Category Archives: house

cant miss it

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Last night I dreamed I was driving a car. I was looking for a turn. You cant miss it. I was told. I drove and drove. “I think we missed it!” I said. You cant miss it, I was assured.
Turns out we passed it before anyone told us we couldn’t miss it. It was the first turn you couldn’t miss.
It was a long way back.

Then I had a dream I was taking these excellent pictures. Like you couldn’t look away excellent. Neither dream was bad. The first was funny and the second was, well, excellent!

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I started plastering the sides of the driveway with mortar. I will continue today.
Also I have some interesting business opportunities coming up….
Fingers Crossed!

A Good Slab, With A Somewhat Disappointing Finish

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The driveway/carport is finished, except I gotta take the forms off today and clean up.

It went well, and I did it all by myself, except the pouring and finishing and the shoveling and moving of gravel. It cost less than $1500.

The cats, chickens and I messed it up.

The pour started at 3:30 PM, and it was 5 PM by the time we finished. I went upstairs to get the dogs for their walk, and when I came down, I saw Little One Thee Cat run out on the wet cement, sink a good 3 or 4 inches, and run back off. I smoothed it OK.

Then there was thunder and all the cats seemed to disappear, so I went upstairs.

When The Wife got home,  I came down to show her the job and there were cat tracks and chicken tracks all over. We tried to smooth it with the board, and really messed things up. I called my finisher and asked him to come back over. He did and we smoothed it again, but this time it was very smooth and I was afraid it might be slippery when wet. He told me to brush it with a broom when it set a little more.

I went to the store and bought a street broom, and on my way out I saw Al run across, leaving deep tracks. When I got home there was more cat and chicken tracks across. The cement had set surprisingly fast and I was unable to brush the marks away. So, the finish is not what I had hoped.

Also, with the thunder came some rain, and the rain dripped off the side of the house in a concentrated area of the slab, so there’s pockmarks from that.

Overall, concrete man would probably call it atrocious, but it will work. It will be nice to have the cars under cover, out of the sun and rain. And, I used 3000 psi concrete and it is a very strong, heavy duty slab of concrete.

Below are several pictures of the whole process, start to finish.

Happy Anniversary

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Fourteen Years ago today, I got up super early, moved my few pieces of remaining furniture out to the driveway for the Salvation Army to pick up. I gave my next door neighbor my house key. Then, on my hands and knees, I puked in my bushes in the dark.
What was I doing? I didn’t even have a key to my own house any more.
A friend picked me up in my old van that I sold to his business. And took me to the airport.
As the plane took off, and curved over the Chesapeake Bay to head south, I looked down out of my window at the familiar land and I actually cried. “I Failed” I thought to myself. “Ten years here, I have a house, I had a good job, I had everything but a wife and I failed!” I felt completely, utterly, miserable and afraid, wondering if I knew what I was doing.
The further south the plane went, the better I felt. When the plane descended into Grand Cayman I was so excited and happy I could barely contain myself. I started the day puking in my bushes and ended the day snorkeling off Seven Mile Beach.
It was one of the best days of my life so far. I have never regretted it.
For years before I moved here, I wanted to move back to the tropics. I wanted to stay in Hawaii after living there almost 5 years but fate had other plans. Then I was planning on moving to Belize, I was planning and thinking, going to the library, planning and planning, and thinking and thinking. For years. It only took a couple months to make the move down here, and it was action, not planning that did it. I made a phone call, for a yard sale, and sold everything I owned, a whole 3 bedroom house full of stuff. I made another phone call, Real estate manager. (I still have the house in Virginia, rented out). I made a call, airlines; airline ticket. I sold my car, turned in a letter of resignation at my long-time job. Very little planning, just actions. This a lesson I need to re-learn over and over again in my life. Now I’ve been here 14 years.
Sometimes I’m still miserable and afraid, thinking about the future and the unknown, but life is good, I’ve got the best wife ever and the best life ever and I’m glad to be here, and I don’t regret a thing.

The past is gone, we can’t do anything to change it. That’s why the past is called History.
We don’t know if we’ll be there tomorrow, or what’s going to happen if we are. That’s why the future is a Mystery.
All we have is Today. Today is a gift, that’s why we call it

The Present