Thursday, August 14, 2014

Update on Progress

My last post on July 6 heralded the delivery of my Shouse and Shedroom. I was absolutely delighted to get started converting them into my home. I dug in and got to work right away, which I will be blogging about soon. I just wanted to pop in today to fill you in on why it has been so long since I last posted.

I live in the sticks, as I have stated before. In the sticks I have no 4g wireless service. In fact, I cannot even get data where I live. This will not be a problem at the end of this month when my internet, cable, and phone lines are installed, but for now it is a HUGE limitation.



I stopped in at my local T-Mobile store to pitch a fit. Seriously, I am only one hour east of Oklahoma City. How can there not be 4g there by now? To my delight they informed me that Shawnee (hometown of Brad Pitt), a town about 20 miles away will be upgraded to 4g in December and then they would be moving east toward Paden. That works for me! Yay! Paden is about 15 miles east of my property, so I will be able to get 4g on my way to work or when I go into town to shop or eat. That means I will be able to update this blog and upload my podcasts a whole lot easier and much more frequently!

While I was in T-Mobile I bought the iPhone 5S and an iPad Air tablet. I love them both! I, to my relief, am able to send and receive texts from my land now. The Samsung Galaxy failed to do even that. The iPhone battery seems to last MUCH longer and that makes me happy as well.

I have had a couple of other setbacks beyond just communication issues. To give you a small taste of the struggles I have encountered:My cat, Helen Keller disappeared, my dog, Tarocchi, was hit by a car and killed, I started a new job which requires travel, it has gotten very hot and humid here making physical work difficult, I had to buy 125 feet of service cable (expensive!) to connect the house to the power pole, I had to dig a 125 foot trench to bury that power line from the pole to the house, had a mouse in the house, something died under one of my buildings and the smell was unbelievable, and I had an infestation of scorpions in the Shedroom (nothing will creep you out more than having a scorpion drop on you in the middle of the night. Ugh!). It has been challenging, to say the least, but I am plugging away. I will not give up or quit. I am happy to report I have electricity and air conditioning now! I will be telling you more about my challenges and how I overcame them in future posts.

I started my new job on June 23rd and it has been wonderful. I love my new job and the folks I work with are amazing. I have been in training which requires me to travel on business two weeks out of each month. I am not complaining at all because they put me up in a nice hotel with cold a/c, free beer, and a super comfortable bed. I am actually updating this blog from the hotel bar!

Thank you for continuing to be interested in my adventure despite the sporadic posts. I will have internet, cable, and telephone installed this month so updates will become much more regular again and the floodgates of photos and information will ensue. I also will begin making how-to and update videos for Youtube, which I am excited about. I will show you in actual practice, good or bad, not just tell you things I have read about or want to do someday . I think the best teacher is example and I will make mistakes and learn from them so you, dear reader, don't have to.

Thanks for stopping by the ranch. Have a fantastic day!