Category Archives: home improvements

Health, home improvements

The Flesh is Weaker Still

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Last night the last of the work was completed in The Dungeon. Well, the last required of outside workers, that is. It and the family room are still mostly empty. The heaviest pieces, such as the roll top desk, the couch, and the love seat are in place. Still to be moved are the 13 bookcases, all the books, end tables and lamps, second computer desk, two work tables, and non-functioning treadmill. Maybe I’ll leave that one in the storeroom.

While the last of the work was being done last night, I spent the time with paperwork clean-up upstairs. Much older correspondence and miscellaneous writings brought home from the office when the office moved last November were in a box, waiting for my action. Last night I got most of them sorted and ready for filing and maybe back side copying. I noted some duplication, so guess I’ll go through them page by page after sorting to cull. I estimate 500 pages.

While I have recovered from the weekend labors, my right arm and wrist hasn’t recovered, and my left wrist is getting worse. I don’t know if this is rheumatoid or something else. The left wrist feels like it could be either rheumatoid or osteo. The right is much worse and feels like it could be pinched nerves or even more serious. I’ve already had the carpal tunnel operation on that hand. And that’s the hand that was damaged while I played softball in Saudi Arabia back in 1982, requiring surgery at the Abdullah Fouad Hospital in Dammam. Although I’m left handed, I learned to use the mouse right handed. Maybe it’s a combination of those.

Typing is so painful I must close quickly. Spent a lot of time on the computer yesterday, trying to fix a floodplain model that I thought others had correct. Today is a day of meetings, little computer. Maybe that will help. Writing is a dream right now.

home improvements, Writing

The Mind is Willing, but the Flesh is Weak

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I have been mostly off-line since I posted to this blog last Wednesday. On Thursday, after an off-site meeting in mid-afternoon, I rushed to a rental place to see if they had a pressure washer. I’d already called and learned they didn’t have one for the weekend, which was my preferred time to do it. I hadn’t asked about one for that evening, since I didn’t think I could get to their place before their 5:00 PM closing time.

My meeting ended a little early, so I rushed to the shop and arrived at 4:58 PM. Yes, they did have a pressure washer, but it was scheduled to go out at 7:30 AM the next morning. I decided to take it. It turned out to be one of the big ones, requiring two men to lift it into my truck bed. Traffic was awful, and I didn’t get home till 5:55 PM, leaving me an hour of daylight, plus a half-hour of dim twilight, to get the thing unloaded, figure out how to use it, move hoses, hook it all up, and wash the stupid deck.

Somehow I got it all done, despite pulling the hose off the quick coupling and separating the 0-ring from the hose. I got the o-ring back on, miraculously, and finished the deck new the end of twilight. I then dropped the wand over the deck, went below and washed the lower decks—in the dark, with only the lights from The Dungeon windows letting me see what I was doing. I was pretty sure daylight would show this late washing marginally effective.

But washing a deck on Thursday means painting/staining it soon thereafter. On the way home Friday I stopped at Lowes and bought semi-opaque stain and a roller. Got home at mid-twilight. Saturday was the big day. I pounded down loose nails, scraped a couple of areas, and, while the workers were working on the insurance-funded repairs in The Dungeon, I stained the deck. At least, I did the bulk of the flooring. Since this was two or three years overdue, and since rain was forecast for Monday (today), I decided to leave the trim for later and get the lion’s share of the flooring done. It needed it badly.

Last time I stained the deck, probably four years ago, I used a 3-inch brush. Took two days and about killed my back and knees. This time I decided to roll it, using the long-handled roller Lynda bought. I’d never have spent that kind of money on a tool, but this one is a good one. It even had an extension on it. I barely had to bend, although standing erect and rolling I felt that I didn’t have enough control over the roller. Took two hours, and left me tired enough. The trim and rails were left for another day.

It would have been nice for that to have been the only maintenance needed on the property that day. Alas, clean-up and dishes (I’m batching it again, for two or three weeks) and clearing deadfall also needed attention. Then there was the neighborhood block party Saturday evening to cook for and attend. By Saturday evening I was in no shape for anything, except watching a little college football and reading less than my weekend day quota in Children of Dune.

Sunday was better. Good rest. Good worship. Good Bible study. Good lunch fellowship with a good friend who was also a temporary bachelor. Good afternoon reading. No access to computer until about 7 PM, however, as the workers were still at it in The Dungeon. I finally got in there about 8 PM, but the fumes were so strong I didn’t want to stay there and breathe in all those solvents and all that dust. Back upstairs, where I divided my time between pro football and catching up on Children of Dune.

So it was a weekend of little writing accomplishment. I researched my next Bible study, read some in Poets and Writers, read in CoD, which is sort of research for sci fi writing, and filed some writing business type stuff. Would have liked to do more, but that was all. Hopefully this week will be more profitable.

home improvements

The Dungeon is Unavailable

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The carpet is coming! We thought it would be installed Thursday or Saturday coming. Yesterday we learned it would be installed today. This is the carpet in the walk-out basement that was ruined when the hot water heater leaked. Insurance is covering it, less deductible, or course. The insurance check arrived today.

Part of the deal Lynda worked out with the carpet company was that we would move all the furniture from the two rooms except two pieces. Otherwise they have go charge for furniture. The rooms included are the family room and the computer room (a.k.a The Dungeon). These rooms have no wall between them, being defined by wall corners. The area has been torn up since July 22 when we returned home from vacation and discovered the leak.

For the last week to ten days we knew this day was approaching, so every day I’ve been doing something to prepare for it: move out an end table and lamp, remove two empty bookcase, remove the last loaded bookcase and the books on it, clean up all tools and supplies from painting the room, etc. But the move up of the installation day resulted in one evening to finish everything else. That’s what we did last night. Love seat, recliner, treadmill, office chairs, television and stand, and two computer desks had to go, moved into the store room or the downstairs bedroom.

We got it all done, leaving only the roll top desk and the couch for the carpet dudes to move. That also means I have no computer at home until we get the desk moved back in and the computer re-installed. Will that be tonight? I don’t know, but I doubt it. We still have some inventorying to do of bookcases and books damaged by the water, and probably should do that tonight and get it turned in to the computer folks ASAP.

So, I expect to be off-line at home until tomorrow night at the earliest, and I think more likely until Thursday. Our modem and router are still connected, so we’ll still have wireless access via Lynda’s laptop, but not for my desktop dinosaur. Whenever I turn that critter off I always wonder if it will wake up again. Of course, I still have the office and office hours, and so will read, even if I don’t post much. And, for writing I still have lots of pencils and reused backsides of papers to make drafts, as well as reading research in what is almost other dinosaurs—hard copy books.

home improvements, Writing

The Leaners Are Down

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Some posts ago, earlier this year, I talked about a leaner tree that I was trying to bring down to the ground. This was at the back of our lot, actually on common POA property. There are three leaners there, or maybe only two since one was bifurcated right at the ground. I took out the smaller of these, about 7 inches diameter, early this year. The bigger one was 12-14 inches diameter. This is the one I wrote about earlier. I cut it all the way through except maybe a 1/4 inch. It fell a little, but a major branch kept it from going to the ground. I sawed on that major branch, but it’s up high about at the end of my reach. Let me tell you, that’s tough sawing. I had it sawed 3/4 of the way through but the branch gave way a little and close up the sawcut. At that time I just left it.

Why do I want that tree on the ground? It’s far a way from the house, not even on my property (though easily visible from the house). My only half-way reasonable answer for that is I want it to come down in the way I want it to so that it doesn’t take out a struggling pine tree on the way. We have so few pines around here, with the oaks taking over and crowding out everything, that I work to save the pines. The on-so-good answer is I just wanted to do it. It was my project—kind of like the stump in Shane. It’s not that it needed to come down but that I wanted it to come down.

The third tree, a 10 incher that is leaning the other way from the bifurcated pair, can stay or not. I may saw on it through the fall and winter or I may not. It’s not as if I don’t have outdoor work without worrying about that.

Well, I looked out the back of the house last weekend and saw the leaner was on the ground. Or, not really on the ground, but fallen off its stump. It appears to be wedged between the pine and something, a few feet above the ground; I haven’t yet gone down there to look. At least it appears to be at a point where I can say “mission accomplished”, with the help of wind and rain.

That brings me to the leaner I haven’t talked about, a 8 or 10 inch diameter oak on the wooded lot south of us, the lot that came up at auction but I was unavailable to bid on it that day. This tree was leaning towards our lot. I began sawing on it, got a third of the way through, or maybe half, then thought I’d better check and see if it was tall enough to reach the house when it came down. I used the various methods I learned in boy scouts for determining the height of a tree, and decided it was a little too short to miss the house. But, would it take out another tree on its way down, and that other tree hit the house? That I couldn’t tell, so I decided to leave this tree alone for a while. To cut it higher up would take a ladder and much arm extension, and I wasn’t interested.

Friday I noticed that this tree had come down as well, again thanks to wind and rain. And to vines, which had grown up the tree, choked it, and perhaps pulled it some. It did not split at my partial cut, but rather fell from the roots, as I feared. The top of the tree landed about eight feet from the house, and it took out a branch or two on the way down but not a tree. So I was right in my assessment. I spent a little time yesterday cutting the top of the tree away. How thick the vines were up there!

Widowmakers. That’s what the folks in the Piedmont area of North Carolina called leaning trees. They treated them with respect, but never hesitated to take them down and use them for firewood. Our fireplaces don’t burn wood, but I do cut the downed trees and stack them in a woodpile. It seems a worthy thing to do.

So that yard work is done. No, wait, on the lot north of us I see two more leaning trees that seemed straight before. Maybe that will be next year’s needless project. Meantime, I shall keep writing my articles. From this blog I will go to MS Word and type the last article in the series of construction contract administration. Then, what? Maybe work on my novel a little. Or read some in a writing book. Or go to Absolute Write and critique a poem. So many paths to take.

Buildipedia, Engineering, home improvements, Suite 101

Good Days and Bad Days

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I have so many facets to my life that it’s sometimes difficult to say, “Today was a good day,” or “Today was a bad day.” It might be good in one sense but not in another. Take yesterday for example. Was it a good day? Here’s the things that suggest so:

  • My weight was down to the lowest it’s been in months, back to that set-point weight I always bump against but can’t seem to get through. I think I have motivation to break through it this time.
  • The mediation preparation in the morning went well, although I think the City (our client) is too willing to compromise. If they let the contractor sue them and they counter-sued, I think the City would win on 14 points out of 15. What some people do to avoid litigation.
  • I had a pleasant lunch with our Transportation department leader, after the mediation prep. He’s leaving us in a couple of weeks, going back to Texas, so this was sort of our goodbye lunch. He’s a good friend, and an excellent engineer. Hmmm, should this be on the good list or the bad?
  • I studied some floodplain issues I had been putting off studying, since our young engineers have been asking me questions about these issues. I’m aiming to give a training class on this within a month’s time. And, I found I could probably get three articles for Suite101 out of my prep. Of course, the bad news part of this is that my Suite articles still aren’t earning much.
  • The editor at Buildipedia e-mailed me, asking me if I wanted to write a certain article for publication in late October. I believe this is the first time that an editor has solicited me, which is a good feeling. Now I just have to see if I can write the article he wants.
  • I prepared a mailing to our former pastor, returning a book I borrowed from him. I included copies of the adult Life Group lessons I wrote from the book. To the P.O. today to mail. One more item checked off the to-do list.
  • I balanced the checkbook, an easy task this month. I had one $2 error, on the third-to-last entry. Took less than 1/2 an hour.
  • Even though I was tired in the evening, I went to the basement bathroom and did the trim work on the painting. I had finished the primer touch-up the night before, so this is the finished color, a nice lavender the wife picked out. In fact, she came down and helped me with some of it. I’m sure we’ll need two coats, but it’s looking quite nice. Progress in home improvements by inches and feet.
  • Went to bed at the time I wanted to, and fell right to sleep; slept well until 5:15 AM, when the arthritis pain woke me and let me sleep only fitfully thereafter.

But in other ways, it was a bad day.

  • After a morning without too much pain, my rheumatoid arthritis flared up by the end of the evening, and I went to bed in considerable pain in my right wrist and arm, the place of “Arther’s” current interest. Woke up in the night with much stiffness (guess I said that already), and worse this morning. Typing is quite painful. Oh, wait, I can’t put that on yesterday’s good and bad list, can I?
  • My powers of concentration at work were poor. After the mediation prep took up the entire morning, I was not terribly productive. Yes, I did the floodplain issues study, but what should have taken me 2 hours took 4. I’ve got to recover my powers of concentration.
  • With the evening activities, I did almost no reading and no writing. The Suite floodplain article was 90 percent done, but I couldn’t push myself to pull up the article editing screen and do the work. I have two Buildipedia articles under contract, but I couldn’t push myself to spend even 15 minutes working on one of them.
  • I did nothing on stock trading. I had no trades on to take advantage of the recent market run-up. And I call myself a stock trader.
  • I missed my noon hour walk, although I walked 12 minutes in the evening, two laps around the circle plus up to the stop sign once. So maybe that wasn’t all bad.

So was it a good day? I say yes, though in many ways it good have been better. Today, except for the arthritis, is starting well.

Buildipedia, Engineering, home improvements, Suite 101, Writing

Improvements to Body, Home, and Writing

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The “hit by a bus feeling” I wrote about on Monday has ended. By bedtime on Monday I was much better. Woke up on Tuesday with the normal morning stiffness, but my right wrist and arm felt much, much better than it had for several days, perhaps even a week. When I weighed in at work on Tuesday I was down 5 pounds week over week, back on track for a net loss by the end of the year. Maybe the better eating, more exercise, and general level of activity did something positive.

Monday evening I was able to write an article for Suite101.com, the next in my series on stock trading. Tuesday noon I was able to finish the article on the Crystal Bridges Museum for Buildipedia.com and submit it. That leaves me two still under contract at Buildipedia, and of course as many as I want to write at Suite. The money at Buildipedia is nice, at Suite not so much, but I see little signs of improvement there. Perhaps these recent articles are generating ad clicks at a higher rate than some of my early ones.

Last night, instead of writing, I finished the primer coat in the downstairs bathroom. Well, almost finished. I found some places I missed on the trim, and other places I had failed to wipe away the dust of sanding. With wet paint in the room I didn’t dust and paint those. So looks like tonight will include a little more painting, maybe no writing.

And on both Monday and Tuesday, as the day ended, I had enough energy and brain power to read a good amount in Athanasius. I really liked Monday’s reading. It was in the place where Athanasius speaks about the Christian’s attitude toward death, basically that he despises rather than fears death. This was so close to one of John Wesley’s sermons on death that you know this is either a source work and derivative or the treatment of the subject hadn’t changed much in the 1,450 years between the two. I found it interesting reading.

So what will today hold, in this adventure called life, juggling devotion to God, being a husband, being an empty-nest father and grandfather, an engineer, a writer, and trying to maintain a house and property? I’ll be writing today, items needed for one of the papers I’ll present in February. So that’s good: any writing is worthwhile writing. I always feel good when I make progress in whatever I do.

home improvements, miscellaneous

Slogging Through Athanasius

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I had a very busy weekend, it would seem, yet the amount of accomplishment I had, now that I look back on it, was not all that much. On Friday I learned I would have to teach our adult life group on Sunday, due to a death in the family of my co-teacher, who was scheduled to teach. So some time Friday and Saturday evenings went to that, actually close to three hours.

Saturday was a work day. We cleaned up the mess from our downstairs ceiling demolition, and the downstairs bathroom wall paper stripping and spackling. This turned out to be a good sized task. The plastic sheeting I put down to catch the demolition mess was old, old, old. It shredded in a lot of places, and much material went through to the carpet. Still, it caught a lot of the mess. I carried two of the four demolition trash bags up to the garage for setting out on trash day. We swept and vacuumed the carpet in the computer room and bathroom, and an hour later it all looked good. This carpet is coming out due to water damage in the family room, but we want to keep this undamaged part to make throw rugs or use in a storage room.

Then I tackled the primer trim in the bathroom. This went okay, but took me twice as long as it should have. I have a painful rheumatoid arthritis breakout in my right hand, wrist, and arm. I can grip a paint brush with it, but can’t twist my wrist as needed for brush work. At least, I can’t twist it very much. So I was stuck using my left hand even in places when my right hand would have made more sense. Laying on the floor around the toilet, stretching my left arm to places unseen by human eyes for years, was not my idea of a good time.

The trim is done, except for one place where I found some of the wallpaper not stripped. Tonight I’ll strip that, and maybe finish the trim. Don’t know about the rest of the primer yet. This morning I feel like I was hit by a bus, or how you feel after playing softball the first time in the spring. Muscle aches. Bone aches. General weariness. This kind of body function is ridiculous. I’m only 58. What’s it going to be like when I hit seventy?

Despite that, I managed to complete an article on construction contract administration for Buildipedia.com and submit it. In that series that makes four down, one to go. I did not get the article finished on the Crystal Bridges Museum, but that should be an early one for today. Nor did I work at all on my poetry. T’is the season for submittals, and while I’m not giving poetry much effort these days, I ought to submit a few to literary mags.

It’s very painful to type. I’m still working through my morning stiffness (it’s 8 AM), so maybe it will get better during the day. Blogspot is down right now, so I’m typing this in Word. I just remembered, however, that for some reason Blogspot has not allowed me to paste text in lately, so I’ll probably have to re-type this all, on my noon hour—assuming the site is up by then.

What, you wonder, does all this have to do with the title of my post? I managed to spend about an hour reading Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, my foray into original works by the early Christians. This is supposed to be one of the more accessible early works, but I found it hard going. Perhaps it was tiredness of the body which did not allow my brain to fully engage. I understood the words fine, but the overall message escaped me. I was really slogging, not rising above and conquering the book. We’ll see how it goes, in a time when mind and body are in sync and properly functioning.

freelance writing, home improvements, reading, Writing

Oh for a Holiday Weekend

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Labor Day weekend is upon us. My supervisor, the CEO, usually comes around early afternoon and tells us we can leave early, somewhere around 3:00 or 3:30 PM. I usually don’t, but might do so this time. While it’s a holiday, with one extra day, I have much to accomplish. Here’s a sampling.

  • We had a strong rainstorm last night, and one of the skylights leaks in our living room. It was a slow drip, but it followed the ceiling slope to the wall and then down the wall. We protected the carpet right away, but now I have to deal with this. Water in the living room, water in the basement. What’s a homeowner to do?
  • Speaking of water in the basement, we are in a testing phase right now. Had the plumber out yesterday. He couldn’t find any water, but wants us to watch it for a while before we do the ceiling re-installation and then the carpet installation. Another week at least with The Dungeon torn up.
  • Speaking of The Dungeon, I’m going to at least clean up the mess in it this weekend. We put down plastic sheets to catch the sheetrock and dust, but the sheets were so old that they kind of crumbled. Who knew? So I’ll get them out and vacuum up all the stuff that fell through the sheet cuts.
  • Speaking of cuts, it would be nice if I could finish taking out that leaning tree this weekend. The cut I made through the large branch that is preventing the tree from falling is mostly through the branch, but it closed up under the weight and I’ve got to start a cut from the other side. Weather is supposed to be good this weekend for working outside.
  • Speaking of working outside, I’ll have a little grass to weed-eat, and maybe I’ll take out those two bushes Lynda wants taken out. That will take an hour. And a few other bushes need trimming. Another hour.
  • Otherwise, I have two Buildipedia articles under contract that I need to finish or at least work on. I have three others under contract that I should start on. And it would be nice to write two for Suite101. Ideas are on my mind; I need to help them find an outlet.
  • Otherwise, I plan on reading, reading, reading. 150 or more pages in the book I’m working on, three or four newsletters, one Geographic, and one Poets and Writers.
  • And last, it would be nice to begin work on the next Bible study that’s on my mind. Actually, I started it last Sunday, but quickly saw it was a lot more work than I had envisioned, and so laid it aside.

That sounds like enough. I’ll perhaps make a couple of posts to this blog, get a few walks in, play Scrabble with Lynda, and enjoy the weather on the deck.

Buildipedia, home improvements, reading, Suite 101, Writing

Reading, Writing, and…Demolition

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After a busy weekend last weekend, painting the walls in the family room and stripping wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom, I took it easy on the physical labor this past week. Did some light work in that bathroom, removing bits of paper we’d missed. Put some pictures back on the walls, and restored some other things in the family room. But I didn’t undertake anything major.

During the week we had the air conditioner man out to look and see if he could see what is causing the staining on the ceiling in our computer room and in the guest bedroom next to it. He said he couldn’t see anything with the limited view he had, and that we would need to tear out some of the fixed ceiling to tell anything. The restoration people said their meters detected wetness in the ceiling. Insurance wouldn’t cover what caused the problem, but after we fixed the problem they would restore everything, including ceiling that we had to tear out to find the problem.

So yesterday, after washing windows, screens, and window sills in the computer room, I began tearing out ceiling. The first piece comes out with the most difficulty, of course, as you pierce that nice finish and use the hole to begin the tear out. I started where the stain looked worst, and the first piece felt a little wet to me. But it was cold, being right near an AC duct, so maybe I was feeling the cold and thought it was wet.

I kept at it, removing enough so I could see what was up there. It’s a spaghetti mix of water pipe, AC duct, drain lines, and electric and telephone. All the ceiling board seemed dry, though staining on the back side sort of mimicked the stains visible below, except more extensive. Looking through the joists, into the ceiling above the bedroom, I could see that the hot and cold to the washing machine was right above the stains. But nothing looked wet.

So maybe the water came from two problems. A year (or maybe more) ago we had to replace the garbage disposal, a hole having been worn into the side of it. We figured this was the cause of the staining, as the kitchen if right above that part of the computer room (The Dungeon, as I fondly call it). But the staining in the bedroom showed up much later. Maybe it’s a leak associated with the washer. Or, the main house drainage line for the upstairs is right in that area too. Maybe it’s something to do with that.

It appears that we will have to run some appliances and watch and see if the area above the stains looks wet. That means everything will be torn up for a while, since we won’t have the new carpet put down (as a result of the hot water heater leaking) until we have the ceiling fixed, which won’t be till we find the leak.

In the meanwhile, I’ve got lots of reading done, not in a book, but in accumulated magazines. I finished the latest edition of Poets and Writers today, finished an old (2008) National Geographic yesterday, and got some good information about a sci fi subject I was thinking of. Have about finished reading the latest Quadangles, the URI alumni mag. And it seems that I read something else earlier in the week. Oh, I’ve read some in an investment/trading book, and have brainstormed a series of articles for Suite101.com on the subject. I hope to write one tonight.

So all in all a productive time. I’m fairly well caught up on mags, so will go back to my reading pile and see what book is next.