Totally a first world problem, but anymore it feels like Thanksgiving is the starting line for a race through the end of the year.

I went home to Massachusetts to visit family at Thanksgiving and stayed for a week. I'm a homebody, so a week away from Chateau Conrad was pretty exhausting for Mama Conrad's little introvert. Then there's the month-long marathon of shopping and consumption leading up to Christmas. This year, maybe it was the timing of the holiday, maybe it was a confluence of the flu, and needing to replace my truck but Christmas' arrival left me feeling Christmas-spiritless.

Plus, there was a shitshow with one of the street urchins in my neighborhood two days before Christmas. The less said about that the better. But, word to the wise. Get a dash cam and make sure it records audio. My cheapo closeout dash cam saved my bacon when I showed the video to the po-po.

New Year's Even finally arrived and I managed to slog through it and watch the ball drop. Poor Jenny McCarthy looked like a drowned rat with all the rain in NYC.

New Year's Day did allow me to see the first use of 18 instead of 19, on a highway sign advising drivers that a road was going to have work starting soon, Deldot posted the start date as 1/2/18. Man, those guys are slow.

But we're here in 2019. I can hide in my house, post a warning that trespassers will be devoured by angry opposums, and relax. For a couple of days at least.

The title says it all. The  next phase of the home renovation process is to change the windows. Of course, in order to change the windows you have to be able to, you know, get at the windows. Unfortunately 18 years of accumulation has made that nigh unto impossible. 

I'm a nerd, so I started measuring and adding and I figure I need about 100 square feet of storage space. Not much furniture will make the move to new digs, but one Hell of a lot of books and tools will. Both of which can be stacked.

So, do I rent a storage locker, which will be a sunk cost, or do I look into other options? A CONEX box, one of those stackable shipping containers, would certainly do. It would be overkill in fact. Problem being, they're a bear to move. So you've got to hire someone to deliver them, and move them, and then you've got to have them hauled away. Another sunk cost. Pods have the same problem. And their storage costs are crazy. Which leaves a trailer. Trailer's are a major up front cost, but most of that could be recouped once you move your stuff into the new place for all of your stuff and sell the trailer.

Fortunately I own a vehicle suitable to tow a trailer. Insurance is negligeble, ~$30 for six months. Registation doesn't even crack $100 a year. Wheel chocks, padlocks and security devices so someone doesn't drive off with all of my stuff will run about another $100.

So, on Friday I'm off to the wilds of Pennsylvania to purchase a trailer. Which should be an adventure, because I tow a vehicle once a year, max.

So, the new heat pump went in yesterday. I've been living without a heat pump for 2 years, after the unreliable old one went belly up on the first cooling day of the year. Winters, I limped by on the emergency heat circuit, an electric blanket and two dog power. Summers were handled by a sophisticated array of window air conditioners and portable units providing enough cooling to be comfortable/tolerable.

But of course there are no windows in the bathrooms of my house.

Consequently I spent as little time in the necessary rooms as possible during the summer. They were always warm-ish. Post shower it was advisable to skip shaving as often as I could get away with it. Shower, brush my teeth and dash.

But now the new heat pump is in! Huzzah!

I noticed it immediately as the temperature and humidity both made a precipitous decline. Because the odd thing about portables is that you're either freezing your 'nads off if you're in the direct airflow, or you're a bit warm if you're anywhere else in the room.

But central air. Glorious central air, all hail Willis Carrier!

First impression: this thing is quiet. When the condensor fan kicks on I can't hear it. Which is probably the way it should be, I have just gotten used to listening to the industrial grade impeller grinding to life on the old one. It's a nice life upgrade.

For those keeping track at home, this is renovation project number three. Next up, windows. (No, not the OS from Hell. The other type.)

So, this is after. What a difference a day makes. Next up, heat pump.

I'm sitting at work in a fit of mild anxiety. You see my new fence is being installed today. I'm not anxious (mostly) about the fence. But because the fence installation might take two days, my dogs are at a friend's house. So, the defense of the house, without my presence, has devolved to my cat, Spot.

Make no mistake. The  loyalties of cats never change. They are loyal to themselves, only.

Have you ever heard of a cat dragging their insensate owner from a burning building? Enough said.

I'm (mostly) certain that everything will be fine. And for those keeping track at home, this is remodel project #2, headed for the record books. Next up, we get the heat pump installed.

I got a new roof put on my house yesterday. I mean, it's not something you rush into. The old roof had been on my house since 1990-ish. So I guess it was fully amortized. Someone must have paid off the inspector, because said old roof had neither a ridge vent or a bathroom fan vent. And this is where the story starts to resemble "for want of a nail..." Because for want of a ridge vent, the plywood on the southern face of the roof started to warp and buckle from nearly 30 years of overheating and no way to vent the heat.

My roof, my roof

My roof was expired

Anyhow, I didn't want to tell the story of the many lacking features of my old roof. But rather how things went awry in the quest to replace the roof.

I bought my house in 2000. The home inspection detailed the lack of a ridge vent, and probable leak at the waste stack vent. No problem! says I. I can save up a couple thousand and get it done. After all, I was working a good contract for a major chemical company. And a week after I closed and moved into the house my contract got cancelled. Panic. Unemployment, scrape by for a couple months, get another contract with a major electrical supplier, nice raise. All is hunky dory. A few months later, a different contract, this time with a internation financial institution. That contract wraps up in July of 2001, but there's a follow-on contract in October in Dallas.

9/11 happens. Plane flies into my employer's building (WTC 1) and it falls on my client's building (WTC 7). And I get to watch it on live TV. Stress. Not a patch on the people who were there. And God bless the people trapped in the buildings and on the planes. But still, stress.

Dallas contract gets cancelled. A year and a half of unemployment, punctuated at odd intervals with small contracts and a last minute reprieve with the same company and same client. Do good work and people remember you when there's more work. Thank you Matt. You know who you are.

Then a couple of months later, just as a third unemployment extension is going to run out, the light at the end of the tunnel. I land a job with a local IT body shop. They farm me out to a local convenience store chain for their ops center. That works for a couple of years, but at a significant cut in pay. Hey, the bills are getting paid.

That job turns into another gig at a local bank and in 2009 I'm nearly back to where I was back in 2000. And then the compay that bought the local IT body shop decides to tell my client that the stuff they contracted to do, they weren't going to do. My client tells them that the contract they have? Yeah, we're not goint to do that any longer.

My last day at the bank, my oldest niece dies. I get told at lunchtime. I had to go back and work the afternoon. It's a testament to my fortitude that I didn't freak out. But yeah, more stress.

And more unemployment in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Job prospects are non-existant in the Carter-esque economic malaise. I get a lifeline from my brother that keeps me afloat, if barely. But the bills are getting paid (mostly) and the wolf is only at the garden gate, not the front door.

And then I get into a hit and run accident in 2015. Yeah, 6 years of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and a drunk hits my vehicle and bolts. Made me wish I had a dashcam (I do now). My right shoulder is screwed up. I start sleeping on my left side exclusively. 

For the next two years.

Revolving door doctors. More physical therapy than I've ever had before. And finally I found a good orthopedist who went through all the steps, and found the problem. Surgery, more physical therapy and eventually, 3 years to the day I was hit, I'm through with medical care.

Small settlement from my insurance (but that's another story). And I can finally pay off my house. Oh yeah, I've never replaced my roof.

So, finally, the roof is done.

The point of writing this all down?

At my lowest, in what I call "The Years of Suck", I re-watched Castaway. It was a good movie. Tom Hanks in the period when he could do no wrong. His character was helpless in that movie. He had no agency to change his situation, or even to kill himself. Until apparent random chance, wind and tide, brought him the tools for his salvation. And even then it was a struggle.

He says, "...And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I'm back..."

In no way was I a castaway. But I have refered to my house as my lifeboat over the years. 

I have to say this to you, and take what comfort from it that you may. Keep treading water. Keep struggling, even when you don't think you can change your course or make a goal you desire. Because your ability to conceive of events outside your grasp, and how those events may impact the arc of your own little story, is insufficient to the task. Sometimes, it's just the ability to hang in there, keep breathing, keep putting one foot in front of the other even though you believe you'll never get where you want, that makes the difference that gets you to your goal.

The improbable can happen and it can happen to you. And that's not a bad thing.

But for tonight I shall sleep under my new roof. And for a change, the pitter patter of rain on my roof won't make me grind my teeth.