Monday, January 20, 2025

Monday - evening

Umm, yeah, I was just writing out a  post and poof, hit the wrong button and there it went. Even hitting the undo tab didn't bring it back, ugh. 

I'll try again. 

I'm going to jump to today tho and not start with what happened yesterday, gag me with a spoon as older current generation says it (yes, it rather odd statement but I'm sticking with it).

Today, I'm thinking about going out to eat.  I worked all weekend and haven't been out since Applebee's 2 Sundays ago.  I'm cutting back but not completely from eating out.  I'm doing very well at that, btw.  It was still mid morning, I get a text.

Power is out on lot 3 and 4, maybe 1.  

What?!!! Jackon's went out last night and then 2 more.  I'm sitting here, where I'm writing this in my bedroom office on my computer, wondering why he didn't contact me about this earlier.  He said he was going to check the circuit breaker on the shed. 

Umm, that won't do anything. It has nothing to do with those lots.  Well...whatever he asked..I just said I'm coming over.  I'm not leaving electricity up to him or anyone else for that matter, it's a thing I want to see for myself and make decisions on my own observations. 

In reality, the entire east side bank of power was done and gone for.  One 110 volt leg was working, the other was not.  RV's are strange how they work and I'm not going into all of that right now. I tried to figure it out and thought, well this looks like an underground problem. I had Trey use the multimeter he came up with other junk.  I thought about it for awhile and said no, that's not the problem. Went to the main breaker and then back to the first pedestal it comes to.  Power at the breaker, no power on that leg at the pedestal. 

Meaning, there is something going on underground.  I called James to come over. I only told him what was going on, I wanted to see if he came to the same conclusion without my input.  He did.  I started thinking. Is this related to the people that ran over the pedestal last year? Perhaps some sort of residual effect that I didn't know about and therefore couldn't prepare for? 

James came to the same conclusion. It's underground.  He wanted no part of that and I didn't blame him at  all. Remember, it's literally freezing cold, 31 degrees and the wind chill much lower when the wind started blowing.  It wasn't particularly pleasant, but I had to stick with it until the end.  I then called the contractor, but I had Trey start digging out the pedestal.  He didn't agree with me, he thinks he knows everything.  I'm facing paying a contractor thousands of dollars to repair this, I'm going to do what I can to fix it myself.  

The contractor came, I asked him to check everything, he did, same results.  Trey was still busy digging it out, I was supervising. Trey can earn his keep, that was my thought, get down there and dig.  He did. He had his own ideas he was constantly bringing up, I rejected them. Bandaid type of "fixes" that aren't going to do anything but be a temp fix. No, we're this far, the contractor is here, we're doing this. The contractor left after lengthy discussion and said call him when you find out what's wrong.

Trey is just a mess. He tries to get out of everything with minimal effort - laziness - and not doing things right.  I had to correct and prod him the entire time. No, Trey, we aren't doing that.  We got down to the wires.  Big, thick wires.  He put his hand down on the ground and immediately pulled it back up. Hey, it's super warm thee! That's where our problem is, I replied, dig it up. The circuit break was off, btw, no chance of electrocution.  

After a while: behold.  There it was. A mess of white ash looking stuff. There's our problem! I was rather jubilant.  Maybe this thing isn't going to cost me a fortune after all. Sure enough, he got down to the wire and it was a melted mess. The aluminum had melted for whatever reason.  Melted aluminum, melted sheath. 

I texted a pic of it to the contractor and then called him. He replied that he is at Ellis supply right now, he picked up the lug we would need to connect the existing wire to a new piece of wire, went to his shop and got a section of wire that we would need that he had laying around and came back over. I'm going to tell you, that guy was over there very fast the first time I called him. I was quite surprised to see him pulling up that fast and then he was over there again quick after calling him for the stuff we needed.  

In the end, we installed a new section of wire via a lug and coated it with this this liquid tape and turned the power back on an walaah!  I profusely thanked the contractor and told him to send me a bill.  Umm, no? It was only $15.  I insisted, I'm not trying to taking advantage of him and frankly, I wasn't facing a thousands of dollars bill to fix it.  No, it was only $15, he said again and said I don't want these people to be suffering.   It was and is cold. There is no doubting that. It was seriously distressing to me about the temps outside and people not having power and it apparently affected him as well.  

BTW, it didn't just cost him $15.  He had to come over, go to the parts store, go to his shop, come back over and spent the time helping.  I consider a person doing something like that as a person that has a big heart. Trying to earn a living, of course, but when the time comes to do what you can to help people, he was all over it.  He could have charged me $500 for all of that and I wouldn't have balked at it.  You do what you have to do. This is not summertime where you can just go outside or open doors and windows.  

I could go into the fiasco at Gurdon yesterday, but I don't feel like it. I was so consumed by this situation at the park today that it just superseded everything, including the Trump inauguration. I came home in time to see James phone with it playing live and Justice Roberts swearing Trump in.  All of that had completely escaped me with this park stuff.  

What I know about Trump at the moment is that he was going to sign off on 200 Executive Orders --  today.  That dude has a serious work ethic.  He's going to undo a lot of Biden bs.  Woke.  DEI. EV mandates.  Drilling bs. EPA garbage. Etc.  I do believe that at least temporarily? The war on natural gas is over.  These people believe that invoking their will on hundreds of millions of people is completely acceptable.  It never dawns on them that many or most people don't think like them or even want their nonsensical declarations dropped like atom bombs on citizens. 

Anyway, it's getting late and yes, I have pushups to do, which I completely forgot about until just now, gag. But, I'm going to get them done : )






 Wednesday - night Another rainy day. Long, dreary road, plant, loading, getting wet.  Getting home is especially nice after such days, I ju...