Copper Coat
Tuesday, August 15th, 2023 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio
72F this morning, and partly cloudy with a good breeze. Perfect weather for sitting out in the shade with the pets.
But Snoop wandered off and got into some kind of scuffle with a wild creature, and ran off toward the front yard.
Yvette & Prowly immediately snapped to their feet and went to investigate, both sniffing the ground as we made our way to the front.
Snoop then found us. He was okay.
And then a FedEx truck pulled up across the street, and out came a guy with a box for my front stoop.
It was the Copper Coat, for the new hatch door!.. three days early!
So, I could get started with that tonight, if I have any energy left.
Okay, there!.. while i'm still fresh here in the morning, I just got the tarp down, opened the can, and got a start on the worst knot.
Those cracks will be puttied over, but from what I've read, I want to absolutely saturate them first, with this stuff... and the same is true for the entire sheet, front, back, and edges.
It smells very much like creosote... the smell of railroad ties, and telephone poles.
I'm sure once the whole board is soaked in it, the porch is gonna smell like a train yard.
But that's why this is gonna take a while... because I've gotta hit all the surfaces a few times to make sure it's truly saturated... and then I have to wait for it to dry out again before I start in with the epoxy.
But, now that I've got it set up, I should be able to do a little before and after work, until it's done.
I'm going to bed now at 4AM, and getting up at 10:50, so... just under seven hours of sleep... which is the best compromise to maximize my time both before and after work.
If my feet were any indication, then the adjustment back to this amount of sleep shouldn't be too difficult.
And this week at work should be easy. The teachers are coming back to prepare their classrooms, but not all at once, and not every day.
So the garbage and vacuuming are light, and the bathrooms aren't getting much use.
Next week things get serious, when the kids come back. But hopefully I'll be more in the swing by then.
Jeremy was there today when I clocked in, and I asked him about my cart.
He was like, "I put it in the hall for you."
But the cart in the hall was clearly not mine! Clearly... this was the one that was in the shop yesterday. I said, "Isn't this your cart?"
He said, "I don't use a cart. I use this," and pointed to a garbage can with a tray on it, made for holding brooms and bottles and stuff.
WHAT???
So, what happened was, the super cleaning team basically removed everything I had on my cart, and then piled on shit tons of stuff they wanted to use...
Outdated chemical bottles and spray cans GeoStaff doesn't use... found in forgotten closets... weird tools nobody uses, dug out of an old tool box... a pile of can liners, way too many rags, three brooms, four mops, two dusters, one of them ancient...
Not only did it look unrecognizable, but it also looked like a cart that had been just sitting in the shop for ten years collecting garbage. Not one that had been actively in use!
I could have SWORN such a cart WAS sitting in the shop all year, but maybe that was the Mandella effect or something!
I dug through the crap and found the squeegee I'd been using on the classroom windows... my one and only clue that this was indeed... my cart!
It took a while, but I set it back up the way I had it, and this time, I took a sharpie and wrote my initials, PM, on the handle.
People will think this means, Post Meridian, or... the cart for the PM janitor. But I will know it means... that's my goddam cart!
11,000 steps today.
I was mistaken yesterday about typical step counts. It was typically 10K at Grape, on a four hour day, and then went up to 17K at Cloud full time, but I got it down to 14K by May, I think.
Either way, it wasn't a super busy day.
There really isn't much that needs doing this week.
But I understand why I had to go back to FT on the 14th, because I got paid today, so... yesterday was the start of a new pay period.
And it's probably wiser to ease back into it anyway, like this.
My feet were pretty good today, but my shin and calf muscles were sore from the big jump up to 16K yesterday.
And even though it was relatively cool again tonight, I was still sweating a lot with the work that I did do... especially cleaning a pair of bathrooms.
This week is more about getting used to the hours again, than anything else. But reintroducing my body to the stresses, slowy, is another big thing.
I was almost gonna say... "and the money," but as I've said before... it's not really the money... which is pretty lousy.
It's about being able to say I've had the job a full year, and that I've been full time the whole way... backing it up with the two most recent FT pay stubs.
That and a credit score is what gets me the money!.. in this case, a future home loan.
I mean... I already did this whole thing back in March, to get the PNC loan... which was to buy me time.
And buy me time it has!
I was able to keep BMO off the scent for five months... which has gotten me within striking distance of the one year mark with GeoStaff.
And more and more, I do think that the offer from Discover, for a home equity loan, is the path I should take next!
My Experian app just notified me today that my FICO score went up from 750 to 751.
Transunion and Equifax don't agree, but Experian is the one Discover seems to work with, and go by.
And Discover also offered do to a home loan with me. So, it should be much easier to qualify for that, than for anything BMO or PNC might be willing to do.
The ultimate goal would be to get a home equity line of credit, with an outrageously high limit... but that wouldn't be an actual loan!
That way, I can pay off both BMO and PNC... and only do monthly payments on that amount... which can't be any MORE than I've already been paying both of them!
But I'd also still have a huge cusion of home equity credit to use... the way I've been using that PNC loan money, to make ends meet.
And the job?
The job money's just there to slow down the rate at which I dip into the HELOC.
But the same game rules would apply to such a HELOC as have been in play with the PNC loan... buy time to advance at work and generate more income down the road!
As I said yesterday, I'd like to get through the entire 23/24 school year at Cloud... not just to look better to GeoStaff, but also because I think my union will be renegotiating in 2024 finally... which could mean a pay bump!
I'm still trying to wrap my head around how FICO will react to...
- learning that I suddenly have a large mortgage debt with BMO.
- Learning that I paid it off as soon as it materialized.
- Learning that I also paid off the PNC loan in under a year.
- Learning that I did it all by using a massive, secured credit line from Discover.
I feel like the score would... not go down, after it all worked it's way through the system.
Because I will have paid off two creditors, which is always good, and while my overall debt will have gone up (by the amount of Dad's old mortgages), my available credit will also have gone up... and a large part of it would now be secured by real estate.
I guess we'll just have to see.
But yes, I think it will take until the middle of 2024 for my actual income to go up very much.
As for the plywood... I am too worn out to do anything with it tonight.
I think that's just gonna be a morning thing, and a weekend thing.
But I am walking through the steps in my head for how the switchover needs to happen.
For the old door, I'll need to detach the hinges from the house first, because otherwise I won't be able to undo the nuts and bolts holding them to the old plywood.
So... it looks like there needs to be a day where there's just no hatch door at all, while I switch over the hinges to the new plywood, still on the porch... cuz, I'll want to put preservative in the new bolt holes before I attach them.
And I'll want them attached, when I go to screw that new door to the house.
I also plan to pre-install the two new eye bolts before the door's attached.
And if I'm doing that... then before I do anything, I need to get the new rigging ready... with a longer cable, and two more pulleys on the unistrut.
That way, as soon as I attach the new door by it's hinges, to the house... I can hook up the rigging, balance the counterweight (by adjusting the amount of gravel) and have the door working right away.
The other hardware... the handle, and the underside pullbar... can be installed after the fact.
So, I'll need a rainless weekend to do the swap... preferably before the family reunion.
I've also found suitable flat washers and rubber washers on Amazon to use for the eyebolt attachments.
I'll use both on the topside, to further waterproof the holes. But on the underside, I think just flatwashers alone will be fine to support the weight of the plywood.
This is a much lighter sheet of plywood than HD1.0, and it's gonna have two lifting points, and a total of four extra pulleys in the rigging system.
Each additional pulley reduces the force necessary to lift the load, which in this case means, the weight of the counterweight.
So... it'll be a lighter counterweight, with the load shared between two lifting points that, if it all goes to plan, will be totally impervious to rain water, on a sheet of plywood that's absolutely deadly to microbes.
All of that, and a yearly coat of boat deck sealant should keep HD2.0 functioning perfectly for... I dunno... 20 years?
Okay, that's enough BS for a Tuesday night.
The garbage bins are on the curb, and tomorrow the trucks come.
°¦}
