Living the life most people just dream about~

After rolling out extra early today and going up for a long day of painting… we finished one big segment of fence up at Blues…. damn it looks nice~! Afterwards, we sat and had a couple of drinks…… OH Okay…. 3 or 4 drinks…… but both decided we wanted to go home and get a shower…… yes, it’s Winter here, but sitting in 85° weather, you sweat….. yea, yea, yea, poor pitiful us ;-). We were dirty and tired and headed back for some A/C and a shower. My Bride was in the mood for a steak – so we agreed to head back up for a steak after 5:00 – standard fare for Blues on a Thursday – steak after 5:00. We had a drink and my bride got her steak – and even by my standards was a damn fine looking [and tasting] steak. I [believe it or not] didn’t have much of an appetite – so I opted to drink my dinner. I did after all have me a mighty fine Turkey Bacon Ranch sammich for lunch~! The night quickly evolved into a typical night at Blues — good friends, good music ( JJ – Jason Jones – the guy that does the killer Johnny Cash) was the entertainment for the evening. Didn’t take long at all before Eddy was calling last call and it was time to pay the bill and get the hell out~!! Met a new friend tonight – Karen, retired Air Force and I spent most of the evening rehashing a lot of things most people would find boring – but it’s nice to talk the same “language” to someone who understands it.

Back here now….. we have decided to take some time off from painting at Blues….. we’re taking tomorrow and the weekend off to sleep in, have a big breakfast and take it easy — we are retired after all~! We are gonna spend a day or two helping a dear friend get her office fixed up the way she wants…. so will probably be a week before we get back to painting up at Blues again. We have had a request added to the painting detail which will add probably add an extra day -or two – but really looking forward to it. I love working around that place to help spruce it back up. So I’m gonna quit here, share the pictures I’ve got from today and we’ll see what tomorrow brings~~~~~

Good Night Ya’ll # # # # # # # # Thankx for stopping in~!

Not sure what brought on that greeting – but it popped into my head just as I started writing~~~ It’s weird and wonderful [and sometimes scary] the things that bounce around in my head sometimes….. would probably make a pretty interesting movie~!

Another couple of days of painting up at Blues….. we wrapped up at ‘opening’ time yesterday, had a couple of drinks and then took off across island to pick up some more paint. While Angie did that – I sat in the Social Security office with my packet of paperwork, patiently waiting my turn at the window. The whole experience turned out to be actually a lot better than I expected. The whole thing only took an hour – which is down right friggin’ amazing for island time – and as far I as know – I am now qualified to draw my Social Security~! Oh Yay happy day. Supposed to get my first check on or about the 2nd of May~! When that happens – for the first time since we retired (May 2017) – we will be bringing in almost as much as we’re currently putting out…. almost! Which means the savings we’re currently drawing right now to make up income differences – should almost come to a stop – almost. We ran up a couple of credit cards during our first 4 months here to get by – and soon as I get them paid off again – we should in pretty good shape~! Lots of if’s , and almosts – but I’m excited. With more paint in hand and paperwork all taken care of – we stopped back at Blues for some lunch and drinks. One of the lunch specials was a Blues Coney Dog….. my goodness – a Quarter pound hot dog topped with shredded pork, onions, sauerkraut and cheese……Woooo-Dogggy~! Now that was a sammich~!! We hung out until about 3:00 when we had to get home, get a shower and head out to the East end to a friends house who had invited us for a big dinner. We arrived promptly at 6:00 and had a wonderful big Italian dinner. Drinks afterwards with some real good folks. Bellies full and another day of painting waiting on us, we finally made the 30 minute drive back to the condo. It was well after 10:00 by the time we got here – and I was just too full and too tired to try and write anything ….. so I hope you understand~ I didn’t even get on FB………..

Up again early this morning to resume painting. I started my day off up there by filling DD up to the brim with junk that Jim wanted hauled off. In hind sight – I guess I should have taken a picture of the truck loaded up like that. I looked like Fred Sanford pulling out of there. Wound up having to take it all the over to next to the airport to get rid of it – but got ‘er done. Came back and went right into painting. Slowly but surely working our way around the yard. Taking a lot more time to get it done than I thought – but when you can only work 3 hours or so a day – it ain’t gonna be quick – but it’s sure gonna be pretty~! Gonna sign off and try and get into bed early for another early day tomorrow.

Good Night Ya’ll . . . . . . . Thankx for stopping in~!

I had mentioned a little while back we were trying to get the fence up at Blues painted. We had got started on it, but then a very busy week kicked in and we had to leave it set. Finally got back to it today. Rolled out of the sack extra early in order to get our morning stuff done so we could be up there by 07:00. By the way – for us that requires us being up by 05:30 or earlier. We got up there shortly after 07:00 and set in immediately to work. I’m happy to say I finally finished the outside of the big fence. I still have the inside to do, but it shouldn’t be near as hard or take as long, because I have already sealed it and painted the sides of all the slats. The rest of the fence is going to be time consuming. Not real hard, just tedious because the slats are much narrower and a lot more of them. Barring rain in the morning – we will be back up there bright and early.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago, that I signed up for my Social Security and that now they feel the need for me to prove I’m me and that I ‘deserve’ my money. I had my youngest Daughter send me my birth certificate, my certified Report of Birth Abroad (with fancy embossed ribbon and signed by Secretary of State [then] Mr. Edmund Muskie… actually it looks like it was signed by the Authentication Officer because their signatures look a lot a like~! ) and several other pieces of paperwork requested. It got here just as I sat down to write this. As about par for the course – I received a reminder email from Social Security this morning saying if I did not have those documents, a pass port would suffice. I guess it’s a good thing you cannot reach through an email~~ but I have all I need now [I hope] to satisfy the Social Security folks and they approve my application………. it just ain’t right~! That’s really about it for today…. kind of a slow news day, so I’ll sign off with a couple of pictures from today and some more of my dive pictures.

Good Night Ya’ll > > > > > > > Thankx for stopping in~!

Well I got to make my 2 tank dive today~! It wasn’t to the two dive sites I was told it was going to be at – but I got to make two dives, from a boat no less~! So definitely not complaining. As a rule, you have very little surface swimming doing a boat dive as opposed to most shore dives where you surface swim out to a drop down point, do your dive, then swim all the way back in. Where with a boat, you drop off the boat into the dive site, do your dive looking around, then pop up right back at the boat…… That is why I like boat dives….. a whole lot less kicking~! I have been to the first site we went to and there were some real bad memories of it [it had an ugly strong current that day that I dove it and I didn’t get to do much of anything other than swim – hard!] but I bailed in hoping for the best. Much, much, much better~! Really good visibility and almost no current what-so-ever~! Lots of coral, a turtle, 2 sting rays… nice dive~! Wrapped the dive up after 48 minutes loaded back into the boat and headed to our next dive site. A new one for me and I was looking forward to it. We waited the appropriate amount of time to let the nitrogen seep from our bodies before gearing back up and going back down. Visibility had dropped off some and there was a mild current – but nothing bad. Got some real good pictures of a massive Lobster. Got a little bit of video of him as well, but you’ll have to go to FB to see it as I still haven’t figured out what the deal is with this two-bit web site. Second dive was not as enjoyable for me as the first one, but it was still a fun dive – and like usual, cannot wait for the next one~! Finally back at the pier, gear unloaded, rinsed off and headed back to mid island to see my Queen. I put my gear up, took a shower to rinse the salt off and settled in with a drink to watch some TV.

We finished up Season 6 of Mountain Men, just to find out they have not released Season 7 yet……. bastards 🙁 Now we have to come up with something else to numb our minds with. We wound up watching a movie….. pretty good one called Mud – it stars Matthew McConahey (?) and Reese Witherspoon. Pretty good movie – I recommend it if you haven’t seen it.

I am having some kind of issue with this website (besides the video piece) – it was acting weird last night and doing it again tonight… and heard from a couple of folks saying they had a hard time getting into it – so bear with me – I’ll get it figured out.

Good Night Ya’ll ” ” ” ” ” ” ” Thankx for stopping in~!

Rolled outta the ole sack this morning feeling like a million dollars…. well….. okay, maybe not a million dollars but pretty friggin’ good for an old, fat, outta shape dude that currently has the world by the short hairs~! My Queen slept in a little bit as she battles that nasty ole cough that seems to have taken the island by storm. Lots of big gray nasty looking clouds out there with a couple of drizzles, but by the 3rd cigarette, they were gone and we have that beautiful sunshine lighting up the sky~!

My Bride finally came stumbling out looking like she had been rode hard and put up wet……. I told her my plans for the day and she [thankfully] opted to stay at the condo and take it easy and hopefully nap a bit. A smidge before 09:00 – I headed out the door for the West end of the island to check in with a friend that needs some carpentry type work done. Her husband, having to run the 2nd part of their business (and a Jar head that don’t know a hammer from a RPG) agreed to get a ‘professional’ to help with their needed project. They couldn’t find a professional, so ask me to look at it…. LOL 😉 J/K – two great people that I am happy to help out. I made the 30+ minute drive out to their end of the island, and spent almost an hour discussing the finer points of what they want done (and 3 other possible projects). All that settled, I headed back to mid island toward my Queen and to do some grocery shopping. She was worried that I had to do the shopping… Bless her heart — I only did 99.99% of the shopping for 17 years before we retired….. so I think I got it~! I stopped, did the shopping [successfully] and came on home without issue. Groceries unloaded, I expressed the need to run out to our local Home Depot store….. arguably the worst excuse for a ‘home improvement’ store I have ever been to in my LIFE~! I picked up a couple small containers of nails and screws that I knew I would need and a couple of tubes of liquid nails…. searching the other stuff I wanted was just a PHENOMINAL waste of my time….. so I headed back to the condo – jumped on Amazon and my stuff should be here Wednesday….. which should work out perfect as I want to get our Blues project done by then…. To celebrate, we went up to [said] Blues for drinks and a bite to eat…… We both had an open face smoked turkey sammich with smashed taters…. I had beans and rice as a side and OMG was it good~!!

We shut Blues down and now back at the condo safe and sound. I have caught up on around 18 texts (my Squirt is Killin’  it at gymnastics competition… AND – I have manage to wrangle my a$$ into a 2 tank BOAT dive tomorrow at 2 dive sites I have been trying to get to since we have been on the island…… AND – I’m getting both dives for 50 bucks~! AWESOME~!!!! Which means lots of underwater pictures for you all~! So with that, since I’m already over limit~~~~~~~~

Good Night Ya’ll > > > > > > > Thankx for stopping in~!!

Didn’t get near the sleep I was hoping for last night…. I think maybe I was too tired. Woke up fairly early to heavy gray clouds, wind and rain. Lots of it and it wasn’t even being called for. It hung in for the better part of the day, which was a really good excuse to sit, eat and watch TV. Which is exactly what we did the bulk of the day. I’m hoping for a better nights sleep tonight – as I’m heading out to the West end of the island tomorrow to look at a friends shop. She is needing some carpentry work done and I’m gonna see what I can get done for her. So – short and sweet tonight with some pictures from the past~

Good night Ya’ll _ _ _ _ _ _ Thankx for stopping in~!

Sorry you all… but I am just too pooped to pop (as my Dad always said) – we just got back from Blues acting as Bar Backs for them… yea, yea, yea…. I know I called it beer back last night….. but we showed up at 3:00 as requested and it was admittedly really slow until about 4:45…. from then on out, it was flat out for us until shortly after 8:00….. but we kept the fridges full of ice cold beer, the hooch shelf stocked with hooch and whatever else the 2 bartenders (Eddy & Tim) needed. We kept trash cans emptied, tables cleaned off and anything else needed done. Finally ran everybody off by 8:30, as we emptied trash and butt cans and restocked fridges that need it. With everybody gone but staff [and us] – we had a couple of drinks and discussed the where-with-alls of the evening…. what a night. I did managed to pop off a couple of pictures before it got just crazy busy….. and that’s all I’m gonna share with you tonight. Pretty sure there will be a lot of stuff on FB about it if you care to venture there…. but right now, I want a nice cool shower, some Ibuprofen and a little bit of sleep~~ So I bid you a good evening~~~~

Good night Ya’ll * * * * * * Thankx for stopping in~!

I left you mid conversation yesterday about our insurance being cancelled. The young lady I was speaking with said she thought she should escalate my case…… well no $hit~! I didn’t say those exact words to her but that is what I was thinking. Another 30+ minutes and I was mostly comfortable with the fact our ‘case’ would be looked into. I was promised a follow up call “either way” to let me know how it was going. This old fat boy ain’t holding his breath~! Now I needed to address the issue of an invoice I got from our on-line pharmacy for some maintenance medication we have received. I have that account set up the same way, to debit the cost every time a medication is sent. Guess what ??? Yup – because our insurance had been cancelled, so was our subscription to this pharmacy…… and because the subscription had been cancelled… they could no longer debit my account for payment AND would I like to know if I want to pay off my balance due on the account? No amount of explaining what had happened would suffice – so I paid my bill with a direct payment and was assured, as soon as our health insurance was re-instated – everything with prescriptions would be hunkey-dory~! (Not their choice of words) 😉 When you are well over 60 years old, living in a place where medical care is ‘sketchy’ at best and discover that all of your insurances are “gone” — is kind of a tough spot to get through~! We are keeping the faith though and hoping for the best. On a positive note – it appears the medicine the Doc prescribed, is helping, as my Queen didn’t cough near as much last night and we both got a fairly decent nights sleep for a change~! Now we wait to hear back from somebody…. anybody really, just to let me know that all those friggin’ conversations were not in vain and we will eventually have health insurance again~! Stayed tuned~~~

I had promised a friend to help him out with some work he needed done kind of urgently. He needed my back and my truck to relocate a bunch of his equipment from a job site. Because I went to bed reasonably early and got a decent nights sleep – I was up by 05:45 and raring to go. Is that how you spell raring? Auto correct says yes – but it don’t look right. I showed promptly at 08:30 at the job site (as requested) and for the next 6+ hours, loaded my truck full of tools and stuff, transported them across island to a storage container, unloaded them and went back for more. 4 times. I had some help from a friend who did everything she could and made my work much more tolerable. Finally finished, I swung out past the Post Office and picked up a couple of large packages waiting for me and finally back at the condo….. My Queen made me a nice strong drink and we sat down to enjoy each others company and talk about our day.

I wanted to attend a meeting this evening on an organization that deals with handicapped people interested in SCUBA diving – but I was just too worn out to do it, so I will catch up with the organizer at a later date to see if I can be of assistance, as it is something I am really interested in, but now have so many obligations I need to be careful what I commit to. Tomorrow looks to be a long day as we are pulling duty as Beer-Backs up at Blues. They have entertainment that usually proves to be a very large draw of people and we’re gonna help to ensure the event goes off smoothly. More random pix for you tonight~~

Good Night Ya’ll = = = = = = Thankx for stopping in~!

After sleeping in until almost 07:00 – woke up to a gorgeous morning here on our beautiful island……. it’s a shame the rest of the day went basically straight to $h*t for me……… We left out a little bit after 08:00, dropped off a whole bunch of laundry (almost 3 weeks worth plus beach towels and linens) and headed out to the Tamarind Beach Resort – that hosts the Deep End restaurant for our Fish With A Vet meeting. REALLY low attendance as we started preparing for our next event coming up, our version of the GONG show to celebrate the 78th anniversary of the USO. NO where near as organized as I would like it to be – but it is starting to take shape (kinda-somewhat)…. but we’ll get through it, one way or the other. It is for a good cause, and history has shown [so far] that everyone has a good time, whether there are 10 people or a 100. Finally got away from there and stopped in at a local hardware store looking for some outdoor lights…. didn’t find what we were looking for, so I think I’m just gonna Amazon it instead of messing with that half-a$$ Home Depot we have here on the island…… Next stop was to find a place to get my Queen on the path of getting healed up. We cut across island to the only Urgent Care Center that I know of on the island. She signed in and we waited, and waited…. then waited a little more. Slightly over an hour waiting, we were called up to be informed that we didn’t have insurance. Say What ? UH-UMmmm – no that’s not right…. please check it again….. Amazingly they made several calls to find out that our policy was cancelled on 12-31-18. Dammit Emmit~! Still wanting to get my Bride healed up — I paid the $200.00 ‘no-insurance’ fee and went back to waiting…. another hour, she finally got called in to see the Doc. Another hour and another $100.00 in medicine, because our prescription service was cancelled too – we were on the road again. Do you get the sense where my frustration is starting to come from ??? Hold on – it gets better… 😉 A quick stop at the store and we came back to the condo for me to get on the phone (all my records and notes are here in the desk) It took another hour of crappy phone service and talking with people who supposedly was speaking English, to find out that because they didn’t get their premium payment, they cancelled the insurance…… HUH ??? Wait a minute… the premium is auto-debited from my checking account~! Oh yes sir – they didn’t pull it. What? How come ? It doesn’t say here, we suspect there was a glitch in the ACH system. SOOooooo, you all botch the payment and I lose my insurance…. don’t hardly seem right does it? No sir it doesn’t, I think maybe I need to escalate your case. Ya think ???

There is so much more to this – and I’m already at my limit – so I think I’m gonna quit for tonight….. I’m starting to get ‘riled’ again and I don’t think my Queen wants me ‘riled’ again….. so – some random pictures for you since I didn’t take any new ones today~~

Good night Ya’ll ……….. Thankx for stopping in~!

Walked out bright and early to what looked like impending rain showers this morning. Heavy gray clouds that looked like they was going to open up any minute. Suspecting probably not more than a passing shower, but just enough to get everything good and wet, I opted to cancel painting up at Blues and let my Queen sleep in. She has been dealing with a nasty cough this past week or so and not getting a heckva lot of sleep and I figured she needed as much rest as she could get. She made a doctors appointment, but it was for 10 days after she called, so tomorrow we are going to the MEC to see if we can get in there. One of the huge downsides of living on this island and probably the number one reasons folks move back to the mainland. Decent medical care here is really hard to find or get and as the transplants here start requiring a lot of medical care, they sell off everything and move back to the land of plenty. So, we’re gonna see what the MEC here offers so we don’t have to wait until the end of the week for Angie’s appointment.

Another day of TV and lounging and I must confess it felt a lot better than it probably should have – but I’m ready to get up and moving now. I get sore and a nasty head ache from sitting for those long periods of time. (Sure does feel good for a while though) 😉 The rain never happened [this morning] but we had a heckva strong little squall blow through around noon. We didn’t even try to stay up for the eclipse last night. I’m sure it was pretty, just not enough to keep us up. Nothing really noteworthy for the rest of the day – so I’m signing off again. Busier day tomorrow with a Fish With A Vet meeting in the morning, going to the MEC, Home Depot and laundry……… and maybe couch time in the afternoon 😉

Good night Ya’ll – – – – – Thankx for stopping in~!