Part-9 Enjoying the Sun Porch

Rejoice, Summer 2008. We have a sun porch and a shop and a walkway from the kitchen to the sun porch, and a retirement package that works. Marge spent part of her Summer money for furniture for the sun porch and I still don't see a knee wall here amidst the straw and dog debris but that is mainly because I put it on hold during Summer Session 1 at Purdue so that the contractor and my wife would not drive each other crazy. Below is a picture of the sun porch and if you would humor me, there is also a picture of a drywall cart that I built. Nifty little guy with my notebook plans are stored as a PDF file .

Needless to say the greenhouse took a cost crunch, galvanized steel is replacing aluminum as we speak.

The Spring saw the introduction of some larger oak trees in the field. I planted about 400 trees but many were older, taller trees. The weather though was hideous. I've never had so much trouble planting trees before, lightning, cold, nasty stuff but the good news has been that because of a wet Spring and Summer most of the trees lived. I threw in a line of Northern Spruce but after seeing the unfortunate demise of the white pines that the original owner put in, the prognosis is not good. Falling on my head explains it all. In June ITT followed through on its November goals but with enough goodies to bridge into social security and retirement but without, maybe borderline, enough to finish my greenhouse and shop. The plan set forth by the company was typical of late 1950's where you think you are getting rid of seniority premiums, benefit and innovation costs but fail to take into account ancillary losses. Its a good move if you are trying to look good to the board of directors. But without adding in stock losses I calculate that between lost customers, obsoleted equipment, and loss of experience they cost themselves about 800K$/old guy over and above the percieved benefit savings, interesting. The day after leaving ITT I bought a brand new 8' ladder to do soffit and drywall work. And God knows I have used my little 6' ladder for 40 years. So imagine my surprise when I stepped off at my usual rung and fell four feet to the concrete floor. After noggin oozing and after x-rays to see the old brain stuff I was surprised to discover they found old brain trauma from 40 years ago (was it the summer of love or was it a mere car accident). That explains it all :) so after several weeks of vacation and aroma therapy (summer), I may be finally get back to doing something .. maybe. The summer of love, hmmmm.......

Part9.html
This page created by Edward A. Kimble
Last modified 7/16/08