Stay at Home, Day #3

I'm on the 3rd day of the stay at home order, nothing has really changed much. I have tweeted more, as you'll see below.

Day #1 (Wednesday)

I wasn't going to download it but a couple of people at work said it was hilarious so I downloaded it and played with it for awhile. It's definitely better than I thought it would be.

I got up to grab some chips, and I noticed my wife was watching me so I asked what there was eat and ended up making me some nuggets. She doesn't like it when I snack for my lunches on the weekends.

We decided to go out for supper, or at least out to pick it up. We had read on their Facebook page where their employees were doing deliveries (they don't normally) on their own gas and people weren't tipping them. So we drove 20 minutes out there to get food and tipped even though we just picked it up.

I worked on this most of the evening. I know their websites that do this for you but I just went ahead and did it myself. I got nothing but time these days.

We got through most of the DVR so we headed over to Netflix, my wife has been wanting to watch it. We ended up watching all 11 episodes and as you can tell by the time this was posted, we stayed up a little late to do so.

Day #2 (Thursday)

I've been going downstairs and working on my cards in the mornings, usually until mid afternoon. Gives my wife her time to herself plus I planned on getting a lot done with them since I'll be home for a couple of weeks. It also gives me a chance to listen to music.

Every couple of weeks or so I try to go through the New Releases. Didn't really find much this week.

I hate notifications on my phone. The only ones that I have are Snapchat (I don't get many and they help me to remember to send my streaks), texting and my work email. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, nothing. I shut the Facebook off for the same reason that I uninstalled Tik Tok. They give me notifications of things I didn't ask for. Such and such posted a new photo. I don't care, I didn't sign up for notifications from that person, don't send them to me.

Day #3 (Friday)

I'm not sure what Walgreens deal was but starting last night, they've been texting my wife every hour to let her know she had meds to pick up. She knew this already but she was waiting on one more to get filled. They even called her about them and when she told them she was waiting on the last one, they got it done.

Hit the grocery store as well, I just went in for 1 item, Milk. By the time I got there, my wife had text me a few other items and then I saw Chef Boyardee 10 for $10 so I grabbed those and a few other things for lunches. I also slipped in some Classic Jelly Beans (Tis the Season) and the latest SI because Tim Anderson was on the front.

I was going to grab some breakfast at Taco Bell on the way home but apparently they discontinued it, hopefully just until this virus is through. I love their breakfast Crunchwraps and the Cinnabon Delights.

When I got home from running around, I headed for the basement to work on my cards and listen to some music. Some background on the above tweet, I was up at the University of Michigan for a game but it got delayed an hour for lightning so a friend and I were walking around the campus. There was a frat house (I assume) and a bunch of people were hanging around, having fun with music playing. That song came on and everyone cheered and then they all stopped what they were doing and rocked back and forth and sang along to the song. We were across the street and we could barely hear the radio anymore over their voices.

We don't have any plans this evening. Just going to catch up on the DVR. We're on yesterdays shows so we may get caught up tonight, we may not. We'll see.

Stay at Home, day #1

Well, in case you haven't heard, there's a virus out there. I live in Indiana and up until yesterday, I was still going to my job in the RV Industry. The governor declared us on a Stay at Home order which means we had to shut down.

I'll be honest, I'm looking forward to the time off. I've put in over 50 hours in 4 of the last 5 weeks and a couple of those weeks was just under 60 hours, so yeah, I'm looking forward to some time off.

On the other hand, I don't want to go without the money for that long either. The good news is, I was supposed to have surgery (on my nose to help me breathe) today so along with all those hours, we had been putting a little money aside to help pay for that. So I'll be good if it ends up only being the 2 weeks that they are saying now. It won't help that now I'll have to start saving all over again to when I reschedule the surgery.

Part of me thinks we are over reacting to this virus. That it's a glorified flue, but I also have a wife here that has a weak immune system due to her auto immune diseases and the medication that she takes for it so I'm also all for it. I don't know what I would do if she got that sick. It's very confusing times.

Other than not going to work, my life doesn't really change much. We don't do a ton of stuff outside our home life anyways. We already do a lot of shopping online. We already do our online ordering and picking up of groceries. Our greatest risk of catching the virus is my daughter works in the food industry so she's still working. They have a drive thru but they also accept carry out. I wish they would have chosen to lock the front doors and just use the drive thru but it is what it is.

We didn't overstock on groceries when all this happened, we've just been buying what we normally buy, except for the fact that we can never find basic things now. We had trouble finding more eggs and hamburger, butter and bread, sometimes pasta is hard to find. It's ridiculous. We've been fine on toilet paper because we always buy that in bulk and we bought some just before this hit.

I love seeing all the charity coming out of this but I also think, where is all this all the time? I'm not really one to talk because I don't do much, charity wise. I donate blood occasionally and that's about it. I did sign up to play basketball against the boys and girls club but they cancelled it. It was supposed to be tomorrow so I had already backed out because they scheduled my surgery for today. I do plan on volunteering a few times a year once all this is over but I had decided that before this. Maybe everyone doing all this extra charity will grow and cause people to do it more after all this is done.

Now that I have all this time on my hands, I guess I should probably post here a little more often. I can't use time as an excuse anymore, at least for the next couple of weeks.

Alone time

I'm lounging around the house today so I thought I'd come over and post, uh, something. I'm not really sure what.

Work has had some stressful times as of late, nothing I can't handle, just been stressful. Usually I calm down and get relaxed on my way home. It's around 30-45 minute drive home depending on traffic and I use that time to decompress, sit and listen to music and drive home. Once I get home, I shower and then veg out in front of the TV, sometimes nap until supper and then chill in front of the TV most of the night, until bed, which is usually between 10 and 11. I get up the next morning at 3:45 and start all over again.

Lately, instead of coming home and napping, I've been going downstairs and working on my cards. Awhile ago, after my grandfather passed, I got his desk and a few items.

Nothing too fancy but a work station all the same. The desk and chair were both my grandfathers. The bookshelf to the left has my card books on it and there is a dresser to the right that has all my other cards in it.

As I said, it came from my grandfather so I have this little section of some of his things. His name plate which I wanted because I always thought of his as a businessman. The Joe Montana stein because he was a Montana/Notre Dame fan, the St. Louis Cardinals Coke and Mark McGwire mug because he was a Cardinals fan.

I got it set up to work on my cards but never went down there because I was logging what I had on my blog and I could do that sitting in my recliner. Well, I got all those logged in so now I'm going through my books and organizing them and making sure what I have and what I have logged are the same. So now I go down and sit at my desk until supper then come up and spend the rest of the time chilling in front of the boob tube.

The positive, I'm enjoying messing around with my cards again, and I listen to music while doing it so I get more time to myself. Plus, I'm actually getting stuff done on my collections.

The negative, no more naps means less sleep. I should go to bed earlier but I hate going to bed that early, feels like a waste and it also means sooner that I have to go to work.

That's my sleep this past week. You can see where I did nap on Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday I got home later so I didn't go downstairs and Friday, I had to take Trevor to meet his mom so I took a nap intentionally knowing I wasn't working Saturday so it wouldn't screw my sleep up and I also knew I would get woke up at 4 to take him so it was a limited nap. I'm not sure why the time is off on that nap. Sometimes it registers me as napping when I'm sitting in the recliner because I'm so relaxed but I don't know why it didn't register the nap I did take. I didn't change it because the time was about the same.

I knew I didn't sleep a lot but I didn't realize how little until I had my Fitbit start tracking it. I do get quality sleep in that little bit of time because I fall asleep quickly and sleep pretty deeply most of the night.

I've enjoyed my time with my cards, and my alone time, and definitely listening to more music so I will continue doing it.

As I said, I get to listen to more music. Here's the top artists I've listened to in the last week. Just because.

Cross Post From MSO

This is a post from my sports related blog (My Sports Obsession) but I thought it fit in here as well since it is personal.


I didn't get any cards today, it is a Sunday after all, but yesterday I did some rearranging in my downstairs level. My grandfather died  a few years ago and I grabbed his desk and put it in storage. My wife was in the storage and it was annoying her so I took it out and set it up in the den. I pulled a dresser out as well and kind of made a "man cave" even though it really isn't. It's still a usable room with a couch and TV but nobody really uses it. I also can't leave my cards out all over because I have a stupid cat that likes to chew on cardboard, so I can't even leave the boxes of cards out because she'll chew on the boxes. When it's all said and done, I can only do so much because the room was painted red when we moved in and we never changed it. I'll probably rarely use it but at least I got to move my cards out of storage to where I can access them easier. My books were in the bedroom on a shelf and it gave my wife some of her shelf room back.

Here's is the aforementioned desk. As you can see, it's pretty nice, and huge. You can also see the red walls. The wife and I picked up a few things that could go on the walls and still match, plus I snuck a few things in as well. We'll go left to right on the desk.

This is my stack of magazines, programs, folders, ect. They are acting as my book ends until I can find a decent set that go with the room. The card books shown are (L to R) Tier 3 collections are in the first 2 books, and the last book has my Michigan collection as well as auto's and relics that are team collections and not player collections.

Next to the books, on the desk shelf are 2 bats that came from the Louisville Slugger museum that my mom picked up for me. The helmet was from the greek fries that I got at the last Sox game I went to, earlier this year. There's also my DVD's from the 2005 Sox.

The stuff on the top middle of the desk isn't really anything yet. The lamp was just thrown there to get it out of the way.

If you know my collections, than you are really confused by these 3 items. They were also my grandfathers and my grandmother gave them to me. On the left is a mug commemorating Mark McGwire's race to 70 HR's back in 1998. The middle is a Coke bottle with the St. Louis Cardinals on it and on the right is a Joe Montana beer stein. In case you haven't figured it out, he was a Cardinals fan, and a Notre Dame fan. As much as it pains me to have a ND alumn on my desk, I figured it was ok since he is one of the all-time greats, and he's in a pro jersey.

Beside that shelf and to the far right of my desk are my other card books. (L to R) Paul Konerko Collection, Tom Seaver Collection, the rest of my Tier 1 Collections, and the last 2 books are my Tier 2 Collections. As I said before, I don't have book ends so I'm using my Scott Podsednik bobble head for one on this side.

A little better view of the bobble head, or at least the box. When I get an actual room, I may break it out of the box.

Next, I'll go from left to right up on the wall above the desk

This photo is of myself, my brother and 2 cousins back when we were in little league. My grandmother made these for all 4 of us boys. I'm on the left and Sluggo is the other in yellow for the regulars who may know him by name.

 

These are above the right side of the desk. We picked these up at Hobby Lobby along with some stuff below.

As you can see, next to the desk is the dresser I pulled out. In the top drawer are my non-collection cards and Baseball Collection, 2nd drawer is full of empty boxes and such, 3rd drawer contains the Vintage Collection and the bottom drawer has my White Sox Collection in it.

Above the desk and dresser are these other 2 from Hobby Lobby. My wife did a pretty good job of picking all this stuff out that went with the walls. That's pretty much just one corner and wall of the room which I have claimed as mine but if you look around the room on shelves and walls, I have other stuff laying around.

There are a few Michigan things, it's hard to put that stuff up because of all the red in the room.

Last but not least, this is above the couch. Another Hobby Lobby pickup by the wife.

I have a bunch of other stuff that I could put up but a lot of it is in boxes in storage and I'm not going to drag all of that up until I actually get my real Man Cave, which will be in a year or 2 when I start kicking kids out and taking one of their rooms. For now, this little corner will do when I need to work on cards (or to be honest, get away from the wife for a bit.)

Not so great week

It hasn't been a great week for me, hopefully things will get better.

Monday I went to work to find out one of my friends died early that morning. He was having chest pains and we believe he was driving himself to the hospital when he had a horrible crash. Coroner believes he died of a heart attack before the crash so he didn't suffer in that. He was only 52. It's been a pretty somber week at work.

On Tuesday, my boss informed me that he put in his 2 weeks notice. This boss is the reason I have the job I do. We worked at a different place together for 15 years and than I left and eventually he left and than he got me transferred to where I'm at. I really like the job and it's been great for us. I can survive without him. I can still contact him and will probably see him a little but what fears me more is who we end up with as a boss. I think I'm going to put in for the job but I doubt I'll get it. I'm not "enthusiastic" enough for them.

Wednesday I went golfing so there is that. Not that I had a great day golfing but it's always nice to be out there.

Thursday my daughter was all kinds of attitude because my wife texted her and told her not to make plans tonight so they could complete their chores. Than later on, I texted them not to make plans for Saturday because we were all going to work in the yard. She gets pissed at the stupidest things and just carries it forever instead of just letting things go. Chores are weekly and we ask the kids to help us in the yard once a year, in the spring. She acts like we make her do all kinds of things. Their chores took an hour and the yard work was maybe 3 hours. Heaven forbid we ask for 4 hours out of her life. Stupid teenagers.

Friday, I got off work early and came home to my wife asking me to run to Walmart to pick up groceries because they were ready. No biggy, it's right up the road. Pull up, check in and they bring it all out and load the car. Wrong! I pull up and check in to only realize that she put the wrong Walmart address in so I ended up having to drive all the way out to a further one, about 20 minutes. As I'm pulling in, I get a call from the wife, saying she just got a call from the school and the girl we have living with us was in an "incident" and that we needed to come in. Now we figured she got in a fight because they wouldn't tell us what was going on. So we weren't in a hurry. I drove home from Walmart, unloaded the groceries and picked up my wife and than headed for the school. We pull in to ambulances and a cop car. We go in and they tell us that she got in a fight in the lunch room and punched a boy. What was worse is that she punched a wall when she left the lunch room and broke her hand. The school talked the parents of the kid to not press charges because she is 18 and the kid she hit wasn't yet so she could have been in huge trouble. They threatened to file charges on him because of the hate stuff coming out of his mouth that instigated the fight. Once we were done at the school, we took her to the ER to get her hand wrapped and we have to take her to an Orthopedic doc on Tuesday, which is the same day as my court date for child support and my friends funeral. So it continues.

Saturday we got some yard work done, kids all helped and had good attitudes. It was a good day and I haven't done anything today so things are already starting to look up.

On top of all of this, Cheri has been in a lot of pain and fighting a lot of headaches. She's been diagnosed with arthritis in her spine and neck to go along with all her other disabilities. What's worse than the arthritis is it tends to give her headaches, which turn in to migraines.

We'll see if I get through tomorrow with the usual festivities of Memorial Day. We spend the morning at a parade and than caravan around to a couple of cemeteries where we have family buried before going to my cousins for a cook out. I already told you what I got going Tuesday. Wednesday I go back to work, Thursday I have an EHS conference to go to and then more work Friday. Here's hoping next week is quick and painless.

Busy week for me

I've actually had a busy week, or at least busy for me. I actually filled up a laundry basket of regular clothes. Why does that mean anything? I wash my work clothes separate so I have a laundry basket full of those every week, but when I come home from work, if I have nothing to do, which is most days, I shower and than get in my PJ's to sit around in. Most days I don't put on my regular clothes at all. So when I say I filled up a laundry basket of regular clothes, it means I actually had to get dressed after work.

On Wednesday, I went to the before mentioned class. I talked my work into giving me a shirt with their logo on it to wear there since I was representing them. The class was good, I learned some things. Most people in there were already certified so it all came easy to them, I struggled with some of the newer to me kind of stuff but I think I got it all. It was a 5 hour class and they had a bunch of breaks, free snacks and drinks as well so all in all, it went well.

On Thursday, I went golfing for the first time in 5 years. The work golf league plays every week (9 holes) but I signed up a week late so I needed to make up the first 9. They golf on Wednesdays and since I had that class, I missed the 2nd week. So on Thursday, me and a guy from work went and played 18 to make up the first 2 weeks. I had some really good shots, and some really bad shots. I shot a little higher score than I liked but I'll forgive myself for going over 100, even if it was only by 4 strokes.

Today, I took the fam (mom, stepdad, brother and sister-in-law) to their 1st major league baseball game. I think my Stepdad had been to one before but the rest, it was their first game. We parked, than walked down to O'Malley's where we got a bunch of Chicago Dogs (I had Chili Cheese Dogs) and ate before the game (it's cheaper). Plus we got greek fries at the game (pic on the right) that were really good. It wasn't a great game for the Sox but it was still a pretty good time for us.

That was my week, like I said, it was busy for me. Now I'm going to sit down and watch the Game of Thrones finale and start a new week. Other than my weekly golf game, I have no other plans as of now so I'll go back to being boring.

House projects

We buckled down this weekend and got some stuff done around the house. I mentioned in my last post (about Fitbit) that I had worked on the house last Saturday and what we did then, and it took all day was to get the wood up for the board and batten in the living room. It was a lot more to it then I thought, my plan was to just glue and then nail the vertical boards to the wall. My stepdad, however, had another idea where we attached them to the horizontal pieces and then nailed the horizontal to the wall. It took a lot more work but I'm sure it looks way better than what I would have done.

We woke yesterday and sanded some spots on the wood, and then went and caulked the board and batten since the vertical pieces weren't attached to the walls, Cheri wanted it to at least look it was so we caulked all around the pieces. I had to make another hardware store visit just to pick up more caulk, we had no idea how much it would take. We originally bought 2 tubes and ended up using double that. After the caulk dried we painted again. Cheri painted the wood while I followed her and painted the wall between it. We were afraid that if we just painted the wood, then the wall wouldn't quite look the same since they were painted at different times plus you could see where she painted around the wood. It took a few hours to paint and we were both dead once we finally finished but it looks great.

While we were waiting for the caulking to dry so we could paint, we finally got around to hanging up the clock Cheri had purchased as well as another vintage type shelf. I'm not sure what other decorations she has planned for the living room so I don't know how close it is to being completed. I know she wants to hang the TV but she wants the cords to run behind the wall so that's a little more than just hanging it and there is also a mirror and hooks for coats that she wants to hang by the door. The mirror is off the dresser we bought a few weeks ago and then we are attaching coat hooks to the bottom of it so it looks like one piece. The mirror is really heavy which is why we haven't hung it yet, it's a little more than just pinning it to the wall. Cheri wants to do a couple of touch ups with the paint on the white and we need to touch up the gold where we caulked on it at the top of the rail.

Here's before and after.

Before

 

After

Ignore the picture sitting on the railing at the left of the picture, I like to put stuff on the railing just to annoy Cheri. I keep telling her I'm going to put my baseball cards on it. You can see we changed the colors plus see the board and batten. You can also see the new clock up there, or down here

It says Laws & Co., Est. 2010

This is the other corner, she hung up the vintage shelf looking thing up there. Cheri has a few books on it (from the 1800's) but she's not sure what else to put up there.

Today our new dishwasher was delivered. I had planned on disconnecting the old one and connecting the new one. That didn't work out to well. I got the old one disconnected pretty easily but once I got the new one in and started hooking up, I noticed one small problem. The old one plugged right into the wall where as the new one is supposed to be hard wired. I'm not messing with electric so needless to say, it didn't get finished and I have to wait for my stepdad to get home from his anniversary trip to help me out. I had shut off the water to the kitchen in order to work on it but since I didn't get it hooked up, I had to figure out a way to get our water back on. I went ahead and hooked up one hose to the dishwasher figuring that would hold and the other hose I'm not sure where it goes. I almost wonder if I need a bigger hose to hook up to the new dishwasher so I took a drill bit and stuck it in upside down into the smaller tube just to plug it. I placed the end of that hose in the sink just in case it manages to spit out the bit. I went downstairs and turned the water back on and no leaks so yeah for me.

I really wanted to get the dishwasher hooked up because I am widely known in my family for not being handy so I was really hoping to be able to do it myself just to say I did. Of course, that didn't work out so now that I had to call for help, I failed, again.


House list

• Den - Paint.
• Dining Room & Kitchen - Paint and Stain the cabinets.
• Garage - Rearrange and clean (clean probably won't get done till spring.)
• Living Room - Put some kind of tile at the front door (there's carpet there now).
• Main bathroom - Paint, possibly restain the vanity.
• Master Bath - Paint, possibly restain the vanity.
• Master Bedroom - Paint walls and possibly ceiling.
• Outside - Reseed grass (spring), stain the deck and the porch, put up a column, paint the door, replace the lamp post.
• Samantha's Room - Paint, take down fish wallpaper, put up chalkboard paint on one small mall.
• Trevor's Room - Completed.