"End of an Era" here for me.....

Well, I pulled down my 33' vertical, auto-coupler, and Line Isolator today so we could demolish the little patio/porch on the back of the house, thus ending 8 years of fixed HF operation.

I can still get on HF, but it would be using a much less efficient antenna, so I probably won't operate much HF until we get settled in Colorado.

And I pulled down my semi permanent VHF/UHF antenna that was on a 5' tripod and three 5' sections of mast and got that all ready to pack up. I still have the Discone scanner antenna to drop, my 'eggbeater' weather satellite antenna, and the mast holding the instruments for my weather station. When that's all done our house will look "normal" again, and not like remote monitoring outpost!

The patio/porch had become termite infested a couple of years ago, and as soon as I saw the little critters I went and bought a couple of gallons of termite-specific insecticide, and absolutely soaked all the wood in that structure, and then doused all the wood on that side of the house. The termites were eradicated, and never came back, but the damage was done. The 4x4 timbers for the vertical supports were hollowed out in spots, and the 2x12 stringers also had some spots that were pretty well bored out.

We found out just how bad it was today when we started taking it apart. One of the stringers split into about three pieces when we pulled the cross-braces off, and one of the 4x4 support columns came apart shortly after that! Our "Handyman" guy does a lot of framing work and carpentry, and he gave the eaves and surrounding area a good look over to see if there was any other termite damage, and said that whatever I sprayed got 'em before they had a chance to spread to the house itself, so we ducked a big one on that.

Wednesday he'll be doing some finish work on the side door to the garage that I installed a couple of years ago. The "door" that was there was pieced together out of two or three interior doors, and had deteriorated due to the weather exposure it gets. You quite literally could have knocked it off the hinges with one good kick or shoulder block! So, I bought a prehung, METAL exterior door, and spent a couple of days getting it framed into the existing opening. I know, a "pro" could have done it in 4 hours or less, but it was the first exterior door I'd ever installed. I caulked the inside seams with expanding, fire retardant foam, but never did the finish caulk and painting, which he'll do Wednesday. He'll also rehang the door on the little "shed" extension off the back of the garage, and hinge the one vinyl fence panel we have as a gate to the space between the back of the garage and the block wall. And he'll began the process of sanding/touching up all the trim on the house, fixing a few spots where the stucco popped off, replacing and repairing any other woodwork that needs it, and spotting in faded/thin spots in the paint on the house. When my wife's oldest son "painted" the house right before we met, he did what Dan The Handyman called a "Spray, Pray, and Scoot", also called a "Blow and Go", i.e., a real quick and dirty "paint job" on the house. I've been noticing thin spots in the paint for several years now, but oh, well.....just another thing I tell my wife that gets ignored.

Wednesday afternoon I get my root canal done since it's already scheduled and really needs to be done, and then I'm going to do a bit of dental "shopping" to try and knock the $15k~$18k price they quoted me down to something manageable.

Thursday the new drier gets here and the old one gets dragged away. This afternoon I shut the gas off to the old one, disconnected it, and with the help of Dan The Handyman, we wrestled it out of the side door on the garage, and then I cleaned out the area behind the washer and drier and made sure everything was ready for the new one to start it's tour of duty.

I'm not sure what's going on Friday. I'll probably let Dan do his thing while I clean up the aftermath of the previous three days.

The wife has a little over a week left in her career with the school district, and then I'm sure she'll try and put the spurs to me to get things done at warp-speed. I'm not sure if I can operate at that speed for a sustained period, so I'll try and keep things going at a decent rate, but there's no way I'm going to run at "Ludicrous Speed" to get this stuff done!