Right -
So I made it back to the ship in one piece, notwithstanding a tooth-jarring-ly rough landing in Paris....only to find the old "Serpentina" was sinking...
SLOWLY....But technically sinking nevertheless....
It seems that a pipe connected to one of the seawater intakes in our Pump Room developed a small leak, that over several days put a foot and a half of seawater into the bilge, finally triggering the alarm system...
The Engineering dept is replacing the faulty piping and valves as we speak...and all this "sinking" stuff should be resolved in a few more hours.
Other than that, everything is just PEACHY....the ship remains accident free and in otherwise good order...just the way I like it....
The time at home was, as always, way too short....
Topping the list of the things I had to attend was my Son's medical issues....his stubborn refusal to die on schedule has thrown the medical establishment into a bit of a pickle....it seems the hospice care team did such a good job relieving his distress that he doesn't care to check out just yet....and the time limit for hospice care has been exceeded.
The appropriate and careful use of powerful narcotics is a wonderful thing....
So....he now has to be removed from the supervision of the Hospice medical director and placed under a "regular" physicians care again....until he feels like dying again of course....
Oh well....threading the various bureaucratic mazes to assure the boys continued access to appropriate pain relief is a small price to pay....
I guess this is "Collateral damage" from the "War on Drugs"....
On the lighter side, I did have a bit of just plain fun this trip....I renewed my Concealed Handgun License....an excellent one-day class by an experienced instructor that included a trip to a really nice indoor range for the qualification shoot.
I shot 249 out of 250 with my favorite side-arm, which is terribly embarrassing....if you are familiar with the qualification process, it means I let a shot wander out of the "5" ring on a static man-sized target no more than 45 feet away....
I need to shoot more often...an hour at the range is worth more to me than a year on a psychiatrists couch....
Maybe the deer won't mind too much if I pile up a small berm out by the back fence....
Oh well....if the goblins want to mess with me anytime soon, at least there is a 98% chance I will at least scratch em with the first round...
Embarrassment aside, it was a great day out, the entire class was experienced gunners and plenty of tall tales were spun thru the group while we were waiting for our turns to shoot....some of these folks have been to worse neighborhoods than I have....
It's nice not be "Weirdest Guy In The Room" for a change....
Just don't get me started on having to stand fast for the equivalent of a legal rectal exam in order to exercise a RIGHT supposedly guaranteed to me by TWO Constitutions....it just makes me mad....
...and I might start ranting....
The fun was soon over and it was back to work.....Precious Bride was in top form surfing Craigslist....she found an ad from a fellow who had a pile of salvageable corrugated for FREE....
It seems this chap decided to burn a trashpile behind a small house he was rehabbing....and burnt that sucker to the ground....the house....as well as the trash....
Shoulda figured in the wind direction BEFORE he lit the heap....
Well....for the cost of the gas and an afternoon's work pulling the sheets out of the ruins, yanking the nails and flattening the sheets out, I wound up with a nice pile of "pre-seasoned" corrugated for projects at The Old Goat Ranch.
One spot in particular really NEEDS this stuff.... while clearing the house and barn sites, I saved a nice semi-circle of hardwood trees that form the center of the driveway....a perfect place for a barbecue pit and roofed sitting area....something my African friends refer to as a "Palaver Hut"....
The next day, while en-route to the Ranch, the pile of tin on the trailer was joined by a stack of steel warehouse shelving, a water cooler and some assorted plumbing bits and pieces courtesy of my Brother In Law, who is shutting down his small beverage machine repair shop.
Thus loaded with various treasure, Precious Bride and I spent a long weekend up at TOGR....the tin is now resting comfortably out back in a nice neat stack under the oaks, most of the shelving is set up in the containers and the water cooler is stored away, waiting for that water-line-to-come....
While there, I took stock on what salvaged materials we had on hand and got together a materials list for the Barn Roof. Over the last year or so, PB scored a big pile of 20 foot treated 2x6 from a fellow demo-ing a deck, and a mess of 4x6 and 4x4 poles and corrugated from a fellow demo-ing a bus barn....
I'll only have to buy a few new boards for the "show" areas, some metal trim, fasteners and pooky for this project...
Tho I have had to invest some of the money PB has saved us in a bottle of aspirin for the backaches from lugging all this stuff around, if it can be re-used, re-named, re-purposed, re-claimed, re-constituted, re-designated, re-painted, re-furbished or otherwise put back to work instead of being tossed, PB will find it and give it a home....and we get a whole lot more mileage out of the money we spend on the Ranch...
She is a genius....
Cheap or Frugal?
I suppose it all depends on how much "disposable income" one cares to dispose of....or how many aspirin you need...
T
