Golf and the Single Parent

Not much to write this week. The work week was ok. Nothing spectacular, but nothing overly detrimental either, so I guess that's a plus.
Thursday, I was hired to do a cabling job (my other job when I'm not doing my normal job or my military job) up in Macon. I took the job and was hoping to get it done fairly quickly. Well, I misheard what the job was and instead of being a "one cable run to the other side of the wall" it ended up being 3 cables, run 150 feet down the hall, through a cinder block wall, across the room, down the wall and over. That was a bit more than I expected. But, I went and did it. Unfortunately, I didn't get done on the first day, so I had to go back over the weekend to get it completed. It was one of those days that I had the "Un-Midas Touch." Everything I touched turned to crap. I ran the cables ok, but then the panduit I bought wasn't big enough for three cables to run through it. While I was trying to mount the faceplate box, I broke it. While I was working in the ceiling, I slipped on the ladder and when I grabbed for something to get my balance, I pulled some supports for the ceiling tiles out and they went crashing to the floor. Then, I left my toner plugged in one of the jacks I was tracing (from Thursday to Saturday) and killed my battery. It was just one of those days. But, as I went back today, rested, refreshed, with a better attitude and more parts, it all came together quick and easy. The new cables are run and active now. I do appreciate my Dad going up there with me today. It's always nice to have some company.
I did get a bit of time away from work this week. I played in a Golf Tournament on Friday. My golf game, which is never really existent, was even more non-existent this week. It was a four person Scramble and they didn't even use one of my shots until about 6 holes into it. Once they started using mine, I was able to hit a few good ones, but I wasn't much of a team player this week. I guess playing once every month and a half isn't the best way to get good, huh?
I'm also a single parent this weekend. #1 Mom needed a Girls Weekend away, so she and two of the ladies she works with all packed up and headed to the North GA Hills this weekend to stay in a cabin and just relax. Hopefully, she's having a good time.
Tiny Baby and I are having a good time together. Since I had to do that job today, Mom came over and watched the baby while I went and did the job. My mom isn't one to just sit around while she's here (neither is my mother-in-law), so while I was gone and baby was napping, she started cleaning my house and doing my laundry. Whoo-hoo!!! Thanks Mom!! Then, when we got back, Dad wanted some time with the Baby, so I was able to run outside and cut the grass real quick. Thanks Dad!! :) They left and it was just the two of use, plus the dog, plus the parrot. It's now 9:20 pm and everyone is asleep but me. So, I decided to sit down and write a bit on the BLOG.
Like I said, not much to write about, but like always, I can take not much and still be long winded about it.
Y'all take care...

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the Father's out there.
Especially my Dad, Don Hall and my Father-in-Law, Ed Warren.

Thanks to all of you that emailed, Commented or text-ed Happy Father's Day messages to me today. It was really appreciated.

I hope you all had a great weekend.

Water, water everywhere. You can even drink it if you want.

We have irrigation!!! And, for once, everything worked as planned. I really expected a comical weekend, but, fortunately for me, it wasn't to happen.

BP sent me a list of items I needed to pick up from The Home Depot, so on Wednesday, I went and got them. I had to borrow a trailer from a friend at work to get 30 pieces of 20 foot long pipes to the house, but that was easily done. On Thursday, I went and picked up the trencher and had it at the house for Friday morning. The plan, as I understood it, BP was going to show up at my house around 10:00 and and start working. We would get done what we could that day. He would crash at my house that night and we would finish the rest the next day. That's not exactly what happened.

BP did show up at the house around 10:30 am. I met him there and he laid out the flags where he was going to install the heads. Originally, were going to have 6 heads in the front yard and 4 in the flowerbed. When it was all said and done, we had 10 in the front yard and 7 in the flowerbed. After that, we started digging near the house to find the water main going into the house. He wanted to have the vales within the flower bed, so we started digging. After about 45 minutes of digging, we never found it. So, he decided to dig out of the flower bed and closer to where the main shut off is in the yard. 2 minutes of digging and we had the line. So, he decided to have the valves in the yard for simplicity sake. After he decided how to run the main feed line and where to run the lines to each head he laid out, he got the trencher off the trailer and trenched the yard. Where he crossed two trenches, I grabbed the shovel and cleared out the intersections of dirt. I was known as "Paco" for the rest of the day. I was hoping we could get all the trenching completed by 3:00 pm because I only rented the trencher for one day and it had be back by 4:00. I was worried, but BP didn't seem to think it would be a problem. And, it wasn't.

After the trenching was complete, we laid out the pipes all around the yard. (The top picture) Once it was all laid out, BP went to installing the backflow preventer, or whatever it's called. Once that was installed, we started gluing all the pipes together throughout the yard. After the main pipes were joined, BP installed all the valves for the 4 sections and then we started putting in our T-junctions where the head were going to run off the mains. After all the T's, the lines and caps were installed, it was time to start putting on the heads. BP cut the "funny pipe" and gave me a bunch of connectors and we were off the races. We were racing against the weather because Mother Nature started grumbling and the rain was a comin'. We got about half way through putting the head on and it started raining. BP asked, "Is it going to blow through quick?" I said, "Sure." 30 minutes later, it was still coming down and I was drenched. BP, I noticed, was sitting on the front porch drinking some water and was nice and dry. He said one of us needed to keep the integrity of a dry work force and he volunteered for it. So, while he sat on the porch, I finished putting the heads on the lines. When I was done, I don't think I had a dry spot on me. And, of course, after I was done and soaked, the rain let up. It came back shortly after it let back and we decided to take a break. The bottom picture was taken during the "rain delay." We had the trencher loaded up and ready to take back, so while we waited for the rain to go away, we went an returned the trencher around 3:30. We dropped by Home Depot to grab a couple things and then back to the house.

We got back to house and the rain was gone. We covered up all the lines we dug except for the ones waiting on wire or covers. BP then went about putting the heads in the ground, while I... Hmm, I'm not sure what I did during this time, but I don't think it was much of anything. After the heads were in the ground, BP tested them all with the manual on-off on each valve. Everything was working, so it was time to wire it all up. We needed a bit of wire, so it was off to Lowe's. 20 minutes later, we back at it. BP ran the wire and then started jumpering everything together. After that was done, it was time to get the wire into the house so we could attach it to the control panel. We measure a spot on the outside wall of the laundry room and drilled into it. Perfect placement. Mounted the control box, wired it all up, checked the wiring, found one small problem, fixed it and we had 4 working sections of an irrigation system.

BP turned everything on and then adjusted the sprayers for the coverage that we needed. After that, we sat down for a quick bite to eat. Around 8:00 that evening, BP was on his way home. We trenched, built and installed an entire system of 17 heads in 9 hours. That was a productive day!

I thought it was going to take two days, but we did it in a day. The only thing I had to do when I got up this morning was put in the maintenance covers over each valve, cover the trenches that had the wire running through them and bury the wire going to the house. That was no big deal and I was happy to do that this morning. It went off without a hitch and everything worked after I buried it all. Although, by looking at my hands right now, you can tell I don't do much manual labor anymore. They are covered with blisters. And, yes, I'm sore.

MANY Thanks to BP for all the work, help, expertise and education during the installation. It was great time, a great project and it works great!!!

If anyone in this area is looking for irrigation, BP's business is Lakeside Irrigation (http://www.lakesideirrigation.com/) and I have his contact info. His website is under construction, so it's not working at 100% right now. He is based out of the Columbus, GA area, but he is more than willing to come this way for jobs. And take it from me: He does a great job!!!

TomYuck

Holy Crap!!!!!!!! I have finally found the most putrid dish in Warner Robins that is supposed to be made for human consumption.

Heather had been craving sushi over the last week. We have a place here that we used to go for Sushi for lunch, but the owner opened a new restaurant down the road and is trying to drive business to it, so he doesn't open our normal place for lunch any more. So, instead of trying the place where we know the owner does good sushi, we decided to try a new place. It's actually not a new place, but we have only made one trip to it prior to today, so it's still new to us. It's a place that serves Japanese Sushi and dishes along with Thai dishes. So, Sid and I met Heather there for lunch today. We got there, sat down and start looking through the menu. I found some sushi I wanted. Some they named after the town in which we live. They were called the Warner Robin Rolls. Rolls of rice, filled with crab meat and tempura flakes. Nice combo and none of that vegetable crap in it. Since there were only a few rolls on the plate, I decided to get some soup to go with it. I didn't realize that Miso soup was the normal soup I got and I ordered something called TomYum Seafood soup. It had scallops, mussels, shrimp and other stuff in it. Sounded great. The spring rolls showed up and Sid and Heather ate them. Then Heather's sushi showed up. Right after that, my soup showed up. Heather was downwind of me and she started gagging right after the soup got to the table. She asked if that was my soup of her sushi. I bent down and smelled my soup. OH MY GAWD!!!!!! It was the most foul smelling stuff I had ever smelled. It literally smelled like sweaty ass. I am not kidding you. If you want to smell the smell of that soup, run your fingertip across your butthole after a hard day's work and take a big whiff. It was unbelievable. I actually tried to eat a couple bites of it, but the smell was so bad, it permeated everything around us. Heather had a napkin over her mouth and was about to throw her food away because she couldn't eat. Most smells don't have a taste, but this one was so bad, it did. I tasted what I think sweaty ass would taste like in the two bites I took of the soup. It almost made me gag. I finally just had to push it aside and hope the waitress would come and check on us quick so she could take it away. Luckily, she did show up quick and she asked if I was done with my soup. I said, "Yes." She said, "You didn't like it." I said, "No. And, by the way, have you ever smelled that soup?" I didn't tell her what I thought it smelled like, but Heather was rolling. I wasn't sure if she was rolling with laughter or just licking the carpet to try and get that smell out of her head. Later, she told me that usually I'm not very outspoken about bad food and that's why she thought it was so funny when I asked the lady if she ever smelled the soup. Believe me, there are some things in this world people NEED to be vocal about and this friggin' soup definitely qualifies. So, please take it from me, if you are ever at the Sushi-Thai place in W/R, don't, for the love of God, order the TomYum Seafood soup.

On a good note, I have my trencher, all my pipes, fittings and parts for my irrigation system. BP will be here in the morning and we will get to installing it over the next two days. There will be pics and a write up with it.

Another week gone by

And, another week without a post. There's been a lot going on and I just haven't had the time to write. Last week, everyone in the family was sick with some kind of nasty stomach bug that's being passed around. We've all had it in the past. Tiny Baby got it from daycare and passed it to each of us. We were all down for about three days. This time, Heather got it from a lady at work (it's passed by physical contact and she was all in this lady's office.) We didn't know she had it and then she passed it to the baby. I was the lucky one. I thought they both had a small case of food poisoning. Until Tiny Baby threw up all over me. That's all it took and 6 hours later, I was praying to the porcelain princess for the next 12 hours. It was so bad, even the dog threw up. It was a rough couple of days in the Hall household. But, again, the Mother-in-Law came to the rescue and stayed at the house and watched the baby on the day I spent hugging to toilet. She was a GREAT help yet again when we got sick. And yes, if you remember the last time this happened, I lost my voice. It happened this time too. Fortunately, the sickness only laid any of us out for about 24 hours. So, no three day ordeal this time. Come the weekend, we were all 100% again, except for my voice. But, I had drill, so I worked all weekend anyway.

Speaking of drill and uniforms. Both Sid and I sewed on TSgt. Sid on 1 Feb and I did it on 1 May. No thanks to my useless training NCO at the Squadron, but thanks to our local Training Guru, my supervisor, my Squadron Commander and a couple nice ladies at the MPF, I was able to finally sew on TSgt. Sid earned his the old fashioned way: Testing, medals and EPR's. I just did a 2 week school and was given the stripe. But, you know what? I'll take it. So, today, he and I invited some friends/co-workers to the club so we could buy them all a few rounds to celebrate our stripes. It was nice turn out and we had a good time. I had sent out the invites and when we looked around at the table while everyone was there, we had invited 8 or 9 women and 2 guys. Actually, that's what was there, but there more of each that were invited that couldn't show for one reason or another. But, I didn't realize how much the female to male ratio was slanted. Need me to do the invites for your next party???

Some of my dive buddies are headed to Lake Juliette tomorrow. I wanted to go, but there are some things I need to do around the house to get it ready for the sprinkler system next weekend. And, I bummed up my knee somehow. It feels like it's going to give way at any minute. If it doesn't get better by next week, I guess I'll have to go get it looked at. But, what ever is wrong, I couldn't be walking around with 40 pounds of gear on my back with my knee the way it is.

I will leave you with this that I overheard in a conversation at the Hospital last weekend while I was doing my yearly physical exam: "I wonder how you field dress a moose?" You know, that's just something you rarely hear in a hospital conversation in Middle Georgia.