Dale's blog. Why would you care?
Man, the City of Omaha and Deffenbaugh are aces. What a fantastic job of not only picking up the garbage, but making sure our street stays nice and quiet… since you cna’t drive down it without zig-zagging around the chicanes.
I’m letting the Straight Talk Wireless lapse, and will sell or give away the phone. Overall impression: The service is fine, just not the right direction for me right now. The phone is not without its faults, but is good as a very basic smart phone.
The only real annoyance I’ve had is Straight Talk texting the phone a few times with upsells, and calling the house number to “remind” me that the service is expiring in a few days. I suppose I can forgive the reminder calls (though I do wish they could be stopped without calling in to talk to a salesdroid). The texts were a little annoying, though.
So Wednesday I was headed to the airport, minding my own business, when it became apparent that something was really wrong and I should probably find an ER. I was right – something was wrong. In hindsight, I was wrong to think I needed to drive to an ER, I probably should have just parked and called 911. Anyway, I am now the slightly sheepish owner of a little chunk of metal mesh in one of my coronary arteries.
I’ve made some changes to my diet and exercise plans, of course. Lisa and I had already done a lot over the past couple of years to improve our diet, but of course there is always more to be done. Less cholesterol, less sodium, less fat, more fiber, more exercise. I’d been working on making changes, but apparently not aggressively enough and it caught up with me.
But, now I’m home and doing fine. I came home from the hospital yesterday (Friday). We took Buddy for a walk and I started getting used to taking a small array of pills that I’ll be stuck with for a long time to come — some of them permanently. I’m not complaining; I’m alive and still reasonably healthy and will be improving that. I’ll be around for the grandkids’ high school and college graduations, Lisa will have a husband, I can start seriously nagging her about smoking (grin) and I’ll be able to fly again.
Life’s good.
This morning Steve & Laura showed up — Steve made me this clock, which is way too cool. The only challenge will be deciding where to have it so people can see it. Thanks Steve!
By popular demand, I’ve updated my Christmas list. I’ll try to think of more stuff to add.
Recently the keyboard on my Droid 3 has been misbehaving. I finally took a little bit of time to clean it out with some alcohol and compressed air. Works like a charm!
Of course, then I took a little time to play with voice recognition. I may not use the keyboard again. I did this entire post using voice recognition and did not touch the keyboard other than to make a few punctuation corrections. I also used the new word press Android app — it’s a little buggy, but seems to work okay for the most part.
After a week or so of work, we’re getting a lot closer to being finished with the big jobs in the garage. The floor is looking pretty good; we still have the last section to do but that should only take a day. Lisa will be the first to get to park on the new floor this afternoon when she gets home from work.
The epoxy paint seems pretty tough! I slid the deep freeze across the floor to get it back where it belongs. It’s usually a pretty big PITA to move around, because there are no slides or even feet on the bottom – just bumps in the sheet metal on the bottom. It left a trail of light gray that just wiped -ff — I think it was just concrete dust from previous moves, maybe with a little appliance paint. No damage to the floor, other than knocking off a few of the decorative flakes. After a quick swipe with a damp rag, you can’t tell where the drag marks were. I don’t know if I mentioned it in my previous posts, but after MUCH research I decided to just go with the Rust-Oleum epoxy garage floor paint. It was readily available (Home Depot had it on the shelf) and not as expensive as the other options I was looking at — which means, if it starts coming up in a few years I haven’t spent $2500 on the floor like one of my neighbors. Yes, his does look better and he had other people do the work… but hey, I’ll spend some time and effort to move a decimal point! I figure I have spent well under $400 on this, including the grinder rental and painting supplies.
I wanted to have a utility sink installed, but the quote from the plumber to do just the bare minimum work so I could do all of the actual installation and drywall work… well, it was simply insane. I guess we’ll run a hose from the laundry room when we need water out there.
Lisa and I took Lauren, Holly and Burke to the River City Roundup rodeo last night. It was the first time any of us had been to a real rodeo… a good time was had by all! The two little ones got cowboy hats. We saw the animals in their pens for 4H judging; the little ones were pretty jazzed to get to see and touch the sheep, goats, and cows. They also got to see some pigs (mainly tiny little piglets) and barnyard fowl — ducks, a goose, chickens and a rooster. I didn’t get many pictures because riding herd on the kids kept us hopping. They enjoyed the rodeo events, as did Lisa and I. It’s pretty fast paced, not much time to get bored waiting for the next event! I think the two little ones will be naturals for mutton busting in a few years. That was hilarious, and it looked like the kids were having a blast! On the way out, Lauren pulled a loose tooth — another first for her, she’s never pulled one of her own before.
The past few days have been a lot of work. Friday afternoon I rented a diamond grinder from Honeyman Rent-All and spent several hours grinding the floor. I had to completely empty everything out of the garage into the driveway and yard. Of course it all had to go back inside when I finished around 1 AM.
The diamond grinder was pretty easy to use. It’s a little noisy, but not bad enough to get the neighbors complaining. The hose connects directly to it to keep water flowing to keep the heat and dust down. I was able to do all of the grinding, rinsing and squeegee-ing in about 4-5 hours.
Saturday I rinsed the floor and used the citric acid from the Rust-Oleum epoxy paint kit. Probably unnecessary, but I had no other pressing need for two bags of citric acid. It also cleaned up the inch or so that the grinder couldn’t get right up against the wall. Then I spent another hour or two rinsing the floor, followed by the squeegee. After the second round I used the shop vacuum to get it as dry as possible. It’s looking pretty darned good right now, so Sunday will be painting day. I have prepped both sides, but the third bay will have to wait. I simply can’t empty everything out of the whole garage for a week.
