Hey, what's up? And welcome back to another episode of Call Me Donovan. Today is 745 days
of alcohol retirement. I passed my two-year mark on Memorial Day. Honestly, I can't remember if
I actually said that in a previous episode or not. The past couple of weeks have been a blur,
and here's why. So if you don't listen to our tech podcast, South Geek News, then you probably
won't know that my son, Tyler, who lives in Seattle and has now for what, close to three years, I'm
thinking. Anyway, he comes and visits usually for about two, sometimes three weeks, about every six
months. And this time around, he did something a little different. He got a couple of friends that
live in Kentucky, and one of them was celebrating a birthday. I think that's correct. It was a
birthday. And so they were all going to a cabin in Tennessee, a Gatlinburg area, a Pigeon Forge. And
so he was invited. They wanted him to come. So he decided to make it an all-in-one trip. So he flew
from Seattle to Knoxville? No, honestly, I can't. I'm drawing a blank now where he flew into Louisville,
Knoxville. I can't remember. Anyway, he flew from Washington to Kentucky. Then they drove down to
Tennessee. He spent a couple of days there. And then he flew from Tennessee to Georgia, Atlanta,
and then flew down from Atlanta down to Valdosta, which is where we went and picked
him up. And that was on a Saturday night. So we got him about somewhere between 9.30 or 10 o'clock,
which is a little rough on me because these old eyes don't see too well at night, night driving. But
we managed. We made it back in one piece. So the funny thing is when he decides that he wants to come
visit for a couple of weeks, he always asks me, what plans, what projects can we work on? Because
we got a lot of home projects, home repair projects around here. Matter of fact, we've got so many.
Some of them are desperately needed. Some of them are pie in the sky type things. The, yeah,
that'd be nice to do if money and time would allow kind of thing. We got a Google Doc that's all shared
among, among us, uh, amongst us. And so this time around, we, we had two projects that we worked on.
And one, one was harder than the other one. So the first one dealt with our, and I'll use,
I'll put this in air quotes, our sunroom. Now, the reason why I call it sunroom in air quotes is
because that's what its intention was, but it hasn't actually been a sunroom probably for a couple of
years after we moved here. It's become the, the kitty lounge, the, the cat house, whatever you want
to call it. Because my, my wife wanted a place where the cats, the outdoor cats could come in and be fed
and be safe from the elements and things like that. And you need to, you need to keep in mind.
And I've mentioned this before. At one point we had somewhere between 18 and 20 outside cats. I know
it's ridiculous. And I paid to have every one of them spayed and neutered. The vet loved us so much.
They gave us the last one for free. Us idiots shouldn't have allowed it to get to that point,
but you know, that's neither here nor there. It happened. We dealt with it. We moved on. Well,
we're down to two outside cats now. So anyway, that's the reason why I call it a sunroom in air
quotes. Eventually when they, when they pass on, I hope to be able to clean it out, do some more
remodeling and actually turn again, turn it into a bonafide sunroom. But for the now it's, it's still
where the cats are fed and then come in from the elements and what have you. So anyway,
the way the sunroom is built, it was originally a porch. Now this predates us. We bought this place
in 2006. The house was built 1990. So when it was originally built, this was essentially a back porch.
I don't know how long it was after that, they decided that they, uh, they needed to enclose it.
So what they did is they put up sort of a rudimentary two by four frame on, uh, two sides.
And then I don't know what you call this. I've never found it on Lowe's or home Depot.
And of course this was 19 in the 1990s. So anyway, it looks like stuff that you would, it's,
it's metal clad. It's aluminum. Uh, it's like in one, one piece and you put it up on and, and basically
screw it into the framing and it gives you like two windows, then the door and two more windows,
that kind of thing. And so of course, you know, in your standard two by four framing, you've,
you've got a bottom plate, your two by four, and this is, this is adhered to concrete. I'm not
entirely sure how they adhered that board to concrete. I don't know if they just used concrete nails,
which in my unprofessional opinion is, uh, probably the, the poorest and worst way to adhere a two by
four. Anyway, when my wife had her accident back in January, where she got in there. And at this
point we had sort of a stray sort of, uh, yeah, he's kind of our cat, but he hasn't been around in
months now. Uh, I had nicknamed him socks. He was a thick boy at white feet, black fur, but back in
January, and I've mentioned this before, uh, she went in there. Um, she had, uh, some blankets or
something. Anyway, she got twisted up in that trying to avoid him trip, fail, hit her head on the, uh,
terracotta, which is covering the concrete. And as she went down, she also hit one of the, one of the
walls. And that's when we discovered a day or two later that that bottom plate was rotten. So we had
to, at first we thought we're going to have to take, or I did that entire aluminum part out, but
instead we wound up just taking the door off and being able to get that two by four out. And then we
put in a new two by four. Well, let's just say when your plans don't go according to plan, because we
discovered that we did not have the necessary up-to-date tools to be able to drill fricking
holes into the concrete. My son and my daughter made three trips to Lowe's that day. While all we were
trying to do, we had the two by four, we had it cut to fit. We were trying, um, we were using, um,
sheet rock, not sheet rock, uh, concrete bolts, basically. Uh, I think these were three inch.
I can't remember. They were expensive. It was about $15 for a box of like 10 of them or something.
But, um, and then the drill bit I had didn't, didn't want a drill. And of course everything was
recommended to do it with, uh, basically, uh, uh, a hammer drill. Well, Tyler wound up getting an
impact drill, which turns out we needed that anyway. It worked for the second project. So it took us from
about 10 o'clock on a Friday. We broke for lunch somewhere in there and until about five or six
o'clock that, that first Friday to get all of that put back in place and get it buttoned up. And you know,
it's, it's done within the next project was in this office that I'm sitting in this building. It's a
secondary building. Part of it is finished out, uh, heated and, uh, cooled. And the other part of it is
a shop. Well, the, uh, the exterior is a type of material called platanium. That's the, I guess that's
the brand name, but basically it's like a textured two by four. You can imagine it. If you don't know
what I'm talking about, if you can imagine it, it's got these little grooves and then you've got this
raised textured and then a groove and then raised textured. And apparently they come in three different, uh,
sizes where that textured part is four inches wide. Then there's eight inches wide. Then there's 12 inches wide.
Well, what's on this building is 12 inches wide. And the reason why we needed to,
to work on it is on the backside of the building, the bottom about two feet from the ground up is
mildewed, rotted and all of that, because there's, there's no water management back there. IE there's
no gutter. And so when the water comes down, it hits the dirt and it splatters up and we didn't seal
it properly. We've painted this place one time. So we didn't seal it properly. And, uh, we ran into a
little problem because what we were going to do is we were just going to get three panels and repaired
the damage part. You know, we get the, uh, the, the Z flashing to go across. And anyway, long story short,
the only place we could find those panels was in Douglas, Georgia. We live in Tifton. Look up,
look it up on a map. And these are standard four by eight sheets. So I made the executive decision.
Let's just replace it with the eight inch. It's hardly noticeable because it's going to be on the
back. So unless you're standing at a corner where you see the side and then the back, you're not going
to be able to tell that it's not the 12. So this past Friday with today being June 10th, as I'm
recording this, this past Friday, we started working on that. We got all the materials ordered. They were
delivered. I think Wednesday, we put them in the shop. We were ready to go. We got, uh, we got a primer
sealer. And so we started disassembling everything and oh my God, everything was put in with those
spiral nails. I don't know what else you call them, but it's the ones that's got the grooves that make
them difficult to come out. And let's just say that that was a, that was a son of a bum to get all that
stuff down, trying to get, and as we discovered, we had to pull the soffit down because the, the,
the, the four by eight sheets, I'm going to call them plywood or siding, the four by eight sheets of
siding, the way they were adhered. And I'm not saying this is wrong, but you had to take the soffit down
because the soffit was attached to a two by four runner, if you will, at the top. And that two by four
runner was sitting on top of the, of the four by eight sheets of, of siding. So then we had to get
the two by fours off and getting those nails out. We finally came up with a system to do it because
it's not like you could get the claw of the claw hammer in there. I mean, especially on the siding,
the siding, a lot of it, there was a combination of screws, which they were easy enough to handle
and nails. The nails were painted over. So trying to dig down into that crap with, with the claw
hammer. And yes, we realized after the fact that they do make a tool, a client makes one and, and we
actually came up doing it the way those tools work. They've got this little, little dimple, if you will,
that you take, it's on the side of the tool. You put it over the head of the nail and you hammer it
down. And then it's also got two, two claws on it so that you can dig down and pop those out. If we'd
had that, we'd have probably been done in half the time I would imagine, or, or at least it wouldn't
have taken us Friday and Saturday to do it, but we didn't have it. So we did what we worked with what
we had. And so we take the siding down, but before we could take the siding down, there's one window back
there, this window that's in this office. There's two windows in this office. That one faces east. That was
in the east side of the building is the one that we were repairing. We had to pull the window. Luckily, it's
not a standard like a window with a casing. It all, it, it kind of reminds me, and this is not to be
derogatory toward mobile homes, but it reminds me of the, the type of windows that were like in my mom and dad's
mobile home from the early eighties. It was metal frame with a flange and you just pop screws in it
and seal it the best you can, that kind of thing. So anyway, we'll pull that out. Finally get all this
fricking siding off. And we probably, we stopped around five 30 or six o'clock Friday. We're all worn out.
My body aches. I'm good, good gracious. So then we, we, when we get back up Saturday morning,
we hit it, we get the rest of it down. When we get to the shop area, because it's open on the other
side, it was a little easier to get that stuff down. The bottom sections, uh, because in that section,
there were, there was a top section in the bottom section, because there was a Z flashing that ran
across because it had been repaired before and they didn't want to repair the whole sheet. So they
cut it at about three and a half, maybe I think it was about three feet up. They cut it, put in the
flashing, put in the flashing so they could then put in that new siding. I think that was actually done
not long after we moved here. My in-laws, I was at work. So my in-laws and my wife and kids, they,
they all tackled that while I was at work. So anyway, I, I could kick that out. And then Tyler
and I'm, and Oriana's helping us the whole time too, because as we're pulling the sheets out, she's
painting like the, about the first, about eight inches of the bottom to go ahead and seal it and
seal under it. So that when it's up, at least that's already sealed. We still have to, to finish
doing the primer and sealer on it. But the way the forecast looks this week, it might be next week
before we can actually do it. So long story short, we had a lot of fun, a lot of body aches, a lot of
cuts and scrapes and, and bruises. But, and, and when we were done, I said, I never want to do anything
like this again. And I'm lying because it was absolutely fun. And don't get me wrong. It was
hard work, but it's, it's fun because Tyler and I both work in tech. You know, I own my own IT company
or MSP. He works for that place that you buy a lot of your stuff from online, but he works for the cloud
services side of it. And, uh, so we're in, we're, we're constantly in tech day in and day out. So to do
something that requires us to think differently and to actually use our, our hands and our legs and muscles
that we don't necessarily have. And of course, sometimes, you know, I have to, I have to come in and use that
old man strength, which then I pay for it for the next day or two, but it, it was fun. And he even
joked, he said, you know, I'm going to, one day I'm going to say, Hey, uh, thinking about heading that
way on these dates for two or three weeks, y'all going to be able to accommodate me. And he said,
you're going to, you're going to one day you say, hell no, I, I, I, I don't have that kind of energy.
Oh, he has nothing to worry about. I mean, he can come anytime. He can, he can visit anytime.
His older brother who lives out in California left here in 2015 has only come back one time.
He and his partner, I don't know what they're, I don't know if they're engaged or whatever,
because he, he doesn't really keep us up to date on anything, but he hasn't been back since, but
he's always welcome. We'll figure out accommodations. You know, all the rooms and everything have been
rearranged and, and repurposed basically. But I mean, Tyler's old room is now his mom's big
sewing room, R and D research and development, whatever you want to call it. And when he's here,
he stays in the middle bedroom because all he needs is an air mattress and he's got a computer and
everything, his old computer. Yeah. He can't cut ties with us. And, and I like that. I mean,
eventually one day he hopes to buy a place of his own and it probably will still be in Washington
because as much as he likes to come back here and visit, I think he did say that he really does like
living in Washington better than living here. I can't say because I've never been to Washington.
I know the political climate there and the types of people that live there probably align with us
more so than the people do around here. I mean, let's, let's face it. I'm an atheist. I am a little
left of center politically. My wife is a self-proclaimed witch. She's more left leaning than
anything else. And so we don't, you know, we being in Redneckville, South central Georgia. I mean,
we get along with everybody. We just don't necessarily see eye to eye with everybody on most
things, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends with them or at the very least friendly. So anyway,
that was a lot to unpack, but that's, that's been our last two weeks. Um, we drove him down to
Valdosta yesterday, put him back on the plane and he's back in Seattle. So come this fall,
if he, um, that's what we're tentatively looking at. We have our deck to completely dismantle and
rebuild from the frame up because the decking boards, once again, my bad, I only sealed it once,
not long after we moved here, but, uh, the boards have deteriorated to the point where they're definitely
a safety hazard. Um, so you can't really get out there and enjoy anything because, uh, splinters,
you're not sure if you're going to step in on the wrong board and suddenly it gives and you're going
to be on, on the ground, you know, that kind of thing. So definitely. And it's not like we entertain,
we do not entertain people. We just absolutely do not have people come over to the house,
do cookouts and stuff like that. The last time that I did anything like that,
was the year we moved here. And I believe it was that April of 2006. I am incorrect.
That's the last time we did anything on the deck. Let's put it that way. We did a, a World of Warcraft
basically land party because we were all big into World of Warcraft in 2006.
So that April, we had all our friends that we played with online that were local. They all landed
here. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and, and, you know, drank alcohol and, and played well. But I
think the last time we had a get together was right before my oldest son, Devin, uh, headed off, or it was
when he came back that one time. And, uh, we just had a, we just all got together up under the carport
and, uh, drank and cooked and all of that. But that was really the last time. That was really the last
time. Um, I got a couple of friends, my, my best friends that I used to work with. I don't see anymore.
I talk to maybe once a year. Of course, Ben is a friend of mine and we do the South Geek News
podcast. Um, we're also looking at working together because we basically do the same type of thing.
He has his business. I have mine. We're still trying to maneuver how we might could merge all
that together. We just, we just aren't there yet, but yeah. Um, and my friend Sam and, but he's in
Kentucky. I've never met him in person. I've seen his ugly mug on discord and he's seen my ugly mug on
discord, but that's about it. We've never actually seen each other in person. So, all right.
Well, anyway, I think that's going to wrap it up for this episode. Um, I'm also testing out on my
podcasting table here. I got my wife to do something. Uh, we, we run into, because the table's so small
and we sit so close together, even when it's just Ben and I across this table from one another,
sometimes I have an echo problem that I'm having to deal with in the South Geek News podcast. So,
my wife being the crafty person that she is, she came up with some, uh, felt and well, I may just
have to take a picture and, and, and, uh, put it in the show notes. Uh, so you can see it, just put a
link to in the show notes to it so you can see what we did anyway. Uh, yep. That's going to wrap it up.
I hope you and yours are doing well. If you have any comments and you'd like to lend your voice
to this, uh, you can drop me a voicemail. Just, just go to callmedonovan.com slash voicemail.
That is callmedonovan.com slash voicemail. And you can leave a voicemail there and, uh,
hell, I may even play it on the show if you want me to. I have a text line, 229-234-1307. That is
229-234-1307. And you can email me and that email address is Don, that's D-O-N, Don, at
callmedonovan.com. All right. It's been great talking to you. Hope you and yours are doing well,
as I said. Um, and until next time, take care, be well, and try to stay cool.
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