After the dust storm yesterday, it was actually fairly quite this morning. I got a bag of ground up leaves bagged and mowed the back yard producing two more bags. I remember the days when I thought I’d just compost the leaves and grass but here in Texas they don’t break down. Grass that’s cut with the mulching blade just falls under the grass and after a couple of rains, becomes thatch. Now if you’ve ever seen how thatch keeps water from getting to the roots that need it below, you’ll understand why it was used as a roofing option in long time ago England. Leaves are twice as bad.

A friend of mine texted me today that he’s on the first vacation in 20 years. I love said friend but I wow, I’ve been bad about not taking vacations but that’s a little out of the pale.

I was extremely luck to have traveled recreationally the way that I have.. And honestly it’s been a rough row to get back into the work thing. I miss being on the road with no real destination and no real commitments. What an amazing way to see the world. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a beat down traveling but wow, we saw some beautiful things.

I’m happy with the reconfiguration I did with the XSL this week. But even so I’m happy that work is over with for the week.

We had a dust storm move through the area this afternoon. They hooped an hollered about crazy wind speeds and extreme fire danger. It was windy but not that crazy. With any luck the wind knocked the last of the live oak leaves off the trees. That usually drags on until April.

I started the day at 5:30am getting Sandy over to the airport. She was out of terminal C which is under construction so half of it is a huge hole in the ground. But they still use it, they even have a sign saying to use other terminals. Jackasses.

The weekend should be a restful occasion. Tomorrow is St. Patty’s day. I feel like I should be doing something for it but I looked around and there isn’t much going on. Not like Erie, damn bars opening at 7am with green beer. That’s okay. I just don’t like drinking any more. My body doesn’t tolerate it these days.

The weeks been cruising right along. I’m finishing up the two projects that they asked for. I’m not sure what’s next but hopefully it’s something.

Tomorrow, Sandy is coming home and I’m taking her to the airport at 4am on Friday. The road goes on forever and the party never ends…

My better half is out of town for training leaving me to my own devices again. That’s okay, I’m going to use the time to make a list of the things I’m interested in changing. First and foremost on that list is why I have issues when I’m left to my own devices.

The next is definitely why can’t I pay full attention to anything I should be doing. My mind is so splintered and with so much input it’s almost impossible to keep it on track.

RANT: You know, 4 generations ago we got up with the sun and went to bed by it, we farmed the land and the only worry to drinking water out of the creek was if a deer was pissing in the water upstream. The air was clean and the land unspoiled. You didn’t live that long and a simple infected cut kills you but god it seems simpler.
Oh well, god, grant me the serenity…

I was a bit tired last night and went to bed at the usual time, I woke up about the regular time and it was darker than usual. Somehow I completely missed that we set the clocks back this weekend. I mean it makes no never mind to me and I’m super happy to have extra daylight. It means that spring is almost here.

It was cold and rainy this morning but it gave way to a chilly sunny afternoon. We decided to do Olive Garden for dinner. Wasn’t too impressed. The waiter seemed to be overwhelmed and the food was just alright. I’m not sure what I expected. But a refill on the raspberry lemonade would have been nice. We should have taken the price of the drinks out of his tip.

Back to the grind tomorrow. Sandy’s out of town in Austin for training so I’ll geek out and knock out my class while she’s gone. That’s the plan anyways.

Did not get a bunch of sleep last night. I turned on the AC and the house wouldn’t cool down and when I got up around 12:30am I started investigating and it turns out that (I’m almost sure) we don’t have power to the HVAC compressor. I texted Brandon and asked him to touch base with me on Monday. Fortunately there’s not AC weather until then. With any luck that’s the only thing that was missed and it’ll be fixed in short order.

Made it out to the dump today. Got things off loaded in fairly short order. The truck is all kinds of muddy so I haven’t put it away. I’ll wash it tomorrow if the weather is as good as it’s supposed to be.

Made it to the gym for the first time in a while. I usually get my steps but don’t usually go to the gym. It was business as usual there. I plugged in to Nevermind by Nirvana and around the track I went. Did some jogging and running. The running seems to hurt a little more than I remember and hitting the high BPM’s is rougher too. But it’s good to push.

I did make progress at work and also figured out that I can log my time daily. This evening I got the truck loaded for free dump day tomorrow at the landfill. Got the big rock from my neighbors house and a whole bunch of stuff from the back yard and should be ready to go.

Let me start this by saying I don’t want to have insulation blown into the attic. I would rather have it cleaned out of the existing insulation and then spray foamed the top. But this is why we did the electric already. There should be no reason at all to go up and do anything up there. We have the camera wires there, and all the electricity lines we could need. And we have to do something as the summers are killing us with the electric bill. It needs to be done but once it is that space is dead to me. Which is fine as I can’t go up there anyways. $2200 and it’s done. I need to get a couple more bids but we’ll have it done.

Work is a bit stressful, we need to move forward with pulling against production and I’m getting nothing but crickets when asking to move forward. Ah, the joys of employment. I am feeling like an unused tool sitting in a toolbox.

The electric upgrade is complete for all intents and purposes. We still have the transfer switch to get put in but that will come in time. The hallway lights are amazing and I’m thrilled to have the 24o & 120 high amp plugs in the garage and the outside unit looks amazing but the truth of it is we won’t have the benefits until we redo the kitchen. We also have full 30 amp out to the RV which is nice too.

It feels like it’s been a long week and it’s only Wednesday tomorrow. Oh well, it will be nice to be back in the office instead of officing in the RV. I’ll sleep better tonight.

We went to Red Lobster to have a night out and celebrate. Wasn’t impressed. It was Lobsterfest and we spit a bowl of lobster bisque which went really well with the cheddar baked biscuits. I had the lobster roll which was three hawian sweet rolls with lobster pieces on top with fries. Sandy had Lobster Pappardelle pasta and we both had raspberry iced tea. It came to $98 or so with tip. It wasn’t worth it. Should have done the Olive Garden.

The electricians made great progress and I got some work stuff done. Tomorrow is the change over to the new box and powering it all up. Then I need to get the attic insulated in short order. I should start calling on that tomorrow. Hopefully we can keep our usage under 2k Kwh/month.

The cat situation worked out fine today. We took Rocky to the RV and Sammy hid in the house. Everyone seemed happy with that situation.