Senior Olympian Sprinter

The busy season for me is always accompanied by the tired  and sore season.   Yesterday I set up the scaffolding and worked on the roof project again.  This session was replacing the siding in a section of the house that I had to destroy when I replaced the roof on the porch.    Small section of siding, but the access was terrible and for some unknown reason, every time I would get going good, the sun would come out and just cook me on the roof.  It looked great when I got the cedar siding installed, but I managed to drag almost every tool I could carry up on the roof, including the leaf blower.   I use the blower to clean up the dust and debris created when you work on an old house.   Dust of all sorts is created and makes for a filthy mess.   I need to do another section on the other end of the porch, but it has better access.  Progress is being made.  I worked until the rain was ready to fall and will h...

  When I started changing jobs almost 4 weeks ago, I was also going to lose my pick up truck, which was a company owned vehicle. This created a deadline to get the roof work done.   Without a truck to haul around lumber and debris, I was not going to be able to repair the roof on the front porch of our house as planned.   The roof was leaking and had to get repaired this year.   The plastic siding that was covering the old wood -which was completely rotten in many spots-was falling off and it was time to fix it or forget it.  So I rounded up some scaffolding, ordered house jacks--(the porch was 8 inches lower on one end than the other), ordered the metal roofing and started the process.    Last weekend was expected to be rain free and I removed the old roof, did the necessary structure repairs-- (a lot of that)-- and put down the new metal roof.   I looks great and last night it rained r...

The last time I was this cold was in January 2014 when it was too cold to deer hunt in Ohio, and too cold to hunt is dangerous cold.  Today in MA it was 27 and windy.  Beautiful sun shine, but cold enough to kill you if you were not looking--just like in Minnesota.   Wow!  I do not miss any of this crap.   Snow is still stacked up everywhere and melts some during the day and then freezes again in the evening and makes for some really slick new ice daily.  It is March and still way to cold to go outside and enjoy.    Linda sent me a picture of our first daffodil bloom, that is March weather in my opinion,  enough said. I am in Massachusetts for a visit to my new home office-- I now work for Kadant, based in Auburn, MA. I just got my new computer--on which this blog is being written and will get an iPad  as well.  I am loading my data and short cuts on the new machine slowly but surely.  I will take a few days to...

New phone number this week--I do not recommend this to anyone that does not have at least 12 hours to hover and update the dozens of places your phone number is used and/or required.   Whew!  You will need both phones to be active to get everything actually completed.  I got most of important ones done, but some places you do not use on a regular basis are a mystery on how to make the change.   Next week, it will be a new computer and all the nuances that go with that process.  "They" whoever they may be, claim that some change in your life is a good thing to stimulate growth and all that crap.  Could be , but "they" can come over and work through the computer conversion next week.  I need a massage.. I finished up with Buckman this week and started to get some tools for my new role at Kadant.  The phone and new employee packet were two days late due to the ice and snow that was dumped on us last week.  I am in full transition mode of payro...

I announced to Buckman this week that I would be leaving for another job in the paper business.  I currently work in the specialty chemicals field of tissue manufacturing  and I will be taking on a new position in the equipment end of the business.  Kadant hired me to champion a new product line of ceramic tipped doctor blades they will be developing.   I will be basically calling on the same tissue manufacturers, but in a different role with a different logo on my shirt.  In my career,  I have worked  in various roles in the paper business for 8, 4, 12, and 8 years.  Average it up and 8 years is the magic number for my career changes.  I am 58 now and another 8 years puts me at retirement age and at that point it will be a wrap.  I like the math.  I have worked in manufacturing of paper, selling of chemicals to paper mills and I will close the circle with this new role as a supplier of hardware and wear parts ...

I lived in the Northern part of the US a large part of my life and suffered as did everyone else in that same boat as I.  I do not need reminded how lousy the weather can be--this last week for example.  But Mother Nature laid it on real thick this week with a reminder that I can go back to the days of wet feet, cold hands, blowing ice water, fog and general mayhem that will cause cabin fever and generally dark behavior.  Linda had the best solution--next year we will be on an island--away  from this mess.  Smart woman!! I was in Mexico again this last week.  High elevation and clear warm weather with the pollution in relative good order for a change.  It is the dry season there, no real rain has fallen since September, so there is a lot of dust in the air. My sinuses were fine, just a general deposit of concrete in my noise.   I was very busy with a project that we finally finished and had little time to do anything but work and eat. ...

What a beautiful day in middle Tennessee.  The sun was out all day and Linda and I took advantage of the rays.    In the mid morning I cut down some more trash trees and reduced them to either firewood size or brush pile size with the chainsaw.  Great work out with the saw if you can look at it in that manner, sometimes it is just work, but it felt good to enjoy the sun today.   The crocus are still out and now the daffodils are just on the edge of bursting open.   So Spring must be close......... We headed to the gym in the afternoon and she swam and I did some running,  but I had little gas in the tank.  I was dehydrated from the saw work, so I really worked on the stretching and ran some slower events on the treadmill.   I was in Mexico this week at 8000 feet elevation with quite a bit of air pollution and that really drags me down.   We were working just NE of Mexico City in the vol...