I am super happy that this week has come to a conclusion. Not that it was bad, but using my brain that much hurt. This evening, I installed a new meteorological station that I got from vivor.com. so far so good, I was able to mount it to the fence between my neighbor’s house in mine so it’s in a good place and it connects with the panel indoors just fine but it seems to have an issue connecting to the wireless network. Once you connect to it and feed it the information for the SSID and the password, it joins the network, but from everything I can gather, it signs itself to 192.168.1.1. If that’s not the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of, I’m not sure what it is. Every router, with a possible exception of two, that I’ve ever owned has used that as the default IP address. I still have to do my due diligence, but I’m very unimpressed with its web wireless setup.

I started cleaning yesterday in a little bit today. I even pulled the slide out on the RV and started cleaning inside of it. I really like the cordless vacuum that we got for the RV. It’s nowhere near the class of vacuum that the Dyson is but if, God forbid, the RV gets destroyed or broken into and that vacuum goes away I’m not losing any sleep over a $60 vacuum. I need to get on the roof of the RV tomorrow and cut some limbs back that are rubbing the roof. We certainly can’t have that.

It’s Mother’s Day weekend this weekend. I think tomorrow Sandy wants to go to the Botanical Gardens. She wanted to do that last weekend for her birthday, but the Mayfest was across the street, and I really didn’t want to deal with that kind of traffic. Hopefully the weather will play nice and it will be gorgeous again. Next week, we’re already going to be up in the 90s. I guess it’s about that time of year, and I’m honestly dreading it. Oh well, I won’t be in Texas too much longer, hopefully.

It’s time to get some rest so I can get on and get stuff done with the weekend. I’m looking forward to it even though I know it will go by too quickly.

What a week, just wow! Monday started out well enough, I was getting ready for a data warehouse preview I was going to do on Tuesday. Then Tuesday rolls around, and it seems we need a whole bunch of mock data that can be used for testing. I had already half built Integrations to populate the ancillary data but was nowhere near having anything end-to-end. So Wednesday was a complete hackathon, and today was doing the same thing, but putting it in a logical order so it can be done again if needed. Of course, putting it together in a logical order and having it ready to replicate means it will not be needed.

It was actually nice to be running at full bore again. It’s been a hot minute since I put things together like that. It felt great to be useful.

I’m trying a new methodology of writing posts that doesn’t have anything to do with writing. I’m just using the WordPress app on my phone to dictate the post. This has some great advantages in that I don’t have to be in front of a keyboard to create a post. For someone who earns a living working with computers, I sometimes don’t take advantage of the modern marvels that we carry around in our pocket and the technology they offer. I’m going to work on that.

Tomorrow is friday, Sandy will be back, and it’s Mother’s Day weekend. I need to catch up on inside stuff, and the lawn probably needs to be cut again if the weather cooperates. I also have the roofers coming on Monday to remove the leaking Skylight in the kitchen and shingle over. Hopefully, that stops the leak, I can make the repairs and move forward with the kitchen remodel.

We also have a new pope today. Hope Leo the 14th I think, he’s also the first pope from the United States. I guess they figured if the Antichrist is running the United States best to get someone from there to be God’s messenger on Earth.

Life is good and I’m looking forward to the weekend!

We rocked it today. I dragged Sandy out of the house and over to moms house for breakfast. It was nice, they get the best eggs. After breakfast mom wanted us to eat cake for Sandy’s birthday, so after all those years it turns out when you’re 53 you can have cake for breakfast. We were too stuffed to do so but she’ll freeze it and we’ll have it next weekend for Mother’s Day.

We bolted out after breakfast and then I went for my usual bike ride around Hurst. Got some pictures of Indian paintbrushes like we say hiking yesterday. Today is the last day for the water tower to be on the base of the tower. It’s supposed to raised tomorrow and I’m hoping to get a couple of pictures of it going up.

When I got home Sandy was already doing yard work. I got changed and joined her. She does the front yard with her electric Ryobi mower and I do the back with the gas mower. So we mowed, edged, trimmed, blew and she trimmed the holly’s in the front and I trimmed the bushes on the east side of the back yard. Finished bagging it all up and called it a day at about 1pm.

Then just joined the cats in being lazy and enjoying the day. I feel exhausted but we got a lot done this weekend and the house looks great. A good nights sleep and we’ll be ready to rock Monday’s world!!!

As I’m terrible at planning anything, we did a spur of the moment trip to the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge for some hiking. I think that we decided that I haven’t been there in 45 years. I remember being in elementary school and having a field trip there.

We did almost 5 miles, most of the river side trails were underwater but we still hiked al over the place so it was nice. We did forget the hiking bag so we lacked the binoculars and water. We did have a packed and iced down cooler and as soon as we got back to the Xterra, I slammed an ice cold ice tea, wow it was the best drink I’ve had it a while.

After that we headed to Little Germany for some good German food and after a hike like that we were starving. Unfortunately they were out of good German food and it wasn’t very tasty. The schnitzel was wafer thin and tasteless, even the sauerkraut was lousy. Sigh, there’s just no good ethnic food in Texas unless it’s Mexican.

We finished off the day with a trip to Brahms for ice cream and then home. We did take a quick bike ride down to the plaza where they were having a parking lot sale but it ended before we got there. Oh well, less junk for us.

So Tony and Cindy were gone by the time I got up, they made it to Mexico eventually. Sandy and Shelly went for coffee and then Sandy had to go to work. I checked the tire pressure and oil and such on the Xterra so Mike and Shelly could take it and enjoy at least a day here. But that wasn’t to be. Instead of their 8pm flight they caught one at 4:00ish and I took them to the airport around 1:30 and came home and finished up work.

Happy we were able to provide a stop over and have a meal with new friends and old.

We had storms run through the area and Shelly and Mike and their friends Tony and Cindy were waylaid at the airport. They managed to Uber over to Love Field and got a rental and came over here.

Unfortunately we only have the one spare bed in the spare bedroom but not two. Tony and Cindy crashed out on the couches and Shelly and Mike took the spare room.

We had a nice dinner at Saltgrass, everyone that was there was exhausted because they’d been up since like 1am to make it from Erie to Cleveland. That’s where they actually encountered the delay that would strand them, the delay there cause them to miss the Mexico flight here and then of course the rain hit so nothing was going anywhere.

It was nice to be able to help stranded travelers. I still remember when I was flying up to Pittsburgh and stuck at the Atlanta airport and Tony came to pick me up, gave me a place to crash and got me back to the airport the next day. I was able to pay that forward. Still miss my old friend.

Today went by pretty quick. I guess that’s a good thing. I still feel like I should be getting more done with my days. Some days I look back on the day and have to ask myself what the hell did I do all day. Today was one of those.

Sandy had to go out to work so I did dinner. I asked her what she wanted and oddly enough it was burgers. I couldn’t believe that ground beef was almost $6 a pound at the neighborhood market. As much as I hate it, America deserves what’s going to hit it over the upcoming years. I’m really grateful that I don’t have kids that are going to have to live through the fallout.

I myself am doing well though. I’ve positioned the second to last payment of the home improvement loan. so mid week next week I’ll be under 20k owed. For everything. That will be nice.

It wasn’t bad for a Monday, I finally got the powers that be to sign off on the work I’ve been doing for the past three weeks and that’s always a good thing. Also got the marching orders for naming convention for final promotion from dev to stage. Which rocks.

On the home front, I got the ashes from the burn over the weekend into the bag and out to the curb. Got my bike ride in, hit 1700 on the old bike. Took a picture of the front of the house for posterity.

I’m happy today, I’ve got a good life and things are moving my way, slowly but surely. I have more than I need and I’m thankful I have someone to spend it with and pets to pamper. Life is good!!!

Sandy’s ankle was swollen so I did the Sunday bike ride solo today. Got 13 miles in, it was nice. Beautiful weather for it. They put the maintenance guts on the top of the tower, really neat to see.

Another thing is that I was riding over in an abandoned retail district and found a sign on the door of the old At Home spot (which is huge) and it looks like they’re wanting to put a bar in there. It’s really not a bad idea. There’s a ton of room and a ton of parking, it could be a mid-cities version of the Bronco Bowl, they’ve got hotels and such so they could be a venue for bands… But the truth of it is that area will never be a crowd gathering area again, retail as we knew it is kind of dead. The Northeast Mall is on life support. If the Macy’s closes there (or any of the anchors for that matter) the mall is gone. Forever 21 closed up shop leaving absolutely nothing in that corridor. It’s kind of sad to see.

Once I got home we decided to go to Egg Haven for breakfast. I (for some reason) had a bit of anxiety just because I thought that it would be crowded. It wasn’t. It was very good too. Sandy had the French toast with Nutella and bananas. I had coffee (good cup of Joe) and the American breakfast. The sausage was patty (not link) so I got the bacon. I’m not the biggest fan of bacon when eating out because I make it better:)

I wounded myself today doing the yard work. But I got everything burned that I wanted to get burned and I managed to clean up the west side of the back yard so Sandy has a place for full sun for her plants. Doesn’t look bad at all.

So after a nap, we decided to go to the Arbor Daze over in Euless. I really wanted to see the drone show and it was Arbor Daze so they were giving away free trees. Oaks too, I thought they were just giving Red Oaks but they also had Live Oaks. Now Live Oaks are kind of a pain in the ass of a tree, they don’t shed their leaves in the fall like normal trees, they do it in February through April. But, the tree I have in the front is a Live Oak, my neighbors tree is a Live Oak and if I did get a Red (or other) Oak, I would have the fall leaves AND the spring leaves. It’s a no win so we got the same tree.

The drone show was interesting, I did like it. It doesn’t really compare to the explosions you get to witness with fireworks but it was neat. It’s not as instantaneous as you’d think as it takes time for the drones to align. Here’s what it looks like.