Monday, August 5, 2024

Wet weekend

The week itself was pretty quiet. I took one look at the skies on Friday afternoon and decided not to bring the desk and stuff home.  As alluded to in the last post, I finished setting up the entertainment center.  Bonus points if you recognize that horse that died after not being shot by a blank :P  

The weekend was very wet, so I didn't do a whole lot outdoors.  Saturday I took advantage of a not really wet morning.  I started off cleaning out the back of my truck.  


I also went for a walk around the rail trail a bit.  The rail trail isn't as nice as some of the other places I go, but it is paved and an easy walk.



It appears someone stole the bench?  There used to be a bench on the concrete pad.


The other thing I did was I finally brought home the desk and whatnot from work.  This is my new workbench.  


It had started to drizzle as I was setting it up and then proceeded to rain the rest of the day, so I worked a bit on my trip planning, which I should already be reserving hotels at this point.  I got hotels picked out for a chunk of the trip, but realized that one of my stops, Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument, is quite literally in the middle of nowhere.  There is no visitor center (even though it is a park, not really a monument, much like the Grand Staircase Escalante in Utah and Arizona), and there isn't even a town around most of it.  So I will need to do some digging on that.  I seriously doubt I will have a complete setup in time for this trip, so I am not sure I want to sign up for camping.  I might just remove that and add a ghost town trip instead.  I never made it to the ghost town in Arizona, the roads were so bad I didn't feel comfortable trying to go there in my Tundra.  It also cuts a day from the itinerary, which might be a good thing since I don't have a resupply and laundry day planned currently, I was going to have to take a day out of either Yellowstone or Grand Teton for it.  I am currently keeping my trip notes here:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VgAnZXowxcvWFAUoVYYKVFOL3tE_f45tBrUGvmUVaN8/edit?usp=sharing

I also tinkered around a bit with the TV setup.  I think there was just corrosion or oxidation on the ye old ancient composite cables I had.  I cleaned everything off, plugged it in, and the old consoles worked just fine on the new TV.  


Just for curiosity's sake, I went and checked the power levels on the new UPS.  They were lower than what I had measured with the kill-a-watt, but this doesn't include the laptop, which isn't on the battery, it is only on the surge protection side.


The big project on Sunday was to finish setting up the guest room.  I don't particularly like the layout I ended up with, but the room was too small to put the endstand beside the bed which would have been preferred.  Oh well.  Longer term, the hot tub will be stored in a bin on  the deck, and there will just be some shelves along the wall instead.  I am also torn on tossing the AC.  I really don't need a window unit, though I have considered integrating it into the cap.  My battery backup should be able to run a small AC like that for the better part of a day (I did some testing with it back when I was waiting for the house to be setup as you may recall).  I would primarily end up using it to pull down before sleeping though, I don't think I would use it much during the day.  But I would also probably get an inverter driven one that is more efficient.  


I only got a few fake bites on the entertainment center, so I tossed it.  I have been thinking on the elliptical, and I think I might get rid of the elliptical and get a fold up treadmill instead.  I still have the sitting elliptical if I have knee or ankle problems with the treadmill, but the treadmill will be half the size and accomplish the same goal.


I didn't snag a picture, but I also went through my cabinets and pulled out a lot of stuff I had stocked up that I was planning on taking with me on the trip (mostly food items).  I really need to get moving on trip prep.  Tonight though it is putting my bike back together, since my truck goes in for tires tomorrow, and I was thinking I might bike to work instead of getting a ride.  

Current to-do:
  • Design deck
  • Build deck
  • Build armoire.
  • Install whole house filter.
  • Refurb cap
  • Access panel upgrades in master closet
  • Back yard drainage.
  • Insulate the water lines
  • Take scrap metal to Buffum.  Clean up trash.
  • Close up tiny home.  Seal up plumbing.
  • Storm doors

1 comment:

  1. I'll claim the bonus points - the horse in Dean Wormer's office on Animal House. And you may want to consider the Devil's Tower as an alternate to the Wind Cave.

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