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I'm back from festivating in Bangor, and it's been an eventful couple of weeks.

First in family health news, Stephanie, my niece in Seattle had a much more serious case of the cancer than initially thought. So Wesley couldn't come east to take care of mom while I was in Bangor. Meals and wheels was able to add a supper to her delivery schedule, so that handled her meals weekdays, and my oldest brother was able to take care of her meals on weekends, do her laundry, and so on while I was gone.

Stephanie had her surgery yesterday. The doctor told her that her chances of survival were 50/50. So, fourteen or so hours of surgery later, she spent the night in the intensive care ward, and moved to a stepdawn unit this evening. The cancer had destroyed nearly all of her inner ear, so she will be totally deaf on that side, don't know about the other side. I'm praying and sending good thoughts her way. She is on some major pain medications still, and lab results are not back, so things are still full of question marks. I expect there will be chemo in her near future, which is another huge insult to her body. All I can do is support them via telephone.

In house news, the construction loan came through just before I left for maine, so paid the contractor up to date. He got the subs back on schedule and is working the punch list. replacement refrigerator was delivered today, so we now have all appliances in the house. Need to assemble fridge and install icemaker, and hook up water to it. Three day weekend coming up, I hope to be washing furniture and putting it back into the house, weather permitting.

The festival had some bumps this year. We had to rearrange the site due to construction, and cut some things due to lack of budget. Predictably, bunch of folks were unhappy with this. They will be even less happy with the changes we will have to work around for the next couple of years due to sewerage tank construction on the festival site.

We also had some vandalism during setup. Several tents had large slashes in them, and one of the power distros got tossed into the river. The police evidence tech was able to get fingerprints from the distro once we fished it back out of the river. So had to give the police my fingerprints to eliminate them from the mix. The water was salty brackish, so when we get the thing back from police evidence in a year or so, I expect that it will be less expensive to buy a new one than try to repair it.

I continue to be very pleased with the lowering cost and increasing brightness of led rope lights and strip lights. They are lower power consumption, are now about equivalent lumens as the same length of incandescent festoon lights, more durable, pack into smaller storage space, and are easier to install and remove from tents. Win all around. Next year, gonna buy more and take a pass through the existing inventory of festoon lights to recycle the more broken ones. I figure in four or five years, all the festoon lights and quartz floodlights will be gone.
dalesql: (Default)
Another july, another birthday. I didn't even realize it was my birthday until I was filling in the date on a purchase request at work. So I took off from work a couple hours early, bought a carrot cake and had some of it with mom after supper. Then to keep me from eating the rest of the cake, I went and gave the remainder to the hotel staff.


Monday I took mom to the dermatologist for MOHS surgery for the skin cancer on her nose. This is where they take a chunk under local anesthetic, send it off to lab to see if there is cancer there. if yes, take a slightly deeper chunk and repeat until the sample removed is cancer free. Each cycle takes about an hour. So that was finished around 2pm. Stopped at MickyDs for a late lunch and late into work that day. Burning more paid time off.

Still waiting for the bank to come through with the actual loan. arrrgh. lawyers make everythi8ng more complicated. Bank lawyer sent us a confusing contract that assigns control of the construction contract to the bank if we are late with loan payments. But the 90 days in arrears is more than enough time for the construction company to finish the job, mooting the entire contract. So the contract is essentially meaningless, but it caused us another couple weeks delay while we found our own lawyer to translate contractese into plain english.

The contractor contimues to use our job as a fill in job with subcontractors, so progress continues as our debt mounts up. Kitchen cabinets and countertop complete. Plumbing is all complete. We have working sinks and toilets! Painting of interior is happening now. After that, floors installed, sanded and finished. Then finish up electrical work, install appliances, punch list and occupancy permit. Then move back in. Hopefully around beginning of september.

August I'll be working the folk festival in Bangor maine. My brother will be coming in from seattle to take care of mom while I'm in Maine. He's bringing one or two of his daughters so they can have a chance to meet their grandmom. Hoping that he can wash up some of the smoke stained furniture we saved and put it into the house while he is here.

Life goes on.
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Festival is all done and I've moved out of the hotel in Bangor and moved back into the hotel in Dedham. Back to day jobbe tomorrow morning. Just banging out a quick entry after doing the dirty laundry.

Also, New personal life lesson. Dont carry a two way radio in your t-shirt pocket when working an outdoor festival in the summer. Second degree sunburn where it pulled down the neck of my t-shirt. Yup, it hurts, but it looks worse than it feels.

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