Tim's House
Tuesday, September 12th, 2023 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
65F and sunny with a slight breeze this morning. Perfect follow up to yesterday's rain. But mowing definitely has to be a top priority on Saturday, now.
I need to get out on the porch and decide what size holes work for the pegs, so that I can order the pegs today.
I need to order a hand crank pencil sharener too!
The jig can center the holes in the edges of the boards and keep them straight, but it's gotta line up with carefully measured lines I make on the faces, so I need glasses and a very sharp pencil point for every line.
I also have a magnifying spot lamp I just got out of the basement, that should help, both with the measurements, and lining up the jig.
Got a call from D313 HR this morning. Just a woman asking if I was okay with the starting pay of $16.18 per hour. I said yes, and she's like, "Thanks, i'll forward this to somebody else who will call you another day."
I went all day yesterday, without once realizing it was September 11th.
I even heard a teacher telling another one that she'd explained the attacks to the kids in her class and I was like, that's weird. Wonder why that came up on a random day like today?
Saw a TikTok later where a teacher said she told her class she was in kindergarten during the attacks... which just floored me!.. but her class was amazed that she was even alive for an event that happened so long ago!
I was a fully grown ass man of 32!
The year 2001 still feels like... very recently!
But yeah, I did totally forget.
Here's how the porch workstation is shaping up this afternoon.
I'm going with 1/4 inch diameter for the pegs.
I've placed the order, for the pencil sharpener, wood glue, 1/4" pegs, and also 1/4" rods. But it said they're coming Monday, which is too late!
Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll get here sooner.
Otherwise, I'll just have to make do, over the weekend.
Okay, it's 1:20PM and all the garbage is out at the curb.
Nothing else to do today but go to work.
Well, turns out the big news today was in Las Vegas, where Tim was finally approved for a new rental house, and will be moving in next tuesday!
This was a HUGE deal, because he's been wanting this for two years, and really working hard at it all this year.
You see, for many years, Tim was married, and he and his wife Kate had seven kids together. And they wound up renting a huge house with a bunch of bedrooms and bathrooms for everybody, and things went well for a while.
But then they got a divorce, with joint custody of the kids, and Tim managed to hold down that huge rental house by himself for several more years.
But then near the end of 2021, the owners of the house began to realize that the property value had gone way the hell up, over a million bucks.
They wanted to fix it up and rent it for a ton more money, so they started putting the screws to Tim to get the hell out.
By then his oldest two girls, Olivia and Veda were adults, and married. Olivia moved to LA, but Veda & Josh had a house in Las Vegas.
Kate, the ex wife, also had remarried and had a house of her own. But she also spends the winters up in Alaska with her parents.
Two more of the kids were approaching 18, and the other three were all into grade school.
So in early 2022, four of the kids went to live at Mom's house while she was away, and Tim and the youngest girl moved in with Veda & Josh.
And his plan was to save up money to get into a new rental house over the course of 2022.
But that wasn't in the cards, because the economy took a huge crap in 2022 (it killed my plans too) and Kate came back from Alaska, and the four kids at her house were stuck with her and didn't like it.
And meanwhile Tim was kinda stuck at Veda's house... though they all at least got along over there.
Recall that when he came for his extended visit in January of this year, he wanted to help Dad get back on his feet.
It didn't turn out that way, and his eight or nine week stay was more about helping me get back on my feet!
But He did also use that time to come up with a new plan for his own life.
Instead of trying to save up a bundle of cash, he'd improve his credit score and get a loan.
It was thanks to his focus on that, that he helped me come up with my own survival plan for this year... leveraging the already high credit score I had after 14 years with the hospital.
At any rate, as soon as he got back to Vegas in early March, he started doing his pools and has been working seven days a week, ever since! I think he's only taken off a few of the bigger holidays.
And he was paying down credit cards, and tracking his FICO score, and just busting his ass for six months to a point where he finally had a loan for a down payment on a rental, and his taxes and FICO looked good enough for an application.
And he was rejected on the first few applications, but he just kept trying... certain that this point in September was the sweet spot... where he still had a lot of work, but after school has begun, when demand for rentals starts to drop.
And today he finally pulled it off!
He was approved for a nice four bedroom rental house, and they move in next week!
Tim says he himself doesn't need a bedroom. He's been sleeping in garages and livingrooms for years now. And it's warm enough in Vegas, a guy can do that.
So Kudos to Tim! I love a good story about a person coming up with a plan and seeing it through.
Back in January, neither Tim or I had any money.
He was doing a token amount of web design work, and I was working a part time job.
And we've both managed to kick a lot of ass this year!
Meanwhile Brian, who's had nine months to plan for the funeral, just said today he's not sure if he can get the day off from work.
And he says he has no money to spare for the church expenses. Like... not even 80 bucks, which would be his share of it.
He's got the resources to do things with his life, and he's had decades to get somewhere... without having to take care of Dad, or any upsets in his marriage, or any of that stuff!
But he just squanders all his time and money on stupid bullshit.
Okay, enough of that! Good on Tim, though!
As for my own latest plan, for the storm windows... I decided today that I'm going to call in sick on Monday.
Jeremy called in today for the second day in row. And I got to thinking about how Amazon's not gonna deliver my stuff until Monday... and how it's almost the middle of September already... and how I'm probably gonna quit GeoStaff soon anyway.
And fuck it!
I'm gonna prep those window frames on Saturday and Sunday... and mow the lawn... and then I'm calling in on Monday, and I'm gonna glue them together!
Then they can sit in clamps and under weights the rest of the week to cure and straighten up!
Actually, maybe I should go ahead and get the plexiglass too on Saturday or Monday, so that it's ready to go the following weekend.
I'll have to figure out the exact dimensions I need, then maybe call Ace to see if they still cut it to size.
And I have to order the glue and window glazing too... though there's a little time on that.
But if I manage my time wisely... I may be putting the storms in place by Sunday the 24th!
Okay, that's my Tuesday.
I've still got a sinus thing going on.
I'm exhausted.
°¦}
