Happy Labor Day!

!

It has been a very quiet weekend here. And I mean quiet!  I have gotten a bunch of sleep (being able to be cool during the day makes a lot of difference) and I've been parked at the site for most of it so far. I put off doing laundry until in the morning. After that have to get a couple of things from grocery store, and then park for the rest of the day!

AND....college football hit it full stride this weekend and I spent yesterday watching it from 11:30am thru to 10:30pm!  It was great!  My time of the year has finally come around again! And Thursday night the NFL season kicks off...so it just gets better!!  I missed the A&M game, but got to see the Tide and Noles games. Missed the Auburn game...but that won't happen again. I have gotten my XM up and running with the help of my little Grundig radio...it's not fancy, in fact, it is rather jury-rigged....but....whatever it takes to be able to get my games is what has to be done!!  :-)  Tonight I'm switching between NASCAR and the TN game. Life just keeps getting!

I got a few more things done in the house today. I finally sat down and got my toolbox sorted back out and straightened up. It actually looks like a toolbox now and I just might be able to find stuff! Re-arranged some of my drawers and other storage. Got the drawers that are over head in from screwed down so that I don't have to worry about chasing them around on bad roads. Tomorrow I have to rework my cabinet that holds my frig and microwave...after the almost tipping over escapade the other day, it doesn't go all the way up to the wall now...I do believe that there is a box of kleenex and maybe a few other things behind it, so will have to unpack it and move it out and see what treasures I come up with behind there!

Abbie got to have a spa day this week...and boy did she need it! There was a streak of sun falling across her the other day and when I looked at her, she had enough dust on her that she looked like a four legged dust bunny!!  Now she is clean and I carry her to the area that is just dirt and kinda grass...she is not going to run around here in the dirt that has been pounded into talcum powder or thru the piles of busted opened bags of cement! No,no,no! So we play fetch and tug-a-war in the house now!

Another couple of weeks and hopefully the temps will start to cool off a little bit. It was "only" 98 here today, but the index made it feel like 101. And that is the forcast for the rest of this week coming up. I just can't wait for cooler weather to get here. Folks keep saying as you get older you'll like the heat better...well...I'm 60 now....and I just keep liking it less! I still prefer the cooler weather...in fact, I think I am liking the cold weather better each year!

That about does it for this installment, each day is a lot like the others here on this job. Hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend and I'll post some more on here later this week.  Have a good week, everybody

Hot Weekend!

I watched 2  football games today! Ahhhh...that time of the year is back! Then I settled in to watch a few movies tonight. Had not watched my all time favorite in quite a while, so that was my start point. 

It has been one hot weekend in San Antonio! Both Saturday and Sunday it hit 102. That is warm!  I spent the weekend here on the site. It is a lot easier to find a spot to park when you're in a small town than in the big city. But so far I've done fairly well. But it has been quite hot each afternoon. I do believe that it has been 100 or over for about 14 or 16 days so far....yeesh!

When it is a little cooler in the mornings I'm still working of settling into my little home on wheels. It is coming along slowly but surely.  I have to replace the alternator on Bertha this week. I'm thinking I'll just see what one of these shops close by will charge me to put it on. I'm walking better, but I'm still not  very flexible.  ;-)

I got my Company shirts Saturday. I do believe they have been here for a week or so, but not a word to me that they were here. And I must say, they are not the prettiest shirts I've seen. And hot! Boy, are they hot. I'm hoping that after a couple of washes they will be a little more wear friendly!

In the morning I'm headed to the laundromat to do the weekly wash, then to HEB to stock up on water and a few groc that I need. Going to try to get everything that I will need for the next 7-9 days, because if I am able to park where it will be best to get me out of the way here at the site, I will be trapped for about a week while they get the forming and pouring done for the rest of the road around the complex. :-) 

Just some food for thought....I've been listening to all the reporting on the MO "riots" and protests...and as I was, I also heard other news stories about other areas and the "prejudices" that exist. And while those were going thru my head, and I was sorting them out somewhat, that something became apparent to me. If you look at an area, state, country, etc....it becomes rather apparent that whoever were the "last comers" to that area seem to become the "downtrodden", those that are at the bottom of the pecking order.  It is not a hard and true thing, but if you get to looking at it, that is what seems to be the norm.

Enough deep thought for the weekend....makes my head hurt!!  LOL  ;-)

Just made my second round of the night, time to clean up the kitchen and get clothes ready for wash. Straighten up a little more and vacuum some.  I've learned how to keep the house bareable in the afternoons....I drop the temp in here to about 70 or so overnight, then during the course of the day, as it heats up, my little air conditioner can keep up with it pretty well until about 4:30. By 5pm the heat of the day starts to drop and so it starts to cool off in here again. If I can get a spot that is in the shade after 3-4pm, then the issue of keeping cool get much less of an issue.

Enough for tonight, making a cup of coffee and putting my foot up for an hour or so, then time for another round.  Have a good week and hopefully I'll remember to post sooner than that!!  :-)

Quiet Friday!

A fairly decent panoramic shot of where I'm parking every day. I have me "parking spots" all measured out & Bertha is 95% shaded most of the time I'm here.  Today has been quite pleasant in comparison to the past 4-5 days. Will be pushing 100° again, but the humidity is down quite a bit & there seems to be a breeze about 75% of the time.

The one good thing about being able to park here is I'm not having to run my generator at all hardly. Right now I'm having to crank it up to charge my batteries about twice daily...my alternator is going bad, so until check day I just make sure I have the battery charger set up each time I crank the generator and I just keep mudding along until I can replace it sometime next week. Kind of a bother...but it works!  :-)

As you can tell in the picture,  I leave my crutch as much as I can get away with now, but any "long" walking (as in over 50') I have to use it...but my leg & foot are doing remarkably better. Maybe by the first of the year I might be back to normal for me! Still trying to figure out what normal for me is!

Saw this old Ford come driving by a couple of days ago, thought it was really nice. Since then I've seen it several times...it is almost like it is his daily driver. And when I got close to it finally I realized that the gentleman driving it looked like he might have bought it new!   LOL

Abbie is getting used to this style of being on the road...finally!  But this weather is hell when you're small, black with lots of coat!  But she is surviving very well. She still goes separation anxiety whenever I leave her in the house and go do something. But she's getting better about that also.

And I am finally getting good use out of my chair that I've been hauling around for these past 4 years! My beige "director's" chair with the side table. It is so comfortable & perfect for sitting out here in "the woods"! LOL. ;-)

That about covers it for today...think I'll eat a little something and then get ready for tonight. Speaking of eating...I'm down to 249 lbs! Amazing how thus heat/humidity and walking with a crutch will take it off of you! That is a total of 42 pounds in 4.5 months. Not bad! It has brought my blood pressure down to basically normal range also!  Of course, my Thrive & ASEA have helped a lot also.  ;-)

Have a good day, everyone.....and I'll add another note tomorrow.  C'ya!

Quiet Sunday

It is quiet in the big city on Sunday! More or less!  :-)  Well, at least there is about 80% less traffic!  Heheh  It is amazing just how much different you see a city on a Sunday morning. It is almost peaceful.  When the shift was over I pulled out and headed to the laundromat for my weekly clothes washing. It is always basically empty, one or two folks come in while I'm there, so it is nice. And they got the A/C fixed apparently, because it was nice and cool in there this morning.

Got all my clothes done, stuffed back into the laundry basket to fold later...as we all know, the wrinkles will fall out shortly after you put them on!!  ;-)  But today was even less $$....I had just one top load and one dry load, so all my clothes are clean for $2.25! I still can't get over the price...a top loader for $1...on the road they had cost $2-2.25. So this has been a pleasant surprise.

Right now I've settled into the parking lot of the nearby H.E.B. grocery store. It is literally on a hill top and there is a really nice breeze here...bordering on a soft wind! Even with the sun coming and going it is quite pleasant. It's amazing just how much better your attitude is when you are not feeling like you are sitting in an oven! But I can honestly say I am looking forward to fall/winter/spring! My body and temperment are just not very good for dealing with heat any more! I would rather be cold! :-)The HEB has a rather large "green" area on the south side of the parking lot...so Abbie got to play fetch and "run, run, run" for a half-hour a little bit ago. She just went wild! For those of you that have had the opportunity to watch her "fly" around...she had that tail of her's on the ground and just tearing up the ground!  She was moving so fast that she was loosing traction on grass! Now that is flying!!  And she still loves to do the fetch thing...we have to do a little relearning about "bring it here" since she is a bit rusty with that aspect of the fetch idea!

I keep trying to get at least one or two small projects done each week in Bertha...which is a trying process at times with all the heat that has been here this past two weeks.  I try to work at least an hour or so when I get off, but that is not always the case...depends on just how hot it has stayed overnight. But yesterday I did get my cables run for adding my inverter to the inside of the house so that I can run my generator less. I can usually make it until about noon each day before I need to fire up the A/C to try to keep it cooler inside here.

But the past week has also taught me that when the temp gets above 91-93 degrees, my little A/C unit is had put to cool it...mainly due to the way the vent tube works and the heat that comes off of it. I'm going to try to find some sort of flexible insulation that I can wrap it up with. I think that will help a whole lot.  But it also helps greatly when I can get under some shade for the heat of the day. Which also means that I am looking into what kind of CoolKote or something of that nature that I can do the roof with.

This has been quite a challenge, to re-order my 2 year plan down to a 3 week plan and then prioritize what had to be done to get out here on the new job! It was quite a shuffle job. Many thanks to my kids for the help and patience of putting up with an 'ol fart like me that is going thru another "life change"!  ;-)

I have been listening to a lot of NPR since I started this venture (I can't find PBS here...in fact, most of the stations have pretty sad signal for television stations), so break out the shortwave radios! Have used both of them since being here and have happily found 2 NPR stations and a couple of Classical stations...so I'm set!!  I'm going to try to figure out how to get my XM up and running again if I can get it close enough to one of the radios so that I can tune it in....it IS football season, you know!!

Anyway, the other day I was listening to an interview on NPR with a young gal that is a singer/songwriter named Caroline Rhodes. She has a pretty good sound, good words/thoughts for her songs, and travels around living out of her van! :-)  Towards the end of the interview as they were talking about all the different things/jobs, etc that she has done because she didn't feel like she could live just doing music. But after several years she made the plunge and started doing the "music thing", and she feels like whatever we do, and go, and work at....when it is all boiled down, we are the happiest when we "come back to the thing that we love the most"....very perceptive for a very young person. It made me think about myself and my "true love" which has always been traveling and seeing what was out here and sharing it with others that can't get/go to see these things...and so here I sit starting out all over again on another path that has brought me full circle back to the thing that I love....being totally fluid in daily life....which is almost where I am with this new job. I might be in one spot for a month to 6 months...but I'm living out of my little antique RV with my dog and seeing the world from a viewpoint that not many get the chance to see.

So if you read an entry from me that has a slightly "down" tone to it...chalk it up to heat, old age, mental instability, being around too many people for too many hours....or just a bad day!  Because, overall, I'm in a stage of my living experience that I have striven to get to for the past 30 years or so!  And, in all honesty.....I'm more at peace right now than I have been in the past 30 years!!

Hmmmm....breeze is slowing down a bit, and it is up to 81* here now....hmmmm....I do believe I shall be on the hunt for shade in a bit...but maybe we will get some of the rain that keeps moving by just to the north of us. From the looks of the radar and from what I heard this morning on the news, DFW got hammered last night and this morning...folks here would love to have some more of that! The one thing that is amazing is that it is halfway thru August and it is pretty well still green around here and the trees are not wilted...so they have had a pretty good summer with rain here so far.

AND...it has also been a good week for Bertha!!  She is now LEGAL!!!  YEA!!!  Many, many thanks to Betty Jenkins at the tag office at Etowah County Tag Office...she is an angel in disguise! (Spelling??  LOL) She got all the paperwork thru for me and mailed it out! It got to Tif and Cary's and I had her send it to me c/o General Delivery at the post office close to me....well, was that an education. I'm used to being where there are small towns and single post offices...such is not the case in the larger cities apparently!  All General Delivery packages go to one PO here...and of course it was about 17 miles away! I believe it was/is part of the cost savings for the PO, but boy, it doesn't do much for "cost savings" for the customer! But, be that as it may....I have a legal Bertha now!!!  YEA!!!  And a pretty tag also!  :-)

One "small" update....I hit the publish button by mistake!!  LOL  I just took the time to go ahead and "upgrade" from the 300w inverter to the 1000w inverter...it shows me the voltage left in the batt and the watts being used. And a fairly pleasant surprise, the small blue fan and the tv on at the same time only draw 10w. Not surprising, but I also now know that the frig draws 90-100w, so it will be sparingly used on the battery.  :-)

It is now 2pm and I am looking for football...but not a replay of the Dallas game (same old Cowboys!). Hopefully I will be able to find some football...but with the results that I have gotten so far with the stations here, I have my doubts.

And...I'm sitting on the end of the parking lot that has grass/hillside/trees on it, so the air is a lot cooler when it gets to me. It is supposed to be 102* today, but it is only 89* on Weatherbug and it is overcast, so it is quite bareable. I'm learning more about how to live the life I've chosen each day!  It is quite fun, actually!!  :-)

This should be it for today's update and I'll be trying to do this at least twice a week, maybe more if things call for it.

P.S. - - - - And just for those of you that are interested and have been following the saga of Frog's blood pressure....just took it and.....

152/84

:-D

Parking is a Nightmare!

 My how time flies when you are working 6p-6a....in fact,you tend to loose track of the days and dates!  It has been two weeks since my last update, so get ready for a long one! I am in San Antonio, TX on a job at a construction site. It has been interesting...no power onsite for me (was suppposed to stay onsite),
so I found this spot under some shade trees behind a big Regal Theatre. Was really nice until yesterday, the manager came by and let me know that Regal wouldn't allow parking on their property...so....I am on the hunt for some where else to hide during the day...and they just don't exist. I'll just have to see how it goes for the next couple of days. And where the site is, in the middle of the San Antonio Medical Complex, there just aren't any places to park. And businesses definitely don't want to have an RV parked on their property...even if it is in the back and gone during their main busy times. Oh Well!

 A few days ago I got my "entertainment center" situated and operational...so I now have my dvd's and Wii Mini up and operational.  It is nice to have some entertainment available when I'm off. As usual, the tv stations here are of a limited selection...I haven't even been able to find PBS here...so there isn't much, but I do have the Networks, so I can get some sports on the weekends.

 Above are the tools of the trade for this new venture. You have to be able to see at night and since I can't do a bunch of walking yet, I have to be able to see a distance from where I park and ends of my walks.

I got my rice cooker out the other day and made my first batch of rice in it. And it worked flawlessly! But I had forgotten just how much 2 cups of rice is! Ate on it for two days!

The panorama shot above is of the "common area" for the complex. It will have a pool and "garden" area...pretty big project.

Below was from the other night when we had a really good line of thunderstorms come thru!  It was in the middleof the night,and the lightening was bright enough to get a couple of shots out the front window of Bertha. I was a major rain, and set construction outside back for 2 days. 

Below is a panorama of the from side of the job. It is cramped to say the least. The entrance is basically a one-way drive..it is not wide enough for two vehicles to get thru during the day with all the equipment running around.

 Have gotten to know some of the workers by face, and they are a friendly group. These shots of a delivery truck is driven by Oscar. They bring most of the sheetrock into the site. And it is a job!!  He spent the whole day there yesterday just trying to get two loads done, and by 7:15pm he was fed up and frustrated, and they left back to the yard, with 126 sheets still onboard. It is just such a hassle to get anything done with such limited space.

 These two shots are of the back of the project which is where I had thought that I was going to be parking....but....when I got here I was told that there was only generator power, no water and not space actually to park on site. So...I had been going offsite every day and coming back at night. And all this open space here in the pics is now formed and rebarred and ready for a pour on Monday morning. The problem with this is there is just barely room for me to turn around at the far end now, and when they pour, you can't get on it for at least 7 days...it is just getting hard to park.

 

This shot above is a round view of the front side of the site. As you can tell, there is just not much room here to do much of anything. It is a more or less corner lot that is on a hillside and not very big. And from what I have guessed, there will be about 350 apartments here. Thus the reason for the parking deck. Boy will they be cozy!!

 

And I got my new Alabama Tag today!  Isn't it pretty! So now Bertha is totally legal!! It is such a relief.

I'll try to make an update in a couple of days. Fired up the generator to get the A/C running because it was just too warm to sleep. I'm at a Home Depot about 3 miles from the site. Might stay here over the weekend unless I find something better. Which I'm not real hopeful of. :-)