"2006 Vacation: Day 3"

This is blog post No.295, so just 5 more to go until the 300th.




Tomorrow morning I go for an accessment and math tests for a job at a local factory that's opening in this town soon, which will produce mayo and mayo packages for restaurants. It's not that the current job I've held for the past 6+ years isn't tollerable, but after this length of time I've gotten as much pay per hour that anyone can make there, plus it doesn't have medical benefits. The mayo plant does have both health and dental insurance for employees, is within 3 miles of my house, and even the lowest of positions there pays nearly $2. more per hour than I currently make.

There's about ten different positions employees can work in in this new plant, and I'm sure that I'm suitable for at least one of them (so, wish me luck!)

And today on this the 3rd. day of my vacation, I repaired the window sill in the front of the house under the largest window. It was much more of a job than I figured once I got into seeing what needed to be done. The wood had totally rotted away; so much so, that I didn't have anything for either long screws or nails to grab into, so I had to remove the flashing and all of the old ledge wood and completely replace that, plus keeling the wood, nailing it into position, replacing the flashing, and then sealing any openings with calking. This along took a good two hours to accomplish.

Then the corner of the old shop roof needed to be nailed back down, so I used long screws on that as well, and scraped down and repainted the wood under that.

Then I touched back up on areas that looked weak from yesterday's painting, scrubbed and cleaned off other areas, some of which will need repainting, and others now "okay" from the cleaning. Then I scraped off the old paint under the front door and repainted it, and, finally, up on the roof to prepare the last bit I needed before repainting the metal.

This required scraping and repainting all of the wood areas first, then recleaning off the roof so that I could put down the new coat of hunter-green paint (tomorrow's task if the predicted rain doesn't move into this area).

I found the paint I needed at Wallyworld, a place I don't care to personally buy from, but it was indeed so much cheaper than a local hardware store was asking for it. At a "Tru-Value" hardware locally, the cost was $26.99 per gallon. At Wal-Mart I paid $11.00. (That's $17. I save by buying it there; what a mark-up these locals make when it's the only hardware store in a one-horse town.)

And outside of that about the only thing I've done was go by and pick up 4 comics I told a local dealer I'd take: 4 silver-age misc. issues of Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery (published by Gold Key). Interesting issues; one of which had a nice BK photo cover, and featuring art by the like of Reed Crandall, Alex Toth, Don Heck, Frank Thorne and others.

We have yet to receive the payment from the insurance for the tornado damages, still, and that's getting pretty old since I'd like to get that vinyl siding and windows repaired. For house insurance this next time we definately won't be buying from the same local firm.