{"id":1516,"date":"2013-10-10T22:52:22","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T03:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2013-10-10T23:04:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-11T04:04:37","slug":"my-unexpected-but-fully-paid-vacation-day-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/my-unexpected-but-fully-paid-vacation-day-8\/","title":{"rendered":"My unexpected (but fully paid) vacation: Day 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my little digital journal from the government shutdown. \u00a0Today is day 8 (Thursday Oct 10th), not counting the weekend. \u00a0Click here to see all of my government shutdown journal entries.<\/a><\/p>\n

Today I slept in till 10am because I was up pretty late last night working on my computer. \u00a0After getting up, I caught up on my Facebook news feed and threw in a load of laundry. \u00a0Throughout the day today I put laundry either in or out of the washer and dryer in between other tasks I was working on. \u00a0At the end of the day I had washed and dried 4 separate loads of laundry. \u00a0Yay me! \u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I know I should exercise more often than just once a week, but this is all I’ve motivated myself to do so far. \u00a0Today I fast walked for just over three miles while listening to my Adam Ant<\/a> station on Pandora<\/a> on my phone. \u00a0It was a nice cool morning today and it feels like Fall is trying to make an appearance in Central Florida.<\/p>\n

\"fast-walking\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s weird that the Adam Ant station plays Duran Duran<\/a>, but the Duran Duran station does NOT play Adam Ant. \u00a0What’s up with that, Pandora? \u00a0Are they similar to each other or not?<\/p>\n

I want to thank my sister and her friend Missy and also my friend Mick for introducing me to Adam Ant along with lots of other great British music in the early 80s. \u00a0I was probably 12 or 13 years old which is probably too young for many of the lyrics in Adam Ant’s songs, but I was probably not understanding the lyrics anyways. \u00a0I think I turned out okay, regardless. \u00a0Now that I’m older and wiser and actually paying close attention, it seems to me that Adam Ant sang mostly about sex, but he also sang quite a bit about pirates and also a little bit about native american Indians. \u00a0Weird.<\/p>\n

I tried to beat my fast walking time from last week, but I was not successful. \u00a0Trying to take my own self portrait while fast walking may have been a factor. \u00a0I’m not quite coordinated enough to work the camera on my phone without slowing down, I suppose. \u00a0After my little hike was over, I passed a yard sale walking back to my house, so I quickly checked it out. \u00a0There wasn’t anything there that I needed to have. \u00a0As a matter of fact, I noticed a pair of gently used men’s underwear and also some\u00a0sexy women’s lingerie. \u00a0That’s real classy, people. \u00a0 Real classy.<\/p>\n

Then I sat in my Adirondack chair on my front porch for a while and enjoyed a banana and papaya smoothie. \u00a0I caught up on my email while I sat there and I also sent out some feelers for any potential TV or film background talent needs that might be currently active in Central Florida. \u00a0I’ve done some extra\/background work in the past and I wouldn’t mind doing some now since it would not conflict with my NASA work schedule. \u00a0So if you know of any leads, please let me know. \u00a0Thanks.<\/p>\n

After I pried myself up out of my comfortable Adirondack chair, I went into the shop and changed out my old mower blades with a brand new set. \u00a0I was not able to get them off the other day by hand, but I borrowed an air powered impact wrench the other day from a friend and it worked like a charm. \u00a0I have a convenient setup in my shop where I can lift up the front of the mower using a cable winch puller (a.k.a. come a long winch) inside the doorway between two rooms in my shop.<\/p>\n

\"mower-lift\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Notice that the winch is attached to the header in the doorway which is essentially a strong beam that is designed to support a load. \u00a0The\u00a0rafters\/trusses that you can see in the background of the photo (that the lights are attached to) are not designed specifically to support a heavy downward load applied at the lower horizontal members. \u00a0Those horizontal members are designed primarily for tension. \u00a0You could cause some structural damage if you applied heavy loads to those horizontal “beam” looking portions of the trusses. \u00a0So be careful.<\/p>\n

There is a really simple diagram on this website that shows the forces on a typical truss.<\/a>\u00a0 Scroll down a page or two till you see the blue arrows. \u00a0(Some of the arrows should show compression and some should show tension, so it’s not perfectly accurate but you get the idea.)<\/p>\n

After I put on the new mower blades, I took them for a test drive. \u00a0They worked beautifully. \u00a0They sounded great and they cut like butter. \u00a0It felt kinda like walking in a new pair of shoes. \u00a0You feel light on your feet and empowered to go places. \u00a0With my new mower blades I felt like I could take on the world … or at least a few large yards. \u00a0My yard doesn’t need cutting for several more days, though, so I put the mower away and went looking for my next task.<\/p>\n

I realized that I was starting to get hungry, so I went inside and ate my leftover Mr. Submarine<\/a> sub sandwich from yesterday. \u00a0Then I installed trim around the fireplace brick in my living room. \u00a0This has needed to be done for two years now … ever since we bought this house … but I’ve been busy and this was not one of my highest priorities. \u00a0Don’t judge me … it’s done now. \u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

It wasn’t exactly a simple job. \u00a0Most trim is just nailed into the bottom wood plate of the wall. \u00a0But this fireplace trim had to be installed in the direction such that the tall dimension was laying against the brick and the thin dimension was laying against the drywall. \u00a0That left me no place to nail the trim to, so I had to glue it. \u00a0I used Liquid Nails Indoor Projects adhesive<\/a> and then I nailed some finish nails into the drywall to hold the trim tightly against the brick while the adhesive dried. \u00a0After I remove the finish nails from the drywall, I will have tiny little holes right along the new trim to patch and paint. \u00a0Oh well.<\/p>\n

\"fireplace-trim\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This odd installation direction is partially because the gap between the drywall and the brick is too large for the thin dimension to cover, but partially because it looks pretty good this way. \u00a0After I got my tools put away, I\u00a0sat down and did some planning for going out in my canoe tomorrow. \u00a0The plan is to go out bright and early in the morning, unless it’s real windy. \u00a0It’s no fun rowing a canoe against a stiff wind.<\/p>\n

Then I ate dinner which was popcorn shrimp wrap … popcorn shrimp, mozzarella cheese, lettuce, Italian dressing all rolled in a soft flour tortilla. \u00a0After dinner I spent an hour or so pulling stuff together for canoeing in the morning … including strapping the canoe to the top of the SUV. \u00a0Then I showered and now I’m writing this blog post.\u00a0\u00a0That’s pretty much day eight of my unplanned furlough slash vacation.<\/p>\n

My to-do list had 24 items on it last night when I went to bed. \u00a0Tonight it now has 21 items on it. Not bad at all.<\/p>\n

What will tomorrow hold for this furloughed government employee? Stay tuned! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Kurt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my little digital journal from the government shutdown. \u00a0Today is day 8 (Thursday Oct 10th), not counting the weekend. \u00a0Click here to see all of my government shutdown journal entries. Today I slept in till 10am because I was up pretty late last night working on my computer. \u00a0After getting up, I caught […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[110,112],"tags":[488,486,487,36,485,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1539,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/1539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}