Hurricane Season 2022 and We're Ready

 When we moved to Covington five years ago, there were five things high on the list of importance:  House, which we had built, Outdoor Kitchen, which we had built,  Elevator to the attic, which we built ourselves, Good doctors who were close by, and a Whole House Generator for Hurricane Season.

We could not afford the generator, so it was the last detail to happen.

Thanks to a friendly neighbor who wanted a new generator, he gave us his old one.  A 22 KW Generac that had been under a service contract the entire time he owned it, and was in excellent condition.  Considering the number of times the power is to for an extended period, you might say it has low miles on it.

All we had to do was arrange for the natural gas line to be run from the meter, and the electrical switchbox be hooked up.  Neither comes cheap, even if you can find someone to do it.  Most generator companies are so busy after Hurricane Ida that they are backed up for months to do the installation, assuming they can even get a generator.  "Backordered three to six months" is the typical response when we called.

But one day a lady posted in Facebook that her Plumber Husband was seeking some extra weekend work and is available immediately.   We called him, yes, he has experience hooking up gas to generators and can start the following weekend.

When he arrived, he happened to be one of the plumbers who plumbed our house for water and gas.

And he knew an electrician who could do the electrical work on weekends.  The electrician worked for the company that wired our house.  And he had considerable experience in and help to do the complicated wiring.

They finished up two days ago.  We now have automatic backup power that can keep everything in our house working during an outage.  We won't suffer next time.

Yes, we could have gone with a portable generator and got by quite easily, but at our ages, we just didn't want to do that .  And the timing turned out perfectly.

Now we can tackle the other things we wanted to do in our final years - relax, enjoy, and breathe normally.

I think the generator looks nice beside The Coop, one of the other priorities.

Follow-up 6-1-22

This morning my Sweetie set the generator to "Exercise" at 9:00 weekly.  It was almost 9:00 so we waited.  At 9:01.50 the generator started right up, 'exercised for exactly 5 minutes, and shut down. Three hours later we were headed out the door and the generator started back up.  We didn't even notice bu the power in our area suddenly went out.  The generator noticed it before we did, and fed the house and everything in it all the power it needed to keep life normal.

We feel very confident that we're going to be comfortable during any kind of outage.  That makes us feel good.

Glaucoma Continues To Take a Toll

 As I have reported in the past, I have vision problems.  Not only am I blind in one eye due to cataract surgery gone wrong resulting in a staph infection, but the scars from RK surgery before that are also causing unforeseen problems thirty years later.  

Add to that glaucoma with complications is making it difficult to see most of my days, and impossible to see halfway clearly the rest. I haven't driven in almost two years.  

My woodworking hobby is pretty much stopped, and cooking on my Big Green Eggs just does not have the luster it used to have.

Watching TV is out of the question.  I can't tell the characters apart.  So I just stopped trying to watch TV.

Reading books is only possible if the type is large.  Even then it takes at least twice as long to read a page, and that's on a good day.  On bad days I don't even try.

The only thing that I can use is my desktop computer.  But even with its oversize monitor, and me sitting with my face less than a foot away, I struggle to concentrate, read, and write.

Given that writing is about all I can do, I really enjoyed writing some stories for the Catahoula News Booster.  I'm told that my stories bring back a lot of old memories in some and even enlighten others about how life was back when life wasn't so modern and crazy.

It's one thing to recall the details of some of those stories, but another to edit them so they can be published in the paper.  It means reading and re-reading each story multiple times before I think it's ready to send to the Catahoula News Booster.

Of course, there's a price to pay for such 'up-close' editing - Blue Light.  Yes, and it can be harmful.

"Each color in the visible light spectrum has a different wavelength and energy level. Blue light has shorter wavelengths and higher energy than other colors. Some research shows a link between eye damage and short-wave blue light with wavelengths between 415 and 455 nanometers. Most of the light from the LEDs used in smartphones, TVs, and tablets has wavelengths between 400 and 490 nanometers.In large amounts, high-energy light from the sun -- like ultraviolet rays and blue light -- can raise your risk of eye disease. That’s caused concerns about whether blue light from digital screens is harmful. "

Because of all the damage already done to my remaining vision, I'm told I need to step away from the computer.  The more I stay away, the better off I'll be.

Well, there goes my last refuge from boredom. 

Protect your vision.  Never ever take it for granted.