Lifes a Train wreck

My oldest son Adam called yesterday to tell us we are going to be grandparents! He wanted to be the one to tell his grandma first, so I had to restrain myself until late last night and this morning to share the news.

The little one is due to make an appearance in September which will formally enter me into the rolls of grand-fatherhood.

Mom was cheerful and in good spirits last night when I talked to her, no doubt the news of an impending new great grand child cheered her up!

It is hard to imagine me as a grandfather, and I still don’t know if I am ready yet! I guess I had better be. It wasn’t that long ago that I had two of them and now I are one….

Yesterday I ran into a bit of a snag on the last pair of tall windows and had to wait until today to start them. The framing had rotted out under the paint and will take a bit more to replace it than I had expected. After a trip to Lowes for lumber yesterday afternoon it was too late to start on it.

That is all for today’s news,

Tom

Mom was hospitalized last night, she passed out and is now undergoing tests. No word yet on why, but at 83 years old, it can cause serious worrying by her brood.

Hopefully we will hear something soon.

Robert and I put another set of windows in yesterday, which leaves the two next to me in my “office” and the bathroom. The two next to me are next and will be installed today if at all possible. The bathroom window will be special order since it is an odd ball size.

Last night was TV night with Smallville, and supernatural back to back.

There was no other forward momentum from this kid to speak of, no articles written, no progress on other projects.

I seem to be stuck right where I am at for the moment with the car in neutral….

Talk to you later,

Tom

I have reached the conclusion, that I live in the biggest tourist trap in the country! one that is geared toward the beach and little else.

Panama City split into two separate entities some time back, before we moved here, and Panama City Beach was born.

The beach gets all the newest businesses and upgrades, so if you want something out of the ordinary you normally end up on the beach. It’s quite a drive from here and is normally at least one half hour to get there.

The beach is a bit misleading, what is referred to as the beach is not all beach, or even in sight of water. To get near the real beach takes much longer, depending on the time of year as tourist season drastically slows the traffic down to a crawl.

The locals refer to front beach, middle beach and back beach roads. Luckily back beach(hwy 98) has most of the normal businesses and isn’t too hard to reach.

There is only one bridge across the bay between the two cities, three lanes in either direction and rush hour is a really fun experience to be sure….

Borders book store is out there, and yesterday we investigated it’s shelving… a great place to spend a couple of hours on a drizzly day!

Tom

It is raining now, lightly drizzling us into a wet world here in Florida. It was warm last night and we had to leave windows open to catch a breeze.

 Robert and I nearly completed another set of windows, one piece of trim is all that remains to complete it. That piece cracked and broke while taking it out and I will attempt to fix it if I can. The old trim is a very hard wood that has survived forever here in the Florida outdoors, something few new woods can claim so if I can I will re-use as much of it as I can.

I sanded the camaro last night and will try and re-primer it today if I can since it is raining. The poor model car needs a lot of TLC….

Scale Auto rejected my article, but the kind editor offered to help me with what I did wrong and has offered to give me some tips. As it was my first ever effort to break into print I really did not expect it to be accepted and can only be grateful they are willing to help me fix my errors. Most editors either cannot or will not take the time to help.

Well, I had better get on with it, today is only getting shorter….

Tom

The sun is shining outside and its warmth is wonderful! It is still cool in the shade, but if the sun can get to you it will warm you right up.

It rained a bit yesterday even though it really was not supposed to, so today will be a window day. Two more bedroom windows will get changed out here shortly.

I got my w-9 faxed into AC yesterday so hopefully I will not end up locked out until they figure out I am me… There are a few CP’s who have had that happen and I don’t care to be one of them.

The camaro is in primer now, with a coat of body putty as well, it looks pretty sad right now and will need lots of work to improve it. All of the emblems and badges had to come off because of close scratching and build up of old paint.

I also worked on the 54’s Chevy’s frame a bit and added a roll bar inside , it’s almost ready for a new round of pictures lets hope I am.

It would be nice to get that project done as well so I can move on to some others.

The queue at AC is empty and I need to get cracking on some new articles there while I am at it!

That is about it for today,

Tom

Monday all over again, seems like I had to wait all weekend for it to get here… I hope all of you had a good weekend!

Not much happened here, Lazed around and stayed mostly unproductive. Now it’s time to re-join reality again for the week. Job hunting is high on the list again for today as it seems to have been for some time now.

The purple power I used to try and remove the tan painted undercoat on the camaro model did not budge it either. So I resorted to sanding and the body is now close to ready for primer. It seems to be working on the nomad body though, makes you wonder what was in the tan paint….

I did get a little done on the new Scale Auto project as well, now if I could only figure out why only one in twenty pictures had a white background instead of tan I would be very happy! I am beginning to think the color tan hates me.

Two 60 watt lights at close range and a white background that is nearly too bright to look at and it comes out a darker tan… fine deal! I can get the white outside, but it may not be possible to do that every time I need to due to weather.

Well I better get on with it,

Tom

I can write in shorts and a t-shirt once again, yay! with a little luck I won’t have to be a human icicle again until next year….

I want to update the Alpha Moon poetry contest today as well. Kathy has been working on the site and with some help from my other sister, Janet, the sharper image quality is much closer to the reality of the detail in Kathy’s artwork!

The contest still has room for entries, it is free to enter and the prize painting is featured on Kathy’s web site.

http://data.fineartstudioonline.com/dataviewer.asp?keyvalue=9658

I submitted a short fantasy story into the critique section of Accentuate services last night, hopefully I will be able to submit this one if it is not in too much need of editing and revisal.

Robert and I spent part of the day out and about, picking up items I am in need of for both the windows and the model cars.

Easy Off oven cleaner took some of the paint off of the models but left a lot to be desired, so now I will give purple power a shot and hope for better results.

Looks like that is all for today,

Tom

Robert and I managed to install two more windows today, our bedroom is now 1/2 done! Just in time for the cold snap to break…. Ah well, life goes on.

The hardest part so far was prying the old trim off, cleaning it up, cutting it down to fit the new dimensions and re- installing it. Mostly because of the ten thousand staples in it.

I started stripping the old paint off of two old models, a 74 camaro and a 55 nomad wagon, the camaro had about seven different colors on it and is in for it’s fourth soak in Easy Off oven cleaner, the nomad is stripping faster ,but still needs more soaking.

I had two more articles published on AC, and another one reviewed and waiting to be published, which leaves the queue empty for now or at least until I add to it.

The article on wind and solar power is written with strict SEO and key wording for the Internet, it might be my highest grossing article yet if all goes well.

I rose to clout five with the last page view update, with an average of 104 page views. Not too bad for a beginner.

That is it for today,

Tom

I am sitting at the computer with only one desk lamp on, and the curtains open and I am not shivering….

It is supposed to keep getting warmer throughout the week and we should see 70’s soon! I think that the cold here is made worse by the short duration and off and on nature of the beast. This year had the lowest low of any year since we moved here, it actually made it into the twenties this time and did not warm during the day to speak of.

The humidity and wind off the water makes it far colder in the winter and more miserable, that and aging I think. I can remember going to school without a coat in mid winter back in Illinois and not being this cold…. Not that I did not have a coat, I simply refused to wear it at the wise age of ten.

I have worked at -26 degrees in an unheated building, unheated because it was new and we were putting in the heating system, something about being that cold refuses to allow me to forget it.

I actually got up and moved yesterday and did a few things and today should be even warmer, I like warm… I hope to get the bedroom windows in today in this spring like weather, We’ll see how warm it really gets.

Time to move on for the day,

Tom

It is not what you could call warm out there just yet, but the mercury is rising! Relating the terms Florida and cold never would have occurred to me until I had lived it. It actually made it into the 20’s over night a time or two!

I wore jeans, insulated bib overalls, t-shirt, insulated shirt, sweat jacket, and insulated boots all day! By next week I hope to be back in t-shirt and shorts once again.

I don’t know if it is age or something that happened to my body working throughout the years, but cold and me really don’t get along anymore. I can hardly move in it and have no drive to complete anything when it descends on me. Oh well, at least here it is a fleeting thing.

The heat is unpleasant and the humidity is not a lot of fun, yet I can deal with it and it doesn’t cause me pain. The cold does, and can render me useless.

I did not accomplish anything yesterday, zero, zip, zilch. I rose from this chair only long enough for the essentials of life until it was time to crawl into a freezing bed and wait to warm up.

I can hardly wait to get the rest of the windows in and the heat system up and functional! A job would be nice also.

Well it’s that time again,

Tom