Category: FYI

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Do NOT Make YOUR Problem MY Problem

You won’t like it if you do.

Well, the rumbles I’ve been hearing about Fedex deliveries in recent months going from average/poor in service to execrable have another data point. Call from Fedex Freight. Nope, the package they accepted to deliver to me? Nah. They can’t get here from there, not with the truck they want to “deliver” it with. . . And it is too big for our vehicles. Oh, and it’s a gig they accepted from another freight company–Pilot Freight–that accepted the package for delivery, then decided to fob it off on Fedex. Now, the original company says it’ll “try to work something out.” There is no try. There is only do and do not. Neither one did their due diligence, and neither one wants to be troubled to deliver the package they accepted to deliver.

Ain’t it grand when folks make a commitment w/o doing their homework and with little apparent intent to fulfill it? *shrugs* Next up: the company that sold me the product. We’ll see if it intends to earn its money. (Just to be clear: I kinda enjoy holding folks’ feet to the fire when they try to back out of fulfilling a commitment. Makes me smile. 🙂 “YOU took the gig. Don’t make it MY problem that you don’t want to do your job.” *heh*)

Progress. Called the retailer. The retailer’s the 500 pound gorilla in this. Retailer kept me on while conferencing in the company that accepted the original contract to deliver. Ruh-roh. Response: “I’ll fix this,” and a promise to call me back with a delivery date/time. We’ll see, , ,

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Another View of Faith

I have posted before that our part of faith =~= trusting obedience. Today, a streaming video study of Psalm 32 cut out shortly after verse 9 had been read, and it seemed propitious, as it spurred me to recall moments with horses that allow me to expand on that verse:

Psalm 32:9 “Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.”

Several things popped out at me when I read this this AM. . .

Yes, ordinarily horses need to be controlled via external means such as a bit and bridle, for guidance’s sake for both them and any person around them, but. . .

There is much more to control of an equine than a bit in their mouths and a hand on the reins controlling them through that bit. There can be relationship, as well, and teaching/training, and. . . trust.

The relationship between the horses and their trainer in the video above are a good metaphor, IMO, for the relationship God desires with his people: a relationship of trust and obedience. Know this full well: those horses would not be so very compliant had their trainer not well and truly earned their trust through consistent and judicious care.

While I have never experienced that level of trusting obedience from a horse, I have had glimpses of it, brief moments where the trust a horse placed in me were humbling, engendering an even greater desire to be trustworthy. If we could but grasp a bit of that for our relationship with God, we would find Him completely, over and abundantly, worthy of our trust.

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Mystery Project

Inspiration struck when I was cutting off the first plank of a fairly large diameter, 10′-long sycamore log today. I visualized a perfect application for the 2”-wide planks coming off the log, though I modded that thought immediately and reserved the last couple of feet to make 4”×4” pieces for part of the “inspiration.” I’ll update on this mystery project as it develops.

And yeh, in the interest of simplicity, I’ll be using exact measurements, not “nominal” lumber sizes.

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Hand Sanitizer — My Fav Formula

NOT a hard and fast formula, because your available ingredients may vary from mine. For example, I list “melaleuca alternifolia oil,” but what I use is 100% melaleuca oil refined to T36C5, meaning 36% terpinen-4-ol (the active anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral portion of the oil), 5% cineole (the penetrating fraction of melaleuca oil). The “aloe vera gel” I use is also just what is available to me.

In a one ounce bottle:
25 drops of melaleuca oil + aloe vera gel to the 1/4 bottle mark
Everclear™ (95% ethanol).

Shake well before each use.

The resultant mixture should exceed 70% alcohol (CDC, et al recommend 60% alcohol in hand sanitizer that uses alcohol), plus the antiseptic properties of melaleuca oil and the skin conditioning of the aloe vera lotion. Then, of course, there is the pleasant (to me, at least) aroma of the melaleuca oil.

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Sometimes Too Much of a Good Thing. . .

. . . is just too much.

Semi-sorta-annual checkup yesterday (my “permission slip” visit for a lisinopril scrip). My BP and pulse were up a tad, probably due to both recent disruptions of sleep pattern (exigencies calling for me to be up ~0300-0430, at the least, for example) and pain from dislocated knee (it’s getting better w/o physician intervention, but OTC pain meds are ineffective). But still, PA thought it’d be a good idea to try some metoprolol to at least moderate the pulse rate.

I’m not sanguine with metoprolol use, in gweneral. The first warning is “Do not stop taking this drug all of a sudden. If you do. . . in some cases heart attack may occur.” Yeh, I told him it brought about a dependency. . . Oh, well. I know how to taper it off if I have to.

Added 25mg (HALF the dosage prescribed) to my regimen today, and. . . my heart rate is now so low I can barely keep my eyes open. We’ll see how that goes.

“If I should die before I wake. . . ”

*heh*

Oh, good night’s rest last night (before I began the new drug regimen), no 0300 call on my time today, and my heart rate and BP had already fallen into an acceptable range, despite the continued knee “discomfort.”

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Spreading Disinformation?

Some folks are touting the virucidal action of plain old soap and water, “Soap and water kills viruses!” Yeh, but not unless agitated for up to SIX MINUTES (OK, depending on variables in the environment where they are found, from two to six minutes). (Yeh, the much ballyhooed paper on soap and water killing HIV doesn’t see that lil factoid make the press. Yeh, I read the paper.) Count on the finger of one hand how many folks you know who are going to spend two minutes, let alone six, vigorously washing their hands with soap and water. Is it less than one? (The key is the physical action slowly working to help the soap break down a secondary, minor component–lipids–of virus capsids, since virus capsids are primarily protein, unlike bacteria cell walls, which are heavily linked with lipids enabling killing of some bacteria easier by similar vigorous and time-consuming application of soap and water).

This is why THE key benefit of proper hand washing is washing microbial materials OFF and rinsing them away.

(BTW, that infamous paper demonstrating that HIV can be “inactivated” by soap and water showed even longer times to effectiveness when some variables were changed, and agitating the solutions was still key. That’s because physics and chemistry–fill in the blank. Go ahead. Look it up. *heh*)

Oh, BTW, I use the term “kill” above referring to viruses, but of course I do not mean “kill” since one either “deactivates” or “destroys” viruses, because (OK, admittedly some controversy/gray area) viruses are not really alive to begin with. so cannot be “killed.”

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Oh, Well. . . Not Today

Made a lot of good “man glitter” yesterday with ye olde Husky. Lil 16” bar and chain did an excellent job w/25” diameter logs on down to smaller limbs and even twiggy stuff, chewing away at the wood mess in the back yard. Was a pooped puppy by the time the saw ran out of gas. Actually, that’s been the way it works pretty regularly: both the saw and I run out of gas at about the same time. *heh*

Today has been a disappointment on the “man glitter” and cleanup gig because of freezing rain (and near-freezing rain that’s even more chilling in some ways) on top of the bit of ice and snow dusting the ground. Ground varies between icy and slip-slidin’-sloppy. Not gonna do that to my back and knees, so the back yard gets a pass today.

Instead, I toodled on outa town and got some material I’ll need next week to effect a safe setup of a burn bin and also use a lil timber jig to trim some of the larger logs down to manageable size. Need to pick up a couple of large tarps as well to erect a sort of awning over where I plan to store logs/trimmings and even a few early cut planks, getting them at least mostly out of the weather.

I hope that I can have a clear path from my back yard to the large logs still laying on the periphery of our property, so that moving them into a place where I can work on them will be possible. We’ll see if the weather will let me get that done.

Not the day I had planned, but I’ve still gotten a little good prep work in.

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Finally, an Exercise Program I Can Stick With

(Because I HAVE to? *heh*)

Oh, the joys of work. . . even if the pay is only the goal of satisfaction in doing a job well, to completion.

I have difficulty sticking to an exercise program, because such things are BORING. Nevertheless, I seem to have found an exercise program that I can really stick with for at least the next few months: cleaning up this mess and processing all the “waste” into useful things. Of course, at my age, and in my condition, I can only manage one to one-and-a-half hours at a time (with appropriate rest times between), and even then, only about three sessions a day.

And oh! do my muscles ache! (In a very good way, one with which I am quite pleased, in fact.) Right knee (my problematic ACL knee) started aching early, and I felt the thing start to collapse on me but caught it in time. Swollen. Aplied a knee brace and some OTC pain meds, and was back at it. Feels OK. Still sensitive to side pressure, but the brace really helps, and if I take care to carry things on my LEFT side, I am much more comfortable. Typical lower back pain a bit exacerbated, but I’ve put up with lower back pain and pain in my left hip since I was, oh, about eleven, so that’s pretty easily dealt with.

All-in-all, really having fun out there, and looking forward to the projects I have in store for this wood. Sure, most of it (by far) is sycamore–a very “soft” hardwood–but I believe I can get some fencing out of it, as long as I paint it well, and the little stuff will serve nicely as burn material to use in making charcoal out of the elm, maple, and even walnut trees and trimmings that I plan to also take down. Also have some furniture planned for a few of the uniquely-shaped pieces of sycamore. Gonna be fun there, too.

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Yeh, Well, I Definitely Do These Sorts of Things So You Don’t Have To

Was at my fav “fell off the back of a truck store,” today, and passed through the “$1 salvage items” aisle. Saw a $1 box of 12 bottles of BSP (buffered sodium phosphate) solution–bottled and prepped for use as enemas–and thought to myself, “Self, since thou doest always gargle salt water (sodium chloride + h2o) and this BSP is sodium phosphate+sodium chloride+water, and ingestion of “gargle water” ain’t on the menu, why not? Yeh, if and or when I get a sore throat this winter, I’m-a giving my mouth an enema. (Small amounts of sodium phosphates via mouth–traces not spit out with “gargle water”–are not harmful, and. . . prepackaged!)

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