Woke up at 9:10. Actually, I was in and out of sleep for the previous couple of hours. The thunder was just ridiculous! I had the sound of rain, repeated thunder, and the constant noise of my sump pump just a few feet DIRECTLY below my head. But I finally got up to my alarm at 9:10. I still didn't have any milk, so breakfast consisted of Grandma's left-over apple pie from last Thursday and water. Honestly, not a bad breakfast, but I'm eager to get back to my milk and cereal routine!
I headed out to the ranch after taking a shower. Jobu and I planned to finish the hay feeder today. And my oh my the rain!!! Before I left, the estimate for Springfield at 9:30 was 4.1 inches in the past 24 hours! We went from 2 weeks without ANY rain to 4 inches in a day! What a state. So anyway, I arrived at the ranch, grabbed a coffee, then checked out the latches that Jobu had bought last night. They weren't going to work. So we headed to the lumber store in Pawnee. What a store! It's the first time I've ever been there. It was basically three stores' worth of goods crammed into one. Reminded me of an OLD hardware store where the items are floor to ceiling, and you have to ask for help! The offices were right there in the store, too! Out in the open! Kind of neat, kind of crazy! Receipts were all done by hand, too!
We grabbed the parts and headed back to the ranch. We ended up finishing the hay feeder today. I'm impressed! The final details were pretty time-consuming (the latches, cutting exposed nails, etc.), but we took it out to the paddock to test it out. And the horses were all over it!!! It was instant gratification. They acted like they knew exactly what they were doing. It seemed to work well, too. We'll probably tweak the next one to catch more hay, but they were eating out of it just like they should! It was pretty sweet fulfillment.
I headed home at 3:00 to work on my house! I started sanding the mud from yesterday. What a pain in the butt!!! It's a fairly simple process, but it's kind of annoying! I had quite a mess, too. I was in the back of my garage where it was ridiculously hot, and the dust just hovered in the air. I tried to cover up my mouth and nose with my shirt, but it was just too hot! Dad came by after work around 4:35 to help me relocate an outlet. The previous owner literally just sent a wire down the outside wall and installed an outlet outside the wall. Pretty tacky. So I wanted it in the wall. Well, what I thought would literally take 20 minutes ended up being much longer. I had to go up in the attic to feed him the wire, but I had lots of wood in the way, it was difficult to get to, it was around 115 degrees up there, and I didn't have a long-enough drill bit. All that made for some pretty frustrating minutes. I was on my side trying to drill a hole into a place I couldn't see, and I was never getting all the way through. We had to scrub the mission. So he left around 5:30. This should have been soooooooooo simple. Nothing is ever easy.
I finished sanding the wall. What a pain! I then took a shower and cleaned my house for a guest that night. Alyssa was coming over at 7 o'clock. I was pretty hungry, though, and I didn't really have much food, so I made a quick run to McDonald's. A hamburger and a sweet tea did the trick. I came back and watched "The Ultimate Gift" with Alyssa. Decent flick. We then talked and caught up with each other. Pretty enjoyable. She left around 11:00.
I then hopped on the internet where I learned fairly late that I needed to get some work done!!! Frankly, it wasn't necessarily "learned" as much as "Holy crap, I've been puttin' this off, and the date is almost here!!!" In order to keep my flight instructor certificate, I have to have recurrent training every two years. I can either take a week-end course (expensive) or take the courses online (cheaper). I opted to take the online course. But my certificate expires July 31!!! So I really don't have much time.
I went ahead and forked over the $125 for the course and started Lesson 1. I checked it out, and I have to take 8 quizzes in order to pass. But before I'm allowed to take each quiz, I have to read several pages worth of material...AND the kicker is I have to have the browser open for 100 minutes before I take that quiz. What a pain in the butt!!! So I have to have 800 minutes worth of "studying" over the next few days. I'm not too thrilled about it. It's just a hoop I have to jump through. But it's FOOLISH to ever let me instructor certificates expire. That would just be devastating...and stupid!!!
So I started one of the lessons just after midnight. I didn't fully finish it, as I ended up talking to someone and wasting time. A lot of time. I ended up going to bed at 3:45...about 3 hours later than expected.
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