I’m actually writing my post on time. In fact, it’s not even 9:00 yet. 🙃
Tired. Body is sore. Definitely been a test of my ability to be grateful today with the various things that have been going on. 🙃
Hopefully I can end on an up note after a long day of feeling not very close to the spirit and with some things going sideways.
🤞
Started my morning routine, as per usual–about 5 minutes or so on the Elevate app, take my vitamins, listen to uplifting music, chat with the Big Guy, study gospelly things.
Turned on the work site to wait for questions while I did other things. It was a much much slower day today. I think I had the site on fishing for questions just about all day, and I might have answered maybe four or five?
All the more important that I took advantage of what was available yesterday. 🙃
Anyway, I decided today was the day to install my solar panels on Rover, so I pulled the solar panels out of their box, and shoved one on Rover’s roof, climbed up, took my measurements, and started drilling holes. 😅
…
Now it’s after 11. 🙃
Aaaaaaaaand… after measuring and drilling and fitting and mounting and everything, I have two solar panels on my roof. 🎉
Though I’m not done yet! 🙃
The bolts I had were two short, unfortunately. I’m actually going to have to modify the mounting bolt holes on the solar panels themselves because the the length of both that I need to make it through the top of the van is too long for the angle between the hole and the back side of the surface of the solar panel. I’m going to have to lengthen the hole, to reduce the required angle of the bolt for passage through the hole.
So I ordered bolts that were a half an inch longer than the ones that I tried to mount the panels with today.
Those bolts will be here Saturday.
I also found out that the cable that I had bought to extend from the cables that come with the panels themselves were not what I thought they were. I didn’t look closely enough at the picture and ended up purchasing cables that were the right fitting on one end but were completely missing the fitting on the other end.
Oops. 🙃
Oh well, I just moved the power station from being between the two front seats to being where my cooler was. That gives enough room for just the basic power cable that came with the power station to reach from the solar panels to the power input port.
So I was able to charge my power station today from 18% to 100% with just solar power, starting sometime in the early afternoon. 🥳
It’s not a lot of wattage, by any means (I think I maxed out maybe in the 180s with the two 100 watt panels?), but now I have the ability to just park my little butt somewhere in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and as long as I’ve got food and water, I can work, I can communicate, I can study and learn, etc etc.
Now I just need a traveling companion. 🙃
Anyone want to volunteer? 😅
After getting the solar panel stuff set up, I spent some time cleaning out the van a little bit, as it’s gotten quite overloaded with boxes and stuff from all the things I’ve been buying. I can’t drive anything to the recycling place, if there is one for cardboard here, until I get the new bolts on Saturday and can properly secure down the solar panels to the roof, but that’s okay. I was able to make a pretty significant dent in the organization of the van, so it feels a lot better than it did. Still a good ways to go, though.
I kept the just answer website on pretty much all day, but there were very few usable questions that came through that I was able to select and answer.
I think I probably already said that. Gratefully, I at least made a little bit of money today. Better than nothing.
Let’s see, I did some of my dishes. I did some of Heather’s dishes, very few. I charged up my hair clippers and my toothbrush. Set my portable charging bricks charging as well.
So many things to charge these days. 🙃
Somewhere in the early afternoon some people from the branch (local LDS church congregation) swung by to bring back the lawn mower that they had borrowed from Heather and Hans for a service project that they were doing.
I ended up staying and chatting with the gentleman and his daughter for a good little while. He had just recently put a roof on his house, so I picked his brain a little bit about his experience, as I keep picking people’s brains hopefully to help Heather and Hans be able to make their decision about what kind of roof they want for their house.
They had relatively recently moved from Anchorage. He’s retired with just a couple of kids left at home, one of them the daughter he brought with him who’s actually on a church service mission right now.
My sister Heather got home right about that time, and the gentleman’s daughter got to ride Fiona bareback. 😊
Although she did get dumped off once. 😅
Spent the next few hours still working on cleaning stuff up and organizing. Didn’t really get much done of the things on my to-do list, but having two solar panels on the roof feels pretty good. 🎉
What else…
Well Heather and I were outside after she got home from work, we were looking off toward the South and saw one of the neighbors walking, and I saw him fall, just sort of face planted. I watched for a little bit, and he was really really slow to get up, and then once he got up, he felt right back over again, so Heather handed me her keys, and I drove over to him to see if he was okay.
He’s an older gentleman with a worn out body. One knee’s been replaced twice. The other has been replaced once, and that’s not all of it. 😬
He had been out mowing something like 40 acres and was just exhausted and had gone for a walk when his body just gave out on him, so I helped him onto his feet, and got him in the car, and gave him a ride back to the top of the hill, as he didn’t want to ride all the way back to his house.
I was a little worried just dropping him off there at the top of the hill, but he sent a message later saying that he made it back home safely, so that was good.
We took the horses out of the pasture and onto the grassy area that will end up being sort of the front yard inside yard once the house is done and all the piles of stuff are gone.
The horse is absolutely love being able to go over and eat the grass. Yummy yummy.
Chatted with Cory for a good little while. What we thought had been a super easy diagnosis, has turned into a black hole.
Corey went out and grabbed another ignition switch and a starter, put them both in, and the moment the ignition wire had power, it blew the brand new starter and the brand new ignition switch all over again. So he’s blown two starters and three ignition switches at this point, yet not a single fuse has blown in the whole system. Never mind the fact that there are fuses between all of these components, so his van should have blown a fuse before blowing any of the components.
Hans suggested that maybe someone had bypass the fuses at some point and wired a direct wire that was now shorting to ground. That’s a fantastic suggestion. That’s the only thing I can think of that makes any sense. Otherwise, fuses should be blown all over the place.
So crazy.
Cory took it like a super trooper, though. 💪😎
From there I started writing in in my journal and then chatted with Cory for a little bit again about more spiritually uplifting and exciting things.
After which I headed in the house, and we chatted a little bit, and that’s when Hans gave me the idea that maybe someone had done a direct wiring job between the components.
Hans is an electrical engineer, so it’s nice to have him to bounce ideas off of, and great to have his idea on this particular issue.
My sister and I started having a lovely little spiritually uplifting conversation after that, which we enjoyed for the rest of the night until it was time to crash.
And that’s where I am right now. Got my blankets all situated, and I’m in bed, feet up on the side getting ready to post this and roll my little body under the covers for the night.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful that the wind didn’t blow my solar panels off the roof of my van and onto the gravel while I was trying to measure and drill and install.
- I’m grateful for the fact that though I wasn’t able to fasten the solar panels on permanently today, I was at least able to get them on and functioning enough to charge Pete up (my power station… gonna try that name out for a bit and see if it fits. 🙃)
- I’m grateful to have people to grow spiritually with. This is one of the biggest spiritual growth spurts of my life, and I need and want people to share in the journey. 😊
- Speaking of people sharing in the journey, I’m grateful for my sister heather, who, after reading my post from yesterday, initiated the gospel conversation that was just beautiful and brought the spirit and brought back that filling feeling. 🥰 Thanks, sister! 🥰
- I’m grateful that though my spinal symptoms were definitely ever present today, they seemed to be a little less powerful today. I appreciate that on a day like today when I wasn’t feeling as spiritually strong as I’d like to.
- I’m grateful that, as my sister shared tonight, that sometimes when we come back from the darkness, we come back even stronger than we were before we walked into the darkness. That’s been exactly my experience this time. I feel like God has given me gifts of perspective and understanding this time that are so powerful, they are far beyond anything I’ve ever had to this point. 🙏
Success:
- I started to pull out of a slide today, thanks to my friend Cory and my sister Heather. I have what I hoped for, a spiritually stronger finish to the day!
Improvement:
- There were some definite challenges to my ability to choose gratitude in all things today. Cory’s van tested my strength, and it was found weak. 😆 Gratefully, that’s not a permanent condition, and I’ll get stronger every time I choose gratitude over resentment or bitterness or pessimism or any of those other unhappy perspectives.
Love, light, and happiness to all y’all. 🥰
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 