Author: Derek

Last week was the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Charley, which kicked off, as the name implies, four hurricanes striking Florida in a month and a half.

Charley didn’t hit my old Tampa house. It was an interesting twenty-four hours before because my ex and I were having a screened in back porch installed. And we decided to save five hundred bucks by doing the demo of the old deck ourselves. So we had a backyard full of debris with a storm coming. My FIL at the time made multiple trips to the dump. Then after all that back breaking work, I had to take him across the bay to his place in Pinellas. Then, I got to spend more than two hours on the Howard Franklin.

Then came Frances, which was coming across the state at us. FIL and I installed mounts for storm shutters on the windows while a guy was putting up the screened in back porch. The fun part was when FIL and I were cutting the plywood. With hand tools. The guy putting in the back porch took pity on us and let us borrow is power tools. Because “it’s nice watching someone else work.”

I was working at the local Mickey D franchise during these six weeks. This is where my joke that McDonald’s only closes for three days a year – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and hurricane.

Day Job Happenings – The big news around the Manor is that I formally requested a transfer from the current day job to my old day job. The new job was poorly conceived and the politics of my current place morphed it into something where I often dread going into the office. Not to say there weren’t parts I liked, but it wasn’t worth the stress. I have to take a pay cut, but since The Wife and I budget relentlessly, it’s more of an inconvenience than a hardship.

Anyways, I’m in that wonderful time where I’ve notified my supervisor (who was not surprised), but I’m waiting on a timeline for how the transfer will occur. Most likely it will take about a month. Maybe more, maybe less. Then comes the fun of informing everyone else. TBH, some of that will be fun. Others will be less so.

Weather Happenings – We got our first semi-decent tropical near us for the season. This meant pulling down the bird feeders. Also gave me the reason to replace one of the poles which wasn’t holding up too well. It’s always fun explaining to newbies that while, yes, the storm is going to make landfall north of us, we’re going to get some interesting weather from it due to the size of the storms.

Fortunately for us, all we got was some real sporty thunderstorms and wind. Our lanai got a bit flooded due to rain coming in – sideways – faster than it could drain. The pond out back probably rose about six inches. The county as a whole saw about 14″ of rain drop over a couple of days, but my little corner saw almost 19 inches. There was pretty nasty flooding across the county and one of the dams south of us had to release some water causing more flooding. So, we’re good, but a lot of our neighbors are going through a rough time.

Derek’s Mind Works In Odd Ways – I’ve recently started picking up some of the GI Joe Classified series figures. For those unaware, these are mostly based on the old 80’s toys, but at six-inch scale, with more articulation and more gear. Okay, I know GI Joe was known for, let’s just say, a unrealistic edge to their weapons and gear. I mean, a motorcycle with a gatling gun sidecar is neat, but not feasible. However, I’m hitting an odd “uncanny valley” issue. For instance, I recently picked up this set. Shockwave was one of my fav’s back in the day, and I’m looking at putting together an urban warfare scene with some Alley Vipers I picked up. Anyhoo, here’s my brain conundrum. The idea of a SWAT-style guy on the team lives on one side of the uncanny valley, while the gatling gun-armed motorcycle lives on another. The double-barrel AR falls directly into the valley. Why? Because it’s a real thing, but there’s no way I can see an elite unit actually using it in combat. I can’t tell you why that bothers me, but it bothers me.