May 17/18 - retirement sure is busy

Yes. I was too busy to blog. That sounds better than a lame "I forgot". Truth be told, I remembered several times during the day but I was doing other things, so this falls into the "too busy" category.

So ... I dropped my suspenders, er, my suspended ceiling that is, by the requisite 1/2" and have also installed some tiles under the duct work, so there's no doubt that I'm "in the clear" now. The tiles under the duct work have to be installed before finishing up the grid in that area because the T's have to be spread to put the tile in, rather than slid in from overhead (because there is no overhead). After that I kind of diddled around a little not quite having the energy for new work after cleaning up old work, so to speak. I wandered over to Jason's a little after 4pm to ask him a question -- whether he needed firewood from Halle -- and found them sitting around in front of the TV, beer/wine in hand. I called Sandy and we joined them for an hour and then we headed home and they had an early dinner. Sometime later in the evening they headed back to Brantford, thus missing the Victoria Day traffic.

Jason had seen and talked to Claudia, who arrived sometime that day. Apparently she has lost 28 pounds and was looking great. Jason also found out that, contrary to Donnie's stories, their place is not up for sale. That doesn't surprise me -- she keeps saying that she wants to retire and I could see them spending much more time up here as well as at their home in Penetang ... and perhaps Florida too, once they buy a place down there.

Yesterday -- Monday -- shortly after getting up I started at the ceiling downstairs again. I spent about 5 hours:

1) finishing off the grid in the main room, double checking height and running a line from there into the games room.

2) I made some small adjustments left/right to the main room grid -- that's largely self-correcting anyway once I put the tiles in place because they force everything to be square

3) with the line extended into the games room, I started marking the floor joists for the lag screws and from there, into the rest of the room. That room is deeper than it is wide -- 22' x 15' (the 15' being two main T's), so I had marks at 2', 4', 6' ... 20'.

4) put in all those lag screw-eyes and cut and hung wire from each screw-eye.

5) extended the main T's from the main room into the games room

6) installed tiles under the duct work -- actually, not quite finished there, have one to go.

Next up, go for a bike ride. The temperature was in the mid 50's, by this time windy with a very cool breeze. I didn't get out until after noon, getting back around 5pm.

There were several problems with this ride. First off, I'd forgotten what it was like to go biking after working for a few hours up.down ladders. Since my legs had already had a workout of a different sort, they were tired without having been warmed up. Second, I'd loaded myself down with too much lunch. With the leftover ham bone I'd made chili of a sort, using a 9-bean soup mixture and typical chili ingredients. It was excellent -- I had a big bowl of that and a large smoked salmon sandwich for lunch. I probably needed ... oh ... 3-4 hours to digest that kind of lunch so biking an hour after eating didn't qualify. I not only was riding my hummer (got to keep it rolling) but was carrying a couple of pounds of lunch in my gut, so to speak. I tasted it the entire ride.

My head is itchy. Inevitably I get a couple of new black fly bites every trip. My legs are itchy. Even at speed, there are enough of them in the air on 522 that I run into them and they grab on and a few seconds later I'm exclaiming "ouch" and swatting them. Ok, I admit it, sometimes -- out there all by myself with no one to hear -- I'm saying "$hit" and swatting them. Since they are together in clouds, I'm usually swatting 2 or 3.

We ate early and I went out fishing. I got to the old fishing hole, slowed down and was immediately surrounded by a cloud of black flies. I'd forgotten to bring a bug jacket or hood, so I headed back. Disgusted, I didn't bother going back out. My intent is to go out this morning ... should have gone already but knew that by the time I got back and blogged I might be getting emails wondering what the heck happened to me.

It's sunny and 10C (50F). I'll have to check the Doppler because they had been calling for rain.

Sandy is going into Sudbury for a physio appointment today. I don't think that she has much more on the agenda -- oh, she is going to stop at HD and get two more packages of lights and a light bulb.

That's it ... once I get back from fishing I'm planning on working in the basement. Tomorrow will be another biking day -- supposed to be going up to 21C both Wednesday and Thursday and sunny both days -- woo hoo ! The bugs will be super-bad !!