Good evening all.
Let me start with the fact that I’m trying new food for Sasha starting tonight – litterally. I tried her new food. It was tastier than what I have eaten on many occasions. I could have made of meal of it myself, but it was for her, so I didn’t. More on that subject later.
Flash back to Monday.
- Victor stopped by and dropped off the septic permit application paperwork. We chatted about carports, fencing, and water. Naturally, after he left, I thought of about a dozen questions I should have asked him. Oh well. I’ll give him a call this week after work and pepper him with questions. I just added a to-do in my list to make a list of questions.
- Signed a new offer on the house house on Augusta drive. It was close enough to asking price I didn’t bother with a counter offer.
- Confirmed the tenant has vacated the house on West Michigan. Found out he appearently had a pot growing operation setup in the garage (setup for more than just a couple of plants). Electric had been turned off so I had it turned back on so there was power for cleaning and showing the house once it is ready.
- Tried one last time to get new outdoor camera working – no go. Left voicemail for seller.
- Filled in some blanks on septic system paperwork and added some details to my building permit paperwork.
- Too tired to cook. Used the microwave for the first time since I left Michigan to heat up a can of soup I brought for just such occasions. Homemade is so much better than processed crap.
- Checked out Mueller steel buildings for carport as suggested by Victor.
- Bed Early (10PM ET).
Tuesday
- Woke early (5AM ET) – go figure.
- Cooked potato soup for lunch – delish.
- No response from seller regarding new camera. Called Amazon and arranged return of camera for a refund.
- Wrote script (computer program) to grab still photos from the outdoor camera at 5 minute intervals.
- Dishes
- Cooked Spanish rice for dinner – double batch
Wednesday
- First “don’t do that” experience of the week. I was dropping some items off at the shed Wednesday before heading over to Tom and Alicia’s for a visit. I couldn’t remember which key went to the lock for Tom’s back gate and I didn’t want to force any of them. So I decided to be adventurous and try a road that runs just east of his property line that I had not yet tried. It seems there is a reason I had not tried it before. Within site of my road, it looks fine. Further in, it was marginally passable for a full size pickup truck. Besides listening to mesquite branches and thorns scrape down the length of the truck and being on the constant lookout for mesquite in the two tracks that seem to rarely if ever see any vehicle traffic, I came across a one foot deep gully that washed out the left tire track. I stopped and paused before entering it considering my options. There was no place to turn around and I had no desire to drive in reverse to retrace the path I had just driven for the last 5+ minutes. There was a fence to the left and mesquite to the right. Seemed to me like the truck should be able to handle it and dropping the left tires in the gully was the only reasonable option. So forward I forged. No problem. Finally, I emerged onto the road that has the entrance to Tom and Alicia’s property.
- Had a great visit once again with Tom and Alicia. Agreed to try to meet at the Tavern for Dinner Thursday.
- Leaving, I drove on real dirt roads, not dirt road wanna-be’s.
Thursday
- Took half a day of vacation.
- Ran to Bisbee to submit application for septic and building permits.
- Dropped off outdoor camera at UPS drop off location in Bisbee.
- Coffee at Starbucks. MMMM
- Grocery shopping at Walmart
- Stop at TSC for some buckets.
- Timing was perfect. Passed Alicia on the north side of Douglas on my way back and found Tom at the tavern when I got to Rodeo. He was sitting and having a drink with Boyd, my neighbor to the Northwest. Alicia arrived a short time later as did Russ and Barbee and Dennis and his wife (sorry, her name escapes me). We all headed back to the dinning room and had dinner together.
- While waiting for Sasha to do her business in the dog run, I realized I had a sizable hole in the ass of my good jeans. The ones I had been wearing while doing all my running.
- I am thankful for two things:
- I am thankful I was not going commando.
- I am thankful I happened to be wearing briefs that were close in color to my jeans and not a pair bright in color that screamed “Hey, look at me. I have a hole in the ass of my jeans!”
Friday
- Took half a day vacation
- Ran to Silver City with Sasha to have her eye examined. Don’t remember if I’ve written about it or not so sorry if this is redundant info. She has had some red fleshy thing sticking out her right eye for a couple weeks now. It kept getting broken open and bleeding all over. The vet quickly identified it as a tumor on her third eyelid. Options: Do nothing. Give medicine in her eye for a couple of weeks. Have it cut out with surgery. He didn’t see to have a high degree of confidence in the medication being effective but felt it was work a try. There is a chance of it coming back when/if you cut it out. I took the medicine path to start with. Once again, questions didn’t come to mind until after we had left. Namely, how much would surgery cost?
- Stopped at Walmart to buy a new pair of jeans.
- Stopped at Jalisco Cafe in Silver City for a Mexican dinner as I was not going to be back in time for the potluck. Parked the truck in a nice shady spot and rolled the windows half way down. Salsa was a bit hot. As always, I ordered guacamole and bean burrito’s with green sauce. It wasn’t until I finished the guacamole and my mouth was still burning that I realized it wasn’t still burning from the salsa. I finally remembered seeing in the menu that they put jalapeno pepper in the guacamole. Burritos were good as well.
- On the way home I had “don’t do that” experience two of the week. I decided to stop in Animas on the way home to get gas and a couple of items from Valley Merchantile, so I took a route I had never taken before. Cruising along thinking about god knows what I came up on a white truck. Straight road, clear visibility, no oncoming traffic, passing zone. Started to pass. First thing I noticed was a “D.A.R.E” sticker on the back of the truck. Hmmm.. I’ve seen that before. Where have I seen that before? I can’t remember. Next thing I notice: Sherriff’s logo on the driver’s door. OOPS! Now I remember where I have seen that D.A.R.E logo before. Law enforcement vehicles back in Michigan. Third thing I notice as I prepare to complete the pass and get back into the right lane are red and blue flashing lights. Ya… Expected that… I truly don’t know how fast I was going but I’m guessing 70-75. I finished collecting all the usual required paper work (license, registration, insurance) about the same time he arrived at my window. He said he didn’t want any of the paperwork. He asked me if I knew the speed limit. I answered him honestly, “no but was guessing it was either 60 or 65” as that is the speed limit of state route 80 that I am used to traveling and this was a flat and straight stretch of road. He corrected me informing me that it was 55. He didn’t want to write a ticket. He just wanted me to slow down. I thanked him profusely and used cruise control the rest of the way to Animas.
- Got to Valley Merchantile and they were closed. I resign to return Saturday.
- Gave Sasha her first dose of medicine in her eye.
Saturday
- Finished the planning for the fence and put together a materials list for it. Made multiple copies of the materials list to provide to Valley Merchantile, B&D Lumber, and maybe Lowes in Sierra Vista.
- Tried to give Sasha her next dose of medicine. She knows what it is now and is not going to allow it. Ugh…
- Went to Valley Merchantile to pick up a few items, get gas, and drop of the materials list for the fence for them to get me a quote.
- Once back at the trailer, I sat down and worked on checking the status of my credit and putting a freeze on it. If you happen to be like me and don’t follow the news, Equifax, one of the three major credit bureaus had a data breach and thieves stole the personal records of millions (~50%) of Americans back in May. Enough data to be able to easily steal your identity and open fraudulent accounts in your name. I checked Equifax’s site and confirmed that my info was in the batch that was stolen. I signed up for the free credit/ID protection offered by Equifax and Transunion’s free credit monitoring service that also enables you to freeze your credit. I froze my credit in Transunion. I was not as successful in freezing my accounts in Equifax and Experian’s systems. I will try again tonight when I am done writing this.
- I spent the late afternoon watching football while waiting for my laundry to wash and dry. First time I’ve intentionally sat down to watch broadcast television since I left home in June. MMA happen to be on so I switched over to that and watched that the rest of the night. I don’t think I will be watching broadcast TV anytime soon again. Too many food advertisements for food I still crave but don’t want to eat in an effort to eat healthy.
Sunday
- Tried to give Sasha her eye medicine. She is not going to cooperate and I am not versed well enough in handling her by myself to make it happen. Need to go to plan B.
- Went to the property and reworked the diversion swales (rain diverting speed bumps in the road) that I paid to have put in place in July. They had been put in straight across the road as opposed to at an angle. I also think they were probably about twice as high as they needed to be. I had hoped to do all the work with the tractor, but found I was not skilled enough and there was insufficient space for me to do what I needed to do. So I used the tractor to breakup the now compacted and hardened earthen speed bumps. I then used a hand shovel to move the dirt and rocks where I thought they would be more effective. Finally, I ran back and forth over the width of the lane/speedbump with the truck to pack it down. It is not the quality job I would like, but it is better than it was. I will revisit it when I’m living on the property and we get sufficient rain which likely will not be until next July.
- Once back at the trailer, I started working on plan B for Sasha’s eye. As many of you already know, my beliefs regarding health are on what most of Western Developed society considers fringe/whacked/radical/whatever description you want to insert here. Namely, a few years back I came to believe that 90+ % of degenerative diseases (diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, tumors/cancer, etc) is a direct result of the food that is put into one’s mouth and in many if not most cases, can be reversed with “radical” changes in diet. Note that “radical” is a matter of perspective. One might consider a whole plant food based diet as radical to reverse heart disease. I would counter that having your chest cracked open to have stents or bypass surgery at huge financial cost and physical pain rather than choosing to eat a healthy diet is radical. Sorry. Coming down off my soap box. Back to Sasha… Given that she won’t let me get close to her eye with the medication, it is time to get rid of the expensive processed food I buy for her out of convenience and invest in her the time and energy I invest in myself to try to get and stay healthy. So, today I searched for home made dog food recipes online, then made a big pot of food for her that should last the next couple of days. As I said in the opening, considering the dump method I used, I must say that it came out tasting pretty darn good.
- Cooked some food for myself
- Did a number of chores around the trailer.
I’m expecting to start working on the fencing next weekend – even if it is just to mark the locations of the corner posts and maybe the gate posts. I have enough funding to do the fencing myself, but won’t be able to start with any other major projects until one of the houses in Michigan is sold and I have the proceeds from the sale to use to fund the new projects. At this point, I have no intention on financing any further development on the property except maybe the septic system. Everything is going to be paid for at the time of acquisition so that no further debt is incurred.
On the subject of the fence, everyone out here keeps advising me to just pay someone to do it. I presume the advice is because it is hard work. Even harder on my property given the amount of rock in the ground. Here is what they don’t seem to get:
- Doing the math it would cost me about $4k for the labor alone to install the fence. That is $4k I would rather use else where.
- Yes it is hard work. I have 3-4 years of hard labor ahead of me. I have to start somewhere. Why should I pay someone else to build the muscle that I need and want to build myself and burn the calories that I need and want to burn myself?
- At this point, I have more time than $$, so why not spend the time and install the fence myself?
With that, you are now up to date.
Seeking Simplicity 