At the Park – Days 76 – 81

Tuesday Sept 5 – Sunday Sept 10

Good evening.  It is still evening although I’m sure it will be morning by the time I wrap up.  🙂

For those of you who like pics and video, you should like this post.  It has quite a few.

Lots to tell.  Where to start?

Let me start by sharing the pick of the easy up that I put up Monday at the property.

Tuesday was a busy day on the personal front.

• Caught a wind/sand storm on video.  You can view it here.
• Prepared the drone to be shipped back to the seller for exchange and submitted UPS pickup request for it.
• I was notified that the sale of the house on Augusta Drive fell through due to financing.  The buyers were $3k short.
• Notified the seller of the car hauler that I would not be buying it due to finances.
• Contemplated loan for solar and water so reached out to rainwater harvesting companies in the area – Southern Arizona Rain Gutters Inc and Oasis Water Harvesting for pricing estimates.
• Updated building permit packet in anticipation of getting septic building permit information.

 

Wednesday

• UPS picked up the drone.
• Reviewed finances.
• Bought a new book – “Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making” by Allan Savory.
• Talked to Rick from Oasis Water Harvesting for an extensive period of time.
• Did some chores around the trailer.
• Encountered the first mosquito I’ve seen since I’ve been out here.  It is really nice being able to sit out after dark without being covered head to toe in DEET.

Thursday

• UPS delivered the computer I ordered to use as a server for the cameras and other things.
• Contacted the Realtor and asked him to re-engage the buyers for the Augusta Drive house to find a solution on how to deal with that $3k gap and got assurances that the renter in the W. Michigan house would be out this weekend one way or another.
• Normal trip to Douglas for groceries with a short stop at the tavern on the way home.
• Decided against taking out any loans.  I would have had to trade a lot rent here at Rusty’s for the loan payment as there is no other surplus funds available for any more loan payments, and I didn’t want to pay for the loan fees given the short period of time that I would need the money.

Friday

• Made black bean soup for the potluck and enjoyed a bit of social time with my neighbors in the park.
• Installed the memory and hard drive in the new computer, then installed Debian 9 as the OS.

Saturday

Found this footage of a visitor captured by the camera during the night.

I spent the bulk of the day at the local “Heritage Fest”.  They have speakers come in and give presentations on various subjects.  For the most part, I found all the presentations interesting.  Saw my property neighbors Tom and Alicia there.  I mentioned something about coming over for a visit and Tom indicated I could just show up.  They were fine with that.  Hoping I will be able to find the down time this week to do that.  Anyway, here was the agenda for the day for anyone who cares.

I headed to the property from there to drop off a couple things and check on the easy up to see how it survived.  This is what I found (and left to deal with later).

I headed to Coronado forest to make sure I knew where the visitor’s center was.  It was the meeting location for the mountain wild flower walk I planned on participating in on Sunday.  After that, I stopped at Portal Cafe for dinner and some live music.  I didn’t care for the music much so I didn’t stay too long after finishing dinner.  Back at the trailer I continued work on the new computer preparing it to take over the function my personal laptop was currently doing – managing the video camera and recording video.

Sunday morning I finished the config of the new computer and had it assume its duties freeing my laptop to more easily be used for photo and video editing before heading off for the field trip.

On the way into the national forest, the car in front of me pulled off the road.  As I started to go around them, I saw why and stopped as well.  A family of javelina crossing the road.

Took a number of photos and some video during the walk.

 

After snapping the photo of the creek, I decided it would just not be enough so I took some video which you can watch here.

On the walk I met:

• Dave the leader of the walk.  Knowledgeable in birding and botany (I heard 3 life times worth of Latin as he was giving the scientific names of the plants as well as the common names).
• Victor and Kim, a couple that moved from Hawaii and are also building in the area.
• A writer whose name escapes me who is also new to the area.  She was keen to learn that I was in IT as she has a fictional novel idea about hacking and she was looking for a technical resource.  So, looks like I might be consulting on a novel.  That should be interesting and fun.
• There were a few other locals as well but I didn’t chat with them too much and I don’t recall their names.

On the way home, my cell phone came back into signal and I got notified of a few voice mails.

Victor, the septic specialist was looking for a bit more information to complete the septic permit paperwork.  I heard he was working on it this weekend from Drew here in the park who is also waiting for his septic permit paperwork.  Drew suggested we car pool to Bisbee.   Given we are out of summer hours at work, I guess it doesn’t matter what day I go as I will have to take time off work regardless.  This week I should finally be able to submit my permit applications.

My realtor called to tell me that we had a new offer on the house.  The couple is pre-approved financially and want to close within a month.  The offer is in the ball park of the other offer that fell apart.  He has not heard back from the other realtor for the family that was associated with the deal that fell apart at the start of the week.  I will likely be accepting this deal as is Monday.  I forgot to ask him about the status of the rental.

It has been a bit of a roller coaster week.  But even during the down time, I was determined to stay positive.  And rightly so.  It is all working out.  I am not going to rush myself.  I am not going to stress over timelines.  I get enough of that at work.  What gets done gets done.  What has to wait, waits.  I just want to make sure I do projects in a reasonable (and hopefully ideal) order and I want to finish a project before starting the next.  As long as progress is being made, I will be happy.  Even in the last couple weeks of waiting, I have been brainstorming about various projects and working on methods to capture a photo/video record of the whole property development process.  It has certainly not be a waste of time.   Soon, the time of analysis will end and the time of action will arrive with a gusto.

One thing I have been meaning to write about is on the “Law of Attraction”.  I heard about the “Law of Attraction” from some you-tuber’s I watch.  In my search of youtube for content on the subject, I found a 3 hour gem of an audio file called “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David Schwartz.  IMO, it is well worth the time to listen.  I’ve listened to it 3 times now and I’m sure I will listen to it again in a few months.  There are other resources as well on the subject, some more on the metaphysical side than others.  It is also interesting to watch the videos on the entertainers such as Jim Carey and Opra promoting this philosophy.  I encourage all my kids to invest the time in listening to or reading this or other similar material and putting the behaviors and thought processes described into practice.

Ok.  As predicted, it is way past my bedtime.  I am going to have to pass on the invitation from Chris, a new park guest I met tonight to look through is massive telescope (guessing 10-12″ diameter and 3-4′ long).

Night all.