Well,, after a hassle or twenty I am now operational in time for Halloween

Which means a LOT as it is one of my favorite holidays.

I have temorary power up and running, no heat but the fireplace, I do have running water and gas. I have candy for the kids and a handle of rum, cups, and a bunch of hot buttered rum mix made up.

For the past 20 years when I'm home I give the kids candy and the adults hot buttered rum and I am going to do that tonight. It's a statement. Battered, not beaten.

It feels damned good being Officially Operational again even if it is out of a basically unheated and somewhat dark house.

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I was supposed to go back to work for 3 weeks as of tomorrow but it seems to have backed up for a day which sucks kinda.

I turn 71 in a few days and have stated my loading and pumping days are over with yet they have kept me busy baby sitting tieed up equipment in Seattle and Frisco for about a year. The equipment has gone back to work there and they want me to baby sit a loaded barge in the Northeast which I will do.

I do serve a purpose which is to free up a younger guy to load and pump because this tanker has to be manned even though it is standing by a power plant in case of an emergency. 

I have agreed to discharge small quantities to the power plant if something comes up which it isn't likely to for a while but it might when it gets cold.

They asked me to change my reservation to come in a day early because I think they need a hand loading it and I begged off. I heard someone use the term 'emergency' in the background and that irked me.

If there was a man overboard, a holed tugboat, a major spill or someone got seriously injured I would be the first person to pitch in.

On the other hand there are also non emergency 'emergencies' and I want no part of those because once you pitch in a couple of times than everything that comes down the pike will be labeled as an emergency and you will never get left alone.

While we were at it, years ago one of the office woman commented on all of the wonderful men that came in on their off time anytime she called them. I looked at those particular guys and a handful of them either had a sick kid, or were saving for a down payment on a home. The bulk of them had some kind of monkey on their back that kept them from being able to live on a pretty good income. I won't get into that. Either that or they were just plain stupid. 

I have decided to stay working as a watchman and fill in as little more than a licensed placeholder. A decimal point or a zero so to speak. 

The WACs of WW2 are somewhat of an example. The concept of allowing women to serve in uniform was to free up men for combat duty. My slot is similar. I am working to free up a younger guy to load and discharge. 

I really don't like to be this way but the truth is that the instant I jump in and answer the non emergency emergency call of duty it will only be a matter of a very short time before I am stuck doing herbor work of running the coast.

I'm very soon to be 71. When men start to turn 62 the exodus begins. By 65 most men are gone and damned few stay until 67. I'm a fugitive from the law of averages (What's new?) and the truth is I have pulled the plow long enough. I probably should retire.

I will cheerfully stay on as a watchman of sorts and actually be useful but I can see what may be in the offing. I am going to have to put my foot down and people are going to call me the a$$hole when in fact they are the a$$hole for putting me in a position where I have to say something.

I don't want it to be this way but if push comes to shove I will put myself on the retired list effective then and there. I hope it doesn't end that way.

Often people ask me what I am going to do when I retire but the fire has just given me a retirement job. I want to get the place up and running and make it marketable. I've lived in it for 30 years now and I'd like to get it in shape and marketable so maybe some young starting out familly can buy it and move in and raise their kids when they ship me to the Old Folks Home.

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I got a "Who do you think you are?"

After telling someone to go away.

Her timing was spot on. I was wearing my usual brown snap brim fedora with the 2-1/2 inch brim.

"See that hat? I said. "I'm a private eye. When I'm in the office you can find a revolver and a bottle of bourbon in my desk drawer."

Shocked, she asked, "Are you carrying a revolver?"

"No, Lady. I'm just glad to see you," I said in a voice just OOZING with sarcasm.

It probably went over her head but it was obvious she didn't know whether to $hit or go blind and didn't have enough sense to just close one eye and fart. 

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Frustration. A day of padlocks

Which is something I damned well HATE with a passion.

Little causes more grief than padlocks. They all suck.

You add the key to your key ring and over time another padlock key gets added and over more time the padlocks you have keys to on your key ring get lost or thrown out and you wind up with a bigger key ring than the Warden of Alcatraz. Finally you clean the ring out and throw away $6 worth of scrap brass because you are too pissed off to care about scrapping them out. You just want to get rid of them.

What's more padlocks don't really provide any real security. They just keep young kids and Joe Honest out. In Basic Burglary 101 the first thing you learn is that you defeat a padlock with a hammer.

I always got a kick out of the guy that puts a Great Big Secure Master padlock (As seen on TV) on a flimsy hasp. You hit the lock with a big hammer and  it rips the entire hasp off, lock and all.

Anyway I needed three of them, keyed alike and I got a four pack because I figured she are just going to lose one.

888888888888888888888888888

When you don't need them anymore just gather all the keys together, put them on a split ring, put the ring in the shank and snap it shut.

That way you have it all in one package. 

Needles to say, most imbeciles won't do that because you have to take thekeyout of the splitring to open it and release the rest of the keys. Instead because they are afraid to do six seconds of work they will keep the keys seperate and lose them.

WTF. Either you can lose the whole damned thing which you can easily deal with OR you can lose either the keys OR the locks and spend the rest of your life looking all over hell for the missing key or lock.

 

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Fire recovery has been SLOW but there's an end in sight.

It took the people I had hired several WEEKS to set up a temporary electrical box and they screwed that one up.

As of now we are pretty much back at Square One but there's an end in sight because we have a rewiring scheduled to begin on 7 November which should change everything. We'll have heat, lights, hot running water and gas. We have cold water and gas now.

Once we get electricity things will start happening.

My plan is to get the top floor remediated and completely finished and then operate out of the little room there. It's all I need and I can live small there for until things get squared away.

I have the general paid off and out of the way and hopefully I won't have future headaches with him. If I do I'll post a blow by blow here and post links to it on every social media platform I can find. Let's leave it at that.

One of the advantages is that as soon as I get electricity I have one thing a lot of tradesmen want which is inside winter work. They won't be outside freeezing their asses off.

The next step is to get things rolling with an experienced contractor because this is not a one man job. I need painters and cleaning people. All the exposed wood in the basement and garage has to be sealed up. 

As an aside, one thing I have discovered is that there is a hydroxyl generator that can be installed in the duct work and turned on and of as needed. It's certainly not powerful enough to remediate the house but it can be used to eliminate odors like the kitchen smell after meat is cooked. (I like the smell, the wife hates it)

This is going to be a slug fest and we shall see what we shall see.

I don't see the job being finished until maybe early summer.

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Cops are not entirely stupid

I wandered into my local Sheetz (read convenience store) to buy a loose single.

A cop I know was walking out. He glanced at me and asked "Do you know someone that said "Hold her for thirty days and if noone claims her she's yours?"

"Moe Howard said that," I replied. "I think he was playing Captain Dodge in 'Uncivil Warriors."

"Just checkin'" said the cop with a smirk.

Go back and read the 1 Oct post I made.

My guess is that Karen went straaight to Ossifer Obie and complained. The copp's smirk told me he found the episode rather amusing.

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One of the things that often scares me is a rookie cop.

As a general rule of thumb I figure that it takes about five years to make a halfway decent cop. They generally need that much experience to get good people skills which is about 95% of the job.

I have a great department that actually serves the people of the township and appears to do a damned fine job of it. They cull the jerks out of the force as quickly as possible and from what I see hire experienced officers.

It makes for a pretty good department.

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Ohhh....That. The wine and cheese party.

which I attended about 25 years ago.

Instead of some fine wine I showed up with some of the crap we made as kids out of grape concentrate, yeast, sugar and water and rebottled it in some fancy bottles.

For the cheese I cut up a bunch of Velveeta and smothered it with Tabasco.

At the party I passed the cheese off as some Mexican hot cheese and the wine off as coming from the vinyards of Estemenia and the women there ooohed and ahhed.

After a while the host took a sip and said, "Who rebottled the swipe? We used to make this stuff in college when we were broke."

I fessed up and needless to say a lot of the wine snob women were realy red faced and angry for being played as fools.

My host laughed and said, "This stuff should be served in cold beer mugs," and got one out of the freezer. That's when the party started to cook.

What was interesting is that my host asked for the recipe and when I said, "Then stir it up with a fairly clean piece of scrap lumber," a lot of the wine snobs blanched and my host laughed like holy hell.

I was never invited to another wine and cheese tasting after that and that was fine by me.

My host did invite me over for a drink or six a few times, though.

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The term 'First Responders' is often a misnomer.

In most situations the REAL first responders are just average people that jump in and take some kind of action.

Sometimes it is as simple as making a phone call. Other times it may be administering first aid until the medics or whoever arrive.

One of the Founding Fathers once asked ''Who is the militia?" another one replied, "It is the people, all of us."

WE are the real first responders if we accept our responsibilities.

I'll bet most cops, medics and firemen agree.

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I set myself up to move back into the house as soon as it gets heat.

Bunk, small table, two chairs.

The bunk has three drawers beneath if so I should have enough space as I plan on living small there.

We shall see what we shall see.

000000000000000000000000000000000

I am now at the stage where I am beginning to believe that had the whole place been lost I would have been a lot better off and in many respects a free man.

I could have just collected an insurance check, sold the lot as is and been off on my next adventure in life.

The older I get the more I realize that I have a storage space full of just plain stuff.

 

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Quick nothing

for continuity purposes only.

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I am VERY SERIOUSLY considering

selling off ALL my $hit, leaving it all behind and buying about a 30 foot sailboat in Florida or Louisiana and simply moving aboard.

My stuff is all in a storage locker and I would just love to watch the look on the face of the person that may end up buying it as he goes through it.

There are a couple of things I would like to pass on but other than that none of it means anything to me anymore.

Someone else who had been through a fire similar to mine told me that after it was all said and done he wished the whole thing had gone up.

I am seriously beginning to see his point.

Seriously.

I am beginning to start the idea of being close to 71 and starting over.

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Still in the hotel.

And someone asked me for a ride to the local liquor store. I had just popped a beer and have a policy of not driving even after one.

Of course when I told him that I got the usual "You're OK. Be cool, man. Help a brother out" crap.

I asked him where his car was and he told me he got a DUI.

"So you want me to get one, too?" I asked. "Some guy you are."

Say I did and for some reason the cop pushed the issue of falsified the blood test, whatever, Is he going to pay my fine? Is he going to pay my cab fare? Is he going to pay my paycheck when I can't renew my seaman's papers?

Oh, if it happened, he'd tell me how sorry it is and hand me a beer to make up for it but that ain't going to undo a damned thing.

Then comes the "Man, don't be an a$$hole1" line.

"I'm not being an a$$hole. YOU are being one for asking me to risk MY license and career so YOU can have a lousy six-pack, How about don't YOU be an a$$hole!"

He didn't like that too much but screw him. 

Years ago I might have done it but as I age I get the wisdom I should have had when I was younger.

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One time I scared the holy hell out of someone.

I was getting a bunch of $hit from someone and had enough.

Fortunately I had a flask in my pocket and pulled it out and unscrewed the top. It was actually almost empty but I acted like I chugged the whole thing. Then I looked at my tormentor and announced:

"I am half Irish, half American Indian and I'm drinkin' WHISKY!" I shouted.

The man fled.

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We succeed in spite of Washington

and not because of it.

Just think of what we could do if they decided to leave us alone!

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I should not post today because my computer is set to UTC and it's my annual blackberry brandy night.

which is a sneaky drink, and a good one come fall.

Yup. a pint of blackberry brandy shared among good men and one  broad that crashed the party but was OK.

OTOH, maybe it should have been a full liter. Then again maybe not.

Tomorrow morning will tell.

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Someone said 'the rights the government gives you' to me.

Sorry, Charlie. Those are birth rights, basic human rights that are given to every human being on the planet.

The Bill of Rights in the Constitution is simply a promise made by government not to take those rights away from us.

Most people haven't figured it out yet. 

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Whoops! Missed a day.

Never mind what happened but I almost simply walked away from it all.

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One of the things I have done at sea is send out messages in a bottle.

Most recently someone that picked up one of my floating messages in a bottle got "I've been trying to contact you about your car's extended warranty".

Oh, why not.

Or "Inspected by #87". 

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There are two WW2 graves I would like to visit

One of them is the grave of PFC Desmond Doss which I believe in in Tennesee.

The other one is of Tadamichi Kuribayashi which is somewhere unknown on the island of Iwo Jima, now renamed as Iwo To.

Doss for his raw courage and holding to his beliefs as a contiontious objector and Kuribayashi for sucking it in, being a good soldier and doing what he had to do.

Google both of them and read up on them and both of them were very different.

Interesing men.

Kuribayashi spent three years in the States as an exchange officer and actually liked Americans. He thought that the United States was the last country Japan should fight but when ordered to defend Iwo Jima he did as best he could. It was the first time the Marines suffered more casualties than they dished out.

The movie Hacksaw Ridge was based on Doss at Okinawa. Mel Gibson, read the entire story on Doss and thought it was way too over the top for the public to believe because he left out the fact that Doss served in combat in  both the Phillipines and Guam before he sent into the inferno of Okinawa. He was decorated in both places with Bronze Stars with a V before being awarded the MOH for actions in Okinawa. 

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Peeling the paint off of the garage walls.

This looks like a job for Superman!

Or at least a more powerful pressure washer than the 2000 PSI unit I have.

Off to Homeless Depot to rent one that throws 4000 psi out.

The little one I have was doing the job but it was a real slug fest. It took forever to do a small part of the garage. It's an electric.

The one I am going to try tomorrow is a gas operated unit that will probably do the job a LOT faster.

If that doesn't work I'll just buy a case of beer and hit it hard because years ago I was told that my piss could peel paint off of a wall.

THEN I'll pressure wash it because dilution is the solution!

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"No. I'm not going to drink until I'm 25.

because that's when your brain fully develops," said a certain young man that I have considered a man since he was about 13.

Then again what else can you expect from an Embry-Riddle student with a 4.0 as a freshman?

He calculates the numbers.

He likely figures if he starts drinking when his brain is fully developed he has more brain cells to lose and can party one hell of a lot harder and STILL not turn himself into a vegetable!

I gotta admit that he makes sense even though I started drinking beer at about 12.

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I was asked to review somehing I bought from Lowe's.

It was a piece of pipe. Yeah. A generic piece of pipe I am using to connect a toilet tank to.

"That pipe is so well built, clean and sanitary the Virgin Mary herself would be HONORED and PROUD to sit down and take a dump in the toilet that is hooked up to that piece of pipe I bought at Lowe's!"

More people ought to answer like that because if we did they would stop doing stupid things like that.

Actually my guess is they were data mining.

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Being holed up here with Kitty in a hotel

can sometimes be a pain in the ass,

last night around 0100 some pimplebrain pulled the fire alarm and Kitty bolted under the bed.

That meant I had to throw the matteress off, lift the box spring and haul him out to stuff him into the cat carrier.

Then I pulled on some pants and grabbed a jacket and shoes and the pair of us were outside freezing our asses off for about an hour while the fire department cleared the building.

The general consensus here was along the lines of a lynch mob, of course. I did notice a couple of liberal types that made excuses for thugs and things mumbling about how the perp should be rat-packed by an angry mob.

I guess the attitude changes when it happens to them personally.

I heard rumors that the perp had been ID'd by a hall camera.

I'll have a word with one of the insiders and find out who it was.

There's this goofy convention here and they were relieved to find out the perp was not one of them.

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Watch this space BMS Cat/FireDex Pittsburgh

Formerly FireDex of Pittsburgh, located in Gibsonia PA.

I just got a bill from them that includes a lot of work that was never done. 

This is going to be interesting.

Watch this post for further developments

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The drama of the burned house goes on.

I am going through a bill and am scratching out the things that were not done. This is going to be an interesting settlement.

For example, I am being billed for the removal of the garage door when in fact the boardup company or the fire department removed it.

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I now have hot water

The gas people came and gave me the OK to fire everything up.

I have a stove and hot water. The furnace runs but I have to wait until the electricity is on to run it full time.

Once I get heat I am moving back in with a movable bunk and a footlocker.

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Busy today.

Might have a post later on.

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Almost missed a day

But squeezed it in under the wire.

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One of the things I was taught in the army back in the day

was never to take a loan of any sort from the Red Cross.

This may have changed over the years but I remember my First Sergeant warned a young soldier that had to get back home for a funeral not to take money from them.

The reason he gave was they would take the entire loan back in his next pay period and leave him with little or nothing.

If I recall he didn't take the Red Cross money and the guys in his platoon loaned him the price of a ticket home and back and he repaid them over the period of a couple of months.

Funny the little things that run through a guys mind as he ages.

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Let's see what happens today.

because I got a letter from the gas company about what hoops I have to jump through to get it turned back on again.

We shall see what we shall see.

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Post 5000 of a series of 5000

Hey there, boys and girls! Be the first kid on your block to read them all!

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I am starting to get things done

I now have an electrician which means I am close to being able to breathe. Once I get the gas taken care of I can get heat.

Once I get these two things I everything turns into a simple slug fest.

I can move back in and finish things out one at a time.

I do have worries for the winter, though. It's supposed to be a rough one and I have to wait until about February for a garage door.

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