I’m tired.
It’s only 7:30, but I’m gonna write this entry and then crash–I hope. 🙃
Since I didn’t get to bed until late last night, I was pretty sleep deficient when I woke up.
Morning routine went reasonably well, though, considering I was low on sleep. I did struggle to focus. 👀 Was a bit all over the place. 🙃
🦎
My concerns for my friend and everything related hit a crescendo while I was doing my servicise this morning (I grabbed my chopping ax and cut all the branches off the main trunk of the tree I cut down yesterday.
Lots of branches.
And lots of thoughts and emotions going through my brain–my hamster was working overtime.
🐹
I thought a lot about what my friend was going through. I have so many thoughts about that…
I’ve got family going through really hard stuff right now, too. With that stuff, though, I feel like I understand what I can do, and I’ve got my plans and efforts relatively figured out.
With this friend, I don’t, and my concerns about it were overriding just about everything else in my brain. Those thoughts and concerns ended up being the entire topic of discussion for family study with my mom this morning.
My mom’s great. 🙂
I’ve got so much to say about all of everything that’s going on with my friend, but there’s not really anything that I can write here, out of respect, other than just the vague generalities.
Tough.
I didn’t really eat breakfast, as I just… wasn’t hungry–brain going too much to eat. I made myself eat a little bit because I was going to be gone working all day, and it’s dumb to not eat in the morning when you don’t have much in the way of food with you.
Speaking of food, I’m missing sugar a bit today. 😅
I’ve been so focused on my goals and what I’m trying to accomplish, that I haven’t really thought too much about missing the sugar, but I do a bit today.
It was a work day for me today, so I left the house and started my day–Rogers AutoZone to pick up some parts for the day. Then driving to check on something briefly in Springdale before heading to my first job at a sorority house in Fayetteville at the UofA.
Gratefully, the first job was easy peasy–replace two rear wheel studs and nuts that had been sheared off.
Done. Check.
So I headed over to the North college autozone because someone had asked me to fix their alternator, but I hadn’t heard from them, so I just drove to the AutoZone to check it out. I guess they ended up getting it figured out themselves and never told me.
🤷
Next job wasn’t until later (I’m having a tad bit of trouble getting back into the scheduling zone 🙃), So I just hung out at the AutoZone for a while eating a little bit, doing business stuff, and online stuff. Had somebody share a Google doc with me while I was there, but when I went to look at it, it said that I had to request permission in order to access it, so I did, and I’m waiting for the permission to be granted still, but it certainly begs the question:
Hey Google, why do you make me ask for permission to see something that has just been specifically shared with me? Seems a little… odd. 🙃
I’m pretty sure I’ve had that happen when I share Google docs with people as well. I’ll send them the doc, and then I get an access request message from the person I sent the doc to… And it’s like… uh, yeah Google, I just shared it with them. Why you makin’ us do this extra work? 🙃
Second car was also on campus–a 75ish degree day halfway through November.
😶
Gosh, I hope we have a cold winter and a long cool spring.
Anyway, So the second job was also on campus, in one of the student parking lots. She had a 2018 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon that wouldn’t start. They had just got a new battery, but by a couple days later, it wouldn’t start again. They were able to start it with a jump, but then it died again the next day.
So I went over there, and all the connections were good. The battery was low, about 12 volts, but it actually did start up the car.
I started the Jeep and tested the alternator, and it was totally fine. That left the most likely cause being some kind of a parasitic draw. So I started doing a parasitic draw test, and I found that there was a 2.7-ish amp parasitic draw, which is enough to drain the battery down to the point that it probably won’t be able to start the car after 24 hours of sitting.
I was about to do the full parasitic drive test, when it dawned on me, this is a 2018. It has no modifications, no aftermarket stuff, there’s got to be some thing posted about this by other mechanics.
So I jumped online to see if anyone had posted about a parasitic draw on such a new Jeep, and lo and behold, there were a few mechanics who mentioned that the auxiliary battery was causing problems.
So after finally digging my way down to where the auxiliary battery was, which was quite a pain in the butt, I tested it, and it only had about 7 volts, and it was way hotter than it should have been.
Bad auxiliary battery.
So I drove to the nearby O’Reilly’s, as none of the nearby AutoZones had the auxiliary battery that I needed. Came back. Installed it. And she was good to go.
Last car, as I decided to only do three today, was another late model. This one was a Nissan rogue. Either 2017 or 2018, I think, and it was a no start. Gratefully, it turned out to just be a battery problem, so I pulled out the old one, cleaned off the badly corroded connection, slapped a new battery in there, and he was good to go.
Nice guy. Going through divorce. Tough times. He’s an English teacher, teaching eighth grade, which led to a conversation about us both being English teachers. He also was a graduate student instructor while he was doing his masters, just as I was. Kind of fun to have that common ground to chat about.
Oh, I forgot to mention that after having a really rough earlier morning, my friend Cory shared some things with me that snapped me out of where I was and into clarity of thought. I very much appreciated his comments, because I went from discouraged and afraid and struggling, to being almost at peace as I recognized as truth what he had pointed out.
Thank you, Cory. That was huge today. Huge.
So despite the really rough morning, for the rest of the day, gratefully, I’ve been relatively at peace. Just like what I mentioned last night when I mentioned my concerns for my friend. I still have important concerns, but, I’m calm and them.
Proverbs 3:5-6.
I’m grateful that I’m willing to work a lot less than I used to. I’ve been looking into what it’s going to take to get my non-profit stuff going. I don’t know if I want to do a non-profit… Non-profits are so strict on how the leadership is put together and run and how it continues over time. I don’t want to give up control of my baby, so to speak, to a board who takes over after just a few years, and then I’m beholden to the board.
So I’m looking into that, and one of these days soon, I’ll likely be registering my business name with the state of Arkansas.
Unless I move to Illinois or Iowa. 🙃 I’m seriously contemplating taking a drive up to the Keokuk / Nauvoo area to have a look around and see what I think. Would probably be best to do that in the middle of the August when it’s the worst of the worst temperatures, but it looks like I might be able to get a decently priced house or multi-family home for dirt cheap compared to other places. I won’t have the real estate property increase in value, but I’m not too worried about that. Getting some cheap properties that I can rent out, some of which are currently filled with tenants, might help toward being better prepared for the future.
Wish there were no such thing as property taxes. Can’t we just up the other taxes? 😅 I want to own what I own, not pay rent for it, not stress about having to find a way to pay the taxes of I want to just homestead, or something, or take lots of time off working.
Anyway, I listen to an audiobook on the way home from Fayetteville from my last job, and I kept listening to it while I ate dinner. I’ve spent a little time looking at real estate for sale as I prepare for what comes next after I have to move from here.
For tax purposes, I’m probably not going to try and sell my heavy equipment until next year. I’m expecting my income to be quite a bit less next year than this year in terms of what I make from working. The added sales of the equipment I sell will likely bring it up to what my average has been, where is if I sold it all this year, I’d probably get hit with a higher tax bill.
Haven’t decided yet for sure, but we only have a month and a half left in the year, so it’s not much longer to wait to get it all done.
Gratitude…
I’m really grateful for the insights on expectations that I’ve had other people share with me, and how I’ve actually been able to apply that to my behaviors and thinking. It’s been really nice to catch myself getting frustrated and to cut it off as an unreasonable expectation.
I’m grateful to Cory for his help in grounding me today. The impact he had on me today was huge and exactly what I needed.
I’m grateful for the calm semblance of peace that I had today after the morning storm.
I’m grateful that though I didn’t want to do more work on that Jeep, instead of being selfish and telling her I couldn’t do the job because my normal part supplier didn’t have the part, I went ahead and bought it from the other supplier. I don’t like using the other supplier because their reimbursement policies for commercial accounts are ready compared to autozone’s, and their discounts are as well.
But I didn’t want her stuck for another 2 days, since I’m not working tomorrow–especially when she’s being ticketed for leaving her car in the lot.
I’m grateful that I’m going to get to bed on time. It’s now 8:30, which means I’ll finish this up in just a few minutes, chat with the Big Guy, and then get this little boy down for his nap.
In fact, I think I’m going to finish this up right now.
I’ve got lots on my mind. And I’ve got at least one, and probably more, really big questions to take to the Man Upstairs tonight.
Life is a trip.
Oh! Speaking of trip! One year ago today, I hopped aboard a plane, first bound for California, then Tahiti, then my heart land–New Zealand. ❤️
Now I want to go look up ticket prices. 🙃
Panama… $300 r/t.
Maybe I won’t be getting to bed on time. 😅
Oh, New Zealand, how do I love thee…
🙃
Speaking of love… sending love. 😊
Time to go ponder on some important things, chat with ⬆️, and crash.
G’night, y’all.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 