Preparing For A Big Day

We have had thunder and lightning here in the great Northwest for the past couple of evenings.  The humidity is high even though there has been very little rain.  The temperatures have been nice but the humidity adds a degree of discomfort that we don't always have however it is tolerable and Zach and I spent yesterday chalking and sanding the majority of the old house in Covington.

 I have a small handheld Porter Cable power belt sander that uses 2 1/2" X 14" belts.  It handled the job fairly well however it does run through the belts (I figured out why) and it gets a little hot to hold after a few hours of continuous sanding.  As for the belts, they are only available at Lowe's in our area.  Home Depot doesn't appear to carry this sander and therefore doesn't choose to stock the belts for it.  I bought all the belts I could at our local Lowe's and ended up at another one about 10 miles away after I ran out of belts.  It appears that the only thing that Lowe's carries is an assortment of belts, three to a package.  You get 50/80/120 grit in the assortment and the 120 may as well be plain paper when it comes to sanding paint on a house.  50 grit works great and the 80 grit can deal with it but it doesn't last as long as the 50 grit.  Going to my son's place of work, Amazon, I see that I can purchase sandpaper belts in specific grits to fit this unit but it is too late now since I have but one small section to finish.

 After the sander hits the siding we have the following results.  It does a good job of getting rid of the flaking paint and makes quick work of feathering all those nasty holes.

 We will be putting a full court press to paint the rest of the house today.  We have a little over half the house to finish.  We worked all last weekend and got a good portion of it done.  Our son, daughter in law and little James came over to participate in our little adventure.  Jeff said James wanted to help paint and he did.  We gave him a bucket and a brush with some paint and he threw it on the side of the house.  My hands were dirty or I'd have a picture.  It was pretty funny.

When he first got there, Zach and I were installing some replacement trim on the front of the house and James became very interested in pounding nails.  Zach pounded a nail into a piece of scrap wood and James spent a goodly portion of his time with us pounding that nail with a James size hammer.  I am not sure the nail moved.  As you can see, James was entertaining Honey.

Speaking of Honey, she was attacked by another much small dog on Monday.  A Yorkshire put some teeth marks in her, bruised her and chewed at one rear leg.  Needless to say she spent the day at the vet.  Mia said it was totally unprovoked and she had to kick the other dog to get it to let go.  The owner was very apologetic and even paid for our vet bill.  She is on light duty and healing nicely.  She is very apprehensive when walking around the neighborhood especially when she gets near the area where she was attacked.


I promised Zach we would be over about 10 am so I best close for now and get my butt moving.
Hope everyone is having a good time.

Do I Sound Like I Am Complaining And Working On The Road

My grandson said the each paragraph that I posted yesterday sounded like I was complaining.  I, of course, said I wasn't't complaining merely stating fact.  Was I complaining.

Does anyone reading my blog currently work consulting while traveling?

Where's Waldo (Ken)

It is a overcast, foggy, damp morning in the Emerald city.   The fog has come down to our level and is providing a cooling mist as Honey and I walk through the neighborhood on her morning outing.

I have the weekend off but it doesn't look like I have the weekend off.  I may not be at work but there is a ton of things that need to be done this Seafair weekend and none of them include any of the many activities taking place throughout the Seattle area.

I have 255 days left and while I do look forward to the possibilities of not getting up and going to work everyday, I am entering this stage of my life with some apprehension.  There are so many unanswered questions and as I have said before we are not the richest people in the world and neither of us has a pension plan from a governmental or union job so what we have saved over the years (thanks to my saint, Mia) is what we have to live on over the course of the next few years.  If we, like our parents, live into our 90's we may find ourselves with some monetary issues.

I have put out some feelers through a network of people I have worked with and vendors who I use.  Surprisingly there are a number of people who might be interested in using my experience for training or consulting with other companies.  I have to get more details, but I have made it clear I am not looking for a full time position but rather something to fill the monetary holes as I travel about the country seeking new adventures.  It would be great if we could travel to a specific location, consult and use our free time to investigate the region before moving on to a different destination.  I still have a lot of unanswered questions regarding this after employment employment but it may well be the answer to keeping our savings in our IRA's or 401's while still having some kind of income to supplement the Social Security Benefit.

Today is going to be a busy day.  Once I hit the publish tab I will be loading up my tools and taking off for the house we own that our daughter lives in.  With the help of our grandson, Zach, the plan is to prep and paint as much of the house as we can today and possibly tomorrow.  I went over there a week ago and prep one portion of the house and sprayed it to see what the results would be.  I was happily surprised and it came out well.  I instructed Zach how to use the sprayer but once we were done I realized that his idea of clean and mine are slightly different so I need to be there anytime he is spraying so I ensure the cleanup is good.

 As you can see he catches on really quickly and he was able to apply paint to the house in a very consistent manner. I suspect we will have great success today.

Work has been a little messed up.  Our department has been understaffed for sometime now and an employee who was on leave couldn't make a decisive choice between coming back or going to a dealer closer to home.  After making several attempts to conform to his requests, I finally gave up and made his leave permanent.  Of course, I did this on a weekend he was supposed to work and I had planned to take three days and spend them at the trailer in Gold Bar.  I went to work Friday to attend a managers meeting and then left and went to the house to work with Zach.  We left his house around noon and headed over to our place to pack up and leave for Gold Bar.  We arrived in Gold Bar in the mid-afternoon and set up camp and had dinner.  Since I couldn't get anyone else to work on short notice I got up early Saturday morning and headed into the shop.  On the way, I caught these flying over the highway.  It was the high point of my day.

The good news, I am off for the weekend.  Next week I have staff on vacation but I must still try to find a replacement for the young man who left.  Just another day in the life of a manager.  I hope to get staffed so that I can work on a mountain of things that I have let slide for the past couple of years.  We need to take a physical inventory of the parts department in November and I want the place ready so it doesn't take us two days to do it.  To do that, I need time to work with the inventory, spend time in the bins and make sure all the paperwork is straight.  We have parts that say they are there but aren't and some that show no indication of being there but yet they are.  It has been almost two years since our last inventory and we moved the department twice during that time.  I am certain we have lost stuff and with all the stress in the department we have no doubt failed to do some of the tasks that are required to keep a straight, organized and accurate inventory.

I must pack up my tools, stop by Lowe's and head over to the house.  Hope everyone has a great day.

Views and Race

I know this is small peanuts to some you but my blog finally found 20,000 views.  53 of those came on a post from earlier this month when asked for some friendly advice.  I was seeking some retirement advice/suggestions.  Two of the 53 who viewed that post responded with some very good suggestions.  What happened to the other 51?

Watching Meet The Press for the first time in the past weeks.   Race relations and Detroit bankruptcy.  Interesting to note that during both discussions the need for more middle class jobs was discussed.  Educated people seem to prosper while the lower classes seem to wade through life wondering where the America dream went.  Racial tensions continued to grow as the younger give up on education in larger numbers than ever before.
We are no closer to fixing the issues than we where in past decades.  Until I, as a middle class white male, is willing to trade my white skin without fear of losing rights, economic status, and discrimination, we haven't reached the real American dream.

Assorted BS

Nope, I didn't retire early, have a heart attack or medical issue.  I have just been too busy to take time to sit down and type out a post.  At work it has been a few weeks of long hours as I fill in for missing employees who are taking their vacations.  Most of the guys I work with have three weeks of vacation so we are missing bodies often during the summer months.  At times I get to work from 2 o'clock AM to 4:00 o'clock PM, sometimes longer.

Service Department Drive at 2 am.

I have been lucky to have every weekend so far this month and Mia and I have used them exceedingly well by visiting our trailer in the woods and having some time away.  One weekend we took our grand daughter and her friend up to the park for a weekend get away.   Who knew two thirteen year old girls could have so much fun.  It was tiring.  The next weekend Mia and I took Honey and spent the whole weekend just laying back at the trailer.  The park was nearly empty so we had an opportunity to enjoy the peace and quiet.  We even had a fire, something we very seldom do.

 I even devised a way to cook dinner over the fire.  We don't have a grate for this little portable fireplace so I took two hot dog cooking forks and put them across the opening of the fireplace and then remove the grille from our portable barbecue and laid it on top of them.  We cooked chicken breasts over the coals left from a very hot fire.

 One of the local towns, Sultan, always has a summer fair and we decided to visit.  They have vendor booths, parades, logging contests and all kinds of summer fun.  We walked through town and enjoyed the sites and sounds and even watched some of the parade.  I hadn't been to a parade in years.  The only thing I took a picture of was this weird converted tractor.  Some kids.

 I have this weekend off and we have chosen to stay home and get some chores done.  I'll read some of the blog posts that I haven't yet had time to read.  We are dog sitting a friends pet and he and Honey seem to be getting along great.  Honey is jealous as heck when Dad pets Kobe.  Jumps all over me.
Hope you are having a great weekend.

Looking For Friendly Suggestions

As Mia and I prepare for the day that we retire (April 15th), we are looking at options as we slip into our golden years.

We are certainly not the richest folks in the world.  I have worked for non union companies all my life which doesn't afford us much in the way of pension plans.  We have managed to save some using 401k and Roth retirement funds but it certainly isn't a bundle and if we live another 20 years there is some concern as to whether or not we'll have enough.

First and foremost is health care.  We will be using Medicare and are advised to have a supplemental policy to protect from massive loss of funds due to emergency illness.  I am looking for suggestions from those folks already using Medicare.  What are the options for supplemental policies?  Which ones do you use?  What are the cost associated with the policy?

Secondly, since we don't have tons of money we will be trying to travel across the country as cheaply as possible.  I suspect gas and food will be our two biggest expenses.  Another expense that I am not looking forward too is the cost of RV Parks.  How do you keep from spending tons on money on fees for RV parks.  Looking for suggestions to keep our expenses to a minimum.  Places to look for further information on boondocking spots and anything else you can offer that will help us remain frugal as we travel across the country.

Lastly, personal protection.  How many of you carry a hand gun with you?  If not, do you every feel the need to have one?  What prompted you to obtain one?

Looking forward to your comments as I am getting close and want to get some of the research out of the way early.

Independence

Happy 4th.  Be safe.