Life on the prairie

What's been going?  I've been lax about blogging because, quite frankly, I'm very disillusioned with social media lately.  Don't get me wrong, I love staying connected with friends and family, but only if they're interactive participants who don't used social media as their platform for hatred and intolerance.  I tell you, social media really shows what people are like on the inside behind their fake facades.

But I'm going to keep on keeping on with what I like to do--share a little bit about myself, what's happening in my life, and what makes me happy.

My little homestead on the prairie makes me happy even though there is constantly work to do.  This year was the year to have the house repainted.

Have you had your house repainted lately?  Let me tell you, it is expensive.  Ours is just a simple little one story house so I can't imagine what the big houses have to pay.  We thought briefly about tackling the job ourselves, but in the end we decided to let the professions do it which was a great decision.

I made lots of calls and got several bids, some of which were outlandish.  I always wonder if they're quoting us a premium price because they don't really want to drive all the way out here for the job.

We finally went with the lowest bid that had decent online reviews.  They started by sending a crew out and gradually over the next few days it was just one guy.  I felt bad for him because painting is no easy chore.  It ended up only taking  a few days, we were lucky that the weather cooperated.

Choosing an exterior paint color is no easy task because it's a decision you may have to live with for the next ten or more years.  We made a few trips to the paint store and ended up with Sherwin William's paint--Downing Stone for the house and a sage green for the trim.  This was a step outside my comfort zone because I normally like to stay with the brown tones, but brown is really not the cool color anymore and I wanted to do more of a gray.  The downing stone is quite nice because it has a very slight hint of green in it which goes well with the trim color we chose.

I really love how it turned out.  The colors go well with our green metal roof.

The new pergola was put up last month also so we have a great place to hang out.

We also wanted out storage shed painted to match the house, but the contractor wanted an extra $800 for that job so we decided that we could handle it ourselves.  What was really nice is that there was lots of leftover paint from the house to complete this job.   

 Irv painted 90%, well may 95%, okay 99% of the painting while I was working so today I finished off the trim he didn't get done and did some touch ups.  My OCD personality really likes that it matches the house, but it doesn't look nearly as flashy as wonderfully unique my she-shed.

Speaking of my she-shed, last week Irv installed a small window air conditioner for me.  Actually, it wasn't' for me it was for the protection of the hundreds of dollars of oil paints that I've invested in.  They are not well suited to temperature extremes and since summer has finally arrived here it was time to protect them.  Above you can see what happened to my new AC last night when the hail arrived.  We even had a tornado warning.  A what warning?  This is not Oklahoma.

This morning one of my boys, Doc on the left, gave me a big scare.  I went out to feed him and he had no interest in food and would only stand in the corner hanging his head and pawing the ground--symptoms typical of colic which can be fatal in horses.  I spent about 45 minutes trying to evaluate him before deciding an emergency vet visit was needed.  I ran back to the house to grab my phone and by the time I got back these two knuckleheads where standing side by side eating out of the same bin.  I've been monitoring him every couple hours and he seems okay so I don't know what was up.  Maybe something scared him.

I'm still working on a project for my former employer.  The whole company is being reorganized.  New positions have been created, some people have left, jobs are being recreated and I'm making a lot of this happen behind the scenes.  I created a whole new Active Directory structure.  I also got to reorganize their folder structure on all the servers which has been great fun.  We're consolidating from about 25 file servers to just a handful.  I've moved folders, I've archived folders and for the most part people haven't gotten too angry when they can't find anything.  I'm also writing queries and creating dashboards for every role in the company so they can see what stage a loan is in and what needs to be done next.

Witnessing a restructure from the outside is disturbing.  People have no life in their eyes and they seem very defeated.  At least a couple times a week I have someone come in my office, close the door and sob while they tell me how unhappy they are.  I guess I'm a safe sounding board.  The last couple weeks I've worked six days a week to get this stuff accomplished.  I'll be glad when it's over!

So that's my life recently.  What's new with you?  

(Remember that interactive participant comment I made above?  A comment would be appreciated.)