Happy weekend, my lovelies. 😊
I… can’t really remember what happened today. 🙃
Let’s see… I woke up a good bit earlier than usual, though still much later than the goal.
My cooler, likely sometime quite shortly before I woke up, finished draining down the power station battery. That means I got about two and a half days out of it with two solar panels trying to keep it going.
Clearly, I need more solar panels to keep it going. I still have those other two that I bought, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with them because I’m just not sure how I want to tackle the whole roof set up from here, as I’ve already drilled gazillions of holes, had two different designs, and now looks like there’s going to be a third which is going to require even more holes in different places.
😅
I’m probably going to hold off on any more significant remodeling until I’ve figured out what’s happening with New Zealand.
Hopefully, I’ll know in the next week. I think I have until Friday or Saturday with that flight reservation. Hopefully, they’ll make their decision about my visa by then. 🤞
I actually did a decent amount of working today, so that was good. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some more done tomorrow, and then I won’t be coming from behind next week like I was this week.
Spent a little while, a good little while on the phone with Identifix this morning. They sent me an email saying that I was in collections for a late payment.
Except I have a zero balance.
😶
And not only do I have a zero balance, there are two refunds that I’m still waiting for, so they technically owe me money.
Poor Identifix is pretty much hapless when it comes to billing. 😅
So I walked through that issue with one of their customer service people, found out that they didn’t have the ticket created for the other refunds I’ve been waiting for, and the customer service guy told me someone would call me back later today.
Well, before anybody even got back to me, I got a notification from my credit card company via email saying that my card had been charged.
By whom?
Identifix.
😶
So it was back to being on the phone with them. How, when my account was set for manual pay did they manage to charge my card.
And why on earth were they charging my card when I had a zero balance?
Basically, and I suppose I could be wrong, but it seems pretty evident that the people who programmed the billing system were not familiar with billing systems, as the system was clearly designed with some pretty significant oversights that have plagued the poor company for nearly a year now.
Anyway, so now I have a third refund ticket submitted.
🙃
Spent more time working while at the same time beginning the project of putting in another skylight (transparent acrylic) over the hole in the roof that used to be housing a vent fan.
Took a little while to figure out how to cut out the acrylic. Last time, they cut it out with one of their machines, but they didn’t have one of those machines at this home depot, so I had to figure it out myself. I started using a razor blade, hoping to score it and eventually get all the way through with the razor blade.
But I quickly realized that was a lost cause, so my next effort was to use a little coping saw, but again, I realized pretty quickly that was a bust.
Finally I decided to just grab my angle grinder, and that actually worked beautifully, melting the plastic as much as it grounded down. 🎉
The next step was being able to drill holes through the acrylic without having it crack. Super quick to crack, so not an easy job.
What I ended up doing was starting with a tiny drill bit and then just going up one size for each pass around all the holes in the acrylic. Nine holes in total.
I probably ended up using six or seven different sizes of drill bits to finally get to the size that was big enough for the bolt holes; and of course, there were already holes in the roof from where the vent was screwed down, so I wanted to reuse the old holes and just make them bigger for the bolts, so I had to make sure I had everything lined up just perfectly.
Took me quite a long while, but now I have another skylight, and it’s sealed. The bolts won’t leak water, and all the sides have sealant both underneath and along the outer edges
There shouldn’t be any water intrusion of any kind… I hope. 🤞 My other skylight has been leak free from the beginning, so I think there’s a decent chance.
I finished the roof right at the perfect time, as shortly after finishing, a storm rolled in and had a pretty good dump, albeit for a brief amount of time.
Texted with my mom a little bit, and she mentioned that she had gotten a whole bunch of mail from Liz’s house that was for me, and she was kind enough both to go through it for me, as well as send me pictures of the ones that were of greatest import, as well as deposit some refund checks that I had gotten from my previous insurance company and from one of my credit card companies.
Between the four checks, I think it’s probably somewhere around $250 or $300, so that’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as the saying goes. 😊
I also remembered that if I do end up going to New Zealand, I can bring back the cell phone that I bought there 3 years ago. It won’t be worth much, but I’ll sell it when I get there, and get a little bit for that as well. It wouldn’t work very well in the States because it wasn’t designed to work with our service towers, so the reception wasn’t so great.
So that’ll help pay for part of the trip. 🙃
Headed over to the septic drain fields to work on grading the dirt a bit more, trying to scratch up this super duper hard packed dirt enough to have at least a little bit of loose soil for plants to enjoy, as well as grading to try and have it be a relatively even slope.
Unfortunately, before I had gotten much of anything done, I looked up to see Zora right on the edge of one of the deeper trenches, probably about two and a half or 3 ft deep. 😬
I yelled over for her to stop, which she’s usually really good at just pausing, but she kept right on going and ended up falling into the ditch.
😬
When she got up and started walking toward me down the ditch, she was limping pretty good. I got her out of the ditch, and she kept limping pretty good. I examined her to try and see if I could find any damage, but I couldn’t find any, and she wouldn’t react to any of my palpations of her leg and shoulder to see where the injury might be.
After limping around for a bit, she stopped walking on it all together, walking on three legs wherever she went.
😞
So I got her over to just in front of the trailer, and I spent a good little while inspecting her leg, looking for damage, trying to see if anything that I did would cause her to wince or whine, but she wouldn’t give any indication of where the pain might be. Instead, she just would roll over on her side or her back asking me to scratch her. So clearly it wasn’t an awful injury, but it was enough that she wasn’t willing to walk on the leg, but when lying down, she just wanted to be scratched. 🙃
After massaging her legs and shoulders for a good little while, I had her stand up, and this time she started walking with only a slight limp. 🎉
So I got her back down on the ground and kept massaging her until I hit something that she didn’t like, and she barked and sent her open mouth and teeth at me.
She’s done that before when I’ve been petting perhaps a little too hard in that same area, I think, so I have zero confidence that I actually hit anything that was related to the current injury.
Gratefully, after getting up and walking away, she started walking after me without any kind of a limp. Then I decided to jog away, and she actually started jogging after me without a limp, so… Hopefully we’re out of the woods? 🤞
I think it’s still a little sore for her, as she didn’t keep up with me as I was walking around the horse track, but neither was there much of an identifiable limp and she walked, so I think we might be good to go.
Grabbed my headlamp and went through the dozens of eggs that our neighbor gave us that there was a bit of a concern might have some fertilized eggs among them.
After going through all of them, I don’t think there’s much to be concerned about. Even the ones that I thought might be a little more questionable I think are probably totally fine, but I separated them out anyway.
Chatted with Heather and Hans a bit when they got home from their trip to Rapid, and here I am writing my entry for the day. I was about to go to bed without writing it, just… not much in the mood to write it, but here it is.
Gratitude to My Father:
- I’m grateful that I was able to answer a small handful of questions today.
- I’m grateful that I didn’t have to wait for too long for customer service either time. There have been times where I would be on hold for probably an hour and never actually reach anybody. So it was nice to at least have people answer I think maybe within 10 or 15 minutes both times?
- I forgot to mention that I went back out and worked on grading a little bit more after it looked like Zora was going to be okay, so I was able to get some more grading done, and I’m grateful for that. It’s starting to look more and more like somebody cared.
- I’m grateful I was able to cut out the acrylic without having the sheet crack significantly. I had one corner crack a little bit, so I shaved that corner off, but I had measured such that there was some extra space, so having a crack and having to shave it off wasn’t a big deal.
- I’m grateful for the lovely wind and the cooler weather that came in with the storm. I can hear the wind blowing through the little screen door I’ve got on the side doors that are currently open to the air, and I can feel the van rocking in the wind.
- I’m grateful Zora seems to be okay. 😊🎉
- I’m grateful the skylight went on well. It’s not an ideal setup, but at least it’ll keep the rain out for now. And if I’m going to be going to New Zealand for 6 months, there’s not much sense doing a whole bunch of remodeling right now. Who knows what life will be like when I come back, so I’ll probably keep things simple here for now and take things as they come when I get back.
We. Celebrate. Successes!!! 🥳:
- I did pretty darn well today at taking the sideways, uncomfortable blessings, in stride. 🎉
- I didn’t get anxious when Zora got hurt. I just took it as it came, and rolled with it.
- I plowed right into some things that I have recently been more fearful / anxious about.
Reflections on Where I Can Improve:
- Though I did okay, I think I could have been better at managing my tone of voice in the first conversation I had this morning with Identifix after they had informed me I was in collections (and I think it was just their internal collections department, not an external one)… with a zero balance. 🙃
Thought of the Day:
I say to the Latter-day Saints, all we have to do is to learn of God…We are the happiest people when we have what are called trials; for then the Spirit of God is more abundantly bestowed upon the faithful.”
While this may sound extreme, it highlights the paradoxical joy that can come from enduring trials with faith. The very process of relying on God during adversity can bring a deeper spiritual experience and a greater measure of the Holy Ghost’s presence, leading to a profound sense of peace and happiness.
~ Brigham Young
Loves!
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 