people at it’s maximum, all there to celebrate the retirement of a regional manager and my boss/friend Don.  Don is even worse than me when it comes to being social normally but he seemed to be having a good time.  I got to see some old faces I have not seen in awhile as well which was a treat.  I kept the Miller Lites flowing to lubricate my social interactions.  I had either four or five.  The party officially ended at 5 but me and a small group of people hung around until almost six just reminiscing.  Many of the stories pre-dated me but they were fun to listen to anyway.

By the time I got home, ate dinner and played a little WoW it was already time to get ready for bed.  The weekend had flown by.  This week I take over as director of our department, there are going to be a lot of balls to be juggling in my immediate future.  My boss has a knowledge base that is not really transferable which is going to make for some rocky roads for a period of time until we navigate those roads ourselves.

If you haven’t noticed, I have been going through a transitional period of life. If you know me a little bit you know may realize that I am all about maintaining the status quo.  That’s why I continue to try to live a healthy lifestyle, work inside of routines, and try to address most conflict with a level headed approach.  I do this because I foolishly pursue the idea that I can somehow stop time, or at least slow it dramatically by continuing to do things as I always have.  If I still am doing pull ups and push ups at 54 it connects me in time to when I was doing them when I was 34. It’s hard to verbalize just how this strategy accomplishes anything tangible but it’s the reality I have always existed in. Consistency equals protection I guess.  If I am still trying to do the same things now as I have done over the last few decades, somehow I am “winning”?

I routinely make mental comparisons to my trajectory and my mom’s.  My mom had a number of longer term relationships after she was divorced.  Her last one ended in her early 50’s, she was dating a man that had all sorts of inner demons despite outwardly being really outgoing and funny.  When that relationship finally ended she never had another serious relationship and insisted she was happier being single, which I never believed.

I know in my mind, the idea of trying to determine the true nature of a person to see if you want to invest increasingly more precious time into possibly starting a relationship sounds daunting, exhausting, and frustrating most of the time nowadays to me.  The dating app that I am on only reinforces those feelings along while making it apparent that so many people are in a similar boat as I am, just searching for a person they can trust enough to build something significant and long lasting with.  When you get to the age range I am in people have so much excess baggage they need a 20 foot trailer to carry it all.  I think if I had an honest conversation with my mom she would have expressed a similar mindset, that trying to find someone you really connect with when you are older is such a big mountain to climb that it’s easier to just raise the white flag and fly solo.

So in addition to the life transition I now have a job transition to manage as well.  In some ways it isn’t a major shift as I will still be doing much of what I already do as my buddy/boss was much more specialized in his tech expertise which was not really IT focused in a conventional sense.  His background was as a lifelong cobol programmer.  I had large areas of responsibility already but now I will have ALL of the responsibility for our department.  One of my early tasks will be filling the position that will open up.  I have never had any direct hiring/firing duties, now I will.   It is a step forward/upward for me for sure and likely the last forward movement I will have in my career until I retire in 8 years.  I still can’t help wishing I had someone taking those final steps with me.  After all I have always been in relationships so as outlined above, my natural instinct is to want that to continue.

The Russia/Ukraine debacle is unfolding.  It seems insane to most that the entire world said Putin was going to do this as a form of dissuasion and he does it anyway.  I hear some at home saying this is all Biden’s fault, that if he was a “strong” president Putin would never have attempted this, really??  I would love an explanation of how a strong president would react differently?  Drop a nuke on Russia?  Send US troops into Ukraine?  The only realistic reaction is to try to cut them off from as many sources of support as possible.  The Russian people are already protesting the move into Ukraine.  Imagine how that wave of dissension will grow as conditions in Russia continue to degrade.

My understanding is this is mostly about controlling the pipeline that runs through Ukraine despite whatever Putin says about human rights of russian friendly citizens in the eastern region.  The idea that Ukraine was becoming more west leaning was a real line in the sand for Putin along with talk of Ukraine joining NATO which was unlikely to ever happen.  It’s a real cluster f.

The response to the conflict has been harsh from our allies yet there is a very tight rope that is being walked.  If NATO countries would get directly involved in the conflict things could spiral  very quickly.  As is, Russia will be unleashing all of it’s tricks to sabotage anything and everything it can with it’s cyberterrorism capabilities, which are immense.  We already know how adept Russia is at sowing seeds of psychological manipulation into social media, that effort will ramp to new levels for sure. I clearly remember time when Putin first came into the scene that he was seen as a decent, reasonable, leader. His transformation into a thinly veiled dictator (that Trump thinks is “brilliant”) is very sad.  At least the world has something else to talk about besides covid…..

This weekend I am attending my first event at South Street in many years.  They are throwing a party for the two people retiring on Monday, my boss and another regional manager.  It will be fun to be in the bar socially, something I used to do pretty routinely the last time I was single.  I am sure there will be lots of swiping left as well.  I prefer to make my own memes by the way.

Yesterday as I was washing my hands in the office restroom I looked at my hair and the switch flipped.  I had been trying to grow my hair longer which you can kind of see from this picture from several weeks ago.  I then tried to taper my hair from short on the sides/back to longer on top, that didn’t go well.  It almost looked like a bowl hair cut.

I then tried to “fix” it but that looked like shit as well which eventually lead to my hair apocalypse last night.  As soon as I got home I took out the clippers with a 4MM guard and buzzed my head. There is something therapeutic for me when I remove 99% of my hair.  It sort of hardens me mentally for whatever reason.  I will probably try to let my hair grow longer again but this time I will utilize the skills of a hair stylist to trim it.  Trying to do it myself with a mirror is a recipe for failure.  Fun fact, in my life, I have only had my hair cut by someone other than my mom or significant other twice.

I have three days left until I take over as the director of our department.  If I had my preference I would want my buddy to stick around until he was 62 to retire like he originally planned.  However in the big picture if I had my 30 years now like he does in I would be out the door as quick as he is.  If I was in his spot I would probably be uprooting most of my existence and be rebooting in some other zip code with my current state of affairs.

Last night after work I headed to Bonita Springs to pick up a used king size bed frame I saw on FB marketplace.  I have decided I want to put a real bed in the guest room, something that has been missing for years.  For years people would refer to the house as Hotel Duffey as the guest room had a king size bed, furniture and a tv. Ali used to even put mints on the pillow as a joke. We used to try to make guests comfortable. Over recent years that room has been changed up repeatedly.  All of the furniture I used to have in there was given away, the king size bed was removed along with a number of other changes.

Since Cindy moved out the room is rather barren with a blow up queen bed in the center, a small cube by the bed and my great aunt/grandmother’s old chest of drawers with a TV on top that is too big for it.  It’s pretty sad.  The bed frame is the first step in “renovations”. (I guess the single curtain was a step too)  I plan on getting a king size box spring along with another foam/gel mattress similar to what I have in my bedroom.  I think the addition of a real bed will be a nice plus in there.  I can add some additional furniture at some point but the antique drawers will be ok for the time being.

I have described over the last few months the weird nausea I have been experiencing in the mornings.  This morning it was particularly strong, I had to take a few deep breaths to push the feeling of near barfing back below the surface.  This does not happen all the time but pretty regularly.  If I feel that way I quite often will skip the eggs and just do two pieces of PB toast instead of one.  I have no idea if this a sign of a physical condition or if it’s more stress related.

I remember when I was a young child I used to complain of feeling a similar way although I was too young to know what nausea was.  I must have talked about it a lot because I recall my mom actually taking me to the doctor for it and having a number of tests run on me as a result.  As far as I remember nothing ever came of the testing and that feeling just sort of faded away as I got older.  I managed to go 45 years or so until these feelings have returned, weird.

Sunday night I joined a big panel of fellow EUC hobbyists to talk about wheels.  It was the largest collection of streamers I ever was a part of.  At one point there were 10 people on at once which was nuts.  Usually when I live stream it’s just me, blabbing non-stop for 3-4 hours.  In this scenario I did way more listening as there were plenty of other people in the line up that were happy to talk.  Having to talk less meant I could drink more.  I finished off an entire six pack of Miller Lite.  It was a fun experience that I talk about in the video I made later in the day Monday.

I expected to wake up with a hangover Monday morning but I felt pretty decent.  It was a good thing because I made arrangements to go play pickle ball with a co-worker of mine at 9AM at the new park.  When I arrived no one was there.  10 minutes later a line of cars pulled up.  All of a sudden there were 12 people on the courts, luckily it was all doubles matches.

My buddy from work recently started pickle ball as well and really likes it.  His enthusiasm was a big part of why I finally decided to try it.  He has a bit of a tennis background which is obvious, his swing is much better than mine.  He also covers a lot more court than I do.  I am not all that quick, especially now with my achy joints.  I often rely too heavily on my long arms to reach balls awkwardly instead of moving my feet.  The wind was quite a factor, the one side of the court always lost the game, except the last one where we switched back and forth.  I managed to barely squeak out a 3-2 win.  It was a lot of fun and we both agreed to keep playing more often.  It’s good timing for me to try to pick up a sport with more opportunities for social interaction.

I forgot to mention that I added a new robot to my army.  It is a hard floor cleaning variety, the Irobot Braava M6.  I have had several hard surface cleaning bots over the last 10+ years.  The last three have used a similar technique where they spray the cleaning solution and then use an attached mopping pad to do the cleaning.  The M6 adds intelligence where it maps the room and eventually knows all of the surfaces it can clean, it will back away from carpet.  So far it has done a good job.  There are a couple spots it has gotten stuck that I need to address but overall I am at least initially happy with it’s performance.

Around mid-day Monday I was sitting at my computer when I saw an email from my neighbor across the street. (evidently she lost my phone number)  She asked if I could come over immediately.  She said their dog was having some sort of medical issue and her husband couldn’t lift him in the truck himself.  I dropped everything and headed over, their dog, Jack was less than 5 years old, a white lab.

When I got up to the garage Steve told me he had just taken Jack to the vet earlier in the day.  While he was there he got a shot for bordetella (also known as kennel cough) On the way home from the visit he had some sort of reaction that included him doing number two in the back seat of Steve’s truck followed by him acting like he was in the middle of a stroke.  Jack was on his side panting wildly but unable to move, it was a visual I won’t forget.  Jack was really overweight, 120 pounds according to Steve.  There was a bed sheet underneath him that we used to get him to the truck.  Getting him into the back seat was really hard since Jack was unable to move.  I lifted the front part of his body while Steve hoisted from the rear.  I felt terrible seeing Jack in this state.  Steve sped off to the vet.

Later I got word that Jack died on his way to the vet.  The news hit me hard.  I can only assume there was some sort of tie into the shot, although my neighbor said he had received it before.  Perhaps the additional weight played a factor as well.  All I know is it was a horrible 15 minutes of my life with a very unhappy ending.  It feels like all I have been doing for a good portion of the last year is dealing with one type of loss or another, it beats me down.

I wanted to keep busy to not dwell on Jack’s sudden demise.  I fired up the weed whacker and spent 90 minutes cleaning up the outer fence line of the property.  Since much of the vegetation is still dead from the cold snap it was much easier to do now compared to normal growing seasons.  After doing that I took Elsa with me to go fill the gas cans, on the way back we stopped at the park so I could get her out for a quick walk.  When I try to put the leash on her she acts terrified but once we are out and moving she is ok. Later I went out for that ride on my Sherman which included grabbing coffee and my THIRD visit to the park for the day, a new record.

Last night I was in VR with Randall for a couple hours.  We played miniature golf, ping pong and bowling.  Outside of a few ping pong matches I lost everything we played.  Despite my results we both had fun and will surely do it again soon.

Even though I have one more day in my three day weekend I thought I would pop in here to recap the last 48 hours.  I got back on the road bike Friday night for the first time in two weeks Friday night.  It’s getting less annoying because my body is more accustomed to the activity and the amount of evening daylight is slowly extending, keeping me out of total darkness for the ride.  I had a good session with a time and overall average speed that is probably damn close to the best I ever pulled off.

On Saturday after weeding Elsa and I went into the office.  I was trying to virtualize our main file and print server, something I failed at once before already.  I used some different tactics this time but still initially had a fail.  The virtual server wouldn’t boot so I brought the physical server back online.  During the afternoon I did some research into my issue.  I discovered with the way the boot set up was on this server, which came online many years ago, I needed to boot the virtual server to the Windows Server 2019 media so I could run some tools from the command line to adjust the boot behavior.  After doing another back up of the drives to a VHDX I was able this time to successfully bring up the virtual server and shut down the physical server, from my home office.  It always feels good to be successful at something you failed at previously.

I made a stop at Lowe’s to grab a set of curtains for the guest room which has had a naked window since Cindy moved out.  I thought $30 for a set of curtains was a little high for my needs but I grabbed a set with a bit of a pattern that I though sort of matched the bed cover.  I am absolutely awful when it comes to style/design, if I haven’t mentioned that previously.

I get home and open up the package.  As I am unfolding the curtains I realize there is only one??  I look more closely to make sure they aren’t just pressed together.  Nope, an examination of the package clearly shows only ONE curtain was included, WTF.  This made zero sense, why wouldn’t they sell as a set??  Who needs just one curtain?  I thought $30 for a set of curtains was a bit much, I now realized I only spent half of what it is going to cost me, sigh…  It’s odd that I have only now just learned the realities of curtain shopping after 54 years on the planet.

Saturday night was a geekfest with me playing WoW for a couple hours.  I hadn’t done it in awhile so I didn’t feel too guilty about it although there was a part of me that thought it was a pretty lame way for me to spend the night made for fun, socializing, and whatever comes with it, which leads me to the next subject.

As I mentioned a week or two ago, I still have been struggling mentally to get my bearings in regards to what my new reality is or should be.  This was the reason that I spoke to the counselor.  During that session I got some affirmation which was helpful but still, I have not found that magic switch to get life feeling good again.  Because of this I have continued to be introspective and have been comparing this to how I felt when Ali and I split.

During that split I was still neck deep in running club responsibilities.  Despite me jumping into online dating very early and very unsuccessfully after that split Ali and I were still hanging out as friends which I think made things easier in some ways but also brought some additional issues as time went on.  In a nutshell I was still doing a lot of things involving other human beings and I was doing a lot more thinking about what was next.  Now I need to be honest, even then there was a LOT of negative things I experienced during the year of being mostly single.  I found the online dating scene to be a lot more frustrating than fun. During that year I think I went on something like 13 first dates with only a handful of second ones.

So fast forward a bunch of years and I again find myself single but under very different circumstances.  I spent a lot of my time streamlining my life with the biggest cast off being my days as a race timer which consumed tons of time, created a lot of stress, and demands of me in multiple regards.  As time passed I found myself very busy but it was also mostly on things that involved no one in my former social circles and much more just things related to the relationship.  Once my mom passed away I really latched onto Cindy’s family and viewed them as an extension of my own.  The birth of DJ set that bond and closeness to an entirely new level.

As I was riding my V11 around today I pictured myself spending all of this time, money, emotion and effort building what I thought was a sturdy structure that would be able to withstand whatever tests were thrown it’s way.  Instead I feel like am walking down a street on a movie set where everything looks great but as soon as you peek around the corner you realize it’s all just a fascia, a seemingly normal front with very little behind it.  That is how I feel right now.  I know only I have the ability to change that mindset.  For the first time since the split I set up in a couple online dating apps, despite knowing that ultimately they are unlikely to produce the results I am looking for.  I need to start somewhere. The single curtain…..