Eighty Years (or so) To The Big Zero

Bought groceries yesterday for spring break so I could stay home and not go anywhere unless I needed to.

Last night my refrigerator broke (again - four times in four years). No longer under warranty.

So do I spend 400-500 dollars to get it fixed knowing it’ll break again in another year or do I spend $1000-$2000 to get a new one?

I’m heading out to Sears today. This is also going on the the new Motiva Discover card. It’s really motivating.

For those keeping score at home:

Bed broke.
AC broke.
Car broke.
Computer broke.
Cat injuried.
Refrigerator broke.

Spirit? Bent but not broken.

I don’t think the financial aspects of this experiment are going to be successful. It’s something I’m just going to have to accept.

What is really annoying is this always happens. I get close to breaking even and series of events pull me back down. Happened in Dallas, happened in MD and now it’s happening again. Perhaps it’s poor decision making? But I’m not sure how. These things just don’t happen - they’re not suppose to happen - every five years or so. That’s whacked.  

Anywho… I’m still doing the exercises. Today I did a five mile hike around a lake that was really good. Still eating healthy-ish. And will start the sits and pushes tomorrow.

I’m going to a party today after I get my fridge installed - apparently they were looking for eligible men to go - so I was invited. Funny story. While I was in the shower today I cut my upper lip with the back side of the razor blade. (How do you cut yourself with the backside of a razor blade? I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention at the time. I was thinking about the pros and cons of new fridge versus paying for a repair.) I now have a large gash across my upper lip that was bleeding for nearly 30 minutes. Now it’s just a red sore - looks kinda like I have herpies or something. I’m still going to the party. I’m sure it’ll be great. Women like herpies right?

Well my friend should be here soon with his truck and we’ll be heading out to dig another hole in my credit line.

Take care everyone and I’ll take a picture of the new fridge when I get it in.

The Credit Trap, Thinking out loud

I started the land cleanup a little later than expected yesterday.

And after one day of clearing and burning it now looks like this.

Just goes to show you what can be done with a little elbow grease, sweat and off-road diesel. 8^)

Oh yeah, and while I was out there and the fire was just starting to make me become very nervous and I was debating how long it woul take for the Fire Department to arrive a big yellow elephant came by and helped out. But not too much. Just an hour or so. Really I could have done it all on my own but he seemed so eager to help out I just let him.

See all those roots and stumps in the pile?Those are the massive pine tree stumps that have been in the ground for over a year. (See first image in this post.) I kid you not, the big digger nearly tipped over trying to pull one of the largest stumps out of the ground. He had to dig all around the stump and snap the root systems. When he finally pulled it up the root stem was at least six feet long. It was nearly as big around as the stump itself. You can’t see it but it’s inside the core of that fire.

Here’s what the fire sounded like twenty minutes after they left.
Flash movie of Stump Fire

This Land

So things did not go so well that weekend.

I didn’t make it to the hike because of my cat. I saw my cat Vayne on Friday night and he had this huge swelling on his shoulder. There was no fur and some discharge and it was like a small bubble on the side of his shoulder. A friend of mine who recently lost one of his long time dogs had similar bulges and it turned out to be cancer. So I got up real early (6:45 am) in the morning on Saturday and started calling the vet.

I called, and called, and called. No answer. At 9 am a friend called and asked about Vayne. I said I couldn’t get a hold of the vet. “You calling the right number?” “Well yeah, it’s …… that’s the number.”

“They have two numbers.”

Silence. “Really?” He tells me the number he calls, and I check my print out for the Vet and there it is, the second number is the number he calls. I hang up and call and someone immediately picks up. They make room and I take Vayne into the Vet. He’s not happy. He’s crying the entire time even though I have my hand inside the cage petting him and calling his name. He’s still “meow”, “meow”, “meeooow”, “meh”, “MEOOOOOOWW”, “eow” for the entire 11 mile drive.

Doc sees him and says, yeah we’ll need to keep him overnight because we can’t get to him today. But clearly something is wrong. Could be infected but we’ll see. You can pick him up on Monday.

Sunday. Monday. Monday evening I call. “Hello. I’m on my way to pick up Vayne.”

“Oh that’s great. He’s fine. There was nothing wrong with him. Just a bruise on his shoulder. He would have been fine in a couple days. But at least we know.” (And indeed he is fine, not even a limp.)

$180 for the knowledge that my cat ran into something and spranged his shoulder.

I had to put it on my new Motiva Discover card. My first credit card purchase of the year and a blow toward Reset.

So I missed the hike. I was really looking forward to it.

Oh and I figured out how to get my SATA drives working but that’s another post on how Awesome it is to be a Geek.

Right now I’m just glad to be back up and running (not in RL) but on the computer.

I’m on vacation for the next two weeks so will be updating the various pages and stats for the Six Months to Reset experiment in the coming days. Have to plan out exactly what is a priority. Today I intend to do some burning of a huge pile of debris from some land clearing a while back with new material from the Tornado.

 Just beyond the bird house is a pile of trees. This was done during the winter. And just over the trunk of my new Toyota Corrola LE is the oak that was knocked over by the tornado. It’s in the last picture also. The second shot is a close up of the trees at the end of my driveway that blocked it and the easement that connects the road to my house and my neighbors home further back. We were cutting those trees up that morning just to get out of the driveways.

Hey, here is a picture of a tree that fell on the same day as the Tornado but was 7 miles away at a friend’s house. We had some very strong winds that morning all over the area. He was going to have to pay someone to cut it down but now that’s not a problem.

 (That’s not me. Just a friend who has helped me work on my yard and taught me a lot about living in the country. He’s gonna help get my garden going for next year. The spot I’m burning today is where I’ll be putting the garden.)

Until later.

The Credit Trap, This Land

I got the power supply for my computer tonight. Computers suck.

It was definitely the power supply. This thing is humming so happy now.

I was unable to get my SATA drive to be the boot drive and since I don’t have a floppy drive that works (suppose I should have purchased one when I got the power supply) I’m kinda back at the whole IDE drive thing. Which I just know this 40 gig drive, which I’ve had for a couple years, is ready to call it quites. I can hear it starting to whine now. Kinda like me. (I’m just a whiner. Seriously I think sometimes I complain too much. Jokingly of course but still with little kernals mixed in there. I’m gonna work on this.)

So my experiment has taken a nose dive while I pull myself back together after the storm, the computer, FCAT, and my dwindling clothing supply.

But no worries - well few. This weekend I’m going for a 5 mile hike and it should help clean things up some.

Until then thanks for reading and I’ll be back next week if all goes well this weekend.

See ya.

Thinking out loud

So we had a tornado on Friday. One of the two tornados touched down in my backyard and I was awoken by the sound of the ‘train’ tearing up trees. Yesterday I went into the back forested area and found the exact spot the tornado landed. I’ll see about getting pictures.

Here are some pictures of the aftermath. (After I cleaned up a little. Being able to get out of the driveway and access road was a priority.)

Coincidentally (sp?) my computer finally went out on Friday and I’m waiting on part to fix it so all my updates have to be done at work. 8^( (Hence not many updates until my main computer get fixed.)

I have 122 pictures so I can’t put them all online. I’ll add some more as time permits. There’s much more destruction. No one was injured or killed so that is good. Just property damage.

I was out on Sunday helping the neighbors clean up and we cleared a lot of material/trees. It’s amazing what you can do with a small group of detemined people pitching in. Ok one more.

Later.

This Land

And by beef I mean time.

I’m so crazy right now. There was a time I was craving a social life and now that I have one I’m just wishing I had time just for myself. Contradictions, I know. Maybe it’s not the social life I have but the kind of one I have.

I swear I heard people talking in my house the other day. They said “Ed, stop where you are.” I was wide awake and was slowly reaching for the gun next to my bed the voice was so clear. Then I heard footsteps and a reply from someone but the voice was muffled. I lay in bed working through the steps I would need to take to aim the rifle when suddenly I heard music. Classical music. Not a complete song but a short refrain from some Mozart piece and I suddenly had to admit to myself that I was still half asleep and half awake. There weren’t really people in my house. But I was up and I still heard noises. It was a restless night. I need to get a better bed. Only a few more months.

My exercise routine has completely fallen apart due to several factors. One I really did something to my lower abs and it hurts to do the sit ups. Really it does and everytime I do a sit up I can feel the muslces pulling and straining in tension. I’ve stopped doing them. The last couple days I haven’t been able to walk due to weather and/or not getting home from work in time to walk. Very annoying.

My experiment is hitting a rough patch. On a good note the new car is driving great. I took out an ex-lady friend to dinner for her birthday the other night (saving her from getting hammered and getting a tatoo that evening instead) and she seemed to really like the car. The car impresses the ladies. Sweet.

Financies are going ok but it’s tight. I pulled off an amazing technology job this week that, if I was a private contractor, would have gotten me a couple hundred dollars. A person I know, their hard drive to their computer just broke. Stopped working. Operating System not found error on boot up. After some serious jumping and hooting at the machine I was able to get the hard drive to respond and found the lost partitions. Copied out all their personal files to an external drive and using a new hard drive they purchased rebuilt the computer. They were very happy and I have to say even I was impressed with the end result. It wasn’t easy. I thought for a couple hours it was all lost.

Well it’s getting late and this is my first post in nearly a week. I had so much more to talk about but probably won’t have time to do another entry until this coming Sunday. Geez. Maybe I should slow down? But how do you slow down when you already feel like you’re standing still?

Thinking out loud