Jonathan’s Mindless Blog

This weekend was great! Friday I just beat the rain home and sat on the porch and read a book ’till a friend came over to drop off some community information stuff, and dropped off some chocolate chip cookies his wife had made. Well, since it’s a mortal sin to consume this kind of cookie without milk (and I had none), I made a trip to the grocery and loaded up on stuff and picked up some milk. I then enjoyed the porch and milk & cookies and my Friday night radio show. It was a really nice evening. Saturday, I took the dogs to the vet, mowed the yard and cleaned up a lot of the yard stuff… all before noon! After that, I went to Cookeville and hung out with a bunch of cool folks at a wine tasting. The host, one Mr. Kevin O’Mara, did and excellent job of explaining the differences both blatant and subtle in the different wines. It was an extremely enjoyable educational experience! After that, there were bratwursts grilled and folks hanging out on the deck just chillin’. Sunday, I was able to meet some new folks that I’ve heard quite a bit about but never meet in person, which was pretty cool. I now have some faces, voices and personalities to go with the names. Sunday evening I was able to talk to Scott who I haven’t seen in a while, and they are all doing well. I also ordered a mesh motorcycle jacket and pants so I can ride without being quite so paranoid about not having the proper protection, and still not be soaking wet when I get to where I’m going. Hopefully that stuff will be in this week and I’ll post some pictures of it.

Last night there was another storm at the house. Last weeks Friday night storm left me and most of the neighborhood without power for about 16 hours. I also worked a 16 hour shift Friday night, but last night the lights were only out for a couple of hours. When the power was restored, I realized that several breakers had tripped and when I turned the first one on, it spit fire and blew smoke all over. All told I had 5 GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) outlets get toasted. Those puppies are $13 each! I got all but one replaced last night and so far I don’t think any significant equipment is damaged. The only one left is in the basement, so the only piece of equipment left in question is the dehumidifier. I was on the porch when the big lightning strike hit somewhere near. I was leaning around the post filling the dog’s water bowl with gutter runoff when it struck and I ended up on my knees holding my head and my ears were ringing, so I’m guessing it was pretty close. I hope to look around today and see if I can see any tree that it struck. Overall, it was a pretty scary incident. I’m just really glad that it only burned outlets and not any of my stuff!

I love it when the weather man is actually correct. Yesterday was an incredibly beautiful day so I took off from work and took a little road trip. We went up to Franklin, KY then across to Scottsville, down through Red Boiling Springs, then down past Cordell Hull Lake and Dam (where I took a few pictures),
and then back home via interstate from Carthage. The Cordell Hull overlook was really cool, and we stopped for a while to rest, but the coolest rest stop was in… well the middle of nowhere beside this little church. We were ready for a break and the side of the church lot had two huge oak trees on it and lots of shade next to a gravel parking lot that really wasn’t much gravel anymore since the grass had kind of taken over. Ended up sitting under the tree for a bit, and while we were chillin’ (all laid out in the grass) a car horn starts honking as it passes… weird since that’s usually a sign that somebody knows you and we shouldn’t have known anybody out there, so I sit up to see the back end of a gold wing trailer and another Gold Wing behind that who also tooted their horn and waved, just saying howdy. It’s almost like a club when you’re on a bike; other riders are usually very friendly and helpful and everybody waves.
We did right at 250 miles for the trip, but by the time the getting to and from the rendezvous point is added I put on about 300 miles yesterday. This morning I’m riding with another friend, but I don’t know exactly where we’re going yet, maybe ride the Natchez Trace. Can’t be out too late though, ’cause I’ve got a date this evening! We’re going to see the Gabe Dixon Band open for Jamie Cullum at TPAC, now I need to get the meal part worked out… Talk about procrastination in planning! All this after this morning’s Political Breakfast with the District 17 folks, I guess you could say I’m a bit busy? Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, or so I hear, so if that’s true I shouldn’t be constructing anything evil in the near future.

I finally completed the installation of my new GPS mount onto my motorcycle. Thanks to my Sis’ for the early birthday present. I took several of the pictures the other day in the daylight, but it’s been so hot I’ve just stayed inside and only gone out at night. It’s 10pm here and it’s still 88F and 60% humidity out, freakin’ oppressively hot to me! I just finished up the install and the final pictures are with the flash, but I tried not to make it too awful. Here’s the finished product:

Thanks to dad’s suggestion, I only drilled one hole and used one of the existing mounting holes, which made it a much more simple ordeal. I used drilled out brass nuts as standoffs to support the plastic and 1.5″ stainless steel screws to do the attachment. Also used some loc-tite thread locker to make sure those buggers don’t rattle out unintentionally. Now to finish the power cable… Right now, the forcast for this weekend is looking fantastic with a high on Saturday of only 89. I feel a day-long road trip coming on.
Oh, and I like the integration of flickr and wordpress and I can’t stand hitting limits of free services after only 2 days, so I’m now a paying flickr member! I have UNLIMITED bandwidth, which means I have no excuse for not posting lots of boring pictures. I think I’ll start with this one:

OK, enough for tonight, I need to update some other pages on the site and prepare myself to mow the yard in the morning.

Ok, well I found out for sure last night that I am not going to Alaska due to a lack of a job offer. I’m still soaking it in, but I think I’m pretty much relieved. That means I’ll get to do a bunch of stuff ’round middle TN with a lot of my new friends! I won’t get to go to AK and hang out with the bears and the hippie transient workers, but it could be a whole lot worse than just staying here. Anyway, today we’ve had storms, hail & tornadoes, but so far I’ve not been called in to work. I selfishly want to work for the money (not the satisfaction of getting people’s lights back on, although that’s a nice bonus) so I can hurry up and pay off my new motorcycle and watch my credit score soar!

Also this evening, I told a few of the necessary people that I won’t be coming back to church. I’ve finally had it with the small-town, do-nothing (or very very little), legalistic crap. I’ve got to find some place a bit less dead, or I’m going to shrivel up and die inside too.

I think I’ll go update my website homepage to include this blog now. Seems like all is working well and I guess I’m ready to update this thing on at least some sort of regular basis, probably every other day or so. Hopefully they’ll finish the new interface for uploading pictures on the website soon so I can start making links and such in here to photos I take without having to create a new web page and format everything with indexes and such.