Yes, The Waterfall

I am working on the waterfall every day.  It is beginning to come into shape.  I have the 3rd tier cemented into place - the cement poured this afternoon.

That is the  final tier - I think.  I am at the top of the waterfall now and I was scratching my head, trying to figure out how I wanted it to look. I was thinking a small pool of water at the top flowing out and over the falls.  I then thought maybe just a flat surface with rocks piled up one the sides and back and a large rock on the top of the back of it where the water can shoot up and be dispersed back down again. 

I've thought of a lot of things, and frankly, I haven't made a decision yet.    There are still several days worth of work on it, at least.  Cement and mortar do not harden in 2 minutes, it's an over night thing. It's basically 24 hours of drying and setting before I come back for the next round.  I have overnight to figure out what I want to do, I do not want to put this off - make up my mind and do it. 

If I don't like it in the end, I can take  everything back off the top and redo it.  I am thinking of doing the small pool of water - if I don't like it, I can just fill it in and have a flat surface top.  That is probably what I will end up doing since it is non-binding in it's permanency.    Just a waterfall update.

The ex called today.  I wasn't going to answer it because I was in the middle of this fall project and wanted to get this phase of it done.  I felt strangely compelled to answer, so I did.  It was not a short conversation, but it as certainly an interesting one.  She was conferring to me different things about my son, her life and what's going on.  She is currently unemployed yet has found the Lord providing her sustenenance in seeing that all bills are getting paid.  Yes, in case you're wondering, I do believe in the Lord's provision, I have seen it countless times, I could tell hundreds of stories.  You could call some of them just happenstance, but some of my stories you would be very hard pressed to confer that fate or happenstance was what happened.                                                                                   

Then came the axe.  Well, this wasn't a killing type of axe in terms of denigration, it was much the opposite.  She stated that she felt compelled by the Lord to forgive the debt.  The debt is the amount of money awarded to her by the court at the divorce proceedings for half of the 401k I had in my account and half of the house.  It was stunning to hear those words coming from her.  She further informed me that she had been praying for me and that at 3:00 am on Thursday night, she was awakened by the Lord to interceed for me.  I am trying to remember if I was awake on Thursday at that hour - I do not sleep well and I am frequently awake at varying hours of the night.  I cannot, however, specifically remember being awake at that point in time or remember anything going on.  Which doesn't nullify the specificness of the time of day or the importance of what God would have been doing, I really don't know for sure.

She went even further asking me to forgive her for anything that might stand in the way of my relationship with the Lord.  Even further said that in recent days, people from all over the place, literally all over the world, had been inquring about me.  I have not been all over the world but my missionary endeavors had me meeting and in many instances, getting to know numerous missionaries from all over the place - Italy; Portugal; Spain; Romania; India; Pakistan; China; several places in South America and other locations on this huge- yet small - earth as well. 

It's definitely got me to thinking.  I have had this "urge" in the last few months to get involved with  a church somewhere, get established and get back in communion with fellow believers.  I have not necessarily resisted, but I have this stuff from church past that really puts up  a roadblock when I think about going.  I should be over this by now, but I find that I am not.  Small steps?  Well, the first step would simply be to shadow the doors of a church this coming Sunday.  Nothing grand, just go in, worship the Lord, receive the sermon, leave.  The second step would be to do it again the next Sunday, and the next and the next.  The third step would be to get involved in whatever meetings might be available.  A place to meet new people and get support and encouragement.  After that, well, that's so far off, it's not of a concern to me right now. 

Not going to go too far into that, I must take the first step and then I can give myself permission to dig into that a little further.

Meanwhile, the BP live feed of the robots at the ocean floor is of an overhead view of one of the robots cutting into what appears to be the main pipe. They have been cutting smaller pipes around it for a couple of days now, I think this is the big one that they are cutting and it appears there is oil coming out from the opening it's creating, further giving me reason to believe that they are coming to the point soon where they can try this giant capping operation that they have proposed.  That blade is a diamond studded blade - we sell them though infrequently, VERY expensive, but pretty much the most durable, rugged, long-lifed blade available in the industry.  Pretty much, you wouldn't expect them to use anything else.  Yes, I just went back to look: oil is now gushing out of the cut to the point you cannot see the blade that is doing the cutting.  Definitely the main pipe they have been talking about.

Back to the ponds, I am probably going to change my plan.  The leak in the pond is apparently growing, as the water level was 2 day's worth of leaking that it was only  a few days ago.  Meaning that I am planning on filling the new pond tomorrow - on the concrete slab - getting some water moving around in it and in a few days, move the fish into it.  All plants can be moved to the lower pond.  The upper pond will come out, be filled with water above ground and observed for leaks. If none detectable, let it set for 24 hours to ensure there are no leaks in it anywhere.  In either case - the pond will either be determined to be leak free or the leak will be found and fixed.  It will be filled with pond water from the big pond and the fish transferred yet again.  I will have shock treatment to help them cope with all the moving around. 

Once back in the upper pond - but above ground now - the lower pond will come out and will be set aside.  I will not need it for my new setup.  The hole will be dug out for the larger pond.  I must have the larger pond emptied before I start digging so I can trace an outline for digging out the hole.   Well, I might be able to trace it over the existing setup and save some of the fish tranferences. 

Regardless, I started this entry 3 hours ago and have been repeatedly interrupted - this is the end of it.

G'nite.
Ben

Tuesday's Monday

So the U.N. has condemned the actions of Israel in killing 9 people on those boats.
I'm not yet convinced.  Israel adamently claims that those ships were "hardly on a humanitarian mission".  It's a little unbelievable that the U.N. can come out with an official statement before an investigation is done.  But, the U.N. is nothing put a puppet, it has no real teeth and that can be seen in sanctions against North Korea and Iran that have basically not worked at all.  I'll wait for the outcome of an investigation before I go around publicly condemning Israel.  What if the U.N. is wrong, are they going to apologize?

I have avidly been watching the robots undersea.  Not GREAT viewing pleasure, but fascinating none-the-less.  It's hard to determine how many different robots they have down there, I have identified at least 3 from view the live feed.  Yesterday they had a saw blade attached to one of the robot's arms and were cutting through the damaged pipe.  Dunno if they finished that operation or not. 

As for today's work, a moderate amount of stuff in there to do.  Not quite the bang I like to see a new month starting out on - can you believe it's June already?  At the beginning of many months, we see a lot of new contracts beginning with some big money orders.  Not today.

I filled out an online form yesterday with SRP - it's their plan to equalize the amount you pay every month.  Pay $225 per month every month instead of having these months where it's $450 or $400 and then other months where it's $150.  They also have a time of use plan that I want to get involved with - basically certain hours of peak use during the day where you don't use heavy draw appliances and yes you save money.  But I already knew that.  Running a dryer in 110 degree heat in the afternoon is hardly a "good" idea.  Heating up the house while you're trying to cool it?  No thanks.  My tenants never figure this stuff out, I have to put up notices.  Well, I don't think they care is more the point. I'm responsible for the electricity, let "him" deal with it.

Not.  I'm considering for future tenants to charge for each use of the machines.  People always ask me if laundry is included, I always say yes - but - it gets me to wondering if they have been in rental situations where laundry was not included. Laundry, when considering the amount of it being done in my household, adds up to a lot of money.  If I could even get a washing machine on payments, I would do it.  Those new front loaders are very energy efficient.  If I could qualify for solar water heating, I would do that to - but - my housing payment issues from last year?  Killed my credit score.

I will be looking into financing on solar water heater regardless.  If they don't want to finance me, oh well.  Worth the try anyway.  I imagine significant savings on just hot water heating alone.  When you think of 10 people taking hot showers every day, plus laundry and warm or even hot water - there you go.

Work day approaches.  My manager is off for the week, I think.  The normal replacement manager is on vacation in Hawaii.  I have NO idea who is coming in here this morning to take control, I'll guess, however, it's the ops manager.  Very beautiful morning out, cool, you would not think that later on this week, the high temp is predicted to be 107 degrees - but that's what they're calling for on Saturday. I would ask "them" to cancel that call and order and please order highs in the 80's.  I don't think "they" are going to respond, though.  : )

G'day.

ben