(written on August 16th and 17th from notes taken previously, and hopefully, I’m not mixing up days with some stuff 😅)
I was up late last night, and it was hot. The overnight lows are around 80 right now with the highs in the triples, and with the humidity (albeit not as bad as usual, because it’s been so dry), it was pretty brutal, a sweat fest. Had to put my fan up to 5 just to be bearable.
And I didn’t go to bed right away. I veged out, diving headlong into various escapes to avoid fear, pain, and discomfort while stuffing myself with junk food.
😕
Gratefully, today was a productive day despite my poor decisions last night. Today was a packing day, and though we got some stuff done yesterday, we got a lot done today.
I spent the morning taping up moving boxes, so they would be ready to load with stuff. My mom started going through all of the stuff in the basement that was already boxed up, deciding which which stuff to keep, which stuff to give away, which stuff to throw away, etc.
After loading the first crop of storage unit candidates into Albert, we headed over to the storage unit, unloaded everything, and then headed over to my mom’s friend Rosanne’s place, as I wanted to take care of her garage door issue for her now that her power was back on.
Gratefully, I was able to get the garage door working again from the button, but there’s still the issue of the manual release not reconnecting like it should. I don’t as best I can tell, it wasn’t properly adjusted, or the when originally installed, it was installed out of alignment from what it needed to be for the manual released properly automatically catch again upon manually closing the door.
As I watched the automatic door motor move the components, I watched how much torque was placed on the system, significantly bending the upper guide bar. I had noticed that yesterday when I tried to manually reconnect the release. The whole darn guide bar was bending over the strain, and I didn’t want to break anything by pushing too hard.
Well, looks like that’s just what’s happening anyway, so I wouldn’t have broken anything.
I think the garage tech is going to come out anyway, so hopefully he can fix the issue with the misalignment or misadjustment or whatever it is that makes it pretty much impossible without massive effort reconnect the manual release.
I also started to try and fix her back door, but I didn’t have everything that I needed to be able to do the job. Oh well.
Back on the homefront, I went back to taping boxes and then stacking them neatly, so they weren’t just piled up everywhere.
The rest of the day was spent pretty much packing, loading up Albert, and unloading everything into the storage unit.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
By the time the day was over, I think we ended up making four or five trips to the storage unit, so we’ve made some pretty good progress. 🙏
There’s still a ton to do. Before I go back to South Dakota, I’m hoping to at least get my mom to the point where everything that isn’t used daily is packed up and in the storage unit, so that when official moving day comes, it’ll just take a handful of people and a few trucks to move the big stuff.
And hopefully by then, there will be a place to go. 🤞
I was surprised at how much energy I had to just keep going today. I’ve been mostly go go go since I got here, and I’m pretty tired, but I was able to just keep going today. I even got a second wind, and we did one more run late.
Went with my mom to the neighborhood market in Pea Ridge, ate the wonderful dinner that she made, did a bit more sorting and packing and chatting with my mom, a bit of house hunting online, and then veged for a bit before crashing.
Productive day. 🙏
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
