3rd Act Sojourn

If you own a house, things keep breaking. No wonder most Europeans own condos or rent apartments. Let someone who knows (we hope) what they are doing maintain the property. Why keep learning new skills when someone else has already tackled the problem multiple times. Anyway, after finishing the patio block walkway I looked at the deck steps and saw this. The stringer is the zig-zag diagonal board that supports the steps. Note the crack where the wood has rotted….

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While rummaging through the cruft and crumbs of my hard drive, I found a forgotten Word document from 1999, twenty years ago, outlining my 49-year-old’s future goals, a bucket list. My 69-year-old self read the following, rewritten with comments, but the ideas are unchanged. First Retirement Year At age 62 to 65, hike the 2200 mile Appalachian Trail, from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Katadhin, Maine in one of several ways. Thru-Hike south to north in six months in one year,…

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Have had a number of handy adventures since the last post but the latest is worth commenting on. After spending a month in Chandler Arizona helping Ryan and Erin with the birth of her daughter/my granddaughter, Lily Belle Lovrien (great name!) I came home to a dripping kitchen ceiling. Since the kitchen is on the first floor something on the second was not right. Hmmm, maybe two story homes are not as practical as the one story Arizona home I…

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Tom’s Handy Adventure, the GFCI saga If you want to be seen as a good photographer, only show your good photographs.  The same advice applies to becoming handy, show your finished work, don’t reveal how you got it done. For example, I was challenged with the problem of three non-functioning (no power) wall outlets in a master bathroom for the past two months. Let’s go through the steps Confirm – Plugged in a razor charger to all three outlets and indeed there…

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I’m getting sick and tired of “Caller ID Spoofing“.  Caller ID spoofing has been around for more than a decade. In essence, the caller doesn’t want you to know their true phone number so they electronically manipulate caller ID to display another number. Legitimately, if a company employee calls you, the company doesn’t want you to know the employee’s desk phone number but would rather you see the company’s main phone number on your caller ID. Makes sense.  However, it is being…

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