At the Hotel, On the Road, and At Home

Boy, am I ever delinquent in getting a blog post put up.

It has been a little over two weeks since my last post, so let me try to fill in that gap of time for you with what I can remember.

Sun Oct 22 was a nice relaxing day.  After breakfast I walked Sasha through the park across the street and down to the Blue Hole which is what I’m guessing is the only scuba diving attraction for hundreds of miles around and it was definitely busy that day.  There must have been at least 50 divers there.

It is basically a large spring fed hole that then feeds a few surrounding lakes (what we in Michigan would call ponds) and a creek.

After our relaxing 2 – 3 mile walk, I relaxed in the hotel room watching a bit of football then switched over to watching some movies.

Monday was working from the hotel room.  At the end of the work day, I called the repair shop as I had not heard from them.  I then learned that there was a Transmission in line in front of me and they hadn’t gotten to mine yet.  They should be able to look at it sometime Tuesday.  More relaxing and killing time watching movies.

Tuesday was essentially a repeat of Monday.  This time when I called the repair shop, they offered to check with the mechanic across the street and to take it to him if he had time.

Wash, rinse, repeat for Wednesday.  The difference being that this time the mechanic from across the street (of where the truck was previously dropped off for repair) called me toward the end of the day.  He had diagnosed the issue as being an EGR valve that had stuck open.  He got it unstuck but could make no assurances that it would not stick open again a few miles down the road.  I asked about time to get the part and repair and he indicated he could get the part Thursday morning and have it repaired by around noon Thursday.  He also provided an estimate of the cost.  I gave him the go ahead to get the part and make the repair as I did not want to worry about it getting stuck again and staying one more day at that point wasn’t going to make that much of a difference.

Thursday, checkout was for 11AM local, but I asked very nicely to stay until 1PM.  They agreed.  I attended meetings and worked on some time sensitive tasks until he finally called me at 1:45PM local.  He picked me up in the truck, I drove him back to his shop and paid the bill.  Leaving the shop I noted that at some point that week one of my two driver side mirrors got shattered.  I’m thankful it was the small lower one and not the upper one which I depend on more.  To the hotel to load and vacate the room so they could finally clean it, then onto the local restaurant from which I have been buying quarts of Mexican rice for Sasha to eat and bought 3 quarts for the road.  Prior to leaving, I did the math to see how far I expected to be able to drive that night and I called and booked a room at another pet friendly Super 8.  I got on the road round 6 PM eastern time.  I drove without incident and around 11:30 PM eastern time I rolled into the hotel in Claremore OK which is just NE of Tulsa.

Friday, I got on the road around 8AM ET and was on the road during meetings for which I could be mobile and pulled off and tethered my laptop for meetings I needed to be online for.  As I was stopped for my afternoon meeting, I estimated that I would hit Chicago at rush hour.  Having lived in the Chicago suburbs for 6 years, I’ve been on the Chicago highways trying to head east at rush hour on a Friday afternoon before.  Not a pleasant experience.  I’ve had it literally double my drive time to Michigan before.  Something I wanted to avoid, so I programmed google maps to take me home via Indiana/Indianapolis instead, then I studied the map in case I needed to make some impromptu changes.  As I was on the north side of St Louis google maps said it found a faster route and asked if I wanted to accept the change.  I did.  I then realized it was sending me through Chicago.  ETA to hit Chicago was still rush hour.  Ugh… I checked the map and found a freeway that I wanted to take to Indiana.  I let the app do it’s thing and I did my thing, knowing that it would recalculate a route based on the path I had selected.  I ended up taking some US and state highways through much of Indiana.  They were lightly traveled with very few stops so that was fine by me.  I caught 65 to 94.  That was still closer to Chicago than I wanted but in all, traffic on 65 was not that painful and there was only about 4 miles of stop and go traffic once I got to 94 before it was clear sailing the rest of the way home.  I rolled in to the house around 11PM, got Sasha and Hershey settled at the old house, then went to the apartment to crash with Cheryl and Rachel.  I will have to try to remember that route should I want to miss Chicago during the business day.

Saturday was spent shopping for washer, dryer, and refrigerator for the house to replace those that the tenant stole, then waiting for them to be delivered.  Dinner with family, and relaxing at the apartment in the evening.

Sunday was spend working for work for the most part.

We closed on the Augusta drive house on Oct 31.  Whoo Hoo!!

The rest of the week was generally spent working, visiting, and contemplating work to do on the old W Michigan house.

Pete invited me to put some holes in paper Friday afternoon/evening which I gladly accepted.  He helped me adjust the sights so I’m close to center mass with my aim and I’m satisfied with my consistency.

I spent Saturday Nov 4 removing wall paper from the kitchen walls at the old house.

I spent an excessive amount of time at Menard’s Sunday shopping for gutters for the front of the house and looking at what it would take to replace the water heater that the tenant stole the burner from, as well as replacement steel door for the kitchen to garage and evaluating options for replacing interior doors, and acquiring various light fixtures to replace those that were either stolen or broken.  I replaced the missing light fixture in the breezeway, the broken fixture in the garage, and a fixture that I had removed and not replaced in the basement.  I reconnected wires to the garage light switch that he removed and left sticking out of the fixture – bare.  Sadly, he removed the switch I had in the garage to turn on the breezeway light.  That wiring is very complicated (a switch at each entry way to the breezeway (4) to control the operation of that breezeway light).  At this point, I’m not sure I would be able to figure out how to reconnect a switch there.

Meetings with HR show a willingness to explore options are promising and give me hope.

I hear that the big boss wants to meet with me and HR has not shared with me what they have found yet but I am hopeful.

We are struggling with our decision on where to live.  The apartment we are staying in does not allow dogs so we have been driving back and forth to the house twice a day to tend to Sasha who is understandably very lonely.  Cheryl and Rachel had picked out an apartment that met our criteria (first floor, 2 BR, allows large dog).  I learned during a nice visit with Brian that that was not a good place to live, so back to the drawing board.  The lease here ends at the end of November and Cheryl goes back in for knee surgery this week  Not a lot of time to sort things out.  We’ve agreed that if they can’t find an acceptable apartment that meets our needs, then we will move back to the House.  They can continue to apartment shop from there… Just another move in short succession if they find something.  Ugh.  Why not stay at the house?  The idea is to be out of the house so that it can be worked on more aggressively to be put onto the market for sale.  It is unlikely that I will do much of the work myself.  That would take too long and would not make financial sense given owning the house costs me about a $1k a month.

Ok.  That brings you up to date.

Not sure when my next post will be.  Maybe around Thanksgiving unless I’m moved to post due to big news before then.  🙂

Cary