Category Archives: home improvements

home improvements, letters, self-publishing, Writing

Thinking About Letters

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I made this presentation on Tuesday, but still haven’t put the stuff for it away.

When I came to The Dungeon this morning, mug of coffee in one hand and laptop computer in the other, I was greeted by a mess. Lots of writing related stuff strewn on my near worktable. A few stray income tax forms on the printer table (making me wonder if I forgot to put one in the packet I mailed to the IRS).

And also on my worktable, some things about letters. Three are notebooks that contain just a few letters, the ones I’ve been digitizing then discarding the originals. I need to consolidate them into one notebook and complete the process. Three notebooks to go to a thrift store, a little more free shelf space.

Somewhere, either on the worktable or possibly upstairs still, are the things needed for the presentation I did on Tuesday to the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society. The topic was “Letter Collections: A Window on History in the Making”. The presentation went well, and we had a good number of people there. Now I need to get a number of books back on shelves and my notes somehow stored so that I can find them again should I ever need them.

Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on. A few edits to this are possible this month. Hang on, folks. It will soon be done and available.

Then, there was the book Letters Between Friends. I thought I had written about this before, but a look back on my posts indicates I haven’t. I guess that was because I wasn’t quite ready to announce this project to the world. And, actually, I’m still not. I finally have permissions from all copyright holders to publish the book, but I had a few redactions to do then reformat as needed. I also felt I should add an e-book, which takes some more formatting.

But I found my copy of it, before redactions, on my worktable. I need to find two hours of time for completing this project, then let people know it’s available. It will be of interest only to family members and classmates of the people involved. Perhaps 20 copies will be sold. I would consider that a success.

But when will I get to it? The two Bible studies I’m working on have consumed all my available writing time. And they will do so today. Somehow I have to carve out those two hours to complete that project.

And another two hours to complete what’s needed to get rid of those three notebooks. That may not take that much time. I should get to it. Right after supervising two workmen at the house today, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Right after the weekly grocery run. Right after finishing a letter to my oldest grandson. Right after…

…oh, where is my to-do list?

Oh, yes, I’m still reading that scholarly magazine article about letter collections. I should finish that today and dump the pixels back into the ether.

home improvements, letters, The Forest Throne, Writing

A Project Complete

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The brush pile back in the spring.

Dateline: Saturday, 22 Oct 2022

It was earlier this year, in the spring, that my wife asked me to do something that I wasn’t excited about. On our wood lot, adjacent to our house lot on the uphill side, was a large brush pile. For years I took deadfall from the trees in our front yard and built that brush pile. We didn’t own the lot at the time, but the owner was nowhere to be found, and rather than haul the stuff way downhill behind our lot, I put them “next door.” By this spring, the pile was about 7 feet high.

For years it was nicely hidden from the street by the many saplings and weeds in the space between the street and the big trees line. Back in early 2020, the power company cleared out all the saplings so as to keep them from growing up to the powerline. They also took out a few of the bigger trees. Since then, I’ve worked on that area to keep it in grass but let the blackberry bushes grow up. As a result, the brush pile became quite visible from the street. Lynda asked me to move it way down the hill.

Being a dutiful husband, I resisted. Then I said okay, I’ll do it. I think it was April or May that I began. That was about the beginning of “snake season,” and I was sure that they would be living in the pile. So I started very carefully. Working from the downhill side, standing as far away from the pile as I could, I used a strong garden rake to pull the top branches off the pile. Once I got them to the ground, I threw them down the hill, saving my legs.

Taken from close to the same place as the previous photo, the brush pile is gone! It’s beginning to look like the wooded park I want it to be.

The first day, I spent maybe half an hour on that. I figured I had to take the pile down a little at a time. Week by week, I raked branches off the top and threw them down the hill. Slowly, I could see the pile height reducing. Slowly, if the snakes were in it, they must have moved because I never saw even a one. This summer, when the oldest grandson and his friend were here, I hired them to move the thrown branches to the downhill brush pile.

I’ll fast forward. Around three weeks ago, the brush pile was gone. All that remained was several little piles of smaller sticks. I raked these up into small piles. This week, I spent time almost every day taking wheelbarrow loads down the hill to the lower brush pile. This morning, I took the last three loads away. I had already raked and smoothed the area of the brush pile. This is near enough to the tree line that I hope some volunteer grass will sprout next year.

And why, you ask, am I telling you this? A few weeks back, I posted about special projects I was working on. Those were three things in the house—paperwork stuff—that were cutting into my writing time and sapping my energy. I forgot about this big project mainly because it was outdoor work. But it was also taking time and energy. Now it’s done. Also, my work on the Stars and Stripes is very, very close to being done. They are inventoried and boxed. All that is left is to take them by the UPS store, get their guidance on whether the packaging is suitable for transporting with them. Then, I’ll add padding to the boxes, seal and label them, and ship them. That will then be only two special project left.

I’m making good progress on digitizing my old letters. My wife and I are also making good progress on proofreading the Kuwait Letters book. I believe we have only five or six reading sessions left. I’ve been making corrections as we go, including moving a couple of un-dated letters that we decided I had in the wrong place. We are down to 45 pages in the original book, maybe 60 pages including items I found after I had the proof copy printed.

I feel so good about these projects, that this week I plan to back off the letter digitizing some and resume work on my latest novel. Just today, I wrote a letter to grandson Ezra, detailing more of the plot to him so that he can be thinking about it and help me if he can think of anything else.

This all feels good. I’m going to go now and finish that letter, or maybe read some and save that for tomorrow. Life awaits. I will awaken the dawn.

America, family, home improvements, letters, Stars and Stripes

Special Projects Interrupt Writing

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The newspapers have taken over my work table, as well as my writing time.

It has now been close to two weeks since I have done any significant writing. Why? Not writer’s block, but three special projects, things I’m doing that are capturing my time and will soon (hopefully) be done, allowing me to go back to putting words on paper.

I wonder if Dad modeled for any of these Bill Mauldin cartoons.

The first is going through my dad’s Stars and Stripes newspapers from World War 2. I’ve posted before about this collection. Dad, a typesetter before the war, was able to get a transfer from the invasion forces to the G.I. newspaper. In Africa, Italy, and southern France, Dad set type in war areas for more than two years. He sent copies of the papers home and his parents kept them. He took them when he came home and kept them till his death in 1997. He had told me they would be mine.

Publication locations of the “Stars and Stripes”, and the editions, changed during the war as US troops advanced.

I kept them for years, hoping to go through them, to learn more about the war and Dad’s part in it. Alas, too many years have passed without doing that. I’ve decided to donate the collection to the University of Rhode Island. They will preserve them, make them available to researchers. I was to do that in August when we were to drive back there but, alas, had to cancel that trip for health reasons. I decided I would inventory the collection (though URI told me I didn’t have to). At least that would give me a better idea of Dad’s movements through the European Theatre of Operations.

Starting with about 30 issues a day, I slowly did more and more. I’m now down to around 100 to 150 newspapers, having inventoried over 900. This has been hard work, but it’s almost done. The good news is I’ve found a fair number of duplicates, maybe 50 to 80 issues that I will be able to keep and distribute some day to Dad’s grandchildren. That is a manageable number to keep. I anticipate finishing this project before the end of September.

The next project is digitizing my letter collection. I’ve been at this for a year, and can see the end of it—sort of. I keep finding more letters to digitize. Two weeks ago I pulled a notebook off a shelf, a notebook I thought included some magazine essays (not mine) I had printed. Not so. They were copies of e-mails from the late 1990s, emails I had printed and saved then deleted the electronic copies. What was I thinking, right?

Now, to reduce possessions, I’m scanning them, saving them in an organized way. The process is slowed because sometimes the scanner doesn’t produce the letters exactly as they are. So I have to check the text to make sure it’s right in my new electronic file. Then, I’m also converting it to better fonts, spacing, and layout on the page, just in case I want to assemble them into books in the future. This project isn’t that close to being done.

I’ll finish with this notebook in about a month or a little longer. Then, I’ll get to start going through copies of handwritten letters. I’m not looking forward to that, and won’t start it right away. Gotta finish and publish at least one book first.

The end is in sight of this special project, proofreading our Kuwait Letters book.

The third project is also related to letters. Lynda and I are proofreading the Kuwait Letters book that I put together over the last two years. I ordered a proof copy of it, and saw a number of places where there were typos. Our son looked at it last month and suggested I add more photos to it. Our grandson Ezra read in it while he was here in July. One letter that his mom had written when she was not quite seven years old, looked wrong. I looked at the original and, sure enough, I had skipped a line when transcribing. How often had that happened?

So Lynda and I are proofreading it. She reads from the original letter, I follow along in the book and mark whatever changes are needed. There are too many changes needed, showing that I’m not the world’s best transcriber. We are a little over halfway through the book, able to do about ten pages in an hour in the evening. Only 14 or 15 more sessions to go.

Once that’s done, I’ll pick more photos, reformat the book, and see what I have. I also added in five lately found letters, including one taking six or seven pages. The current file is 325 pages. More photos will likely expand it to 340. No, we’ve found a couple of letters that need some editing either due to repetition or the nature of the material. Maybe only 337 pages. I see that all coming together around the middle of November.

family, home improvements

Routine Interrupted

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Dateline Sunday, 21 August 2022

If there is anyone who reads this blog regularly, including on days when I don’t make mention of a post on Facebook, they will note that I missed posting last Friday. I can’t think of the last time I totally missed a post. A few times I’ve made a minimal post late in the day. A few other times I did my post a day late. But it’s been a long time since I totally missed one.

Why did I? One reason was our son was here for a week’s visit. A few weeks back, when Lynda’s sciatica came on very strong and debilitating, he was ready to hop on a plan in Chicago and come right down to help out. We advised him not to at that time, and he complied, but he scheduled to come see us at his first opportunity after this. He came last Sunday and left Saturday.

He had to work remotely much of the week—it wasn’t vacation for him. After his workday ended, he helped us in our decluttering process. The main target was the garage. This has become a catchall place for things we wanted to get rid of, but we never seemed to get around to deciding what was trash, what was for donation, and what, if anything, actually needed to go back into the house.

We already had a donation pile. Tuesday we worked around 3 hours, sorting trash from donation vs keepers. We had a full trash barrel and a large donation pile. Wednesday evening early, Charles and I loaded that in the van and took the stuff to Goodwill. Then we worked another three hours. Thursday, I had writing critique group meeting. I worked a little that afternoon on organization, and that evening drove the car into the garage. That hasn’t happened for 15 years.

Friday evening, we drove into Bentonville, took a walk on the Chrystal Bridges Trail, then walked to the square and ate at a somewhat fancy restaurant. At least it was a good restaurant. Then it was walk around a little to find a certain store, then get some ice cream. Saturday, we took Charles to the airport, dropped a few electronic items off at the Benton County recycling facility (for a cost), came home, and relaxed for the rest of the day. I could have written a post then, but I just wanted to read. I also worked on an inside the house project: converting paper files to electronic files. I did that to 10 old letters. This is a long-term project that I do a little on each day, and hope to get done in around a year.

The other reason is that our air conditioner went out. That was last Saturday. We suffered through it until Monday our HVAC guy got here and gave us the bad news: complete replacement, costing in 5 figures. But supply chain issues means we won’t get the replacement for 2 to 4 weeks. Yuck. A man at church loaned us two portable vent-through-the-window unit. On Tuesday our HVAC man loaned us a third, It’s not quite 90 in the house as it was early on Monday, but it’s hotter than normal, and that leads to not feeling like doing much, including things like blog posts.

Now it’s Sunday. I taught Life Group this morning and will head back to the church shortly for a Teams meeting.

Tomorrow, I hope to get back to writing, something I did almost none of last week. Maybe I’ll even take time to write the next couple of posts in my climate change series.

Stay tuned.

home improvements, miscellaneous

The Summer of Major Events

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I’m going to just say a few words here, a day late from my usual posting day.

This has been a summer of major events. My cardio rehab 3x per week. Our church Centennial. Lynda’s severe sciatica. My 50 yr high school reunion—as it turned out missed due to the sciatica. And now, our air conditioner goes out.

It happened on Saturday. I noticed around 1 or 2 pm that it wasn’t cooling. By early evening it was up to 84° in the house (92° outside). Naturally, at 6 pm Saturday evening, no one is coming for two days. Our HVAC guy got here at noon Monday. He determined the unit would possibly be fixable, but our best bet was to replace it. But, lead times on new units are 2-4 weeks. By mid-afternoon Monday it was 91° in the house (95° outside).

I posted something on Facebook about it, and a friend from church, who lives fairly close to us, said he had two portable units he had bought when their AC went out a few weeks ago, and he would loan them to us and help get them set up. That happened last night. By morning the temp was down to 80° in the common space and cooler in the master bedroom and kitchen, where the two units are.  We will survive the 2 to 4 weeks and, who knows, maybe the supply chain will do better than projected.

With this going on, I felt terrible yesterday and didn’t even think about this blog. I was in no condition on any of those days to pull my next climate post together, so the series is yet again delayed. Maybe I can get it done by Friday.

home improvements, miscellaneous

Worn Out

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Nothing seems to wear me out more than talking on the telephone. Long calls, such as a couple of hours or more, require twice that amount of time to recover.

That’s what happened yesterday. I got to the late afternoon completely exhausted. It wasn’t all the call’s fault. And, actually, it was a Zoom conference, but that’s the same thing as a phone call. I spent the morning working on the publication files for There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel. I managed to get about 2/3 of the way through it on this latest pass, looking for formatting inconsistencies, typos, missing quote marks, etc.

I pulled off the formatting to work in the yard. That was about 10:30 a.m. or so. Fortunately, I didn’t have any stock trading tasks to do yesterday. I worked pretty hard, mainly weed-eating at the front of our unbuilt lot, going around known blackberry plants and looking for new ones coming up. I worked on that until I figured the battery needed charging. I moved a few downed limbs, then raked some of the cuttings and put them on the compost pile. I didn’t even come close to finishing that. I also spent a little time working on a sitting-in-the-woods location to make it a spot where I could go out with a book, in the shade, drink coffee, and rest my body while working my mind.

I was almost done with outside work. I decided to tackle—that is, begin to tackle—a small woodworking project I’ve wanted to do for a couple of years. I figured out what I wanted to do, found the odd pieces of wood in the garage, and did some measuring and cutting. Possibly tomorrow I’ll work on it again. When that was done, I came into the house and checked the time. Almost 12:00 noon, so close to an hour and a half of this work.

I went to the hot sunroom for reading, a window fan making it tolerable. It was just a little over 90° there. I managed to get a few pages read in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, but not near enough to justify the time spent.

After a lunchmeat and cheese sandwich lunch, I headed back to The Dungeon for the Zoom conference. I won’t go into the work we were doing, just that it was a one-on-one conference related to our church’s Centennial celebration coming up in July. It was tedious, finding the correct places on Google Drive to put some files, creating new folders. I grew weary of it and, after 2 1/2 hours, told our committee chair I needed to leave. I had hit a wall and was unable to accomplish anything more. We had at least another hour of work, and by this time I was scrolling through folders and just seeing words or pictures racing by. I couldn’t find anything.

I went upstairs and, for an hour and a half, did nothing except sit in my reading chair, check a little on e-mail and Facebook, and nap. It was after 6:00 p.m. before I got up and started putting supper together. Fortunately, it was leftovers and pre-prepared salad.

By the time 8 p.m. rolled around, I was able to go back to the Google Drives and pick up where we had left off. Over the next hour I got a lot more done. It’s not finished, but it’s in better shape. I should be able to finish it today.

Well, for now it’s back to the book and try to finish that formatting today. Publication is getting closer.

Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, Health, History, home improvements, reading, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

Post Not Ready

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Six ads running for this, getting impressions, clicks, and a few sales. Other promotion is bearing fruit.

This morning I went outside to work shortly after I got up at 6:45 a.m. The temperature was 60°, and it felt good. I planned to work a half hour, mainly cleaning up a few things and pulling a few weeds from the backyard. When I did what I wanted and went inside, I was surprised to find I’d worked more than 45 minutes. I was way past scheduled time for my blog post, but I wasn’t worried about it since I had a post partially started—two posts actually—and thus could post it quickly once I got to it.

Alas, I finally came to my dashboard here, found there was only one post, and realized it is no where ready to be posted. Bad memory I have.

So here I am with nothing prepared to say. I could talk about any number of things off the cuff: what I’m writing, what I’m reading, how book sales are, what I’m doing for book sales promotion, life in general. I guess I could tackle all of those.

I’m still working on little changes to the church centennial book. I got some new information yesterday that will require a minor change. I also have decided to double-check a couple of places in the book. One I’m fairly sure will require a change, the other one maybe or maybe not. Still, I come closer to done on this every day.  Also, my short story inches along. Every couple of days I open the file, re-read it to remember where I was, and add a few hundred words. I need an uninterrupted , undistracted couple of hours to finish it.

For reading, my time is taken up with Way Truth Life, the book for our Life Group lessons. I’m also reading a book on the Genesis flood. Sorry, I don’t remember the exact title, except that it might be The Genesis Flood. It is a scholarly work from the late 50s-early 60s. I’m not enjoying it a whole lot, but will stay with it a while longer. As to recently finished books, I have four sitting here on my work table waiting for me to write my book reviews.

Book sales are good in September. So far I have 14 sales outright, and I think two accesses from Kindle Unlimited with both people finishing the book. This is my first time to have KU reads (not many of my books are in KU), and I need to figure how to account for them in my stats. I suppose as 2 sales, bringing the total to 16. That’s a good start to the month.

Sometime soon I’ll make a presentation to the local Civil War Roundtable. That will be my first author event since June 2019.

I have been a little more active in book promotion the last week. I still have my Amazon ads running for three books, and they seem to be generating sales. I contacted two influencers in our denomination, both men I’ve interacted with in the past, about giving a shout out to Acts Of Faith. I heard back from one on Friday and he is going to put a promo in his next newsletter.  Another promotional item concerns my Civil War book, Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Back in July I gave a copy of it to the president of the local Civil War Roundtable. I heard back from him yesterday. He liked the book and wants me to make a presentation to the Roundtable. I don’t yet know when that will be, but should know today or tomorrow. So book promotion is in progress and, at least a little, seems to be working.

Life in general is good. I’m still having trouble losing weight, but in general my weight is dropping very slowly. My blood sugars have been under control, though just a little higher than I’d like. This morning’s was good. My right knee has been hurting more of late. Perhaps replacement surgery will have to be moved up. Although, the last three or four days I’ve done a few different things to try and ease the pain and it seems to be working. Four nights of good sleep in a row. Yardwork is in much better shape than in past years. Household projects are slowly being done. My devotional life remains consistent, with room for improvement.

Life goes on. I’ll have a better post on Friday, and will start getting some of these book reviews done.

home improvements, miscellaneous, Writing

Morning Work

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Some of the area already cut. I started at our mailbox (just out of the photo to the left) and am working my way uphill along the street and downhill toward the woods.

It’s hot out. Yesterday’s high was 97°. That’s actually around average for this time of year in Northwest Arkansas. I think our summer, overall, has been slightly cooler than normal—not by much, just a few degrees. Certainly within a standard deviation of normal.

In these temperatures, if I have yardwork to do, I go out immediately upon getting up and do it. This year I have yardwork every day. That’s anywhere from 6:30 to 7:00 a.m., depending on when I wake up and how fast I’m moving. Today it was 06:45, and I was out the door in just five minutes. I worked until 07:45, so just under and hour.

Some of the isolated blackberries. Still some weeds to cut away if I want to, but I’ll probably leave them. So long as I know where the blackberries are that’s good enough.

The front yard (a rock yard, not grass), is picked free of weeds; nothing to do there. Our unplanted flower bed needs to be picked of weeds again, but the lack of rain has resulted them being impossible to pull out; nothing to do there. The backyard (also a rock yard) needs much weed pulling. I think I’ve weeded twice this year. But I never blew the leaves off of it last year, which has prevented many weeds from growing. Still, that was a possibility.

However, I also had work to do on our wood lot. This is the lot south of our house. It’s our lot.  Over a year ago, the power company did a lot of cutting on their easement on this lot, clearing growth away from their lines. The shredded the smaller saplings and hauled off the bigger stuff. This left about 30 feet of a combination of grass and wood-covered bare earth. I raked down a bunch of the shreddings and put them on a brush pile on the lot. Naturally, plants have come up in that area. The favorable rains and temperatures have resulted in a lot of plants growing in this area, some as tall as 6 feet.

I’ll start working in this direction either tomorrow or, more likely, next week.

Most of those plants are weeds and grass. Some are wildflowers. A few are blackberry plants. Everyone knows I want more blackberries, and to have them growing on my own lot instead of across the street in the right-of-way would be great. So, to remove the unsightliness of the tall weeds and to isolate the emergent blackberry plants, I’ve been manually cutting weeds on this lot using hedge sheers. That’s my only option since my weed eater quit and I haven’t replaced it yet.

It’s not really hard work. I work from the downhill side so that I have to bend less. Still, it includes a lot of bending. Once I find a blackberry plant the bending increases, as I go slowly, cutting weeds and grass around it to isolate it. I have around six or seven viable blackberry plants isolated so far. I’m not sure if I’ll find any others, but I still have a long way to go, so I may.

The hickory is down. The clean-up remains. That will be tomorrow, along with raking down some of the cuttings of the weeds.

Another thing I’ve been doing in my morning outdoor work is cutting down a 4-inch diameter hickory sapling. This is growing right against an oak, and the two of them don’t need to be so close together. Until the power company did its clearing, I never noticed this tree encroaching on the oak’s territory. Again, I’m using manual tools: my ancient bow saw and my little folding pruning saw. Sawing is hard work, especially when bending or kneeling. No, 4 inches isn’t a lot to cut through. Hickory is a hard wood, however, so the combination of conditions meant I decided to do this over a few days—four days to be precise. Today, down it came after the last little bit of sawing. Now I get to do the clean-up.

If I had to guess, I’d say I have about five more mornings of work on the woodlot, a morning of work on the flower bed (once it rains), and at least five mornings of weed pulling in the backyard. By then a few weeds will have come up in the front yard and I’ll pull them.

All of this should be of no real interest to my regular readers. So in my retirement I get up early in the summer months and do yardwork. Big deal, right? It’s of interest to me, however. I figure I have another month of doing this, having a little less daylight each day.

This work, while it helps keep me limber and “young”—young being a relative term—it does cut into my writing time. My short story is sitting there, waiting for me to add the final conflict and last 2,000 words. The Forest Throne is sitting there, waiting for me to get beyond the first chapter and make a book out of it. Documenting America: Run-Up to Revolution is sitting there, waiting for me to move from completed research to writing.  And sorely needed updates to this website are begging me to get to them.

This too shall pass, and soon I’ll be back to starting my day off with writing, the yardwork either being completed or the days cool enough to do the yardwork later in the day. I’ll be glad for that time to come.

Health, home improvements, miscellaneous

Still Tired

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One friend I exchange letters with, via e-mail, said, “You really don’t understand retirement”, or something close to that. As I said in Monday’s post, I stay busy. So I guess my friend is right.

This week, every morning, I’ve been out in the yard around 6:30 a.m. to do my work before the heat of the day comes. I’m pulling weeds from a couple of places. Also, Mon-Tues-Wed I cut the deadwood from our crepe myrtle bush. The branches all died in last winter’s extreme cold, but new shoots are coming up. The dead branches took a lot of sawing, so I spread that hard work out over three days. But it’s done. Tomorrow, I have just a little more weed pulling left, then bush trimming (evergreen and boxwoods), which I should be able to do in an hour or so. Then I’ll haul the cuttings and the deadwood off to the brush piles I’ve made in the woods nearby. Then, next week, I can tackle the backyard.

All this has left me pretty tired. You would think that an hour of yardwork a day wouldn’t tucker me out, but it seems to. That’s a lot of bending and stooping. A rock yard should be easier to keep up than a grass yard, right? Maybe if you spray for weeds regularly to keep them from growing, but pulling them out by hand is real work. Hopefully it’s keeping me young.

Wait, if I can’t work an hour in the yard without wanting to rest the rest of the day, I am no longer young. I keep telling myself that there’s nothing wrong with me that losing another 40 pounds (on top of the 80 already lost) won’t cure, but maybe that’s not true. I haven’t felt much like walking lately, though maybe that’s the heat more than energy. Walking seems to give me energy. Maybe I am old.

The fatigue I’ve felt has slopped over to non-physical pursuits. My work on the history book for the church anniversary is close to done. I’ve started the process of looking into printing options. I should now be spending time on my next two writing projects. But, after a brief rest after yardwork, I haven’t felt like new writing. I do a little hole-plugging on the church book, bringing it from 98% done to 99.5% done, but my mind hasn’t wanted to wrap around my work.

I did manage one mental task this morning. I finally called an appliance repair man to come and see about our oven. The lower heating element went out a couple of months ago. The porkchop and rice casserole I made last night took three hours to cook, so I’d had enough. The man is to come out late today or sometime tomorrow.

So that’s something. Next, maybe I’ll get our barely functioning vacuum cleaner replaced. After that, maybe I’ll return to decluttering activities. Or maybe I’ll get two listings made today, if I can multi-task these house and home items.

Then, and only then, will I have mental energy to work on my writing.

Oh, yes, one more thing. I have decided that next year I will hire a “lawn” service to spray for weeds in the front yard. If that works well and there’s no weed pulling to do, maybe the year after next I’ll do the same for the back yard. That will be my nod to retirement and the accumulating years.

Health, home improvements, miscellaneous, The Teachings

Getting Things Done – Latest Edition

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Thursday’s work was stump grinding from our front yard. Looks like they did a good job.

More than once I’ve posted about getting things done. I usually keep a to-do list, which I try to work through. From time to time I slack off from the list, but somehow that doesn’t reduce the amount of things needing to get done. I’m a little late with my post this morning because of getting things done. In fact, it’s likely to take me over an hour to write and post this because I still have other things to get done that are on a time schedule.

Today’s work is pressure washing the north wall and some other minor repairs. It’s going well. Just wish they had brought their long ladder.

How far back do I go? For over a year my wife has asked me to have her sewing machine looked at, but pandemic related closings and restrictions caused me to keep putting this off. Plus, the repair shop is 18 miles away, and I don’t generally drive 18 miles for a single purpose trip. But Wednesday of last week I was in Rogers for something else and could divert to the store with very little distance added. I did so and dropped the machine off. When there, they said they needed a bobbin for the machine and there was none in it. Once home I got the bobbin ready to mail. But when I took it to the P.O. I learned it was too thick to be considered a letter and would cost $4 to mail as a small parcel. I knew I would be in Rogers again this week, so I just made the slight diversion again and dropped that at the sewing shop. Now we wait for the repairs. Check off the item on the to-do list.

It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but the area to the right is weeded; to the left is not. I think this work is keeping me young and agile. At least a little more so.

Last Saturday I received a message about someone wanting to buy some of my wife’s paperback romance novels I had listed on Facebook Market place. The problem was she lived too far away to come by and get them, would I ship them and how much would it cost? I replied immediately and transitioned into salesman mode. I told her yes, I would ship them, but had many more available that weren’t mentioned in the Marketplace listing. I’ll shorten this story. We had 203 romances to sell and she wanted them all. I took them to the P.O. on Monday to weight for a shipping estimate, received payment via PayPal on Tuesday, and took the books to the P.O. in the mini-snowstorm the same day. They are now in USPS hands, “winging” their way to her. Check one item off the to-do list.

Also P.O. related, on Monday I mailed a nice group of greeting cards to the daughter of a first cousin. These are cards found in my dad’s house at his death in 1997. He kept all incoming greeting cards, and even had some that went to his father. I’ve slowly gone through them and sent them back to the families from whence they came. I contacted this cousin and she would like the cards from her grandfather, mother, and aunt. Mailed them on Monday; check one item off the to-do list.

On Tuesday, while waiting at the doctor’s office, I finally called our electrical cooperative to ask why they had never come back to grind the stumps left from when they took trees out of my front yard in December 2019 and January 2020. A different crew was supposed to come a few days after the last tree was down, but they never did. I kept finding the card for the vegetation management guy, then losing it, then finding it. The last time I found it I put it where I could pick it up easily, did so as I went out to the doc. The co-op was very apologetic, the man came out that day, and the crew arrived Thursday late-morning to do the work. They were done by 1:30 p.m., and the yard looks good. Check another item off the to-do list.

Everything above in this post I wrote over two hours ago, almost three.  I interrupted first for doing my stock market work, which is busy on Friday. Then the work crew came that is doing some siding maintenance and repair on our metal siding. Spending our stimulus money. Since I was outside lining them out, I did my yardwork, a little more than usual. Now, I’m back in The Dungeon, typing away.

I have two books to work on, but haven’t done much this week other than research, as these other tasks distracted me too much. But, really, there was one big task that was the most distracting: publishing The Teachings. Sunday (or maybe it was Monday; the days are running together) I published the e-book. I haven’t made an announcement as I wanted to get the print book published then start promoting it. But, the cover designer, who did a super job on the e-book cover, is busy with her college work and is a little delayed. That’s no fault on her; sometimes the timing of a project isn’t good.

Not bad as a placeholder. Just waiting on Amazon’s human review. It already passed the automatic review.

I decided I would try to pull it together, using the e-book cover and using G.I.M.P. Readers of this blog know that I hate G.I.M.P. Yesterday morning I decided I would just knuckle down and get it done, and I did. Today I uploaded the interior file and the cover. Amazon accepted them for human review without any problems—meaning I must have figured out the mechanics of using G.I.M.P. for creating print covers—and now I wait. My cover is a placeholder. When the cover designer’s schedule frees-up, I’ll have her do the real one. Meanwhile, the book will be available both as an e-book and print book.

So here it is, 12:17 p.m., and I’m finally coming to the end of this post. Maybe next week will have fewer things on the to-do-list. You think?