[March 2(or3): 3.25 miles; 3/5: 4.2; 3/7:3.23; 3/9: 3.27; 3/12: 5.0]
Sorry, I don’t seem to have much to write about these days. When I started this blog I was aiming to make a post on every day that I ran. And I did pretty good with that. Then in the last year or so I’ve been using a gps-watch to track my runs and that sort of let me off the hook. And now sometimes I don’t wear the watch and still don’t post. After a week or so it is hard to remember when I ran and how far.
But, here we are.
I worked on the taxes a bit yesterday and today. I need to get all of the information compiled and sent off to the tax man. The first step was to sort out all of the bills and put everything in the file drawers. Actually the first step was to get the file drawers into action from where they were hiding under the pile of moving boxes. But we got that done and since then I got my radio station annual financial statement completed. Now I just need to fill out the big questionnaire and get my pile of W2’s sent to the numbers guy. The last couple of years I have sent in receipts for charitable giving, but it doesn’t get used. So we are still making contributions but the tax-time worry is probably pointless.
Work has been busy. We are frantically trying to get our demonstration projects into shape before the demo-day in mid-April. My responsibility is somewhat diminished because I don’t have a demonstration allotted to me and I am leaving the group after demo-day. But I would still like to see success.
I haven’t done any ham radio stuff recently.
I’ve been helping my father-in-law with his deck. He is doing most of it during the week, but I go over on Saturday if I can and if the weather is good. Today we got the last of the joist replacements in. So next is the decking itself. Then we have some stairs and hand rails and we’re done.
Our riding lawn mower we bought in 2009 I think. It is having some issue of not charging the battery. I tested the voltage regulator this week and it appeared to be broken. AC was going in but nothing useful was coming out. So I got a new one. Today I put that in and it was not improved. Even less was coming out. I tested the AC input again and it is 33 volts. So either I have a connector problem or the new part is a dud. My wife likes to mow (yay!) and she says we will need this thing in operational shape soon.
But this morning there was snow on the ground when I got going. I did about 5 hours of work starting before 5 am. I didn’t go to the Starkville running group. They say tonight the temperature is supposed to be in the mid-20’s. And we have the annual banging-our-head-on-the-desk resumption of Daylight Savings Time.
We see the stars again. In Dubuque we were in town and there were lots of lights and traffic and everything. Here it is quiet and we see the stars if the the sky is clear. If there are clouds we can see the reflected light from the airport/industrial park to the west and from the cellulose mill to the southeast, and Columbus to the northeast. But otherwise we can see the stars and the milky way and the airplanes.. sometimes the space station.
We’ve been hearing about Ukraine and the other news stories. Seeing the prices of gas and food going up. We are again going to Wal-Mart for our groceries. They haven’t had saltine crackers on the shelf since we moved back here at the beginning of the year. But we find enough of the necessaries to get by. We’re done doing masks and covid worrying. But we don’t go into town every day, frequently don’t really go much of anywhere. M. is running a lot and I’m working a lot so it is hard to do the day and then rouse ourselves up to go into town.
We did recently buy a 50″ TV and got that mounted on the wall. We sit all the way over on the other side of the living room on the sofa, probably 12-15 feet away. We have been watching “Walter Presents” shows on the amazon fire stick. And we have enjoyed watching some safe driving videos which are hours of dash-cam footage of fender-bender car crashes. We are actually getting much better about spotting the potential problems; we like to try to guess where it is going wrong. “Watch out for that left turner!” Stopped lane with a gap and a “friend” waving someone through.. they’re doomed. Maybe we should get a dash cam?
We have travel coming up. M. has her big race up near Knoxville. Then we hope to get out to Colorado in May. Can you believe our super-smart grandson is now walking! And I won’t be surprised if he has some words to say when I see him next. I wish we were closer. But he has a good Dad and Mom and a grandma there that he gets to see often.