A "Doh!" Moment and Other Random Musings

I've been off from work this past week. Typically, vacation days always fly by for me but not so much this time. It's been really nice. Lots of walks with the pups, time on my bikes and a good amount of hours spent working in the yard. All of those things I find relaxing and that was what I was after. I'll have one more week off in late August before heading into the home stretch of my career.

Speaking of retiring, we have several controllers retiring at the end of June: Tim Baker, Fred Damico, Grant Feest, Dave Hanson, Rob Ralston, and Mark Anderson.

Me? 188 dtg.

We took Elaine to the zoo on Monday. She was excited to see the monkeys but she probably enjoyed the butterfly garden most of all. I can't remember the last time I was there.

Federal subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) were upheld by the United States Supreme Court this past week. They also ruled on same-sex marriage, making it legal throughout the country. Conservatives and Christians are not happy. They seem to be happiest when we're spending vast sums of money on war but not the health of our citizens. And how is it that we ever allowed someone's biblical definition of marriage to define who in our society can marry whom? The bible is anything but clear on the definition of marriage because it's not just one-man-one-woman.

We had to have both Joe (our contractor for our addition) and Brian (Joe's former tile installer) out to our home to look at some cracking in the tile grout in the sunporch. We first noticed the problem a year ago but didn't think too much about it. I figured I'd just re-grout the area once it stopped chipping. It's much more serious than we imagined. Either one of the products under the tile (self-leveling compound or anti-fracture membrane) has failed or there's been some movement in the room to cause it. Joe took some measurements and said the structure is within 3/8 of an inch from being perfectly square and level.

If you look closely you can see chips in the grout throughout the room but Joe pointed out that most of the failing is where the structure ties into the house and where there are no footings beneath it that could've possibly moved as seen in this photo. That makes sense.

We're not sure what the final solution will be but Joe is hoping to have an agreement reached with all parties concerned in the next month or so.

Rachel and I had a "Doh!" moment earlier in the week. We went to pick up her mattress at her storage locker and proceeded to tie it to the roof of her car not realizing that we were tying her car doors shut. If this helps to affirm that I'm not her go-to guy for any future moves I'm okay with that.

I was out on my Sarma Shaman fat-bike quite a lot this past week getting acquainted with it. I'm still riding too tentatively to say for certain how much benefit I'm getting from the front suspension but so far, so good. I'm liking my new ride a lot.

I was planning to go for a few hour walk on Friday afternoon but just as I was leaving I changed my mind and got on my fat-bike instead. I was glad I did. I had so much fun out there and whatever worries about our tile floor that were preoccupying my thoughts increasingly faded away with each mile I put behind me.

Video from my ride.

Tuesday's ride had me in some of the tallest grass I'd ever seen. The Shaman made easy work of it but I did have to stop a few times to extract grass from my drivetrain.

Surprisingly, I only found one tick after I got home.