(written on August 13th)
I don’t remember when I got up or what I did first thing. I did call the county assessor and get the trailer and skid steer off my property tax assessment, though. 🥳
Then probably somewhere around 9:30, I
left my mom’s place and spent the rest of the morning and the beginning of the afternoon at Pea Ridge Park, charging my power station from The Pavilion outlet while simultaneously working to clean out and organize my van.
After having chucked so much stuff in my van to drag with me to Arkansas for the fuel system swap over, I’d lived days inside with no room and the mess just getting bigger and bigger. It was nice today to clean out a bit and organize.
Once everything was charged up, I headed over to the neighborhood market in Pea Ridge and then stopped off at neighbor Joe’s house before pulling into Haven Hill. Ended up spending probably 45 minutes or so chatting with Joe on his front porch. His wife was out of town, and we just shot the breeze for a little while. Cool guy. 😊
I’m grateful to be friends with my old neighbors. 😊
As during our conversation, he started talking a little bit about roadsters, as he’s always wanted one. He had thought about buying a little Mini Cooper convertible, but I talked him out of that rather quickly (garbage vehicles, if you ask me 😅). I told him I’d bring my Happy (my Z3) by one day soon and let him give it a drive. 😊
After chatting with Joe, I stopped off at Liz and Mike’s place to drop off a little box full of clothes and other things that I was donating to the cause, so to speak. I finally gave up on keeping any of my jeans from yesteryear. My body just… Can’t handle restrictive waist lines. 😕
I also donated nearly all of my dress shirts that I used to wear when I was an associate professor at the University of Utah and a teacher American Heritage School.
If I’m remembering correctly, some of those shirts I bought while out shopping with my only college girlfriend (Janelle).
It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t take time to think much about it/reminisce.
From there, I wandered on over to the carriage barn, finding Jim and Eddie they’re talking, and I joined the conversation. Apparently, it was Eddie’s birthday today [happy birthday Eddie!!! 🥳].
We talked for a good little while, and then we all decided to go over to Sam’s Club for lunch for a little mini birthday celebration. 😊
Sam’s Club for the win–again! 🙃
It was Eddie’s first time enjoying the wonders of a dirt cheap Sam’s Club meal– three of us getting our fill for something like $7.87. 😎
Thx, Sam’s Club. 🙏
I spent the rest of the daylight hours back on Haven Hill trying to help out as much as I could. Jim and I spent a good little while cleaning up the area on the south side of the carriage barn and beginning to clean up the entryway as well.
We brought the tractor over and filled the bucket with trash. We also made a scrap metal pile that we’ll haul off later.
It’s definitely looking a lot better, although it’s probably not really all that apparent. I got a burn permit and started burning the leaves that I was raking up that were left over from last fall.
I think I made two trips with the tractor bucket full of trash over to the dumpster. Jim was going to order one of those large metal dumpsters that are the size of dump trucks to have dropped off, but I think we can save him the money by simply taking the trash over bit by bit as the place gets cleaned up instead of trying to do it all at once and perhaps not being able to take full advantage of the dumpster because of a lack of time, with so many other projects going on.
Jim wasn’t feeling so well, so after a while, he headed in to take a nap, and I continued working outside. Eventually, sometime after the sun went down, I called it a night (at least for working on the Hill).
I didn’t go back to my mom’s, though, not just yet. I headed into Rogers and stopped off at the recycling center, finally getting rid of the glass bottle that I had found in my little camping spot in the mountains East of 5thwater Hot Springs in Utah.
If glass bottles could speak, it would probably have a fun story to tell. 🙃
Stopped off at the Walmart Supercenter in Rogers intending to take back the two storage bins that I bought in Rapid City last week to catch the transmission fluid out of the donor van transmission, should they have stopped me and required that I drain the pan before dumping the van at the scrap yard.
Except I walked out of the Supercenter buying whatever it is that I bought, completely forgetting why I had gone there in the first place. 😆
Sooooo… I still have my two brand new bins that I’ll never use. 🙃
I got back to my mom’s place I think somewhere around 10:30 in the evening, rather late, but still in time to start a load of laundry. 🙃
Thx, mama. 🙏
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 