"Everyday life presents itself as a reality interpreted by men and subjectively meaningful to them as a coherent world." - Peter L. Berger
Read into that quote what you will, about how each of us constructs an internal model of what constitutes reality.
One of my colleagues recently left the company to relocate to a warmer climate. He ended up at a small hydro facility in the US Southwest - the lucky guy. His stress levels should drop to about zero, because working at a dam is nowhere near as demanding as running a thermal power plant. A legit retirement job, and I assume he won't be dealing with snow ever again.
He left in the middle of last year's multitude of forced outages, and I honestly don't blame him for wanting to move along during that clown show. My colleague owns one of those useless trucks with a very short bed, and he had the inside of the bed sprayed - but then he didn't want to scuff up the new finish. So in addition to his truck being inadequate to move very much stuff, he also didn't want to wreck his brand-new bed-liner.
He asked me to help him get rid of a lot of his belongings before he moved, because I own a legitimate truck with a dented and scratched up full-size bed. In addition, his moving company was going to bill him based on shipping weight - so he needed to get rid of a lot of stuff that was heavy.
So during that exhausting period where I was working 60 and 70 hour weeks, I'd also go over to his house after work and remove stuff from his place to my shop - heavy stuff that he didn't want to haul down South.
While it was exhausting dealing with both issues at the same time, it was also very generous that he simply gave me a lot of valuable stuff - if only because he was getting rid of it to move. So it was a VERY mixed bag from the two standpoints of physical exhaustion and generosity.
Some of his stuff that I've either given away or decided to keep:
A barely-used Husqvarna small chainsaw - given away. Practice arrows and snow markers - kept.
Meat slicer and fancy food vacuum sealer - given away.
Diamond compound bow - kept - for now. I've already got one of these.
A monstrous NordicTrack treadmill - kept. The daughter wanted it. There was also an elliptical that I hauled over to church for the annual yard sale next summer.
The treadmill turned into a serious ordeal, because the exercise room is in the basement, and the treadmill weighs a million pounds or so. It was necessary to remove the control panel, the horizontal grab bars, and the pedestal that the assembly tilts down from. This left two very large sections that were attached by a fine control wire that I could not disconnect.
So I strapped the section that says "NordicTrack" to the section with the treadmill together and we did our best to get it downstairs without either a) damaging the fine wire that controls the machine, or b) punching holes in the walls in the stairwell. It doesn't help that there is a 90 degree turn in the stairs with no landing to rotate the million pound load before going down the second part.
After a very difficult and slightly dangerous operation, the treadmill finally was in the basement with only very minor scuffing on the stairwell walls, and it was time for re-assembly. One part absolutely refused to align with the other, and I tried a lot of different techniques. In the end I had to go to the shop and oversize the holes that several bolts passed through so that they could thread into other parts. Just awful.
I told this story to one of my other co-workers, and he told me, "And that's the most calories that will ever be burned on that treadmill." :) So far, he has been correct. The daughter has used it 2-3 times now.
Below: Proof that I got it downstairs and back together!
Back to the very heavy stuff. My colleague didn't want to ship his gun safe - it's heavy, and the shipping charges would have been more than the value of the box. This, along with a gun and some ammo, he wanted me to purchase at a ridiculously low price.
Below: Varmint rifle. Not my thing really, but it was cheap.
Below: Lots and lots of varmint ammo and spare magazines. These really are small-bore bullets, made for plinking small critters and targets.
For Christmas, I received a red dot scope for rapid target acquisition, and because I am not a fan of aligning open sights. I'll mount it and sight it in when the weather is better. At that point I'll have to (safely!!!) figure out all the purpose of all the knobs and gizmos on the rifle.
One of my co-workers who owns a still gifted me this jar of apple-flavored moonshine.
And I adore these noise-canceling bluetooth headphones. I'd recommend these to anyone!
The Christmas ham turned out pretty well. I don't consider myself much of a cook, and how hard is it to ruin a pre-cooked spiral cut ham anyway? Plenty of left-overs, as there are only three of us.
Work has moved on to focusing the next outage. Meetings and more meetings regarding another two-month long outage that will begin in April.
Winter has been mild so far. Most of the precipitation has fallen as rain in the valleys where everyone lives, although lately we've been having a bit of snow, which thus far has mostly melted off. This works, as there is plenty of snow in the high country to avoid a drought and wildfires, but at least I haven't had to shovel any!
Below: Recent snowy commutes to work and back home.
I had to get yet another phone because the charge port on the old one got wallowed out and the charge cable would simply fall out. It was nearly impossible to get it to connect and charge, so that one is gone. It took nearly a week to get everything on the new one to function, and a few things still aren't quite right. Life in these modern times!
I'll leave you with a song that was written in 2004, which at the moment has some relevance.
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