Still very cold today so I got some more pieces of wall pulled down, more plaster bagged up ready to go out with the trash, and then went for a walk. I had considered running today but it was too cold - with temperatures only slightly over freezing and a cold wind I didn't want to get sweaty and have my body heat sapped dangerously fast. So now I have seven bags of plaster ready to go - about 300lb in all - and a big pile of nasty laths that a friend is going to take away and burn. I've also got a few other nasty scraps of wood with nails in them that he's going to take. At this rate I'll be rid of my bags of plaster by the end of February, but by then the chances are I'll have pulled down the nasty ceiling in another room and created another pile of bags. It's surprising just how heavy plaster can be - my bags are 35 gallon bags but they are barely a third full by the time I hit the point I think I'm pushing the 40lb weight limit the garbage company has. They're usually pretty good about taking two bags if one is a bit over and the other is a bit under, but I don't want to test the limits too hard. The room with the ceiling that needs to come down also needs new windows, which in turn might as well include removing the window well cavities and having the entirety of the window frames replaced. I'm not planning on having that work done until it gets a bit warmer outside.
After a rest day yesterday ran the mile tonight when I got home in 10:50 The increased stride is really more comfortable on the back and hips… now I just need the cardio and pulmonary to catch up! Not planning on increasing the distance until I get the mile down smoothly and without significant distress to between 9 and 10 minutes
For those who need conversion that's -18°F with -35°F wind chill. No matter how you put it that's colder than a welldigger in the Klondike.
Smaller, more fiddly work today. I've been bothered by having drafts blowing out of power sockets for a while now, but not bothered enough to actually do anything about it. The drafts aren't horrendous but combine to make the room feel chilly. Today I decided it was time to fix it, so I pulled the back boxes out and stuffed insulation into the spaces, then put everything back. It's not a brilliant solution but for now seems to work. I also put some insulating foam strips around a door that had a draft around it, which means I now have another door that doesn't have a draft around it. Again, not a huge draft but it's amazing how they add up. I figure the $3.49 I paid for the strip of foam to stick in the door frame will probably have paid for itself within a few days. This afternoon is probably as warm and sunny as it's going to get for the rest of the week so I'm thinking I might get a run in while I can. Not a long run - it's still not exactly tropical - but enough to at least try and maintain some fitness.
I got a run in and did a little under 5 miles. Didn't feel great but timing was OK, although I've lost some of the speed I had developed when I was doing my regular training plan. With icier weather coming I'm not likely to get back to my plan any time soon so I'll most likely end up canning it and either starting a new one when it's warmer, or working my own training plan around what I've learned from the previous one. I also noticed that my friend came and took away the big pile of scraps already, which was nice to see. It's handy having a space I can leave them where he can take them whenever he is ready, and it's good when he can get them fairly quickly so the place doesn't look like some kind of hillbilly dumping ground. Now I've got some more space in another room so I can figure out how to rotate a few wall studs to provide better support for the ceiling and make everything straight again. I'll want to have a quick chat with a friend who has construction experience to make sure I'm not going to do anything ugly to the supporting wall if I tinker with individual parts of it. In the meantime maybe I'll get into the attic, move some stuff and lift some more floor, and then pull down another ceiling. If I can get the ceiling pulled down I can use my nail gun to pin some wooden struts between the ceiling joists and replace the cellulose with fiberglass, then maybe feed the cellulose into the tops of some wall cavities and fix a few other insulation issues rather than just dumping it all.
Got a walk in with my wife, in the cold. Today's high was allegedly 32 degrees but so far it doesn't seem to have made it as high as 30. At least it isn't windy today. We took a load of recycling away, so now our bins for plastics, tin cans, card, paper and corrugated cardboard are all empty. Hopefully it will be at least a little warmer next week, and I'll get my work done to pull down another ceiling. That ceiling is in an empty room that's waiting to be rebuild. I'd really like to pull down another ceiling but that's in a closet we're using, so I'll need to figure out what to do with everything in the closet beforehand. And then I can restructure a couple of things to divide the closet in two, and potentially have someone in to drywall the whole lot in a single hit. That would be nice. Which reminds me, in the meantime I can run some power cables to the breaker panel. The room in question currently has no power except for an extension cord plugged in to the room below, which only works because all the walls are pulled down. I might as well get busy running a power cable ready for when it all gets rebuilt.
I'm back. Was gone several days because my phone needed repair. It was a nightmare. I had a cracked LCD. Thursday morning I took it to a repair shop I knew and had used before. He knew they had the part at their other store and just had to get it there. So I paid for the repair and left the phone. That afternoon I checked back and was informed the part would be there the next day. I went back Friday to check to see if the part was in and see about getting my phone. (The repair only takes 1 1/2 hours.) Nobody was there. Checked Saturday, nobody. Sunday, nobody. By then I was ready to spit nails. I went over to the other shop to try and get some information but couldn't find a parking spot (special event in the area). That evening I borrowed a friend's phone (the only phone I have is my cellphone) and called the other store and basically read them the riot act. Needless to say I was extremely upset. The only thing I heard the man saying was excuses and no solutions. This morning I went to see about my phone but nobody was there. So I drove over to the other the other shop ready to personally read them the riot act and get my phone and money back. However I didn’t have to. He had gone over and retrieved my phone and was working on it. He must have figured I wasn't going to go away. Went home to try and corral the messages that had built up only to discover that my sim card, the sd memory chip and the slide that held them were missing. So back to the store. They had removed them to work on the phone. This has not been a good week.
The weather is still hideously cold. Church was cancelled yesterday because an ice storm was forecast. We didn't walk at the church as we expected it to remain locked, and struggled to get to 5000 steps during the day. Today was still very cold and there is still ice everywhere. The major roads are mostly clear but where sidewalks exist they end up under the snow the plows dump - they scrape it off the road and dump it on the sidewalk and then expect the homeowners to clear it off the sidewalk. So we walked at the church again. I sometimes jog around the hall rather than walking - it makes for a harder workout and isn't much more interesting than walking but gets my heart rate up in a way that walking doesn't. I ended up running a little under 6.5 miles, doing endless laps of the hall. At least I could connect my phone to the sound system and have some music playing. Then I did a bit more tinkering on the house. I found a cold patch in the basement and determined that a unit set into the wall looks like it goes right the way through the basement wall, and had a horrendous cold draft blowing in through it. So I applied copious amounts of sealant to every space I could find, which helped but not as much as I hoped. So I used a circular saw to cut the sides back, drilled some holes in the back of it, and sprayed an entire can of foam into the gaps. There are still more gaps but I didn't want to use a second can of foam until the first one has had chance to cure, so I can take stock of how effective it has been. This house project is starting to annoy me now. A lot of time slipped by because of temperature issues (e.g. not wanting to work in 140 degrees, or in 4 degrees), and a lot has slipped by because of the endless theatrical posturing over the virus, and the stupid prices places want for building supplies. I found the receipt for a 250ft roll of 12/3 I bought in November of 2020 for $125 - it's more than double that now if you can even find a 250ft roll of it. Makes me wish I'd bought the entire stock of it - I could have turned a nice profit. But I'm getting to a point where I just want stuff done, even as we head into a very cold time when I don't really want windows and window frames removed if I can help it. Hopefully we won't have a brutal winter, so I can press on with some other work.
Well, the hip strain is just about healed. I can at least get out of the car or out of my desk chair and walk like an upright human without having to do the old man shuffle just to get to the coffee. I'll probably try to start walking for exercise again tonight... Just can't yet bring myself to try to jog even a little bit. Getting old sucks. Plus, my schedule is just nuts for trying to exercise. I get up at 4, leave the house by 4:30, in the office before 6, leave work at 4-4:30 in the afternoon, home by 6, and its already freaking dark and cold by then, and our little gravel road in the mountains doesn't have any streetlight. By the time I eat dinner and even speak to my wife, it's almost bedtime. Sigh...........
At work, you should just stand in place. All-day. Every day. Asserting your dominance. Just by standing in place.
Well, I do have an adjustable (electric) stand up desk, and I have been trying to use it more. But I don't think that's what you're sayin'!
If you can walk without hurting that's a good way to keep moving without killing yourself. I walked for months before even starting to jog. Yes, but it beats the alternative. Sounds like you need a treadmill at work. Does it really take you 90 minutes each way getting to and from work?
Not quite 90 some days, more than 90 others. It's 58 miles, door to door, and the first 6 of that is on little super-twisty "2 lane" -- read, 20 feet wide -- roads in the mountains. Generally, it's 18 minutes from my garage to the highway. So, fastest time ever is 61 minutes, average is about 1:20 in the mornings, as there is a necessary coffee stop along the way. This morning was 1:06, including coffee stop. Going home is usually more like 1:35 with traffic, plus any stops for errands on the way home.
Yeesh, that's a lot of driving. I feel for you. I'm only doing 77km one-way but it's on logging roads. Traffic is at least light, except when a passle of logging trucks coming rolling through.
Probably in July we will be moving about 30 miles closer. Will cut the drive to about 45 minutes, which I'm certain will help a good bit.
Are you still keeping this place though? You seemed pretty happy with the spot. But I could certainly understand the desire for a shorter commute.
Somebody elsewhere agreed with my post. Now my head won't fit through the doorway. Puffed-up in Montana.
Depends on real estate prices. Right now, the value has gone up so ridiculously much since we bought it that it makes no economic sense to keep it. We're paying $400 a month for storage right now, and I just am too freaking cheap to keep that up for much longer. Plus, I want my piano back. And my wife wants a bunch of the stuff in storage back. Like an entire dining room... And a home office. And boxes and boxes of books. Mostly though, my mother in law (turns 89 in 3 weeks) is finally talking very seriously about finally moving in with us like we've been asking her to do for 20 years, and there just isn't room in the current place for her to feel comfortable.