Category Archives: home improvements

Bible study, books, Genealogy, home improvements

Chipping Away

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The harvest is in progress, and a good harvest it is.

Today,  on our Independence Day holiday, my work continues. I transcribed another WW2 letter, bringing the total up to 13. No end in sight, but a pattern for what the letters are is beginning to emerge. I went through at least 50 scan files, verified that I have them also stored and properly named in OneDrive folders, and so was able to delete the scan files. Then brings me down to about 1325 left to go through, or about five weeks of work. I think it might actually be less than that, because I’ve already skipped close to 100 files that I’ll be keeping.

I picked blackberries this morning, close to a pint, from less than half the plants and only getting the easiest ones to pick. Cut back a few of the new branches so that the paths between rows are more easily navigable, and raked up the cuttings. The harvest is plentiful. After the season is over, I plan on a major cut back of the bushes. I have four rows of blackberry plants that have sprung up naturally. With judicious cutting on my part and a bit of training, these are producing a good harvest for three years in a row. But it’s at least twice as many blackberries as I need. So after this year’s harvest, and when the weather cools off some, I’ll take two rows out completely. I’m actually looking forward to that.

I’m finding the book I’m currently reading a bit of a slog (I have a habit of picking those), but I’ll get through the last 65% of it, somehow.

Decumulation continues. On Wednesday, we drove to south central Kansas and delivered to Lynda’s brother all the Cheney photos we don’t plan on keeping. That included six large framed photos and a large painting of the Cheney homestead ranch in Meade County. Her brother can now decide what to do with them. Good riddance to one burden. It frees us up to work on photos from the other side of her family and finish those, hopefully within a month.

Today I edited a chapter in my Bible study. Only two chapters to go. Then, I think one more read-through at a normal pace to check for duplication or incomplete sections, with hopefully only minor final edits, and it will be on to publishing.

Last night we walked to the municipal fireworks display. We don’t live far from where they shoot them off, but a ridge, a valley, and lots of tall trees prevent us from seeing them from our house. Driving there and getting involved in that mass of traffic is a pain. So for the first time we walked to the top of the ridge, a little over 1/3 mile, and joined a hundred or so people who had done the same thing. I don’t really care about fireworks all that much, but Lynda enjoyed it.

So as you can see, I’m staying busy. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

home improvements, Writing

Life Gets In The Way

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Now that my own blackberry patch has come in nicely, I no longer tend he ones along the street. But we will pick some there.

I had a complicated book review planned for today. But yesterday, after I got a minimum amount of editing done, along with my two special projects, I decided I was behind on my yardwork and better get to it. Under full sun, but much of the time working in the shade, I started pulling weeds out of our gravel yard. I made my goal in about a half hour.

I then tackled my blackberry patch. I had clearing to do in the paths between rows, trimming back high sprouts, cutting out competing vines, and then weed-eating around the whole patch. I didn’t get that last part done, nor did I clean up the mess I made with cuttings. But I did leave my crop in good shape. Saw a few berries starting to turn black, so the harvest may start as early as today.

The harvest isn’t far away.

All together, I was 1 3/4 hours in the yard, stopping in part because the weed-eater battery died, but also because I felt my strength giving way. I went inside, rested and read, and, after lunch, came back to The Dungeon to finish editing. I then rested for a couple of hours.

By 4:30 p.m., I was recovered enough to go back outside. Afternoon shade covered an area in the front yard I needed to work on. I started the small project, and to my surprise got more done than expected. The project is done. I came back inside, feeling good about having the strength to get both my inside and outside work done.

I spent the evening sorting through old photos, making progress on both physical photos and computer files. For some reason completion of the project eludes me. I can’t find some batches of like photos to add strays to. Hopefully today I’ll find them.

But only after I clean up the mess around the blackberries, and see if any are ready to harvest.

 

Decumulation, Engineering, home improvements

Trophies

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The trophies have to go.

So, in the interest of decumulation, I’m getting rid of books—even cutting deep into books I would like to keep and read someday, I’m getting rid of photographs. They don’t take as much space as books, but they are more numerous, are a burden rather than a blessing, and someday will be a burden to our kids. What else can and should go?

Every now and then I take a “tour” of the basement storeroom, looking for what should go next after we finish with current decumulation projects (mainly the photos). I see boxes of old Christmas decorations we haven’t put out for years. Same for other holidays. I see a couple of boxes of old camping equipment that I’m sure we will never use.  At some point we’ll tackle them, but I don’t think the time is right just now.

The pants I wore to church yesterday seemed pretty big on me. I checked the size, and they are 42s, about 10 to 15 years old. I don’t know, but maybe I’ve lost enough weight that 42s are now too big and I should get rid of them. That, of course, brings up the whole subject of clothes and closets, which is a huge project. Do we tackle that en-masse or one garment at a time? I’ll be pondering that this week. It wasn’t too long ago that I stuck an old pair of 44 corduroys that were way too big in the donation pile and took them to Goodwill.

Last week, seated at my desk in The Dungeon, I looked at the shelf above my computer desk and saw it adorned with what I can only call “stuff.” Some of it is left over office supplies that I “might” use some day.  Some is misc. things. Not quite sure what to do with those. But one thing I noticed is my trophies. These are things I got for delivering technical papers at engineering conferences. One year my paper was awarded best paper at the conference, and I received a trophy for that (actually two, since the first came with a typo and they sent another). The company I worked for then awarded me trophies for writing the papers, as a means of encouraging others to do the same.

Those trophies sat on a shelf at my office. When I retired over six years ago, I stuck them on the shelf in The Dungeon and more or less forgot about them. But what good are they doing me now? None. So I have decided they will go in the trash on Wednesday. The shelf above my computer desk will be a little barer, a little less decorated, but a little close to being ready to be moved somewhere when moving time comes.

One small decumulation step; one giant leap toward downsizing.

Bible study, home improvements, Writing

Closer To Normal

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Dateline: Sunday, 2 March 2025

This may not be a terribly long post—we’ll see how it goes.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve felt a little more like my normal self, settling into my normal routines, getting normal things done. When I wrote on Friday, I felt overwhelmed by the things I had to do. But by the time Saturday wound down, and I looked back on the day (and on Friday), I realized I had accomplished things close to normal, as well as having completed a couple of special projects that would allow for doing normal things. Here’s what I got done,

  • Worked 15 minutes out in the yard. That may not sound like much, but that’s the first outdoor work I’ve one since Thanksgiving.
  • Did the final edits on A Walk Through Holy Week, Vo. 2.  I did that over Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Since I’ve done writing only one day since before Christmas, I can’t tell you how good this felt. I figured, If I can’t wrap my mind around writing, I have much editing to do. Perhaps that will be a stimulant toward writing.
  • Finished transcribing some journal sheets from 2014-15 that I found in an old file cabinet. This took a lot of effort. But getting it done was a huge relief. I have a couple of small journal books still to transcribe, but somehow these don’t seem as daunting.
  • Got a smallish batch of family photos (21, I think) sorted, saved electronically, and agreement reached on how to dispose of them.
  • Completed some major reorganization of the storeroom. We have sold off enough things that we have a little extra shelf space available. This allowed me to fairly easy to move things around, getting like things together, exposing some things I hadn’t seemed for years. We still have a long way to go at decumulation, But it’s looking a fair amount better.

Despite doing all this, and working my hardest at a cardio rehab session on Friday, I felt good. My energy level remained good. I took sitting breaks when I needed to, as well as a reading break at midday.

This week I plan on getting AWTHW-V2 ready for publication and actually publish it, maybe by Wednesday. After that, I hope to get a start on the last week of writing to go on the next volume followed by editing and publishing tasks.

And tomorrow morning a woman is coming by to pick up some surplus office supplies for her non-profit. It will be nice to have some surplus materials gone and space recovered.

Well, it’s one to finishing a good Lord’s Day with reading. Nothing better.

 

Decumulation, goals, home improvements, miscellaneous

So Busy, So Tired

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Tonight is the alignment/parade of the planets. Just after sunset, we are supposed to be able to see seven planets, a highly unusual event. Except, if you read the fine print, Saturn will be so close to the setting sun you really won’t be able to see it. The one further out from Saturn (Neptune or Uranus, I forget which), will only be visible by telescope. You need to have a cloudless sky to see it, and a rural area not beset by light pollution will help quite a bit.

I don’t know what our cloud cover will be tonight, but all the other conditions are right for viewing in my area. The light pollution is to the east of us, and the viewing will be in the western sky. But we have one pesky problem: trees. We live in a forest. Mercury and Saturn will likely be below the tree line. I’m not sure about Venus, Mercury, and Saturn.  So for us to see the planetary parade, we need to go somewhere that gives us a vista to see the four, or maybe five, planets.

But the bigger problem for me is the busyness and tiredness of the last few day, which will continue today. By the time sunset arrives, I will certainly be too tired to drive the three miles to the best venue close to me.

What’s making me so busy. In a word, decumulation. In another word, decluttering. In a third word, cleaning and organization. The last three days I’ve been working hot and heavy at these three thing, and will continue today. I’ve been purging business records, and stacking the paper for shredding. Other papers go straight into the recycling pile. I’ve also been transcribing old handwritten journal sheets into my electronic journal, and checking the odd genealogy paper against my electronic files.

I could write pages and pages about this, but I need to get to decumulation and decluttering work. I’ll let these few words speak for themselves.

Oh, by the way, yesterday I got back to writing. Editing old stuff instead of writing new stuff, but it’s part of the writing process—the first I’ve done in over a month.

family, home improvements, miscellaneous

Still Too Busy

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Yes, between decumulation and getting ready for a trip and dealing with health issues, finding time to write a meaningful blog post just isn’t there. I thought of it Thursday night, but was dealing with purposeful sleep deprivation for an EEG on Wednesday that effectively took three days out of my week. Friday found me too busy trying to wrap up several decumulation tasks. Last night I sorted through two 3-ring binders, and got rid of one and all the papers it held.

Work continues on that decumulation, but I see lots of progress. I’m hoping that this week we will take a load of miscellaneous things to the new Goodwill donation center that opened just a mile from our house. I’m hoping also this week to begin going through old family photos of Lynda’s paternal family, take electronic pictures of those we want copies of, and send the rest on to relatives. That depends, however, on Lynda being well enough to look at them.

Today I will do two main tasks. First, create electronic forms for 2025. I didn’t do this in January because I didn’t get December’s finished. So to do his, it means first finishing December, copying the files to 2025 files, making the few alterations for the new year, and entering January’s data. I’m talking about family budget, book sales, and stock trading records. This will take about two hours, I think. Second will be filing a mass of papers that have accumulated on my worktable in The Dungeon. A lot of these are health papers, and I hope they go into place fairly easily. Still, this is probably an all-day task.

Whether I get to do a little writing or not is up in the air. It would be nice to find an hour to write, but I make no promises.

Carlyle, Decumulation, home improvements, travel

Still Very Busy

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For the last week, I’ve been quite busy with small decumulation tasks. I sell a book here and there, including two on Saturday, one yesterday, and one today. Saturday I re-discovered a bunch of old computer floppy discs in The Dungeon. They are now on the way to the trash barrel, including an empty case for holding another 20 discs. I transcribed 21 old journal sheets from 2014 and 2016 from when I was working hot and heavy on Thomas Carlyle writing/research projects. I just finished that work. And today I identified two more items to list for sale.

Consequently, I don’t have a substantial blog post for today. See you all on Friday, hopefully with something a little more meaningful.

Oh, year, I also spent a couple of hours planning out a trip. It’s amazing how much time that took, and it’s not done yet.

books, home improvements, memories, miscellaneous

So Sick Of Books

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The legacy books on the built-in shelves in the living room.

No, not sick of reading. I’m in the midst of reading two different books, one print book and one e-books. Actually, it’s 3 books. There’s one other one out in the sunroom that I’ve almost given up on. Maybe I’ll read a little more in that. And, when I’m done with these two, or three, I’ll transition into two more. Wait, it’s four. There’s also the book I read in the mornings for devotions.

The books on the left are waiting for the buyer to pick them up. The books on the right are waiting for reshelving.

No, not sick of writing books. This last week I finished the first chapter in my next Bible study. I enjoyed doing it, though after almost two months of writing nothing due to my health problems. And the two months before that I was writing at reduced capacity due to the two freak injuries I had in mid-July. So I’m having to get re-used to taking a portion of my day for writing. And working through my fine motor skills for typing. Yes, re-learning the elements of being an author.

Keepers to go back on a shelf, or possibly to be revaluated, but right now adding to the decor in the dining room.

No, what I’m sick of about books is selling them. You see, in the interest of a future downsizing, which after this year of health problems is much closer than we though, we decided to make a big dent in the 2 or 3 thousand books in our house.

That includes what I’ve been calling my legacy books, or more properly termed heirloom books. These include a large number of books published in the 1800s. This has been a lot of work. Looking up the books at on-line sales sites, deciding on a price, placing an ad on Facebook Marketplace, fielding queries, scheduling buyers in, dealing with no-shows, etc. It’s a lot of work.

Books on the dining room table.

I could also say gathering books from various places in the house. We had many boxes of books on shelves in the basement storeroom. Lynda was the one to identify the boxes and carry them upstairs (since I wasn’t allowed to go on stairs after my operation). Our daughter, Sara, also helped carry books upstairs while she was here. The basement is now much cleared of books. Yet, the bookshelves in the basement living room still have lots of books. We have no shortage of building material.

Books on the garage worktable.

The garage worktable is covered by boxes of Christian novels, mainly for women. The dining room table is covered with boxes of misc. books, a cross between legacy and modern books. All those are for sale. Then we have boxes of books in the living room and dining room that Lynda hasn’t yet made the keep/get rid of decision. We also have a pile of books on the hearth, waiting for the buyer to pick up, and another, smaller pile near of books we have decided to keep but haven’t yet looked where to reshelve them.

Why not just give the books away, you ask? It may come to that, especially with the modern ones. But for the legacy books, it seems a shame to not first try to get something for them. Some of them have been in the family for 130 years—first on bookshelves of some kind in the houses David Sexton rented, later in boxes in the boxes in the basement of the house I grew up in in Cranston, Rhode Island, then finally on the bookshelves or in boxes in our house. All that storage and transporting deserves compensation, don’t you think?

At some point, the inventory will be small enough that donation will be more likely. Or the few that are left will be manageable to keep. We’ve already done that with children’s books, 400 of them donated to our church for a special event.

But at some point, I’ll be glad for the dining room table to be clear, the living room clear, and the garage clear of book boxes and loose books to be gone, either sold, donated, or re-shelved.

family, home improvements, Writing

Help Is Coming

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On Wednesday, our son and his husband fly in from Worcester, MA to give us some help. One primary project is moving my workstation from The Dungeon to someplace upstairs. This involves moving two monitors, the docking station, the wireless printer, and various supplies. I know where I want it to go. In that scenario, they will also have to move the computer desk, both top and bottom portions. They’ll also have to move a small cabinet for the printer to rest on. And, of course, a chair.

That will be done either Wednesday night or Thursday morning. That will be the start of a new era. But it will be nice to have my remote keyboard again and a surface for it to rest on.

Will it work? Maybe. Our kids are worried about me going downstairs. Other tasks, such as filing business papers, and sorting through things in the storeroom, will for some time require me to go downstairs.

Other projects are on the agenda for while Charles and Mario are here. One is for Charles to look through my stamp collection. He said he wanted to look at it before I listed it for sale. Stamp collecting was extremely important to the Todd family over the years, but those years are over and it’s time to sell it. I don’t think there’s much market for stamp collections, so I don’t expect to get much for it.

Then there’s that spare bedroom set. It’s in the basement storeroom, tucked away to form a wall that divides the storeroom into different areas. We need to pull it out into the light, take some photos, and get it listed for sale.

Moving my workstation will result in freeing up a 6-foot worktable. Hopefully we will move that into the storeroom for staging stuff.

I’m sure we’ll have a load or two of miscellaneous things to take to donation. And boxes of books to move to the garage in hopes that they will sell. Some are already advertised on FB Marketplace, but they seem to be generating little interest.

So, will I get any writing done this week? Probably not, but we’ll see.

Bible study, critique group, Health, home improvements, letters

Busy, Busy, Busy

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I’m late with my Friday morning post. Chalk it up to busyness.

I won’t say all that’s going on that made the days busy, but here’s a little of it.

  • Monday I went to the hospital for a test, only to find out the test was no longer needed because a test they did back on April 15 covered the same area. $20 miles of expense just getting there, and about two hours I would never get back.
  • Wednesday I went back to the same hospital for a different test, an MRI to take a closer look at a small mass of “neoplasm” found in the April 15 test. While the final report isn’t complete, it appears to be just a cyst on my kidney. Nothing to worry about.
  • We had painters at the house Monday-Wednesday, finishing the work needed after repairs from water damage to the house. I think I’ve blogged about that before.
  • Yardwork continues, though I’m pretty much on top of it and need to do only a little every day. I hope to get in an hour today.
  • We are slowly putting everything back in place from the house repairs. Got some done last night.
  • We continue to sell a few things in our dis-accumulation efforts. Sold two items this week, and brought a bookshelf to the garage for work to strengthen and repurpose it.
  • I’ve been writing this week. Today I wrote the last two sections of Chapter 2 of Volume 2 of A Walk Through Holy Week. I feel good about the progress.
  • I’ve had several items of correspondence this week with other writers—some for our critique group and some just for pleasure.
  • Yesterday I finished transcribing letters from or years in Saudi Arabia. I still have a travel journal to transcribe, then I’ll start putting them in a book for family. No hurry on this project.
  • I have made great progress with scanning/formatting/e-filing the poetry critiques I did from 2001-2010, which I had printed and saved. I’m down to less than thirty still to do. No hurry on this project either.
  • I’m working on plans for three special events over the next two weeks. Not going to say much about them now, but will likely blog about it later.

So with all this to do, I sort of forgot about my regular Friday post. Still, I’m not terribly late with it. And I won’t be late with my Monday post, for it’s already written and scheduled.