Back To Work

 We've been home a week and during that time I worked 50 hours, 10 is overtime on a holiday so I'll earn about $1000 that day, now for my second week I'll work 60 hours so worked time is 110 hours plus a holiday, which for the regular holiday time I'll take as comp.

I did not plan on working so much right off the bat but its available and I'm high enough in seniority to get better shifts but honestly I enjoy every position on the dock.  Mostly I sell but traffic and plank are as easy as pie.

All this OT is due to the FIFA in Seattle; they are paying for extra people to be on the dock so I said 

SIGN ME UP!

The OT will be about 70 hours each week through July 10, by the time it's over I'll be wiped out.

Next Trip Planning

We're hoping to take another trip down to Pioche in the fall to winterize and prep for the big demo next spring, when we remove the utility room, kitchen, basement stairs and bathroom.

Here's a diagram of the current house, it measures about 20' wide by 36' deep and the bathroom is 5x5

This is maybe what our future house will look like. This isn't to size but you get the gist.

We still need to figure out how to get into the basement after we remove the stairs down to it.

This section on the left is the bathroom that we will remove, and the brick chimney on the other side, the metal one is already gone. The part on the right is the kitchen & utility and they will be gone too.

Here's a better photo of the chimney

This is the utility room, the door leads to the stairs that go 3 up to the utility room and 7 down to the basement floor; all the blue area will be removed along with the door/stairs,

This is the basement stairs thing. Its all going to go.

We will need to make sure the exterior walls are straight and cover them up with new siding of some kind. Currently the house has stucco on it but we're not sure what we will use on the new sides.

 

After the Trip

We left home at 5pm Thursday May 21, 2026 and drove till we were tired, Friday we woke early and drove to Dugway Geodo Beds, where we spent the entire day digging and found a lot of them, couple 5 gallon buckets full.

Spent the night there, then in the morning we drove to the Topaz dig area and got some but by the time we got there it was very warm and I just wasn't into it. Lan was able to dig some nice small ones right out of the rocks.

Then we headed out and arrived in Pioche at dusk.

Our home when we first saw it this trip.

Lan worked hard to replace two front windows, making them both bigger and straight, and he worked to suck in the side of the house where the stucco wants to bulge out.

Neither of those were easy jobs but both look much better now.

After the stucco was dry I got to paint & since I knew it wasn't going to be an easy job at all, I decided to use the best tools and paint I could afford and I chose 'Pure Turquoise' as the color, or as neighbor Tom says, Brothel Blue.

The 12" boards at the top of the walls are painted white but its old and peeling. I didn't have supplies to clean that up and its probably going to need replacing eventually so I left it alone. The blue is just to protect the walls.

While Lan was working on the windows and walls, I was tearing out the inside walls of the kitchen. I removed all the cupboards and cabinets and took down a lot of the many layers of walls, there was plywood, boards, wallpaper, linoleum and cloth. 

There were a lot of iffy things on the walls so we made sure to use the good filters.

We did a lot of sxs riding too, one day up to the top of Mt Wilson, another trip out to Hackett Ranch and others. We saw a lot of wild horses and that made my heart happy.

We went to neighbor Toms yard sale and paid $50 for the Traeger smoker and have used it twice, for Brisket and ribs. WOW, its fun to use. I'll be cooking another brisket (ok, this one will be a chuck roast) and ribs today. I do need to go to the store for the roast since I didn't think to thaw one of ours.  I'll need another bag of pellets too.

 

We Leave Thursday

 SO MUCH TO DO, 

as there always is right before leaving on vacation.

I've got most of our clothing packed, I will need to wash a couple more loads of laundry, some to wear, others just so they're not sitting here dirty for 2 weeks. 

I've been trying to find an outdoor umbrella style clothesline but none around us and seriously, I do not know why I want one so badly at this time, we haven't ever used enough power to raise the bill more than the minimum monthly charge. I do enjoy saving money, only if its in my head and I LOVE the feel of sun-dried clothing on my body. Our neighbor, Tom, has a clothes line and I'll use that but not for any undies, he already put the kybosh on that.

We do have most of our things packed but that's 89% or 675,329 items.

Yesterday I asked Mom if her offer to give me 'traveling money' still stood; she said yes so I went for a visit. Mom gave me $5,200. Yay, that was awesome BUT

she didn't invite me into the house.

Because Heather and Ashleigh, the 2 total lowlife losers of the family, were there. That hurt.

What I SHOULD Be Doing...

 I should be packing

I should be cleaning

I should be grooming my horses

I should be putting clean clothes on the line

I should be straightening the sewing room

I should be getting all the food together for our trip

I should be putting together a bag of cross stitch things

BUT

What I am doing is sitting here on my butt not doing anything productive

In One Week

We'll be leaving for vacation in a week, heading to Dugway, Utah first, where we will dig for geodes. We've never been there so it will all be new to us but we have seen a bunch of YouTube videos. About half the people find a lot, the other half don't find any. I hope we get a few good ones. 

Then we will head to Pioche.

Today I'm printing a couple cross stitch patterns to do on the trip, patriotic ones for our nations 250th birthday. This eagle one was hard to figure out & get it so I could even see the pattern.

Now I can't even figure out how to get to the other picture!

I'm tired and hungry, stressed out and headachy. We have SO MUCH to do and so little time, like the last 6 months hasn't been enough time to get our shit together! 

Packing For Travel

We'll be leaving on another trip to Pioche in 9 days and let me tell you, I'm pretty stoked.

We'll first drive to Dugway Geode Beds in Utah, where we will dig for geodes and I thing we're guaranteed to find some. I'll be taking a shovel, bucket to carry them, spray water bottle, all sorts of things. 

They are in Simpson Springs, Utah

This is one area

This is what the area looks like. 

I've read that the BLM goes out & digs up more areas once in a while.

I hope to find a couple cool ones, I hope to find enough that I can share and give a few to Jeremy so he can cut me one.

Then we'll continue on to Pioche. There are several ways to go between the two places but the dark purple line is one we haven't taken before.

I've been planning the things I'll be doing when I'm there, one of which is painting the basement walls. Currently they are gray concrete and purple paint. I've read that you're supposed to use a certain kind of paint on concrete but I'm sure they didn't use that special stuff before so I'm going to paint over it with the paint I have, a light gray. It might brighten it up a little bit.

I'll be pulling weeds again, tumbleweeds. 

Lan will be working on the sewer lines and a bajillion things inside the house. We're ramping up for when we take down the bathroom, utility room and kitchen but there's so much to do before then; basement, clearing out the interior of the rooms, 

We also need to pay a few bills while there too, the garbage bills is $150 for the year, too bad we can't just pay for the time we're there, and the truck tabs are $741 (yikes) but I have called our local DMV and its half as much to get license and tabs in Washington than it is in Nevada.

We will utilize the town pool, its ALWAYS nice to go for a dip when its blasting hot.

We're leaving home on May 21 and heading to Utah but we'll need to sleep somewhere along the way so we got ourselves a free truck canopy and we'll build a bed in the back. The bed will need to be big enough for Lan to sleep on it, so at least 6'3" and that only gives him a couple inches leeway. 

Lan wanted to paint it but that's just one more thing to do and he's already too busy doing shit here and he did point out that it matches the SXS.

Yeah, we'll be taking the Can Am too, its why we bought the house down there in the first place.

Oh yeah, we've got the shed frame up, now just needs the roofing put back on and I'm hoping to find Costco garage sides for free that I can put on it. It has seven 12' corrugated green fiberglass panels for the roof but one is broken so I want a clear or opaque panel, for additional light.  We're going to store the new cart and Kenny inside this.