Category: Family

Ward Manor upgrade happenings – We’re remodeling the downstairs bathroom to take out the tub and replace it with a walk-in shower. However, we’re getting close to start time, so we ordered all the tile needed. Yeah, that was a lot of money. The first bit was delivered, but it was by – I guess – a freelancer. We were taking packages of tile out of someone’s car. Well, we got to use the collapsible wagon we picked up with the ambitious goal of using it to walk to the grocery store across the street.

We also took advantage of the Black Friday deals to do some upgrades on televisions. Both MIL’s and our bedroom televisions have been showing their age. It was interesting to see how much thinner current televisions were compared to some most of a decade older. Plus it was nice watching “Dune Part 2” on a new OLED.

Less upgrade and more shuffling was moving a couch from upstairs to downstairs. Fortunately, it kind of slid down the stairs. But it did require quite a bit of shuffling to get it into place. Now to figure out how we’re redoing the upstairs. I mean, we kinda have a plan. Sort of.

Thanksgiving happenings – This year Thanksgiving was being held at BIL and SIL’s house. Since Mom is back out west for a bit, The Wife stepped up to make some of the common dishes. Namely, the stuffing, the apple crisp, and the sweet potato souffle. The stuffing is a family recipe from my paternal grandmother, and it was the first year someone other than Mom or The Brother made it. This was one of the holidays The Wife was very grateful to have the double oven. My contribution was limited to helping reach high or heavy items.

There was a lot of food. SIL went all-out. The Wife’s food was awesome. SIL’s food was awesome. I overindulged in said awesome food. It’s a good thing I took Black Friday off. Food hangovers can be just as bad as alcohol hangovers.

Story Happenings – I finally finished the third Irregulars story. Well, I got the ending finished. Now it’s set it down for a bit and then do an edit. My goal was around 15K words, and it’s sitting at 16K words.

Decorating Happenings – This is The Wife’s favorite time of year. She can let her decorating instincts run wild. To her credit, she’s been keeping the volume of decorations down to what can be easily moved in four to five large plastic tubs. Still, it’s surprising/amazing how the house changes as it is festooned with holiday cheer.

Monday evening my Uncle Calvin passed away. Fuck cancer. Fuck cancer with a syphilitic donkey cock.

Calvin and I were very different people. He was this gregarious man who was happiest outdoors with his horses. I am an introvert who is quite happy keeping his excursions outside Ward Manor to a minimum. We didn’t see much of each other due to living on other sides of the country. Still, the man put in indelible mark on my life.

The summer before junior year of high school, I was sent to work on Uncle Calvin’s farm. Tending to fields, helping with cattle, learning how to irrigate, and so much more. At the time, I didn’t realize how much growing up I was doing. I wouldn’t really figure that out for years.

I have many happy – or at least funny with the passage of time – memories of Uncle Calvin. I am very glad that The Wife got to spend time with him.

I will miss you Calvin.

MIL has been tooling around in an eleven-year-old Hyundai that she bought new. Over the last six months or so, she’s been toying with the idea of getting a new vehicle since hers doesn’t have a backup camera or some of the other modern features. Plus, MIL wanted to go from a sedan to a small SUV or crossover. Well, riding around in her friend’s new car seemed to have been what was needed to push MIL over to actually going car shopping.

We really were just going to go to test drive a car. We narrowed down a Nissan Kicks as a likely possibility, and were going to let MIL test drive one to make sure. We really didn’t plan on coming home with a new car. But MIL really liked the Kicks.

I hate car buying, even when I’m not the one buying the car. It takes so damn long. The plus side was that neither the salesperson nor the finance person did any “hard selling”. It still took hours before MIL and The Wife drove the new car off the lot.

Still some admin stuff to finish up in handing down her old car to family, getting plates transferred, and other items. But as of now, the driveway has both the Ward Wagon and new MIL-Mobile.

I’m starting a new semi-regular feature on the birds of Ward Manor. The Wife and I set out bird feeders around the house to attract some of the local birds. Mainly for our viewing pleasure, although we have a couple that are primarily for the cats’ viewing/hunting pleasure.

This installment is on the flock of glossy ibis we have roaming around. Here’s the Wikipedia article. I like them because they’re like mini-plague doctors. Sometimes we have a few, but then are the days we have a flock of couple dozen. I managed to snap a couple of pics when the flock was between the two extremes.

Halloween Happenings – Ward Manor was invaded by the great niece so she could trick or treat in our neighborhood. This year, she decided to be a police officer. We set up our table at the end of the driveway and handed out little trinkets. We avoided handing out candy because, well, that means having candy in the house. I will say the best costume goes to the next door neighbors. Not because they dressed up their 13-month-old as an Ewok, but because they turned his stroller into an Imperial Speederbike.

Orlando Happenings – The Wife and I spent the last few days in Orlando so that I could go to the Babymetal concert.

Sunday, The Wife and I traveled over to Disney Springs. We got there shortly before everything opened up and made a beeline to the Lego store. Because, if you’ve never been, they limit the number of folks into the store. The line gets long the later in the day. From there, we meandered through the different stores. They closed their big Star Wars shop and enlarged the smaller one. Not sure if that’s permanent or what. From there, we went up to get some groceries. Much to our surprise, there was a hot pot place advertising boba tea next to the Publix. So, we enjoyed boba while we picked up groceries. From there, we trekked over to the Airbnb. Which was in a place that was kind of like a hotel/apartment thing? I dunno. We had some fun with the door lock, but got all of the stuff dragged in. Then came setting up the workstations. I found some portable monitor/laptop stands. These improve the workstations a lot more. The Wife got the small dining table, while I got the much smaller desk in the bedroom.

Monday was a work day. I will say using laptop stands improved working remotely. Which was good because the day job threw me a quick turnaround – as in same-day – analysis. The internet at the AirBnB wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst we’ve had to deal with on our travels. The chairs were in the same vein – not great, not the worst. We ordered dinner in from Carrabba’s – which neither of us had eaten from in quite a long time. Tuesday work day was similar, with the exception of my work headphones acting up.

Concert Happenings – There was some discussion on whether I should bring my sling bag or not. I ended up deciding against it because it would be one more thing going through security. Plus, I’ve never been to the Hard Rock at Universal – and I always get a bit anxious with new places. When I arrived the line was – shall we say long? I will give them credit, once the doors opened, the line moved pretty smoothly.

The good news was that I had a seat in the center of the stage. The bad news was that the seat was probably in the top row.

The opening act was Scene Queen. Grindcore with a female lead. Kind of like Letters From The Fire meets Bloodhound Gang. Not my cup of tea. At least the singer’s voice didn’t hurt my head like the lead singer from Edge of Paradise.

Babymetal puts on a good show. The girls are very energetic and played a lot of their hits. I will say that through my AirPods Pro I was using as earpro, you could definitely tell how produced they are. Still, even with that, I really enjoyed it.

Plus when the concert was over and the house sound came back on, I got to hear a couple of thousand metalheads sing the refrain from “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I may have joined in the festivities.

Here’s a couple of pics:

The Wife and I went to Disney Springs last weekend. There will be more about the trip in tomorrow’s post. This scene needed its own post.

We went to a store that is kind of a high-end Bath and Bodyworks. While perusing through the wares, we came across little packages of “solid shampoo”.

Me: These are interesting, particularly if we use them for packing for air travel.

The Wife: Those are supposed to be good for your hair, but I’ve never used them.

Me: I’ve used regular bar soap to wash my hair, but nothing like that.

The Wife: There are times you make my head hurt.

How is it the end of October already?

Day Job Happenings – I am now firmly ensconced in the old/new job. We have a new supervisor who was hired during my interregnum from the team. It’s fun when he explains something the team does that I helped start up before I left.

The other fun was I put in an IT ticket because a piece of software was having an issue. In return I was told my laptop was out of warranty and I needed to come in to swap it out. Grumble. My team uses some non-standard software. Plus, getting everything back would be a pain. On top of that, the day job is about fifty miles north of Ward Manor. Anywhoo, I went up, found a place to work for an hour until I could go down to IT, and at the appointed time went down – to be told there were no laptops to be had. Oh, and do you need yours to work? So, I guess I need to make the 100 mile round trip again at some point.

Drink Happenings – The Wife and I picked up bottles of the new Oreo flavored Coke Zero. Okay, not horrible, not great. Also, not something I would go out of my way to get again. I think that kind of sums up the experience.

Cat Tree Happenings – The cat tree we kept out on the back porch was finally deteriorated enough to toss out. After much deliberation, The Wife found one on Amazon that was wood and rope – perfect for outdoors. When it arrived, the wood was, shall we say, very naked. Dang. Run up to Lowe’s for stain and assorted items. I was told by The Wife to stick to staining the small pieces. Assembly didn’t go too bad. A couple of frustrations. Then some rearranging the back porch.

Voting Happenings – The Wife and I did our early voting. There was a small hiccup but went relatively smoothly.

Grill Happenings – It looks like I’m going to get a new grill. The Wife’s nephew is looking to offload some floor models from his day job. Plus, the old grill was getting a bit “dilapidated.”

The Wife loves her TikTok. The algorithm fed her up a guy named Caleb Hammer, who is kind of like a foul-mouthed, very confrontational Dave Ramsey. Not my cup of tea, but i can see why he would be popular.

Anywhoo, it led to a discussion between The Wife and me about how glad we are that we agreed early on money, spending, and budgeting. It also got me thinking on some of the financial reps – the financial muscles I had to build.

The beginning exercise was to pay cash for stuff. I really believe this was such a foundational financial rep. Because when I got used to paying cash for everything, I learned to pay for only what I could afford and budgeted to spend. This was the strength I needed to go to using a debit card. I could spend in more areas, but I still was doing the financial reps of staying within budget and keeping with what was in my account. This meant I had that discipline when The Wife and I went to a credit card. We already had those financial reps to treat the credit card like cash.

Last week, Hurricane Milton slammed through our area. Ward Manor was maybe twenty miles north of the eye as it made landfall and marched across the state. The TLDR is that Ward Manor weathered the storm with minor damage. It was still terrifying to listen to that wind howling outside as we sat in the dark counting down the minutes until the worst passed.

There were some lessons learned. First, I need to make sure I test all of my gear before the fecal matter impacts the turbine. Second, I need to fill my gaps faster. Third, I need to improve my storm checklists. Still, the preps we did have in place allowed us to be in a much better position than many of our neighbors. And allowed us to have stuff to hand out when we were in a better position.

Below is the log I kept during the events.

Saturday 10/5

This is when where the “blob” started becoming dangerous. The Wife and I rely on a local weatherman we trust, and when he starts giving out warning signals, we take notice. Warning signal – hurricane likely to hit somewhere on the west coast of Florida. Where? Models aren’t sure, but damn if the track looks like it’s going right through Ward Manor’s Area of Operations. Originally it looked like a strong tropical or Cat 1. Worrisome, but we just weathered that kind of thing. Here’s the issue. If I’ve learned anything is that with a warm Gulf, storms can intensify quickly. Very quickly. A Cat 1 projected to sideswipe us was one thing. A Cat 1 crossing the Gulf on a beeline? That’s something else.

The issue was that we really hadn’t done any of the purchases that we planned out after Helene. Part of that was my misreading of Amazon’s Prime Days in October or whatever they’re calling them. I thought it started on the 6^th. No, I have no idea why. It meant I stupidly delayed the purchase of the portable AC. By Saturday, there was none that would work for us that would get to Ward Manor until after Wednesday. We pulled the trigger on the one we liked and hoped it would be here in time to help. If not, we have all our fans.

Food and water – including hurricane snacks – were topped off. Making sure every powerbank and battery were charged was started. I also started planning the shifting of our stuff so that everything comes inside Ward Manor’s walls. When did we get all this extra stuff? We also went a little spendy on some extras. I may have picked up another Streamlight Siege lantern.

Sunday 10/6

 We made the decision to call the handyman we’ve been working with to come and put up the upstairs storm screens. The downstairs ones we can do on our own, but the upstairs we need assistance. Plus, it’s a matter of better to have them up and not need them, than need them and not have them up. Since we were laying them out for the handyman, we put a couple. Which just reinforced the idea that I would like either automatic or at least pull down hurricane shutters. Stupid HOA rules.

When the handyman was putting up our screens, we found out we were ten wing nuts shy. Run to Lowe’s. Completely out. So, we ran up to Lowe’s. Completely sold out. Well, let’s try the Ace store. Fortunately, they had some. We bought what we needed to make sure there was some for others. The neighborhood FB pages were blowing up with people looking for wingnuts. We also ordered more so that we’re not in this predicament next time.

Boo – our hairless – got a bath because EBC showered him with vomit. Disgusting but somewhat hilarious.

Monday 10/7

 I had to travel up to Tampa for a work thing for going back to my old job. Since there was no gas down in our neck of the woods, I hoped to get some at a couple of stations on the way. Rolled into one station and was heartened to see no bags on the handles. That lasted until I tried to pump gas. No go. Try another pump. Nope. Try one more. Oh, hey, it has supreme. I’ll take it.

 While I was gone, BIL and SIL dropped off the portable AC we bought about a year ago. We were very grateful. We have another coming after the storm, but it was nice seeing it in the garage.

I left work a couple hours early to go prep. It was a lot of pulling stuff from around the house inside the garage. As much as I disliked it, we had to make the decision not to bring the Ward Wagon into the garage. We have too much stuff, and Manatee county suspended trash  service for Tuesday and Wednesday. The Wife and I put up the two most obstinate screens. One that was clearly cut just a bit short. New curse words were invented. We also ordered more bolts because some of ours were in desperate need of replacement. We also cleared the back porch. Damn we have a lot of stuff.

Going to bed, I was a mess of pain.

Tuesday 10/8

While we worked, we did more storm preps. Primarily, we did our laundry, and starting to put together some quick go bags. The Wife talked with her niece who lives in Bradenton. Although she wasn’t in an evac zone, she was kinda close to evac zones. The Wife finally talked her to come to Ward Manor with the great niece. Great, they’ll be behind our walls. But that’s two more people (okay one and a half since the great niece is pre-K). MIL and I made a run to the Publix across the main road for a supply run. They had the main supplies we needed, but paper towels, toilet paper, and bread were gone. They had cases of store brand bottled water, of which we picked up a couple.

This is when the track put the storm right on course for Ward Manor’s area of operations. And it looks like its projected to come into our area Wednesday night / Thursday morning. Um, yeah, that doesn’t look like we’re in for a fun night.

 Proof positive that telemarketers have no brains, The Wife and I each had someone call asking if we wanted to sell our rental property. Really? You want to give me a sales pitch while I’m trying to make sure my home is ready to weather a storm? Needless to say, The Wife and I released some pent up stress on those telemarketers.

We decided to not put up the last screen to give the cats a bit more time to enjoy the back porch.

Wednesday 10/9

 The morning was filling up the tubs and my buckets with water. We also filled up the various water bottles up for a bit more drinking water. We had a brief moment of hope when the storm bobbed south, but it quickly came back to aiming at Ward Manor AO. I spent some of the morning making videos of various rooms to record our possessions. I pulled down all the flashlights and put in batteries. I also put batteries into a cheap storm radio I picked up about six months ago only to find it wasn’t working. Feck. After this, I’m getting a better damn radio.

About 0900, we went and retrieved The Niece and Great Niece. The roads were more deserted than I expected. MCSO and state troopers were out. Much respect to those folks. They’re going to have a longer day than we will at Ward Manor. After ensconcing The Niece in one of our workstations so she can keep working, The Wife and I finished putting up the last storm screen. I put the locks on the garage door. Ward Manor was in lockdown.

MIL was nice enough to watch Great Niece for a couple of hours so The Wife and I could grab a quick power nap. Afterwards, we put down some instant dams we picked up at Lowe’s. Those were a pain in the ass to activate and put in place at the front door.

1830 – Extreme wind warning issued for our area. The storm looks like it’s coming directly at us. We’ve had a few power flickers. The Brother lost power. The Wife’s nephew lost power. Manatee county has pulled first responders off the roads.

1900 – Expect the worst to last for the next two hours. There’s something helpful and annoying about having a four-year-old who is completely oblivious to what’s going on except that she can’t go to the park.   

1945 – power goes down after several flickers

2030 – landfall south of us. Not sure if that’s going to extend our window of danger

2130 – oh good, all the fire alarms are going off. Poor vampire cat. She was scurrying around the house to find a place to hide from the noise. Think it’s a low battery in the one in mil room. Switched out and hope for the best

2300 – looks like the worst has passed. Trying for sleep

Thursday 10/10

0400 – woke up to thankfully almost no wind noise. Geek Aire fans were limping along. Craftsman fan was going. Saw that the Trop lost its roof. Nothing about water restrictions.

0600 – house woke up and morning chores done. Cracked the front door. No damage to cars or front of house. FB post reported someone did not secure their trampoline and it ended up on a neighbor’s roof.

0730 – Daybreak; did a look around the house. Some of the mounts for screens were nowhere to be seen. One of our gutters looked like the wind twisted it up pretty decent. The oak in the back yard is leaning pretty strongly, but it’s toward the pond. The trees on the other side of the pond took a hit. Some are gone from view, and a couple of the big ones are leaning at an almost 45 degree angle. The Wife and I took down the screen on the back porch to give us more light. She also took advantage of the relatively cooler temps outside to open up the front screen door.

0800 – Well goddamnit fuck fuck fuckety fuck. Guess who bought the wrong damn cord to hook up the batteries to the box? If you guessed Derek, you win the prize. Well, at least I can wheel the batteries in and we can plug stuff in. Which is good because we need to use the small drink fridge for insulin for one of the cats.

0930 – Power kicked back on. That was a hell of a surprise. Kicked the temp on the AC up a bit so The Wife could enjoy having the screen doors open for a while longer.

 1030 – Take the great niece to the local park to let her blow off some steam while the ladies of the house went to a local coffee cart. Ward Manor came off extremely light compared to some of my neighbors. Not outright destruction, but siding was torn off, trees knocked flat, and other damage.

1130 – The Brother asked if he could come down due to his place having neither power nor water. While he was traversing down to Ward Manor, we were busily trying to get our house back in order.

1630 – We have an early dinner. Niece and Great Niece will stay with us for at least another night as they have no power at their apartment. BIL and SIL report their power is back on. The Wife’s nephew and his wife are still without power. We lent them our portable air conditioner as they have a generator and some power banks.

Friday 10/11

While The Brother, The Niece, and me worked at the day jobs, The Wife went to check on a friend who she hadn’t heard from since the storm.  It was disconcerting to have her out of contact for that long. After work was more putting the house to right. We also received word that trash would be picked up on Saturday. No yard waste, no recycle, just the trash. The Brother received word from his roommates that the house had water and power, so he departed after dinner.

Places were starting to open, but with limited supplies and staff. The big issue was where to get gas and where to get groceries. Gas stations had lines that were measured in tens of minutes waits. Some had Manatee County Sheriffs Office out directing traffic.

Saturday 10/12

The utility that handles The Niece’s apartment complex said that they expected to have 95% of the county back online by Thursday. Needless to say, this caused some disconcerting feelings as she was not expecting to have to stay with us for over a week. Looking at people desperately hunting gas made me feel glad that: 1) all the workers in the house are teleworkers, and 2) I decided to go with batteries instead of a generator.

An interesting note was the sighting of an osprey in the trees behind the pond. First time I’d seen an osprey in our neck of the woods.

Sunday 10/13

About midday, The Niece saw her home network come back up, which meant her apartment had power. It was then furiously pack up and take her over to pick up the car from her SO, so that she could head home. While The Wife and MIL were running that errand, the handyman came by and took down the upstairs screens.

By1500, Ward Manor isn’t fully back to pre-Milton, but it’s close enough.

Hurricane Helene – Yeah, we didn’t get much from the storm. Some rain that came in intense bursts, some nasty wind (which treated us to watching a neighbor’s trash can roll down the street). Overall, not much in our vicinity. Not even a power flicker. So, the good news is that I didn’t have to use my big Ecoflows. Of course, that meant I didn’t get to use my big Ecoflows. As for other folks in my home county? It was the highest storm surge recorded in a lot of areas. Lot of flooding. Lot of damage. The pics coming out of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina are scary. We were very lucky.

Visiting Relatives – Last weekend, The Wife, The Brother, Mom, and I trekked down to Okeechobee to visit relatives. This entailed me driving Mom’s new car – a Kia Carnival. Mom’s had Chrysler minivans for a long while, so it was a surprise when she announced her new one was a Kia. Still, it’s a smooth driving car, and The Wife even said if we had to get a second car, this one could be in the running. My only issue was how much was touch screen style stuff and less buttons/dials. Anyways, we had a good visit with family and went to visit the family grave site to visit Dad and my grandparents. We also stopped and looked at Okeechobee’s Cattlemen Square, which is a group of bronze statues depicting a cattle drive. If you’re in the town, you should go take a look.

Day Job – This is the last week of the current day job before I go back to my old position. This was definitely a learning experience. I’m not going to say that it was all bad, but I learned a lot of what I don’t want to be doing and what I do want to be doing for the remainder of my career.