Yeah, it’s summer.

Maintenance stuff more than rennovating stuff this weekend…I got all the tree limbs we cut a couple weeks ago (a metric sh!t-ton) and some more I trimmed Saturday all chopped up and burned.

I also cleaned up an old burn barrel site (glass, and tons of bailing wire for some reason) by shoveling it into feed-sacks and throwing it away…

Mowing got done…weedeating got done…

Oh, and we cleaned a bunch of trash out of our building on the square just for good measure.

A hot weekend for that kind of work…

I also fiddled more with the paint-sprayer…which I thought I had fixed but it is still not working right…this is a problem…I really need to spray some of these jobs to do it right…and the budget says I can’t buy a better rig at the moment…but this one is not cooperating. A date with a shotgun may be in its future…

There was a bicycle event in Clarksville this weekend…so there was live music on the square Saturday night…the square is very pleasant once the shade shows up…balmy, breezy. Texas summer night magic…

The band was Native Pride, a rock Band featuring Clarksville Native Wendell Davis. They are quite good and did a couple sets of great music.

Me and the wife spent a nice evening, arm in arm, sitting on a park bench on the square enjoying the breeze and listening to the music…

Music…a nice Italian dinner, a bottle of wine…

Yeah, Texas summer night magic.

Working hard and living well.

Hope y’all are doing the same!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

In the mean time, just a quick reminder.

Always remember…no matter how busy or frantic things become…Weekends aren’t just for working.

Take the time for the ones you love.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

I putter. Watching some TV. Listening to music. Reading. Writing. Plotting my next project.

Sunday I manage a nap…and for the first time in days, my dreams don’t wake me in a cold sweat, yelling for people to get down…to run…to get away from the laughing drug dealer who, even as he steps over bystanders’ bodies, just won’t run out of bullets.

The wife sits across from me, reading, occasionally looking up at me. We share a look then…a promise…a reaffirmation…that only intimates can make or understand. Nineteen years and my heart still gives a lurch.

The caffeinated kitten, who now (and seemingly rather suddenly) inhabits a big orange cat’s body, bounds in through the gap we left in the patio door for some fresh air…his collar jangling. He prances up and proudly deposits his latest catch at my feet…a large leaf from the front bushes. It joins the growing pile of similiar prizes he’s left me in the last hour.

He gets some praise and a quick skritch behind the ears and he’s off to his next big adventure.

The Maine Coon is upside down, half in and half out of a bag on the kitchen floor…his natural habitat methinks. He snores.

Bills to pay. Back to work tomorrow. Normalcy.

And yet I wonder…is that okay?

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

The prosecution’s case was very carefully put together. He knew his business. The defense had nothing. There was no reasonable doubt. There was no doubt at all. The verdict was inevitable, and even with our diverse jury, quick and unanimous.

And then the other shoe dropped.

The case was far more than it seemed, as we suspected from the extreme care the prosecution had taken with the case, and we discovered for certain during the sentencing phase.

I ended the week with the images of an innocent bystander murdered…caught in a shootout…in full color/motion and from every angle…burned into my head.

It shook me up far more than I can explain.

Yeah. The jaded, world traveling, burly, biker dude.

And I can’t find the damned erase button.

To the defendant…whom we put away for 85 years…may God have mercy on your soul…if you even have one…because surely I have none for you.

And damn you for making me face that fact.

Ride. I think I need to ride.

But I need to vomit first.

And I really, really need that damned erase button.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

We did. We spent Wednesday stuffing family full of food!

Friday…well…we spent Friday lazy-ing about the house, basically recovering from Thursday. Well, that and eating leftover turkey and ham sandwiches and pumpkin pie.

Mmmmmm…

BUT…we did head up to the Old Vic for the weekend to get something done.

I find myself wondering…Am I through with Home Depot?

We bought something like $350 worth of stuff last weekend…mostly wire and fixtures, as well as a few pop-in electrical boxes.

The three fixtures were for the outside lights at the rear of the house…two matching porch lights and a dusk-till-dawn floodlight fixture.

Three fixtures. Four returns. Sigh.

Now, please understand, I had no problems with the employees at the Home Depot…they were all courteous and handled my exchanges quickly and efficiently.

But…are we really in a world where everything has to be returned at least once to get a product that works?

The returns were even more annoying as the store is quite some distance from the Old Vic, and I was ready to hang the lights when I opened them.

The dusk-till-dawn fixture was the first. One of its most important features…the photo-cell…was missing from the package. We exchanged it. The new light was in a blister pack and since it took tools to get it open, I knew it had never been opened before.

This one had the photo-cell…but one of the sockets didn’t work. I, of course, had to completely assemble and hang it to find that out.

Turned out the ceremic was cracked. Sigh. Returned again. Two for two doesn’t inspire confidence in the quality of that fixture…so I decided I’d change my plans and “ponder” a different fixture for that location.

AhHa! I have this handy motion-detector light I bought (from Home Depot) early on in the project to replace a bad one that came with the house. I never replaced the bad one, as we eliminated it with the installation of the new stuff.

I opened the (previosuly unopened) box, did the requisite “some assembly required”, and hung the light. Gahhhh! One of its sockets didn’t work. Crud! Foiled again! What, I’m doomed to spend the entire weekend dinking with three light fixtures? Sheesh!

I was ready to hit the gun range, toss the thing like a frisbee and yell “Pull!” but again, exchanged it and it finally works. The culprit? A wire that wasn’t crimped to the socket connector.

Next, the porch lights. Securely packed in what appeared to be undamaged boxes. Yet, one had a cracked glass. Once I discovered that I couldn’t even hang the other one, as they need to match and I had to make sure I could get the broken one replaced with another matching one (or I’d have to replace them both).

We exchanged that one on the way home, so I didn’t get them hung either. So, of the three fixtures I wanted to hang this weekend…the three I bought last weekend…I got NONE of them done.

I did get the substitute fixture hung (the motion detector one) but had to exchange it too.

From now on I’ll be opening every package I buy at Home Depot, on the spot, before I leave the store. Are they becoming the Wallmart of home improvement? The quality of thier incoming product is either going down, or they are returning defective/damaged merchandise to the shelves (or both).

That does not provide a positive customer experience, no matter how courteous your employees are.

As an electrician, I’ve hung 50 fixtures in a day. How am I supposed to get anything done if I can’t manage to hang *three* in a weekend?

Am I through with Home Depot? Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve so much yet more to buy…

As to getting stuff done…I did finish another circuit up. We now have plugs in the Sunroom and the Master Bedroom! WooHoo!

But, oh, I should mention…when we got home to the surburban “blah” house…the 50 watt sodium light that lights up our driveway…the one I bought from Home Depot just months ago, has died. The last one lasted over a decade.

Sigh.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

There’s a tower ya see. (shrugs) What was I supposed to do?

So, ya’ll (technical Texas term) may know I own a house with a tower on it…since you’re here I expect you read a little about it.

A pic (because I can muhahahahaha):

A circa 1903(ish) Queen Anne Victorian. We’ve had it a year this December 1. Lots ‘O things going on. New electric. New plumbing (started). Rebuilding an old second kitchen that was an old screened-in-porch that was an old step-off-porch into a new utility room. One of 47 windows rebuilt.

Heat. Air.

It’s going…maybe a little slower than I hoped, but it’s progressing nicely.

Now…to the title of this post…

Apparently…I am a glutton for punishment.

Hmmm. Make that Glutton. For. Punishment.

We just put a contract on a 1880(ish) commercial building right on the historic square. With any luck we’ll be closing on it about Dec 1 this year.

It has a tower, ya see. How could I resist?

Old house. Tower. Needs a little work.

Building. Tower. Needs a little work.

Seemed to make sense at the time…

I may have a skewed definition of the phrase “little work”.

Lots more work to do now. We have big plans for this place.

A pic (or couple):

A few more pics here.

More after we close the sale!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer (got the evil lair/well on my way to world domination)

- Isaac Asimov

Read the rest here.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

At least one of them is an alien.

See this thing?

There was no sign of it when we bought the house…well, maybe a little sign…a small dead space on the ground around the rose bush…

Then this thing exploded…during the summer it took over the rosebush (presumably still alive and dormant deep in the digestive tract of the invader), then it ripped down the trellis and threw it across the yard. Then it cascaded across the yard. As best as I can tell it is still growing and unless the winter slows it down, it will take over all of east Texas by Thursday. I even crashed into it with the lawnmower and it hasn’t phased it.

It has nuclear blooms, ya see.

It seems to bloom in the evening and at night…

And as you can see, the radiation is causing the camera problems (don’t you people *WATCH* science fiction?) Nuclear blooms is undoubtably a bad thing.

Run for the hills! Save yourselves! You only have a short amount of tim……

(endtrans)

There were dozens of outstanding artists, a Friday night gallery show, some fine Texas wines, beautiful sunny skies, great food, rocking music, and a lot of friendly people.

Thanks for coming out…and we’ll see you again next year!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Since there is a LOT to do about the house, you can probably imagine this is causing me some strife.

I’ve got wiring to do, air-conditioning to install, the utility room project, glass to glaze, windows to mount, *more* windows to repair, grounds to maintain, etc. This is just the stuff that needs doing that I have the materials/tools/whatever on hand to do. I need to get paint for the sunroom (whose ceiling, BTW, is currently swiss-cheese due to the stages of installation of a whole slew of light fixtures), more trim, a hot-water heater, sink, vanity, and toilet for the half bath…and so on.

Outside there’s trees to trim, a lawn to keep cut, minor maintenance on the house exterior to keep it in shape pending actual repair/restoration.

Oh, and then there’s another possible major project…sorta-kinda house related…definitely life changing…certianly on the scale of the Old Vic project…gad, what am I thinking? Must I *always* push myself to the limits of my abilities (time, skills, money)? LOL!

More on that later.

The urgency is artificial…unless my subconcious has picked up on something I have not and is driving me for a reason. Hmmmm. Ponderings are afoot I suppose…but really, I just need to focus on each segment at hand. The whole is overwhelming, but I just need to look at it enough to focus on a segment, then gnaw on that till it’s done. That works amazingly well.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer