Road Trip!

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The snow and wind stopped sometime during the night and I woke up (late – nearly 8:00!) to bright sunshine and crisp temperatures outside. Have not gotten above 25 today, but the lack of wind has made things much more hospitable than they were yesterday. My weather app tells me that tomorrow will also be sunny and that the thermometer will reach to nearly 40, which will feel like shorts weather after the last few days.

As planned, the fire had nearly gone out by the time I woke up, so I made some coffee and then shoveled a bunch of ash out of the stove, which I deposited into the trash can designed for such stuff outside. Feeling the housekeeping bug, I then proceeded to do some furniture rearrangement – moved my table and wood pile, pushed some chairs out of the way, redesigned the way that I hang my sink, set up a better coat rack, then swept out the entire cabin and the front porch.

After doing so, I brought in two loads of wood and completely filled my inside wood rack. Note to self: do that BEFORE sweeping the floor next time.

Took stock of my food for a bit next. Down to 6 beers, no chips left. Sure, I have other foodstuffs, but let’s be serious here. I was taking stock of the important food. Having determined that I was running low on the vitals, I determined to drive in to Cheboygan and restock. This turned out to be somewhat of a hassle, as my car has been sitting idle since last Friday and was covered in 3 inches of snow and ice. I brushed off most of the loose snow (did I mention that, yes, I have a snow brush and scraper in my car?), then remembered that I needed to add a quart of oil to the thing. Managed to get the hood open, but could not loosen the oil cap until I got a couple of logs from the woodshed and banged on it for a while. Got the oil put in, then climbed in and cranked her up to warm up the windows before scraping off the ice.

For a horrible moment, I thought the car wasn’t going to start, but it caught after a couple of attempts (this car has never sat out for a week in sub-freezing temperatures) and warmed up everything nicely. Drove to the Marathon station in town (about 5 miles) and filled up with gasoline, then picked up a 12-pack of brew, a couple bags of chips, a gas station sandwich – which I had for lunch, along with a pack of three-pepper sauce that I found in my brain – and a big bottle of Gatorade. Needed that last not so much for the drink, but because my current pee bottle needs to hold more, if you know what I mean.

Arriving back at the cabin, I shoveled some more ash out of the stove, then put in a couple of new logs, started listening to a podcast, and promptly fell asleep. I’ve been dozing on and off for most of the day since, and – now 4:20 in the afternoon – the sun is on the way down. I plan to hit the sack fairly early tonight (sleeping is what I do best on my solitary vacations), and maybe take a walk tomorrow, in between naps.

The picture for this post is of one of the two lighthouses that I have guarding the east-west channel alongside of which I’m camped. This one is right offshore to the west – it gives its name to the Lighthouse Cabin – and there’s another about a mile or two down to the east. I haven’t taken any pictures of them this year, but there are some BIG ships heading past every day, and the sounds of them chugging along and sounding their horns, along with the sounds of the horns from the lighthouses at night, is pretty amazing.

Cold Snap

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I woke up early this morning, and quickly discovered – on my way to the latrine – that it had gotten markedly colder than it was yesterday. The temperature itself wasn’t terrible, having only dropped a few degrees into the mid-twenties, but the wind was back with a vengeance. Not sure what the wind chill actually is (I used to have a chart for that), but I’ll just say that it has been COLD all day.

That being the case, I’ve spent most of the day inside the cabin, reading, snoozing, and listening to podcasts. I did bundle up and take a walk this afternoon – explored some of the Duncan Bay side of the point, and got in a bit more than 2 miles of exercise. Was forced to wear a gaiter than Cy gave me several years ago or my face would have frozen off; and I had on a tee, flannel shirt, windbreaker, gloves, and flannel-lined pants to keep the rest of me warm.

Today was pasta day at the old cabin. Made some ravioli on the wood stove for brunch and had some dehydrated spaghetti and meat sauce about an hour ago. Both were pretty good, but I’ll give the nod to the spaghetti. Mountain House makes some good dehydrated food.

It has also been snowing off-and-on for most of the day, although I got a couple hours of sunny clear skies during and just after my walk. No accumulation to speak of, but the sidewalk that I so carefully shoveled could probably use another scraping. That won’t happen today, as it’s already dark.

For some reason, the picture that I keep trying to attach to this post (a shot of my cabin kitchen) won’t upload, and my email doesn’t seem to be updating, either. That being the case, this post might not publish – but I’m going to click the “Publish” button now anyway.

Monday in the Woods

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I’m not sure what I said that I was going to do yesterday, but I’m fairly confident that I didn’t do it. I spent nearly the entire day in my cabin listening to podcasts and/or watching a couple of movies. I’d hoped to be able to watch the Falcons game, but my YouTube TV apparently doesn’t get live feeds in this area (one more reason that I’ll continue to experiment with that on a month-to-month basis).

As it turned out, the Falcons got crushed by a terrible Cleveland team, so I didn’t miss much.

I did get a nap in for an hour or so late-morning. Also brought in another load of wood (my third since Friday) and made some very good beef stew. Did that last on my old Coleman stove, which was the first time that I’ve used it at all since arriving here. My wood stove has done an admirable job of heating my water AND my food for the last few days. I stocked up on Coleman fuel for this trip, but it seems to me that I’m going to use very little of it. What I did not stock up on was lantern fuel – and since it’s pretty much pitch black in the cabin by 5:30 at night, that may have been an oversight. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve got a couple of tent lamps, at least one (I think two) head lamps, and a couple of flashlights, so I should be okay. If not, I don’t mind going to sleep when it gets dark.

Should you be wondering why I have so many flashlights and head lamps, it’s because I brought my “brain” on the trip. It’s the little bag that sits on top of my backpack, and I’ve said on many camping/hiking trips that, if necessary, I could live out of my brain for a week. It contains a lot of the ultra-light stuff that I’ve collected in the last 20 years while striving for the ultimate light pack, and usually has a couple of light sources, fire sources, spare food (oatmeal, cliff bars, coffee), water purifiers, various drugs and ointments, a spare knife, and lots of other things that may come in handy in an emergency. My brain only weighs about a pound, but it’s definitely a worthwhile weight for overnight hikes.

I did some snow shoveling this morning. Cleared the sidewalk between the cabin and the outhouse, and also cleared a path between the cabin and the wood shed. Salted everything, and that should take care of any slippery spots for the next day or two. It has continued to snow since yesterday afternoon, but it’s not sticking, so I don’t foresee any problems with actually driving out of here at the end of the week.

I did rouse myself out of the cabin stupor for about an hour late yesterday afternoon and took a rather brisk walk on the beach for about a mile (and another mile in the woods). My plan for today is to make a long loop on the various trails – head to Cheboygan point on an interior trail, circle back and head east on the beach all the way down to Poe Reef cabin, then head south through the woods to the campground, west on the other side of it, then back north through the cedar swamp to my cabin. I’m not positive about the distance, but I think it will be around 10 miles.

Or maybe I’ll just sleep, eat, and watch videos.

I meant to point out earlier that the picture at the top of this post is, I believe, one of loons that were hanging out in my little cove yesterday. There were 6 of them in total. Lots of water birds here. In addition to the (I think) loons, there is a flock of about 20 swans, at least two eagles, ducks, and lots of seagulls.

Later. My 10-mile walk ended up being a little over 6 miles. That’s fine, because my back, quads, and feet really didn’t want to go any further. Between the sand on the beach and the snow, walking was tough!

So that was a couple of hours this afternoon, since which time I’ve made a dehydrated turkey casserole (quite good), listened to a podcast, and played in the wind a bit. The wind has picked back up dramatically, and it has gotten quite cold on the beach. Since the sun is going down in the next hour or so (it’s already pretty dark), I think I’m probably in for the evening.

Loving that wood stove….

Lazy Sunday

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It is a dreary morning here on the shore of Lake Huron. It’s been snowing for a few hours now, and that shows no signs of stopping. Not a heavy snow, but enough to fill in my footprints after 20 minutes or so.

The wind completely died away sometime after midnight last night, and the most immediate result of that is that it has become uncomfortably warm inside the cabin. I’ve got two windows and the front door open and I’m still sweating through my tee shirt. Maybe I’ll take a dip in the lake. Ha!

It was wonderfully cold outside last night. Sounds strange, I know, but there is something about a northern cold that I really like. I know that I complained a few months ago that it had been relentlessly cold in Georgia last winter – and I meant that – but I guess because of the humidity the cold in Michigan or Vermont or Canada just feels different, and I like it. There was also a break in the cloud cover last night and I was able to catch a look at the night sky away from city lights. Beautiful.

I’ve been listening to podcasts this morning, but will probably take a walk in a little while. Might also shovel the sidewalk (I didn’t get to that yesterday), and will definitely bring in another load of wood. It’s warm in here now, but I know how fast this cabin will reach the twenties if I let the fire die.

Other than the walk, the wood, and the shoveling, I have no plans for today. Might be a day for reading or napping.

Snow Day!

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I woke up this morning to a beautiful Lake Huron sunrise, strong winds, and a couple of inches of the white stuff. As I sit here at the table in my cabin, listening to a Furman football game, I’m looking out at something I’m pretty sure that I’ve never seen before: snow in the foreground and the lake, with huge white caps, in the back. The wood stove in the cabin is doing an amazing job – I’m in my underwear and have cracked a window, both to cool things down a little bit and to let me hear the wind, which is constant and incredibly soothing. I played my wind game for about an hour earlier this morning, which I haven’t been able to do for several years.

Wind game: try to find a spot outside that allows me to simultaneously be in and out of the wind. I invented it as a small child in Shoreham – the perfect spot was behind the berry bush between the roots of the Elm tree in the front yard. The best spot I found today was in a Cedar Grove near the beach.

Took two fairly long walks today. The first one took me to Cheboygan Point, about a mile from here. I wandered around there for a while, then walked east on the beach back past my cabin to the edge of the park. Came back to the cabin for a lunch of chicken and dumplings, then opted to walk over to the campsite on the southern edge of the park rather than take a nap.

I’d just arrived back at the cabin after that trek when one of the rangers showed up to give me some rock salt and – you called it, Dad! – a snow shovel. I shoveled off the front of the cabin, where I have my “settin’ outside” chair, before coming back in to listen to the game. Later today, I might get enough energy to shovel off the walkway that leads to the latrine.

A bit about the cabins here at Cheboygan State Park: there are three of them, all available year-round, and all basically the same. I stayed in the Poe Reef cabin last year. This time, I’m at 14-Foot Shoals, which is about a mile further off the main road than Poe. A quarter-mile further along is Lighthouse Cabin. 14-Foot Shoals has a “porch” of sorts, which is missing in the other two cabins. It’s just a little 3-foot overhang across the front of the cabin, but it’s a great place to sit outside without being completely exposed to the elements.

Other than that, the cabins are all pretty much the same. They’re square buildings – I’d guess about 20 feet per side – with a single room under a peaked roof. Each wall has at least one window (2 on the lake-facing wall), and there is a small counter in one of the lakeside corners. Each building also has a wood stove, 4 sets of bunk beds, a table with two benches, and a number of wooden chairs. Hooks in the rafters provide a good place to hang a lantern (there is no electricity). Each cabin also has two out-buildings: a vault toilet and a large woodshed. Water is available from a hand pump outside (kind of yellow this year, but seems to taste alright), and there are two picnic tables and two firepits – one set at the forest side of the cabin and the other on the beach.

I’m sure that, during the summer, the beaches here get crowded. In late October/early November, however, I’ve had the place pretty much to myself. Yes, there are people staying in the other two cabins, but they are distant enough to not exist, basically. Solitude is what I like, and this place has it.

A Home in the Woods

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I have arrived at Cheboygan State Park in Michigan.

Actually, I arrived at just after 2 this afternoon, and it is now about 3:30. In the 90 minutes between, I unloaded my car of about a week’s worth of supplies, stocked the cabin with firewood (there’s plenty more in the wood shed), put on my boots, walked on the beach, and have drunk exactly one beer (more will be consumed, I predict).

It was snowing when I left Perrysburg, OH, this morning, and it’s threatening to do the same here in Cheboygan before the day is over, but right now it’s just overcast and a little chilly (about 36 degrees, according to the cabins thermometer). In the cabin itself, I’m guessing that it’s in the 50s, but I did get a fire started (forgot to mention that), and I expect that it’ll be up closer to 70 before too much longer).

The week in Perrysburg went pretty well. We had some network trouble on Sunday night, but got that cleared up on Monday, got all of the workstations set up, and were able to leave the office by about 6:30. Tuesday-Thursday went smoothly. Not too many people had trouble, so it was mainly a case of making sure printers worked okay, explaining how multiple monitors have to be configured, easy stuff. There was a system-wide outage on Wednesday morning, which was not cool at all, but nothing we could do about it. My mind was in Michigan anyway.

The plan for the rest of the day is to get the temperature up in the cabin, drink a bit of beer and bourbon, heat up some water for a sponge bath in the morning, maybe take a walk, watch a movie (I brought six of them on my phone), and sleep like a dead man. Between the breeze in the woods and the sound of the surf, about 100 feet from where I’m sitting, that last should be no problem at all.

Week of 10/22/18

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Monday: Thought that I’d try something different this week and put down some notes from each day into a post that will be published at the end of the week.

I played a concert with the Gwinnett Wind Symphony yesterday afternoon. It wasn’t the best thing that I’ve ever been involved with, but it probably wasn’t the worst, either. We had a decent crowd at Gwinnett Infinity Theater, and – in spite of a few close calls – the band didn’t fall apart.

After the concert, I stopped at MicroCenter and picked up a mini Bluetooth keyboard, which I’ve paired to my phone (and am currently using to type this). Together with the WordPress app that I mentioned in yesterday’s entry, my phone is actually becoming something that I can legitimately use for writing. Yes, the KB is pretty cramped, and the shift keys aren’t exactly where I expect for them to be, but with practice, I can probably get up to 60-70 words per minute, which is amazing.

After the stop at MicroCenter, I went over to visit Herb in his new assisted living place. It’s a pretty good setup for him, and is close to Jenny and me. He’s got a small bedroom/office in one room, and kitchen/living room in another, and a good-sized bathroom. Pretty homey, all things considered, and he’s got caregivers around the clock, which is excellent. I helped him get his wireless printer set up and gave him a ream of paper (I’ve got more than I’ll ever use). Jenny was also there, so we visited for a bit before I came home, watched some television, did some laundry, and hit the sack.

Printers were the bane of my existence at work today. About a week ago, one of my firms decided to swap two printers. Normally, this isn’t a big deal, and I would just have to change their names in the group policy that pushes them out to workstations. Something went wrong with the policy, however, and I spend much of last week trying to get things working. Not only did the two printers not swap like they were supposed to, but people started losing OTHER printers. I got a frantic call from the client admin this morning saying that nobody on the second floor of the building had any printers.

So I spent all day trying various things to figure out what the hell was going on. Between 5:30 and 6:00 I think I finally got things working normally. It’s my hunch that the policy was never set up correctly when the firm came on board two months ago. I’m guessing that the on-site people manually installed everybody’s printers and nobody noticed that the policy wasn’t working until something had to change. When I made that change, all of the problems came to light.

It was, to put it mildly, a frustrating day.

I did get a little bit of time during the day to do some more work on a powershell script that I’ve been writing, and that was fun. I’m trying to, basically, rewrite the registry editor so that I can modify specific user hives in remote terminal servers. There are probably a hundred other (better) ways to do what I’m trying to do, but I’ve never used Powershell as much as I should have when I was managing systems, and learning a new language is a nice break during otherwise monotonous days.

Tomorrow will be another stressful day – we’re migrating four firms to Office 365. Two of my guys are in the O365 phone queue for expected heavy traffic, and two others are on a project in Florida, so my team will be severely short-handed.

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Tuesday: The weather took a turn for the cool this morning. I think it was in the low 50s when I got up and hovering around 60 when I left for work. Never got warmer than the low 70s.

Work itself wasn’t too bad. I had to do a few more tweaks for the printers that have taken up much of the last week, but got that out of the way early this morning. The rest of the day was spent closing tickets and helping my team with their own. Also got a little bit of work done on my Powers he’ll script and though of a few things that I can add to it.

Learned from one of my team that our team entry into last week’s Mega Millions drawing actually bore some fruit! We bought 9 tickets as a team on Friday as a part of a team-building exercise (went out to dinner at Dave & Busters), and we won $200. Not a billion bucks, but not bad. Of course, nobody won the whole thing, so tonight’s drawing, as you may know, is the largest jackpot ever at over $1.6 billion. Yes, I do have tickets – bought twenty of the things on my own. If I win, maybe I’ll throw some cash at my team.

I got home fairly late tonight – somewhere between 7 and 7:30 – and didn’t do much at all. Watched some television, washed some dirty dishes, and now I’m in bed. Maybe I’ll be a billionaire when I wake up.

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Wednesday: Not a billionaire. Not even a millionaire. In fact, on the twenty lottery tickets that I had – that’s 106 numbers altogether, I matched exactly…none. Oh well. Back to the grind, I guess.

It was nippy today for a while. Tomorrow is supposed to be nippier, with a high in the 60s. I’m not sure if it got over 70 today, but I was inside for most of the day, so I was comfortable in my Downtown Magnetawan tee and jeans. I had high hopes of closing out a bunch of tickets today, but things kept getting in the way and I honestly don’t know what my final numbers were.

Did an interview from 4 to 5:30. Nice kid, but he won’t be working for us. The three of us who interviewed him were unanimous in our opinions that he has absolutely no computer skills, in spite of his degree in cyber security.

Learned this afternoon that I have to do one-on-one meetings with my team before 11/15 – which in my case means before 11/1. So every day between tomorrow and next Friday will be spent in preparing – gathering metrics, listening to phone calls, reading ticket summaries, etc. Not my idea of a good time. We’ll also be migrating firms to Office 365 every night from tonight until the end of the year, which is going to cause high ticket loads every morning. This is the biggest project the X-Company has ever attempted, and I don’t think it’ll be a lot of fun, but it does need to be done.

I tied the registry portion of my Power Shell project into the lookup portion of it today, and it’s working quite well. This tool may actually wind up being really REALLY useful for my team.

Got home fairly late again tonight – somewhere around 7 – and make a couple of chicken sandwiches to eat while watching “The Newsroom” on Prime Video. That was it. Sitting in bed now and am about to be lying in bed. Just waiting for the kitties to settle in.

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Thursday: It was indeed a little cold today, with highs in the mid-60s and an unrelenting breeze. Normally, I would love that, but I underestimated the prognosticators and wore a tee shirt to work – did not bring a jacket. Of course, it was completely comfortable in the office, but my breaks outside were cold.

Tried to prepare for my 1-on-1 meetings with my directs for about half of the day, worked on tickets for most of the other half, and had my own 1-on-1 with my boss, where I learned that I’m doing pretty good. We talked about my future plans – whether I’d stick with the management path or jump to an upcoming escalations specialist spot. I said that, in my heart of hearts, I’m a techy; but that I’m determined to see if I can get comfortable in an admin role. That being the case, I do not intend to apply for the ES role when it comes up.

Turns out that I’ve got the inside track to a management promotion as we continue to add level 1 employees. My boss doesn’t want to have more than 12 directs. As we add more L1s, we’ll break them up into more teams, each with a team lead (leads currently report to my boss). The plan is to put another level in between the L1 leads and the Service director (my boss), and that’ s where I’d go. The leads would report to me and I’d report to the service director.

As I grow more comfortable in this role, I can see where that position would be more to my liking – dealing with intelligent technical leads without having to also deal with the daily grind of dealing with newbies who may or may not have a future in tech. Certainly something to think about.

We also talked about our respective personalities and how we approach our leadership positions. Turns out that both of us harbor inner thoughts that we’re frauds, which is oddly comforting. So I’ll soldier on and continue to work on my leadership and motivational skills (or lack thereof), and will continue to try to make this a new 2nd-act career.

At the end of the day, my friend Schuyler and I dug into my Power Shell project and tweaked and played until after 6:00. That being the case, I didn’t get home until close to 7:00. Made a shepherds pie for dinner (very good), did some dishes, and watched a hilarious mockumentary about a terrible survivalist. It was called, I think, “Tex Montana Will Survive.”

Got in bed with the intention of watching some college football, but it appears that it is not on a local (non-cable) channel, so I guess I’ll just go to sleep.

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Friday: A cold, drizzly day to end out the work week. At least I was smart enough to wear a rain coat today.

Worked on tickets for most of the day. Had one 1×1 meeting at around 11:30 and got some coding done late in the day, but for the most part, I zoned out to tunes and worked on problems. Had one guy not show up for work – he sent me a picture of the side of his car, said that he was hung up and waiting for AAA. 2 hours later said that AAA had just picked him up (this was a also at around 11:30), but he never came in. Very smart guy. Good guy. And this is his third unexcsused absence in two months and the second this week. We’ll be having a meeting on Monday, which I do not want to have. But… I wanted to manage people, right?

I got home by 6 o’clock or so and it was 60 inside the house. Hated to do it, but I was sort of tired of being right on the verge of cold, so I turned on the heat (set to 68). It’s the first time I’ve had it on since probably March, and the earliest that I can remember turning it on. My Nest thermostat needed something different, though, and I’m interested to learn if it handles heating as well as it handled cooling all summer. The heat has been off for the last hour or so, so I’m not overly concerned yet about my natural gas bill. Plus, we’re supposed to rebound and be back in the 70s by tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I don’t have many big plans for the weekend. Going to fix Jenny’s toilet on Sunday – replace a flapper, I think – and will probably start organizing things tomorrow for my trip next week. Will probably also go somewhere tomorrow afternoon to watch some football, play trivia, and hoist a few. At some point, I need to buy toilet paper and clean my master bath.

Call it the weekend of the toilet.

So I’ll wrap this up now and call this experiment of nightly updates to my blog, using my phone as a monitor and a tiny Bluetooth keyboard as an input device, a rousing success. Had I known how much I could use the phone for if I attached it to a keyboard, I probably would’ve picked up the latter years ago. It will definitely come in handy on off-the-grid vacations in the future.

With that, I close this entry and prepare for sleep. I’ll pick up this tome next week!

Still Alive!

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So it’s been a while. Figured I’d try to catch up on things while I’m sitting at Tires Plus waiting for new tires. Also testing out a WordPress app on my phone, which may allow me to post more often and, hopefully, will work well enough so that I can use it when I’m in Michigan in a few weeks.

I guess that’s the big news for now. I rented a cabin at Cheboygan State Park again this year, and I’m planning to stay there from November 9th to the 16th. It’s a lovely spot and I’m really looking forward to having a week by myself in the middle of nowhere to decompress and think about things. That week will come immediately on the heels of a week in Toledo, where I’ll be on a project for work. Not looking as forward to that, but it works nicely financially, as I’ll be reimbursed for mileage for around 1300 miles out of my entire trip.

Work has been somewhat exhausting as of late. The X-Company really built up the numbers in L1 support staff this year, and I’ve now got 10 direct reports and am expecting 1 or 2 more by the end of the year. Having been back in the management gig for nearly a year now (the last time I had directs was around 2006), I’ve sort of settled in to it. Managing people is, for me at least, much more stressful than just dealing with misbehaving computers. I get particularly annoyed when one of my people feels the need to take an emergency day off because, “My kid threw up,” but I guess I’m not allowed to admit that. I also have a few scenarios every day when I’m deep in the heart of working a problem which has been escalated to me and I get interrupted by someone who needs help with something that, to me, seems incredibly obvious. Maybe not the solution, but definitely the troubleshooting steps required to find it.

I haven’t gotten to get out much this year. Did go up to Whigg Meadow two more times since that weekend when Brett and I discovered it. Both trips were really nice (I hiked up both times, rather than subjecting my car to the terrible drive), though I did get absolutely soaked the first time – caught on the trail in a downpour with no rain gear.

I’m still looking for the perfect place to buy some land for a tiny cabin to live in in my old age. Have not found it yet, and I’m again wondering when I’ll be able to actually do this. I looked at my 401k yesterday and see that in the last 2 weeks I’ve lost everything that I gained during the first nine months of the year. Wouldn’t call it depressing, but it’s certainly not encouraging.

…

And now it’s the next day. I did get my tires put on, and had the front end aligned, which makes my car feel like a new car. Very nice. Jenny and I went to a Gladiators hockey game last night. Once again, we saw them playing the Orlando Sun Bears, which I think is the team that we’ve seen play every time we’ve gone. And once again, the Gladiators lost. We have a bad hockey team.

After I got home last night, I saw that I had an email from Dad. It had been written while I was sitting at the tires place, and it mentioned that he misses seeing updates to my blog. Well, here you go, Dad!

I guess the last little bit of news is that I’ve got a concert with the Gwinnett Wind Symphony later this afternoon. We’re performing the Suite from West Side Story, the Candice Suite and something else that I don’t recall right now. The band has been sounding pretty good for the rehearsals, which is different for this group.

So, we’ll call this test over. This app appears to do a pretty good job of allowing me to update my blog on-the-fly. The Voice Control isn’t all that great, but it’s faster than typing on the little phone keyboard. I do have to go back and correct things fairly often.

I don’t know how it will do with inserting pictures, which will be important when I’m in Michigan, but I’ll try that out later.

Ahmic 2018

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Yep.  I made it back to Camp Ulvik this year after not being able to do it last year.   What follows are notes as I wrote them in notepad while waiting for the WiFi to be turned on.  I’ll just update this post over the next few days rather than make new posts.

6:03 AM 7/8/2018
A gorgeous morning, with a slight breeze coming into the guest cabin from the lake. I arrived in camp at around 7:30 last night after driving up from Lima via Sault St. Marie. I took that route, though it is longer, because the crossing is so much easier than it is in Detroit and because the drive is much prettier. Saw a herd of bison, and a heron, in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. Just Cy, T, and I in camp last night and we had burgers and a pasta salad for dinner. In bed by 9:30 and I got nearly 8 hours, though my watch tells me that only 3 of those were deep.

2:03 PM 7/8/2018
Took a fairly long walk this morning – down Langford Lane to the Rouse camp, then back up Thompson Road until I saw an interesting 4-wheeler track off to the right. Followed that into the woods for a while, then came back out, continued the walk up to Nippissing, and came back to the main cabin here. Got my 10K steps in, which I think is around 4.5 miles. When I got back, it was about 11:30 and Cy and T were heading into town to refill their propane tank, so I relaxed in the guest cottage. Sat on the porch in my underwear after taking a dip in the lake and listened to the wind chimes. Walked back up to the main cabin at around 1 and chatted with the two of them while they ate lunch. T is now in his cottage reading and I think Cy’s gone to the dock to try to steal WiFi from Whit and Ellen’s place (the phone lines are down here – wire snapped and T and I were unable to get the two ends close enough to splice, so the telephone guy is supposed to be here tomorrow to try to fix it). I stole T’s wireless keyboard for a while, since the “T” on my own keyboard has stopped working (along with a couple of other keys, I think). That’s on my surface pro. Guess I’ll need to get a replacement for it if I’m going to continue to take this little computer camping with me. For dinner tonight, we’re planning on going to Tanner’s British Pub. Have never been.

7/9/2018
We did indeed go to Tanner’s for dinner.  Everyone else had prime rib.  I opted for Shepherd’s Pie.  Wasn’t all that great – generally isn’t, from what I’ve learned by ordering it in restaurants.

Dianne arrived during the early afternoon and got settled into the near side of the boathouse.  There’s a new shower on that side this year, which is pretty cool.   Took the boat into town for a few things (I needed ingredients for a chicken/rice thing that I made for dinner – somehow managed to lose the can of soup that I got there….).  I spent much of the rest of the day trying to snooze in my cottage, but didn’t really sleep much.   Rolled myself up to the main cabin to make dinner somewhere between 5 and 6.  In addition to the rice chicken (which was pretty good), we roasted some beets (also pretty good).  Played team cribbage until about 10:00 (Di and Cy smoked T and I), then we all crashed.

7/10/2018
I slept in this morning – didn’t wake up until after 7, then stayed in bed for another hour before going up to the main cabin for coffee and conversation.  Took another long walk after that, dressed in a manner that covered every inch of exposed skin to keep the flies and mosquitos off (jeans, pullover, netting over my hat, and gloves).  Worked okay, but the little bastards bit my hands through the gloves anyway.  Got back to the camp and jumped in the lake a couple of times.  Cleaned the windows in the boathouse, fixed the drain on the fish sink, and had a bologna sandwich for lunch.

7/11/2018
Dianne made dinner on Tuesday night – hot dogs and some sort of macaroni salad (good stuff) – and the four of us played Oh Hell until about 10 o’clock.  I held a lead for most of the game, but fell apart late and Dianne kicked everyone’s butt.  Chris and Jamie still hadn’t arrived by the time it was dark, so we all went to bed.

7/12/2018
Chris and Jamie got here shortly after we had all retired on Tuesday, so it was great to see them first thing in the morning.  It was a beautiful day all day – lowest temps of the weeks (high 70s) – and we got some chores done before Cy and I went to Huntsville for groceries and to look for souvenirs.  That latter part was a complete bust for me.  Huntsville is no longer the nice little downtown area with cool mom and pop shops, but a built up tourist trap with very little other than restaurants.

Once we got back to the camp, I did a bit of reading and took a nap before heading back out to go to the Cornball Store for croissants and to the bait store for gasoline.  Cy made stuff peppers with leftover rice from Monday and some sausage that she brought from Vermont – fantastic!

The 6 of us played a variant of Pitch until it was dark.  Didn’t really keep score because we weren’t completely sure how to play, but it was fun.

7/13/2018
I slept until almost 7:30 this morning!  This is my last day in camp, so I’m planning to clean out the guest cabin today and get ready to hit the road as soon as I wake up tomorrow.  Plans for today are nebulous, but it’s supposed to be very hot and overcast (bugs will be bad!), so I see a lot of reading, swimming, and sleeping in my immediate future.

The croissants are amazing, by the way.

trips and falls

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So, yes.  It’s been a while since I updated this thing.  Truth be told, I just don’t feel like looking at a computer screen after I get home from work.  Don’t feel like doing much at all, honestly.  Free time is a luxury these days, with the relatively long commute to and from the office and the little projects around the house that never seem to go away.  So I wake up, I do or don’t take a walk, I drive to work, I work, I drive home, and I generally go to bed.  On the weekends, I flip a coin to decide whether to stay home and accomplish something (or sleep) or to go out and not accomplish anything.

On this fine Saturday morning, I haven’t flipped the coin yet.  Instead, I pulled out the laptop, paid some bills, did a little administrative work on my football website, and decided to add a new post to this story of my mid-life.

Today’s featured photo is of the mess that is called “the network closet” at the J. D. Frost CPA firm in Chattanooga.  That closet and that firm is where I kicked off the month of June by onboarding them during the week of Memorial Day.  The week went extremely well (hey, I was the lead on the project – a first for me – and I expected it to go well) and one other X-Company employee and I got the firm set up and working pretty much on the first day.  The rest of the week was spent fixing little problems that popped up (the same stuff we’d normally do over the phone for clients) and getting to know the 30-some CPAs in the office.  Great group of people, by the way – even though a bunch of them were UTC grads.

I stayed at the Read House on Market Street in Chatty, which I would’ve thought would be a lot nicer, considering how much it costs to stay there.  No refrigerator or microwave in the room.  No free breakfast (not even coffee, except for the little in-room coffee maker).  Small room with a view of an alley behind a parking deck.  Tattered carpeting in the halls.  They say that they’re doing a $25 million restoration until this summer, so maybe I should look again in the fall.  As it is….well…kind of a dump.

The hotel was about two miles from the office.  Two miles DOWNHILL from the office.  I know this because I walked to the office every morning and got to really hate that hill.  Also got rained on pretty much every day.  The rain, however, did little to bring the temperature down; so in addition to walking up that two-mile-long hill every morning (and back down every evening), I generally had to wear my North Face rain gear and a Tilly hat in the sauna that was Chattanooga in the rain.  Didn’t enjoy that a lot.  I did find a good pizza place though: Community Pie.

The Friday night that I got back from that job, I hosted Dianne and one of her friends at the house.  They’d come down to run a 5K race in Atlanta to raise money for the aquarium or something.  Good to see her, although I really have to question her sanity.  Who wants to run in the Atlanta heat?

We had a post-race meal with Jenny and her father at Mad Italian, during which I got the details on a trip that Jenny was taking to London the next week (last week).  When she does things like that, I’m supposed to feed her cats and occasionally check in with Herb to make sure he hasn’t fallen down his stairs or something crazy like that.  I’ve only actually done that a couple of times, and both times he’s kind of laughed at me, which I can understand.

So Jenny texted me last Saturday afternoon about something (I think I’d sent her pictures of her cats) and asked if I’d called her dad yet.  I said, “Not yet,” and didn’t think much of it.

Got a text from Jenny on Tuesday morning of this past week that said, “Call me.  Dad’s in the hospital.”  Also got a voice mail from Herb’s neighbor.  Herb had fallen down the stairs.  On Saturday afternoon.  And had lain there, literally in a pool of his own blood, until 11AM Tuesday morning.

Needless to say, I felt like the world’s biggest horse’s ass for not calling to check on him over the weekend; but after considering it, I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that if I’d called and he didn’t answer, I’d have left a message and not really worried about it.  I don’t have a key to his house or anything.  I may have called again and – perhaps – have driven over to the house if I hadn’t heard back from him by Sunday.  I honestly don’t know.

What I know now, though, is that Herb has a fractured skull, a broken wrist, a bit of pneumonia,  a slight brain bleed, and is eating through a feeding tube since his epiglottis isn’t working normally (possibly because when he arrived at the ER on Tuesday, he was understandably incredibly dehydrated and malnourished).

He spent Tuesday through Thursday in the ICU before moving to a regular hospital bed Thursday night.  Doug flew in from California early Wednesday morning, and Jenny cut her London trip short and came back Wednesday evening.

The good news is that his physical improvement since I first saw him in the ER on Tuesday morning is incredible.  His right eye had been completely swollen shut, but is now looking almost normal.  His speech, which had been slurred and often confused (he wasn’t able to distinguish between reality and the hallucinations that he’d been having since Saturday afternoon) is pretty much back to normal, although he’s obviously tired and was still a bit taciturn when I went to check in on him yesterday morning.  His wrist will not require surgery, nor will his skull.

The somewhat “iffy” news is that his throat still isn’t working properly and he can’t really swallow, so the feeding tube remains in place and doctors yesterday were talking about surgically implanting a stomach plug so that he can get nutrition that way.  One doctor apparently said that “he doesn’t have an epiglottis,” which sounds like a load of hooey to me.  The man is 85 years old.  If he didn’t have an epiglottis, I can’t believe that he wouldn’t have been hospitalized about 100 times for pneumonia before now, and someone during those times would’ve figured out that he’s been aspirating crap into his lungs since he was born.

More likely, his throat muscles atrophied for 4 days and he needs to learn how to swallow again, but assisted living places don’t like to (or can’t) take patients with feeding tubes, so the stomach plug is a quick way to discharge him.  Of course, that would put an end to things like enjoying food (and wine, which he loves).  Doug is gathering information and he and Herb and Jenny will decide how to proceed.

At any rate, he’s much better than he was on Tuesday and, though there is still much to be decided about where and how he’s going to live, live he will.  That he managed to survive is, to me (and to the doctors and nurses that I met during the week) almost unbelievable.

Tough old bird indeed.