Frazzled Three Day Weekend

August 10, 2026 by Adam in Family

I keep hitting a lot of stressors these days, with the latest being the initial mold remediation report - still trying to understand what it means, what we need to do, and how much it will cost.  Sadie and family arrive this week.  The farm house project has a bunch of final work being done.  Not to mention Jo and I dealing with a clog this morning that involved cleaning the sewage ejector pump and using the snake on the basement pipes.  There's a lot going on.

I've been slowly working through my to do list - changing toilet seats, fixing downspouts unattached by the painters, replacing painted-over bathroom vents that were blocking fans, and so on.  The list of things to do seems to grow faster than I can get things done, but at least I've made a little more progress.

I had a good time going over to Jason's house to play board games Saturday night.  His daughter is heading off to collage shortly, so it was a last hurrah that included BJ and her vast extended family.  We played Flip 7 where I didn't win but was able to decide who won based on my trickery and deception.  Then it was off to Mansions of Madness where we carefully started collecting clues until one player went yolo and nearly everyone went insane battling a ghost.  Good times.

Yvonne called.  She's working away once or twice a week helping with the EMT classes at a local university. I think she'll get her license soon and then start eyeing full-time EMT work in earnest.  It'll be nice to see her in a couple weeks.

Work is the usual madness of things to be done.  I just keep yelling at assorted AI agents all day, trying to keep it from doing silly things.  When the machines rise up against us they'll probably try to murder us with pastries or something bizarre.

Beautiful Porch

August 04, 2026 by Adam in Family

Jo scraped, power washed, and painted the front porch which was looking rough in comparison to the house. It now looks beautiful. We still want to get better railings but it feels much better than before.

Survived the Weekend

August 03, 2026 by Adam in Family

There were some good things and rough things about the last few days.  I headed out with mom to the farm house on Friday and had a walkthrough with Matt from HiLine.  The porch is being built, so getting in is tricky and mom stayed in the car.  I went around and took pictures of things and got the list of remaining items.  The biggie is painting, as the painters have apparently vanished but hopefully Seraph can get in touch.  I had my ai agents make a farm project website to help keep track of things.

Since no one else was doing it, I went out Saturday morning to clean up the site.  There were a ton of cardboard boxes I broke down and lay out in the trailer.  I swept and vaccuumed and picked up the other trash, adding a second layer to the trailer.  We'll need to have a full cleaning of the house as things like the bathtubs are filthy.

I'd been fighting a headache all morning but by the time I got home I was feeling really bad.  Jo needed a pickup from the train station, coming back from a Portland event.  After that I crawled into bed and alternated between unconscous and taking pain killers.  I felt more human by the evening, as long as I wore sunglasses to handle the light sensitivity.  I suppose I looked pretty cool.

Sunday I was pretty low key.  I painted some minis and played with different AI games.  Jo helped buy and schedule farm house appliances.  I managed to unhook the trailer but not much else of a practical nature.  Jo prepped and power washed the front porch.  That afternoon we headed to Jerry's to pick up some primer and concrete patch goop, running into mom along the way. 

On the way back we decided to check out the porch concerts that were going on all weekend.  We headed to the Whit and wandered into someone's backyard to listen to some very cool "depressed folk", stopped by Tacovore for dinner, then walked to another house where we missed the "sing-along folk" but listened to the "piano folk" for a time.  We ran into Angie while I was there, who was there with her husband and enjoying the festivities.  Eventually we wandered home where Jo worked on patching the porch while I took it easy some more.

Now it's off to work in a few minutes.  I'm still feeling a little achy and will likely try to take it easy.  I'm going to take Friday off, just for my mental health.  I might have to take more time off depending on what happens to the painters at the farm house.  I try to keep telling myself that we're almost at the end.