Tuesday - night

"I'm ramping it back up at the property.  I spent hours out there clearing out weeds in the area where the new lots will - someday - be installed. But I motivated myself today in raking over the piles of dirt where I had put them while digging out the trench many moons ago and just about clearing the back 4 acres - still more to go but most of it is done. Got much of the front 3 acres done, scraped the driveway with the new box blade - it works 1,000% better than that pile of trash I was renting at the rental place in town.  

I mean, maybe 3 passes and it was done. I was spending an hour going up and down just one portion with the rental unit.  I should have taken pics of that rental thing, it looks as bad as it works lmao.  Old pile of shit, frankly.  And at premium prices and they don't include the rippers. They never said why, they just said no, we don't want rippers on it. These are claws that hang down off the rear of the box blade and tear into the dirt.  Absolutely necessary to tear up the hardened dirt and get down into the softer stuff.  "

Put in parenthesis for I started that post last night and simply forgot about it.  

I've got Thursday and Friday off. Weather permitting I will be out there attempting to get this sewer line stuff done and over with or at least get a big chunk of it done.  

As for today, well, I got to the loading plant and there was another truck in our bay - but not one of our trucks.  In fact, I had never seen that trucking company before.  They let the system drain almost empty up there to the point that we can't keep up with it. Had they simply kept up the orders, it would be in good shape.  But NOOOOO, they had to wait until they had ONE truckload of product in there before realizing they are going to run out. 

Well, we only have so many trucks running this route and hence, they get outside companies to help along.  I only waited maybe 10 minutes and he was out of there, no big deal, but when is this dude showing up tomorrow? Early, like earlier than me? When I show up? Make me wait an hour plus? When these other companies get involved, they don't care about appointment times, they'll just show up whenever they want to.  

Now, I have a decent relationship with management up there and if this starts happening too much, I'm going to ask them to make those drivers wait.  They have enacted such restrictions in the past on people showing up well outside of their delivery time.  

I went and got my trailer today.  It needed a new set of springs and the entire lighting system replace.  I spent almost as much as I paid for the trailer. However, I bought that trailer when they were "cheap", nothing is cheap anymore.  I get somewhat irritated when I hear the term "inflation". If you start thinking about it, someone, somewhere, got greedy.  "The love of money is the root of all evil". 

It isn't some grand thing that happened. For example, something happens in the Iran war. Oil companies INSTANTLY jack up the price of fuel even tho the oil that current fuel was made out of was not affected by it. But it's literally everything now.  And the cost of trucking now? Look at the price of fuel! Trucking companies have surcharge agreements and they aren't going to be eating that cost.  

Oh, off on tangents. I think my trailer is worth around 2-1/2 times what I paid for it. Well, this repair guy has had some major health events happen recently which is why he isn't working his actual brick and mortar shop he once owned.  He just works out of his back yard as much as he can.  

He gets dizzy and has trouble walking. How he does the work I have no idea but he's really good at wht he does.  Anyway,  he got up from looking at the connector to my suv to hook up the lights, started walking and literally fell backwards. His head almost hit a tree. Took me by surprise. He was laughing I was seriously asking him if he's ok?  He's seeing doctors and such, he's just not in good shape at all.  But, he wants more work and my Caterpillar generator needs repaired.  I'll probably drag that thing over there on Thursday before going to the park to get down in that ditch and get some work done.  

I've got to do it and I'm finally motivated.  The mower guy will help me if I need the help.  I probably do, something is wrong in my left elbow, serious pain when I go to lift something.  I'm going to have to find a new doctor,  I typically just use the urgent care but stuff like this probably needs a "specialist" to charge me the arm that I need looked at : )

So, deliver tomorrow, whatever that entails and then off until Saturday where I will have to work the weekend and I think they have me working 6 days in a row.  

__________

As typical for me, time got away from me. Just wanted to post this before going to sleep. 

 Thursday - late afternoon

I was sleeping very well last night until this creepy dream hit me.  You see, I was standing in the hallway of a house - apparently I lived there tho I have never seen this place before.  It was the middle of the night, why I was up I have no clue, but I was looking in on someone for who knows what reason.  The next thing I know, there is this loud, crashing footsteps shaking the entire house.  It was on the other end of the house and it was making all kinds of scary noises.  Like something out of an extremely frightening horror flick. 

I couldn't see anything but it was getting closer and closer, so I ran to what appears to be my room, closed the door and stood next to it.  The thing got right up to the door and stopped.  Does it not know how to open doors? I thought.  What is it doing. It then started making ghastly noises, things you'd expect to hear from the pit of hell or something and the next thing I knew? I was standing on a hill with trees in an open area.  There was some person laying on the ground, a woman with a t shirt and blue jeans. 

She wasn't moving.  This voice called out from the heavens telling me I have to come to their planet and surrender myself voluntarily or they were going to kill her.  I have no idea who this woman was, never saw her before, either but that was enough. I woke up out of that and never got back to sleep.  

I'm not saying there is any viable real-life meaning to it, but it was truly terrifying.  

Anyway, completely changing the subject,  the zero turn was finished yesterday, no the day before.  It had an oil change and the repairman said the carb was full of water, where am I getting my gas from? Cefco I replied but if their fuel has water in it, I think I'll switch gas stations.  The machine had started running foul and that was definitely the problem.  

Yesterday I had the day off. It had been a while since I could just sleep in or just laying bed awake doing nothing in particular so I did. Until like 9:45 am lol. I got up and took the trailer back over to the repair shop.  Lights not working, a ticket waiting to happen.  The repair guy texted me later on saying he'd spent way too much time on tracing wires, he's going to get a new set of trailer wires for it.  Yes, please do, I don't want to spend a fortune in labor and if it had that many shorts in it already how many more would he have to find?

He then stated something I thought was wrong with it: You know you have a broken spring on it? I replied I didn't know for sure but I figured it was something like that because the trailer is leaning.  It came back that way after loaning it to a friend of the family - not a close friend - who kept the thing for 3 months and returned it looking like that. I've never had it checked out.  Well, it's getting fixed now.  A bit costly but necessary especially what with the idea of hauling that tractor around.  I want to bring it home and park it here for awhile. No one is going to steal anything from our back yard without dealing with a very large dog who isn't in love with strangers and goes bat-shit crazy if anyone comes close to "his" domain back there. 

After leaving that there, I went to the courthouse and renewed the registration on it, expired the end of what is now last month.  Over to the park, I installed a solar powered camera that I bought off of Amazon, I think it was.  I am going to get more. These cameras don't need a service (like the ones I currently have running off of T mobile) and they aren't expensive. I'm going to ditch the T Mobile junk - it isn't all that great anyway  and at $30 each per month, not a great deal - and just have several of those. They run off of WiFi so they have to be in range of one of my routers, but that shouldn't be a problem.  

I was looking at the long stopped project considering getting it going again.  It is very likely that in the next coming days I'll be down in that ditch and attempting to revive the project and get it going once again. There's still a lot to do, unfortunately.  It is what it is, I just need to get the ball rolling again and get some momentum going on it.  I have gotten over - I think - the drudgery of the chaos I created in accidentally digging up the existing park water line AND sewer line, what a catastrophe.  

The reason I am getting motivated is because the building I want to put in needs to have all of that finished first.  

I dunno, I'm just musing at the moment, it's still warm out tho it's supposed to rain later today. Well actually after looking at the weather forecast, it is supposed to start raining in half an hour.  We'll see about that.  Perhaps it will signal a change of the seasons that has already occurred but hasn't really manifested itself? You know fall?  They have a saying around here  that we have 2 seasons: summer and winter.  Lol.

As for work, today was a bit sucky.  I got to the plant and there was an entire crew of construction workers installing some new loading apparatus on the loading platform that sits right in front of the loading bay I have to pull into to get loaded.

2-1/2 hours of waiting and they finally - went to lunch and I was informed I could back down there. Fancy that, I have to wait for them to load a truck that brings that plant their income. No notification to our company, yes we are going to be doing this from x hour to y hour, your driver can come later.  Nope, just make me sit there for hours. 

I wasn't bored tho. I pulled out my Switch 2 and got on Fortnite. They just did a new update today and it's really cool. 

 Saturday - late

The day started at 4:45 am, tho I was awake long before that. I didn't sleep well last night and it just happens that way, tho I think the noise in my ears is definitely attributing to the even worse sleep mode.  

So, I drive up to Arkansas, unload, drive back and home in time to grab a sandwich, get my gear and head off to the swimming pool.  It's a rental pool in town.  We were there around 3 hours before we left to go eat at Chili's.  After Chili's, stopped at the house for 2 minutes to grab my shoes - forgot to take them as I was wearing sandals at the pool.

Off to Piney Park. The pool was in my plans, Piney Park definitely was no part of any plans I made today.  I figured after working and the pool I'd be worn out and would want to go home and relax.  Well who needs to relax, apparently, when there are families with kids not to mention 2 kids in my clan who have seemingly limitless energy to bound around this place doing all kinds of stuff.  Up stairs to slide down slides.  Run around a maze to play tag.  Walk around the entire wooded area to see all of the Fall stuff they had out.  Sit down with the kids and have an ice cream.

I did not have an ice cream, the kids were begging so I got them some.  $17 for 2 small cups of ice cream. Well, we did get in free through a friend and that is the only money I spent there. I am consuming no sugars of any kind and excepting for the 5 days of cheating, I haven't been eating sugar at all for many months.  

Also note that the maze was crazy.  I don't know where that energy came from.  I was running through this thing trying to get away from the tagger.  I not only got away from whoever was "IT!", I couldn't believe I was outlasting these kids!  They were bent over huffing and puffing, I was busy running around not getting tagged. 

No, I didn't want to run around a maze. Again, the kids were insistent I go through the maze with them.  This Piney Park adventure was literally non stop for hours.  

Got home around 30 minutes ago, it's after 10.  This has been one of the busiest days I have experienced in quite a while.  My ears are buzzing like crazy and I just remembered I was going to take a benedryl tonight. YES.  The doc asserted it would help with draining the fluid out of my ears and that's exactly what I intend to do. In fact, I'm taking one after I get done with this blog entry. 

Well I want to go to bed so I'm getting offa here. 

 Friday - afternoon

With getting horrible sleep, I started using a box fan to drown out the noise of the ringing ears at night.  I was informed it could take weeks for this stuff to go away.  I intend on taking a Benadryl Saturday night to see if that will help, I won't take it on a night before a work day.  But, the box fan helped the first 2 nights, last night? Not so much. Woke up at 3 am and never got back to sleep, giving me a "full" 5 hours of sleep. 

lol

Whatever. Today's work day is done.  I went and got my Ford out of the shop.  Lovely bill at almost $900.  They had to replace all the hardware for the driver's window to make it roll up and down, that was the biggest part of it at near $500.  Oil change and getting the low tire light to go off.  The ABS control module? No thanks.  $1,400 for the part!  I looked it up and found it "cheaper" elsewhere, but we're talking an older vehicle that has been running without all of that stuff for 3 or 4 years now, I am not spending that kind of money just to get some lights to go off.

If I can find a good used one out of a salvage yard, I might do that, but only if they, too, aren't trying to rob people blind with ridiculous prices.  I've had that vehicle 9 years now and it's served me well. I don't know how much longer I'll keep it.  I just hate to get into car payments and if I buy a building, that will be a payment in and of itself.  I have definitely decided on getting a structure, what I will end up getting is a different story.  Keep it minimalist and low payments? Or go for the gusto and just get a giant building that I will need if I ever get the park upgraded and will serve for multiuse?  

On another note, airfare has gotten pretty crazy.  $550 round trip to AZ ? Huh?  That's way up from the last time I flew over there.  WAY up.  I simply don't have the time or the desire to drive over there so I"m going to have to fly.  I just balk at the prices.  I'm sure some of it has to do with fuel prices right now.  

I got the zero turn turned into the shop yesterday.  The thing wasn't running too great - it needs to be used more than I use it - so he is going to clean out the carb along with changing the oil, sharpening the blade and one of the steer bars is a bit stiff.  The tractor - well, I really think I should bring it home. Experiencing theft gives me the chills.  Some person tried to steal gas out of one of my guests cars, sitting right in front of their trailer while they were sitting in their living room. RIGHT THERE.  Then there's the person - maybe the same one - who exchanged my rather expensive Husqvarna weed eater for the much cheaper one.  

If these people are that brazen, what is next? More expensive stuff, obviously. The zero turn was a no brainer: easy steal if no one sees them doing it.  Hidden from sight? Sure, right next to a guest's trailer in fact. However, she is gone most of the time as she is an OTR truck driver.  I know how that goes.  She does have a car parked in front of it tho so it at least appears that she's home - but - no.  I'm going to spend some time beefing up the video surveillance, I have a whole system I never installed because the wifi in the shed wasn't working, unbeknownst to me at the time until I tried to hook it up. 

After that? I gave up on it. The ordeal I went through to get that wifi router hooked up to T Mobile was incredible.  Incredibly insane and ridiculous, but incredible at best. I posted several blog entries about that quite a while back and not going into that again here, pretty aggravating stuff. But I have all of those cameras, I'm going to now see if I can hook the system up to the wifi and get it up and running. It will necessitate running power lines to all of them.  I bought the stuff to do all of that and put it ---- somewhere. 

The onus is on me to get a full scale video surveillance system going.  To that end, I received the Eufy camera yesterday. It has WIFI capability. It recharges itself with a mini solar panel.  It doesn't have a monthly fee and it is allegedly high quality. We'll find out about the latter soon enough after I get it installed where I want it and see what kind of clarity it provides. I'd like to be able to see license plates clearly on it. I am going to likely put it on a tree to catch vehicles coming down the driveway.  

The temps are getting lovely in the mornings. Afternoon temps a bit much still but I'm happy for cooler weather.  I am going to force myself  to start attending to the property a LOT more than I have been.  The stifling heat? No thank you.  

I dunno, if I leave this entry here and go do other things as I'm about to, I'll just not finish it and leave it hanging and either not publish it or publish it without finishing it, been doing a lot of that and would prefer to have an ending to this one.  

I have work tomorrow, I'm going to get up a bit earlier so I can get home in time for the pool I rented.  I think there's 14 of us going.  It's an app called Swimply. If there is a pool for rent nearby, you click on it, reserve it and all that entails and walaah, you have a pool for however many hours you want it. I opted for 3. Decent amount of pool time while keeping the costs down. The hotel we use? They already shut their pool down for the season! 

I since learned that a lot of hotels shut their outdoor pools down after Labor Day. Go figure. It's still quite warm out in the late mornings til evening.  There are a couple of indoor pools in this town, they're quite small.  If we do an indoor pool thing, it won't be with all of those people. Hotels monitor such things and likely they all require every person to be in a room in their establishment.  Except this one we've been using. We know because the manager came out and we were honest.  She said, it's ok as long as someone is staying here.  Yup, we were. 

It isn't a compelling reason to get a pool at my park but is - A - reason.  Lol.  Nahh, I'm thinking this building is far more important at this time. Or a loan big enough to cover both. But if I'm going that big, I need more income so finish the 4 lots at least?  That should make a payment for another loan, easily.  

This is enough? I think so.  At least I'm finishing this one lol. 

G'day

 Tuesday - evening

 I finally caved and went into the urgent care. The noise is ridiculous.  Ringing in my ears that is.  The doctor found problems in both ears, amazingly enough. Somehow, I have fluid behind the ear drum in the ear that did not have the tick.  The ear that did also apparently has fluid in there and she is saying that that is the cause of the ringing.  She prescribed ear drops which I still have to go pick up but she actually recommended taking Benadryl for the fluid build up.

Benadryl.  My history with that stuff is that it knocks you clean out and you have serious trouble waking up the next morning.  I'm looking at a box of it sitting on my shelf right now.  Maybe if I go to bed early?  I want this ringing gone.  It's ridiculous. 

The 30X70 steel building will cost around 20k.  That's delivered and installed.  I've had several places pricing it, pretty much the same price everywhere. I'm going to give a local person a chance to give a quote - but not yet.  

The thing is, I will have to either put the building behind or near the shed, or, put it in a location closer to the front of the property.  In order to do that, however, I am going to have to run the power line. A couple of places I wanted to put it? Can't, there's underground plumbing for the park it would be sitting on the top of.  No thanks.  

Whatever the case, I had totally forgotten about adding the tractor to the park insurance policy, getting that done immediately and probably add the zero turn as well.  I am also going to go to T Mobile and get trackers for both of them.  I don't know who the thief is, whether they live in the park or not, but I do have eyes looking out for people. One person said a green volkswagen comes back there daily, no one knows who they are. I really just need to get a good, wired video system going.  

With high quality cameras?  

Sitting in my truck Wednesday morning at the loading plant. I stepped on the scale this morning annnnnd… finally. I lost all the weight I gained doing that 5 day cheat episode and now 2 more! I’m at 209 pounds, haven’t been this “light” in a long, long time. I can taste the day I hit 199. 

I just won’t do that many cheat days in a row unless warranted. I’m tentatively going to see mom for thanksgiving so there’s definitely going to be some cheat days there. But before then? I might do one cheat day just to get my potato fix but not any time soon. I want to get down to say, 205 before I do another cheat day  that way I might go up a couple pounds but I won’t leave the single digit range. It will probably take over a month if not longer to lose another 5 pounds. 

Anyway, just wanted to report that. 

 

 Monday - night

Mondays - are Mondays.  Work was a bit slow but nothing too terrible.  I got to the plant to load, they had me back down into the bay but the loader came out and said I'm going to have to move, that other truck needs in the bay right in front of you here. I normally just load them as they come, first come first served but they said you are early. Yeah, I'm early, that other driver is late I thought but didn't speak.  I just smiled and moved out to the parking load, an hour and 15 minutes later they were loading me.  So, I was there like 2-1/2 hours.

I've had to wait much longer than that there before, so I just let it go.  

Parents are within their right and reason to monitor their children's activities online and using cellphones.  So it came as a shock to me today that the mom sent screen shots of the oldest going off on another person in some sort of chat room or the phone or whatever I don't really know.  It looked funny.  

Many hours later and the truth came out.  That thing monitoring him just posted up everything that was being said between the two, it didn't delineate who said what.  The child went and got his phone and showed how he had said none of those thing, it was all the other kid.  

I have been looking at various sheds and steel structures to get something over on the property to have a lockable storage facility.  I started small, then realized I could have a small office in there.  Now, at those prices, I'm thinking go much bigger and just get it over with. I've needed and wanted a building over there for some time now.  The front portion of  my 25 acres doesn't have a lot of extra room on it if I ever get these other lots put in.  Putting a small building in makes no sense after thinking about it.  Just go for the gusto and get a bigger one - a 50 footer I'm thinking now. I was quoted 12k for a 40x30.  That's a steel building and it costs about just as much to have a concrete pad put down, which I would want. 

What if I went 50X30?  Half of it can be for equipment storage and work room, the other half can be a bathroom, laundry facility, small office and whatever else I want to do.  But, I'd have to design the thing first. If you are putting in a bathroom and laundry facility, you have to run the plumbing before they pour the cement. So now I'm in sort of a conundrum about that.  

So I'm going to put the brakes on that for a minute and think about it and go out and mark a 50x30 piece of land to see how it actually looks and if that's even enough.  Right now, it's around 23k for the 40X30 with concrete pad.  It isn't anything that would have to emerge overnight into a usable facility for an office and such, it just needs built and locked, put my stuff in there and keep it all under lock and key.  

Well, I just saw a 70X30 for 20 grand.  3 roll up doors, 2 walk in doors and several windows.  Note that none of these from any of them include any electrical or plumbing.  Hence the idea that it wouldn't have to be an overnight thing. Build it, get my stuff in there and then either do it myself or find someone to do it for me.  I prefer the latter. I wired up my shed and it's worked perfectly well, I also plumbed it and haven't had any problem with that....

....however...it's not my line of work and I had to make endless trips to Lowe's to sort through aisles worth of plumbing and electrical stuff and spent countless hours researching how to install all of it. Now, I haven't exactly forgotten all of that. Quite to the contrary, I remember how much of a pain in the ass it was, to put it bluntly.

If I got a 70 footer, this would allow for a one room hotel style room (not for rent, for me, others I know who need a break in some other world where they can disappear), a bathroom with shower, maybe 2 actually for male and female delination instead of a one size fits all, the storage an offce and a small C store.  

 Saturday mid afternoon

It isn't shocking that someone decided to "replace" my $400 Husqavarna weedeater with a much cheaper version of one and think I or others that use it wouldn't notice.  There are a couple of people that come to mind, the leeches that kept saying they would pay rent and never did are one of the suspects.  They had stated to the neighbor that they couldn't get theirs to run.....I don't doubt for 2 seconds in my mind that those lying trash people took it. But, there is another individual I could suspect as well.  Poor people that have limited morals often times excuse their thievery because they are poor.  

In their minds, they deserve what they need because they can't afford it. It isn't just food that they steal, it's anything they want or need. I know this because I was poor for quite a while and tho stealing never entered my mind, the neighborhood was full of other poor people and MANY of them had no problems with theft.  I never understood that for in all the years I was barely making it, stealing stuff wasn't a part of the equation.  I toughed it out and I made things happen - eventually. 

It has forced me to decide to buy a large storage shed on payments.  I can't afford to keep losing more stuff. Ladders, chainsaws, tools and now this.  Get one installed, get the thing loaded up with security measures - cameras and stuff - put it near people in the park and lock it up.  I want one finished this time with electrical outlets and flooring and walls already in it. I do not want to do all that work again like I did in the laundry room one. It took wayyy too much time and in the end, it would have been worth it to just have paid to have it fully completed in the first place. 

The only thing about that one tho is that it is big and it was a good price.  Still, a couple thousand more for the wall, outlets and flooring to be in it would be easily worth it and hopefully some insulation.