Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I got into work about 6:30 AM today, so I could leave around 11 (having logged more than 40 hours this week even with all of the disruptions), and that meant I could detour up to Yuba City. When we last left my storage locker there, we had taken almost everything from it except for a Japanese tri-fold screen that wouldn't fit in the back of my Astro unless we removed the middle seat, and a few other things. The Rolling Stone is long enough that if I could get the thing inside the RV, the screen would fit. And indeed, it did fit, as did nearly everything else left in the locker.

( Last Call at Locker D2 )

After dealing with the locker, I went and visited my sister. My mother had come down from the hills for the weekend as well. This was the first time they'd seen the RV. When Mom heard I had bought an RV, I think she'd envisioned a big bus or a Winnebago-style box on wheels. The Rolling Stone is much more nimble, even though it still feels huge to me. They were impressed.

I was not impressed with myself, however. This morning I forgot to shut one of the two roof vents, and by the time I heard the loose vent tearing itself free and flying off the roof as I headed down the freeway, it was too late. Fortunately, there's no rain expected tonight or tomorrow, but we're going to need to replace it, of course. In fact, Lisa thinks we'll probably need to replace the other rooftop vents, as they're UV-degraded.

What with spending time visiting with my family, I didn't get home to Fernley until about 9:30 PM. Lisa helped me unload the RV and did an initial diagnosis of the damage to the vent and to one of the interior reading lights that broke off in my hand (old plastic; I only tried turning on the switch and the thing popped off the wall). We'll need to look more carefully on the roof tomorrow in daylight and with a taller ladder than the little one on the rear door. Hey, it's a used RV, and even with only about 58K miles on it, there's more than twenty years of things just getting old and needing work. It still is paying its way in hotel nights I don't have to buy.

It's nice to be home and being able to sleep in my own bed again. Even nicer: no alarm tomorrow, and because I brought the last of the storage-locker stuff home with me, we don't have to make a day-trip down to Yuba City or wrestle the middle seat out of the Astro.

Yesterday evening after returning from the Open House at the Fire Department, we went to Lowe's to see about getting the additional crossbeams for the shelving for the garage. We saw that they had received two more bundles of eight beams each, and while they can be sold individually, Lisa said that she could use sixteen beams. We sought out the manager and explained that we'd bought ten of them earlier in the week because that's all they had, and he agreed that it would be no problem for us to "return" the ten we'd previously bought (without having to actually physically haul them back to the store), then buy 26 of them, sixteen of which we'd collect tonight in addition to those we already have. That let us get the 20% contractor discount, and my 5% Lowe's Card discount still applies, so we ended up saving more than $90 on the heavy-duty (each shelf is rated to hold about 900 kg) shelving beams.

One problem, however: one of the 8-packs was trapped on the top overstock shelf in the store, buried under a bunch of other rack material. While I dealt with the Head Cashier to "return" the ten original beams and pay for the entire lot, the manager had one of the other staff bring a portable lift over to the shelving area.

( Up into the racks )

We got the rack material home and unloaded with minimal issues. With the small racks and a pallet of boxes moved to the locker, Lisa has almost managed to clear enough space to be able to put the Small Orange Pickup back in the garage. I helped her move one of the pallets on which we'd been temporarily storing boxes out of the garage and onto the pile of pallets outside. We shuffled vehicles so that we could move the Rolling Stone back to its space within range of ground-side power; the RV shop had accidentally left some of the interior lights on while they did a separate repair to the refrigerator in addition to installing the steering stabilizer, and we want to make certain the batteries are fully charged before I head off to the Bay Area for a two-week stint tomorrow.

That was a very productive Friday the 13th for us.

Day Jobbe was only running at ordinary speed today, so, having started work at 7 AM, I expected that I could quit by 4 PM. Around 3:30, I went out to the garage, where Lisa was working on shelving in anticipation of us taking another shelf and more boxes to the locker. As I rounded the corner, a wasp flew at me and stung me on the chin!

Yeow! It wasn't a very deep sting, and the wasp flew away again, but it's the first time I've been stung in nearly twenty years. Lisa and I went inside immediately, where she applied a water-and-baking-soda patch after confirming that there was no stinger in the wound (they only good thing about a wasp sting as opposed to a bee). After a little while, I put an ice pack on it to keep the swelling down. It's not fun, but it could have been worse.

I finished up with Day Jobbe and gingerly made my way back to the garage. Yep, there was a wasp nest hanging from above the garage door. Wasp killer was now on the shopping list, but first, it was over to the locker for a brief round of logistics. I say brief because in 35°C heat, you really don't want to work that long if you can avoid it.

( More boxes, more shelves )

After the short, hot work in the locker, we went to Lowes, but we didn't like the look of what they had for wasp killer, and on the spur of the moment we decided to drive to Fallon to go to Big R. The fact that the AC works in my van but we still don't have it in Fernley House was a major determinant in this decision.

At Big R we bought wasp spray, some new gloves, and another box fan. We also learned that Big R has apparently finally been granted an occupancy permit for the Fernley store, and it must be pretty serious, as one of the Fallon staff who will be working at Fernley is looking to sell her home in Fallon and move to Fernley.

On the drive home, we agreed that we were both worn out, and stopped for pizza for dinner. While waiting, we chatted with a couple who were on a circular drive around the USA, having started from Saint Louis and gone to Southern California, then north through the Central Valley, over Sonora Pass, through Virginia City, and next toward Idaho. We wished them well and headed home with our pizza in hand.

After dinner, it was late into dusk, which the wasp spray said was the better time to spray as the wasps are less active. I carefully stood away and directed the spray at the nest, thoroughly soaking it and then quickly distancing myself from the nest in case I missed anything. I wasn't immediately set upon by an angry swarm of wasps, so maybe that did the trick. We'll see tomorrow.