Preparing for winter

Getting ready for winter. I've made several attempts at temporary versions of the solarium. Last year I bought supplies which were more permanent. However, the dogs ripped through the plastic sheeting I used for a cover. This year, I still have the wood. Devising a more permanent design. Going to build something solid. Still using heavy plastic sheeting for the top but using wood at the bottom to keep the dogs from destroying it. Mostly still be a temporary solution but each incarnation gets better. I'm also going to set the bases of supports in concrete and build the frame from 2x4's. Over time, I'll replace the plastic sheeting with clear polycarbonate. I'll replace the cheap wood with stone or stronger wood. The challenge remains building a design which colls in summer aside from warming in winter. Only going partway across the back of the house for now. Extend it further over time.

Of course, that all does a limited amount of good if I don't insulate the house well enough. That costs more, so will have to come later. 

Going to get a blanket to insulate the water heater. That and having the solarium covering the laundry room part of the house should help keep the gas bill down for that. 

Obviously, I'm expecting a really cold winter this year. Working at home means more heating in general, so I want to conserve as best possible.   

Weekend

Been a slightly rough week. Lot of callers for work who seemed clueless on how to submit radiology requests. Didn't have the correct information. Really long calls. 

However, my case rate has been around 50 or above on average. Which isn't bad, considering that half my shift is nearly all written cases, which go much slower. I think I could hit 70 now if I could move my shift back by 2 hours. 

Haven't been blogging because I've been mostly too tired of typing. 

Garden is pretty much done. Picked 3 pie pumpkins yesterday. Plus the two large ones. Biggest remained at about 80 lbs, the smaller of those two 50-60 lbs. They look good! Still didn't make my goal of a 200 lb giant. Try again next year. Picked the two large ones just in time because there were lots of snails on both of them but had not had a chance to do damage.

I ordered a mattress for daughter's room. It should come in next week. Still need to build a base for her bed and finish the room, itself. Long way to go but slowly getting there.

Not too much else going on. Trying to gather enough money for a different vehicle while accomplishing other goals. At least my expenses are low right now. 

Priorities

Finished my training this past Friday on the new job. It was 2 weeks in CO, then 4 weeks remote training at home. I start working on my own in the morning.

Little nervous but also excited. I think I'll do fairly well. My mentor was extremely helpful, as is my supervisor. They both feel I'll be fine.

Now that I have a fairly steady income, I have to set priorities on what needs I should work on first. There are quite a few.

Need a new vehicle for certain. That one is high on the list.

New glasses. That has to be high on the list because I'm straining my eyes a lot. Gives me headaches at times. Slows me down a bit other times. 

Insulating the house. That's important to keep the place comfortable and keep bills down. Since I'm going to be home so much I have to keep the place warm this winter. Utility bills will be really high if I don't get this done.

At least a small section of the solarium. That will serve two purposes, to help keep the house warm and to act as a doghouse. Otherwise, I'll have to build solarium and doghouse for three dogs. Better to build the one and include a dog door. In any case, it has to be dog proof. These dogs are too dumb to realize when they're destroying their own shelter. 

Completing daughter's room. That's a big one. She shows lots of signs of wanting her own space. 

Along the way, need to install more shelves in the pantry. Replace some worn out items. Been buying 1-2 new pillows each paycheck. 

Holidays coming up. First is daughter's birthday. Then others follow in rapid succession. After that, have to have a lump payment on the mortgage in January. Then all the bills I got assistance with are back at full force. 

Battle engaged

I have seriously gotten tired of the battle going on in this country. The right wing has gone too far and continues to become more aggressive.

I'm leading the charge against them, once and for all. I've been waiting for sane voices to come from somewhere and they are there but too disjointed. 

Today, the House of Representatives voted to cut food stamps by $40 Billion over ten years. Taking food out of the mouths of the poorest members of society. 

Meanwhile, economists say the wealth gap has grown to the largest since slavery ended. 80 percent of the wealth in this country is held by 10 percent of the population. These are the people the GOP "conservatives" fight for. This gap grew much wider while the country was in recession. Yet they continue to claim "trickle-down economics" works.

They fight against health care reform. We have the highest health care cost per capita of any country on earth. Tens of thousands of people cannot afford the medications which maintain their health or even keep them alive. We have a system where medical care is the leading cause of bankruptcy. If you do not have insurance, there are two options for government health benefits. Be old enough to retire or become disabled. There is no system which helps you avoid becoming disabled without causing major debt. Meanwhile, the GOP has fought against health care reform for over 20 years. 

The same Conservatives fight against women having the right to abortion under any circumstances. 

They have fought tooth and nail against gay marriage. 

It seems to me the goal is to prevent the economy from recovering under a Democratic President. It is also to widen the wealth gap even further. Keeping the poor as poor as possible, basically a slave class. All working for the profits of the shrinking few. 

Meanwhile, they dictate their concepts of right and wrong. By preventing abortions and outlawing gay marriage, they hope to keep a steady supply of low income births occurring, continuing the cycle. By opposing universal healthcare, they hope to keep the poor in debt. By de-funding food assistance, they make sure the poor must use all their resources just to survive and never climb out of a hole. They tried really hard to prevent mortgage reform, which would have resulted in only the rich owning property while the poor defaulted. Which would have insured the poor would have been required to rent and never own property. 

None of this will come to pass while I'm alive. Not if I have anything to say about it. The only choice is to educate people against these tactics. 

 

Update

Took daughter to the state fair this past weekend. We had lots of fun! Her favorite ride is still the big swing. We stayed for about 9 hours. Luckily, it was cool and mostly cloudy all day.

That night, the living room flooded. Rained so much the path right outside flooded and water seeped through the wall. Daughter took it in stride. Looks like I better do something about that. However, that was reportedly the most rain Abq has had in 70 years. Hasn't happened before.

Started on phones for the new job. Looks like I'm better at that than written cases. There's a shock! Mentor told me all day how she was happy to have a student who is doing rather well. She assures me I'll be very ready to be on my own by Fri evening. I must be doing okay because we talked at least as much as we worked cases.

At the same time, I'm getting sick. Thinking I came in contact with something at the state fair. Probably viral. Bummer. Hope it doesn't last long.

Getting better

I'm getting better at the new job. My supervisor even told me I'm doing well. She has reduced the number of my cases she goes over and has only gone over them 2 days this week. Today, she only went over about 4 cases. 

I'm increasing my speed. Did 31 cases today, which isn't bad for written cases. Some were pretty complex. 

The food mill arrived today. I am thrilled with this thing! Cut the time needed to process tomatoes into paste or sauce to a fraction! No need to skin and seed them, just scald the tomatoes, cut them into pieces, put them in the food mill and turn the handle. Have a pot of tomato paste on the stove right now. 

It will come in handy for processing pumpkins later. If I ever get strawberries to grow, it may serve a purpose making preserves. Maybe not. It would help with processing grapes, though. 

Okay, need a bath.

State fair week

State fair started this week. Taking daughter this weekend. I've conserved enough money for that to happen.

My pay has increased over previous months but catching up doesn't happen all at once. I have the bills paid so nothing gets shut off. Got paint for daughter's room. Got the trackball to relieve wrist strain and speed things up for work. Able to afford groceries without donating plasma. Ordered some other items, not mandatory but with definite use.

So, can take daughter to the fair and still have enough to live on until next Friday. 

Woke this morning to find a cat directly beneath the chicken coop. The dogs were playing in direct line of sight and never made a sound. I grabbed the bow and arrow, shot an arrow at the cat. Missed but it ran off. Luckily, chicken was okay. The dogs still never made a sound. But a neighbor's small dog walks down the street and they go crazy.

Looks like the vine feeding my giant pumpkin is almost dead. So, it topped off between 80-100 lbs. Another one about equal size is still going fairly well. 

Upside, downside

One of the upsides to working at home is the fact that I'm gaining some weight again. (For me, that's a good thing. To a point, of course.)

The downside is that I am gaining weight because I've been getting absolutely no. exercise. at. all.

So, another upside is that I got my first paycheck today. With a constant pay level, I will be making effectively double what I've been getting on UI. Add to that the fact that I have temporary financial assistance on student loans and the mortgage. I may exit out of those plans early but for now I am seriously relieved. All this year has been seriously stressful financially.

At the moment, I need a lot of things I've been lacking or needing. Some new jeans, shoes, shirts. Nothing fancy or expensive. Glasses. Clothes for daughter. Supplies to finish daughter's room. Insulation. Things to finish building shelves.

And of course things for the holidays.

Improving

I seem to be improving at the new job. At least when my supervisor looks at my reviews, she more frequently says, "That one's not bad." I'm not expecting much from her. She's a New Yorker.

Picking up speed. Up to 26 reviews today. That's not bad for written reviews, especially when I have to spend about two hours going over past reviews, making corrections and such. Supervisor confirmed more that telephone reviews go much faster. Still, for now I have learned to stick with shorter faxes. Go faster on review, supervisor checking over the review and decreases chance of error. Since I'm new, I have to do a lot more writing, which I won't have to do later if a study is approved. 

So, things are looking up. For me. Not everyone in my class is so lucky. Some are struggling. 

Think I'll shoot a few emails out and see how the rest are doing.

Activity season

Most intense activity season of the year is coming up.

Every year my daughter and I go to the state fair. Somehow, I have always managed to scrape the money together. Has not always been easy.

At times, things have not gone smoothly. Last year, the truck overheated and broke down a few blocks away. I had some worry it would be towed, though the lot I parked it in was vacant. The radiator split at the top. After the fair, we managed to just barely get it home. The year before, we rode the bus. Had to take a taxi part of the way home. 

This year the truck is still overheating. I'm checking on park and rides and other options. Cost of a taxi here is still ridiculous.

We started a new tradition a couple years ago. Globalquerque. This year they chose to havethat the same weekend as the last weekend of the state fair. Wonder how that's going to work out?

After that is the Abq Balloon Fiesta. Again, we always manage that somehow but typically without much money to spend. Once more, the truck is an issue. If I can't get another vehicle by then, have to look at a park and ride or something similar. 

The comes her birthday, which may be a collaboration this year because it's on a Sunday. She also wants to go to the Zoo Boo that weekend.

Then Halloween. Because of my work hours, I'll have to leave that one to her mother this year except for the Zoo Boo. 

Then, of course comes Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. We always manage to get through them without being completely destitute. At least I'm employed, even if work hours suck for very much extra time together this year. Maybe I won't have to make most of my shopping at Dollar Tree this time. 

But I never count on anything too much any more.

Mild weekend

Daughter and I had a rather mild weekend. Did some shopping and ate at a restaurant on Sat.

Came home, she is already really enthused about Halloween. So she convinced me to drag out the Halloween decorations. She started decorating.

Sunday we painted a base coat of blue in her room where it had not yet been painted. Then we went swimming. Tried to go to the nearby indoor pool but it was closed. On Labor Day weekend. Last night she wanted to have a party, so we had dinner and popcorn in the smaller living room with Halloween music playing. 

Today we had a lazy day. Her allergies are pretty bad and I didn't want them to get worse. Watched a lot of TV and she played games on the computer. 

I haven't felt all that great yesterday or today, myself. When we ate out on Sat at a Chinese buffet, got gluten contamination and I've been really feeling it. 

A lot of goals to start working on again. A better vehicle at a decent price. Better doesn't take much to achieve. Something that doesn't overheat and break down. Burns less gas than 10 mpg.  

Getting daughter's room more completed.  More achievable in fall and winter than summer. The furnace will heat her room and, if needed, space heater can heat her room more without having to heat the whole house.

New glasses.

Insulating the main house is a big priority. I think it's going to be a really cold winter. 

Lots of other goals but less pressing. Holidays are really close. Lots of special events between now and then. Besides, I still have to keep practical considerations at the fore. I still have other catching up to do.