The City Mouse in the Country

These last few days have convinced me that I need to get off my proverbial ass and find a work from home position, or failing that; one that only needs me in the office two or three days out of the week. My 2012 Kia Soul (stock photo) The reason is that recently I "threw a rod" in my car.   This is basically the worst type of engine failure possible.  My starter also died at roughly the same time, which means that they can't even turn over the car to try to determine the extent of the damage or what exactly failed.  A new starter won't be in for a week.   Now this type of engine disaster can be fixed but it's going to take anywhere between two to three weeks at minimum even if I can get the parts in a timely manner. Living out in the "boondocks" requires that my wife and I have two cars.  We work in two different parts of the county and two different schedules, so it is just a requirement. There is no public transportation, no car sharing services...

Life can be stressful here in modern America.  Sadly we have become a country where a parent may worry that they will never see their child again as they board that school bus or go out with friends.  Not to mention the additional stress of worrying about our countries direction; and the direction of the planet, as a whole. We live in trying times, but worrying about the future all the time is only a recipe for sleepless nights and ulcers.  We all need that proverbial margarita by the pool sometimes.  In many ways I looked forward to taking the past week off and traveling to Niagara Falls and upstate New York with my wife. It has been nearly 30 years since either of us had been to the Falls, and on the way up we passed solar farm after solar farm and more than a few windmills generating power, we even passed a hydroelectric plant.   Green power is the future and in a way my heart sung that so much renewable power was being generated. However I also thought ...

One of the first items that Sue and I bought as a couple all those years ago was a grandfather clock.  We used to snuggle under the blanket and listen to the chimes on the hour, the sound filling our house with a warmth and resonance.   That clock is nothing special, being simple in its design and technology.  It's accurate because of the beauty of physics and math...and is a lost art form in its own right. I thought a lot about time and place as we traveled this week.  I thought a lot about place.   Sue and I finally took a brief vacation recently.  Due to circumstances beyond our control, every plan we had made to get away earlier in the year came to naught.  My father became ill and ended up in the hospital which we decided to stay home "just in case."  He ended up in the hospital at least three times this past year, and I decided to spend what time I could with him. Family, after all, is what brought us back to Pennsylvania. We had p...

          Recently I had to travel up to Erie, PA for business.   It's about an hour north of me and is a rather small city, having just under 100 thousand people living in it.   It played an important role in the founding of America,  - where it was the headquarters for Oliver Perry's flagship Niagara during the battle of Like Erie in the war of 1812 .            It was also a important shipping center, being Pennsylvania's only access to the Great Lakes which was the easiest way to trade with parts of Canada at the time as well as move goods to the cities of Detroit and Chicago, which in the mid to early 1800's were just starting to develop.  It was also directly north from Pittsburgh which was a major industrial city at that time.     Yet Erie never really grew beyond it's humble beginnings and I wondered why.   Like any good sleuth I turned to the intern...

      September got away from me it seemed,     A lot of personal things happened in the last month which made me question a few things, including if it was worth continuing this blog; considering how my readership is so small.   In the end however I decided it was.  Rome, as the saying goes, was not built in a day.     I can already feel the winds of the coming winter starting, our garage is all ready full of three tons of wood pellets for our stove and yesterday was the first day we lit it.   It was not a bad or particularly cold day but we had a chill in the house that caused my hands to be ice cold, and lighting the stove helped chase that chill from them.            Soon it will be time to work on winterizing the home.  First however, we had one last trip that Sue and I had wanted to make; or more of a pilgrimage of sorts.  We were going to visit the National...

     In the last post I asked if I hated living in the country. I answered with a pretty subjective "No."  There are parts of it I am not fan of.  One of the reasons I agreed to move to the country is that I was hoping to make a change in my lifestyle.     I've never been afraid of hard work, I used to work 60 hour weeks right out of college when I worked for an engineering firm.  I've owned my own company in one form or another sine 2008, which has supplemented my main income and padded both my retirement savings and paid for vacations.  I have discovered however that hard work in the country is not the same of the hard work of a city mouse.   However, I'm tired and burned out.   I find myself wanting to retire more and more and enjoy my time here and now.  Full retirement for me is still twelve years away and age 70 would probably make more sense.      Given another year, both cars will be paid off in ...

      I know, wrong state but read on!           Sue and I like to play things by ear.  When we travel just to get away it's often by throwing a dart at the map or picking a direction.   These little jaunts often lead to adventures, such as exploring near by Oil City for example.  However these short jaunts into the unknown only recharge our batteries.  Neither Sue or myself has had a proper vacation in some time.        So given the opportunity to visit friends in the Great state of Tennessee, we took full advantage of it, and flew by the seat of our pants southward with no plan in mind.     Our pants were ripped and torn however and our bums were left flapping in the wind by the end of the trip.        My buddy Tim is an old friend form High School.  We grew apart over time but started to reconnect over the last few years.  He own...