Got some more work done today. I decided to work in a room on the project side of the house. I didn't really want to be tearing anything else apart before getting at least something rebuilt but it's getting cold over there so I decided to play "hunt the draft". So I set to figuring where I thought it was coming in, took down a neatly marked section of drywall and found.... nothing. Nothing, except for a draft coming in through the hole in the drywall. So I took down a little more, and a little more, and now have a door with no trim around it, about 50 pounds of bashed up drywall in a bag, and still no smoking gun. I found a hole in the inner face of the brick I didn't know was there, and a big hole that I thought was fully plugged but turned out not to be as plugged as I thought, so I poked more fiberglass into both. And I found a draft coming from behind the drywall on the adjacent wall, so it looks like I might have more demolition to do in order to find it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a gap between the window frame and the brickwork - I found exactly that in the room above which was part of the same extension project. Perhaps the next course of action will be to get the window trim off. That will be fun....
There are many days I wish I'd never started this project but it's making quite a difference. Heating bills are down. At present the road noise is worse than before but I suspect that's because some of the wall surfaces are missing, which would normally absorb at least some of the noise. The next thing I'm going to try, which is a bit of a distraction from bigger stuff, is to get some 2x10 lumber, cut it to fit into the window wells, then cut some of my sound deadening vinyl to match the window wells. The plan is to line the window wells with some rockwool (thermal and sound insulation) then a layer of sound deadening, a layer of wood, another layer of sound deadening, then fill the remaining gap with rockwool. Finally it will be covered over with another layer of sound deadening and drywall. That final stage won't happen until the room is fully rebuilt, but hopefully the intermediate stage will make a difference.
Wanted a break from the house so went out for a run, and set a new record for a 5k, which was nice. It's handy that our church is just very marginally closer than 5k if I take a roundabout route, which means that if my wife needs to do anything at the church she can drive, I can run and I've got a ride back home again. There's a circular loop that starts and finishes that the church that I'm told is almost exactly 10k so maybe I'll take to doing that when it warms up again. The main thing I struggle with when running is the hills - I can't run up hills for very long before my pulse rises higher than I'm comfortable with.
That stuff is going to do so much for your continued, sustained health. Even that positive environment and terrain will prove beneficial. And you have the good sense to back off when necessary.
Yep, and curiously it was when the fuhrer announced a state-wide stay home order that I really started getting out and walking. Then I took to walking faster, then further, then further and faster, and as I started pushing personal bests figured I'd try jogging small parts of the route, and then the small parts became larger parts and so it went. Along the way my resting heart rate dropped, my weight dropped (mostly because of all the walking, although running obviously helps too) and so on. One downside was that I started finding my clothes were getting baggy during the time that the fuhrer had shut down just about everywhere I might find new clothes except for Wally World, and one thing I really don't want to do is stand in line to get into Wally World. I hate the place enough without standing in line to hate it even more. I would get some extra clothes to get a jump on the fuhrer locking down again, just don't want to find they are the wrong size if I start shedding more weight.
it does, but... I hate shopping at places like Amazon. I really don't want to give Bezos my money unless I run out of options. I'm an unusual shape so I really need to try things on to figure out whether they are the right size. In the past I've had issues with pants where I'll have one pair (size X) that fit me nicely and are maybe a little loose while another pair (size X+4) are sufficiently tight they aren't appropriate to wear in public. I really can't be bothered with ordering the size I think I want and a couple of sizes either side of that knowing I'll end up returning (at my expense) the ones that don't fit right, and then having to repeat the process with each different thing I want to order.
I'd have said much the same thing this time last year. But then the fuhrer shut everything down and I took the chance to go out walking (because His Excellency was gracious enough to allow us to go to the grocery store, and most of my routes go past the local grocery store) and just kinda worked up from there. It's been good for my waistline and my leg muscles, not to mention the numbers the doctor measures and used to describe with a general air that things could be better and now uses much more positive terms.
I'm fairly standard size. My dress shirts are 16 1/2 inch neck, 34-35 inch sleeve. Pants are 35/36 inch waist, 34 inseam. I always order dress pants unfinished, so I'll go in to the tailor and have cuffs put on for $13 a pair of pants. Jos. A Banks was having a ridiculous Black Friday sale, so I got 11 very good qualify button down dress shirts (long sleeve) and 7 pairs of 100% wool pants for $500. Couldn't pass it up, since I sort of wear that every day.
Same ole, Same ole. Dickies carpenter pants, 34x30. No tuck country shirts, 38 chest, 32 sleeve, 15 neck or short sleeve. Carhart long sleeve pocket pull-on. Dickies 36-30 bib overalls. On this, Amazon rocks. Tried a Wally World pair of bibs. Straps slide down. Never again.
It's been a while since I wore dress shirts as a matter of routine. Most of the ones I have are a bit baggy on me now, but I wear them sufficiently infrequently I don't worry about it too much. I think the last time I really dressed up was for a friend's wedding two years ago. My daily uniform now, such as it is, is pretty much a scraggy pair of shorts with a T-shirt, usually one advertising the local hardware store. They give them away at their annual sales, and I think I currently have 12 of them. Some of them have varying collections of marks, stains etc. I think the most decorated one has orange foam, white foam, sealant and paint on it. Another one has a few holes in it that I think came from a time I was running the angle grinder and something pinged and charred my shirt. Another is a showcase of what color I painted the room that's fixed up. These days for me "dressing up" means a T-shirt that doesn't have stains or holes in it. That said I usually wear something more presentable to church or if we're going out to dinner or something.
My wife hates how I can go to the store and just buy things off the rack. Especially shoes though. She's got weird feet and takes hours to find anything comfortable.
I wish places would make things in reasonably consistent sizes. It's one thing to use concepts like "small", "medium", "large" etc but when they use objective numbers and still nothing is even remotely comparable I wonder how anyone can buy something without trying it on first. Years ago a friend of mine was dating a girl who was - shall we say - generously proportioned. If I recall she was something like a size 26. But when she shopped at a particular upmarket ladies' retailer she was a perfect size 16. Presumably wealthy women don't want to be told they are large, and companies that cater to wealthier women (or at least women willing to wave a credit card liberally) simply comply to get the business.