hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

Just wanted to say the boss did confirm today he's giving me a raise. How much that will be, I have no idea, but I hope it's a big step because I could really use the boost right now!!!!! It won't hit until the NEXT pay check, though, so I have to wait until the end of the month to find out!

CONGRATS! That's awesome - happy for you!

Congrats! That sounds really awesome for you!

Thanks ladies! I'm relieved!!
The BF got his workbench set up in the shed, so now there is a place to put things as we organize stuff, and a place to work on to get pieces set up to hang on the wall and things like that. So that's a tiny bit of progress!
He also called the bank yesterday and got approved for a 20,000 loan for a new (to him) vehicle, more than likely a pickup truck. I'm proud of him that he is approved for so much. It would put the payments at about $305/month if he used that much. He told them no money down, but he does have 3000 stashed from selling the Jeep that he will put towards all of that. And he's hoping to find something that is less than 20,000 in the first place. So we'll see what happens. I'm really hoping he finds something for a LOT less, but we'll see what happens.
The guy is supposed to stop by tonight to look at the records, we'll see if we can still do it, there's supposed to be storms in the forecast, so I hope that they aren't bad. I hope he can find a few that are worth something to him, but we'll see. I'll just be glad to have them out of the house! Whatever he doesn't want (which I'm expecting to be most of it) I'll sell to my coworker's husband, and she'll be up in the office on Monday so I can get them all out of the house then. I'm really looking forward to that! I hope this guy wants the record player, too, but somehow I'm doubting that he will. We'll see anyway.
Not much else happening. We're going to work on GH's place and TW's place this weekend, so that will be good to get that all wrapped up and finished. I'm so ready to be done with that project. I just hope it doesn't take the entire weekend, but I expect that it will because sometimes the BF moves more slowly than I think he should. He has to work on Saturday morning, and I've got to run down to HR's anyway and do the chores there. I'll talk to him about seeing if he can show me how to run the machine he drops off so that I could in theory head to GH's and get started moving loads of stone dust before he gets off of work. I'm just going to be glad to collect the checks for all this work so I can get some bills paid in my business!! Plus I owe myself and the BF some money that falls under the "personal loan" category, so hopefully I can get that paid back because it sure would be nice to use that to pay off some bills!
So things are going, hopefully they keep moving in the right direction. He and I had a bit of a heart to heart last night about how we've been eating and things we can do to eat better. While we've been cooking at home it's been quite a bit of convenience food, so it's better than eating out, but it's not all that good for either of us. So we need to make some changes. And then we need to stick with them.

You're busy, busy, busy - as usual! Hope boyfriend finds a good deal on a truck and that the fella coming to look at the records finds some treasures!

maybe that guy coming to look at the records will want the record player-- maybe for parts at least?

Record players are back to being an in thing again. They are actually making records again - not many but some.

Yeah, the audiophiles claim they can tell the difference between the digital recordings and analog (ie: records or tape)

Well, records turned out to be not worth anything. I'm sad for the guy that he came all the way, but at least now I know they're not worth anything. In the guy's words "the old man was whiter than white!" Apparently everything that he had was all very normal basic white people music, so it's so common it's not worth anything. I thought it was hilarious. So now I'll check with my coworker's husband and see if he wants any of it. The guy did comment that the tax write off for donating records to somewhere like goodwill is actually really high (Like $2 or $3 per record!) and since we have almost 300 between the 78's and the 45's that's a LOT for a write off. So whatever the coworker's husband doesn't want we'll donate and hopefully at least get a pretty good write off. They'll probably be thrown away by goodwill, but at that point I don't really care! So it was a bust, but still not a total loss. Now I just need to get them moved along to the next phase so that they can get out of the house! The guy wasn't interested in the record player at all, so I don't know what I'm going to do with it now. The arm is broken on it, anyway, so I'll either just take it to goodwill or try to freecycle it, or if all else fails I'll trash it. We'll see what the BF thinks. I'm ready for this stuff to not be in the house anymore!
I did manage to sell the tent, finally. A SUPER sweet lady bought it so that they can use it for the party they're having for her grandmother's 95th birthday party. I'm so glad that she got it, she was really, really appreciative!
Saturday we got up and I headed to HR's to get chores done, and the BF headed to work. I left HR's and went to GH's and he met me there to drop off a bobcat. He gave me the crash course in running it, and left to go finish the work he had to do that day and away I went in the bobcat. I noticed that the bucket wasn't sitting level on the ground, and that it seemed to be struggling to pick up a load, and I texted the BF about it. He said he'd look at it when he got there. So I just kept moving little half bucket loads, and did a LOT anyway. I stopped and raked out most of what I had dumped, and FINALLY the BF got there after 12, and brought lunch. Once we finished eating we got started again. The BF discovered that one of the cylinders was not working on the bobcat, so it was essentially trying to lift with only half of the machine. No wonder it wasn't working. He worked to smooth out what I had moved, and then got started in the barn yard scraping up all the dirt that had washed it's way in front of the barn over the years. At first we couldn't get it to do anything, and finally he was able to make some headway. We got most of it scraped up, and then moved out and piled up at least. At that point the BF said the machine wasn't really lifting at all, so there was no way we were going to get the rest of the stone dust moved. We decided to call it a day, and stop there. We got cleaned up and I left to go meet the lady getting the tent, and then headed to HR's to do evening chores. The BF headed to Home Depot to return the extra shingles and then went home and started dinner. We got in the shower after dinner and crashed!
Sunday morning I had to head to the barn, and HR's, so I didn't get back home until noon. The BF got the garden tools organized in the shed, so they are now all hanging on the wall in a place! I'm so happy they have a home now and they're not all sitting in front of the shed anymore! When I got home we ate lunch, and then I went over to the neighbor's to go through more of her clothes that they were giving me. The BF mowed the grass since it hadn't been done in a couple weeks (oops). We went down to take care of Cowboy and Coyote after that, and then grabbed dinner and went grocery shopping since I hadn't done that a while either. Got back way too late and pretty much crashed.
So sort of productive weekend, but not quite everything that I wanted to do. I really wanted to finish up that work for GH and TW, but I texted KD to find out if we could use his loader, and his is broken, too. So we'll have to try again next weekend. The good news is that the weather this week looks like it's going to be gorgeous and no rain, so we should be able to finish it up next weekend easily. Then I can get paid!!
This week I just hope that I have enough energy that I can get lots done in the house so we don't have much to do on the weekend. I think I'm going to decorate for fall this week, too. I'm ready for it!