Every action causes an equal an opposite reaction

We are replacing a major piece of equipment at work. It's called a cooling tower and roughly 100 walk in coolers, freezers and environmental growth chambers in the building I work in depend on this piece of equipment. It has run 24/7 virtually non-stop for 2o years. The unit itself works very well, but it's always had a tendency to suck water into the building when running on high speed during a driving rain storm. This caused by a poorly designed air intake plenum that forces the air to come in along the bottom of a large louver on the side of our building. Louvers are normally sized assuming even air flow across the entire face, not just along the bottom 25%. When the water comes in we wind up with about two bucket fulls in the 5th floor hallway, quite a problem when it happens.

These towers have an expected life of about 20 years, so ours due. As part of the replacement process we brought up this water intrusion problem and asked about going with a stainless steel tower this time, thinking it might last longer. We have had several meetings over the past few months about all this and it's become increasing clear the folks in charge of the project don't have much interest in pursuing these issues. They just want to replace the tower in kind and move on to the next job. We've wound up having to do our own research into the pluses and minuses of SS vs. galvanized steel tower construction and draw up our own plan of how to redesign the air intake, as each successive drawing kept showing replacing the air intake plenum with the current configuration. All this time we made it a point that we have $179,000 available for this project and need to stay within this budget. We also face a time constraint as major road construction outside our building will make crane access impossible after April 1st.

About a 2 weeks ago the project engineers and the prospective contractor showed up unannounced in the morning to go over potential cuts. I work in the afternoon and missed the whole thing as did my boss, since they couldn't find him until the very end of the meeting. Last week we found out the project coming in at $300,000 and we need to schedule a meeting right away to go over cuts. Keep in mind it's almost February and you don't just walk into Home Depot and pick up a cooling tower.

This all coming at a very bad time in relation to my plans to go the AHR Expo and take some time off to work on the house. By the time the end of the week approached this took it's toll on me and I lost my fire for going to the show. I also sat down and looked at my finances over the weekend and realized I really should stay home and save my money for taxes coming up in a couple months. I've struggled with feelings of guilt since the upcoming tower meeting set up to work around my "vacation", yet my change of plans too late to make rescheduling the meeting any sooner practical. Also, this whole tower process very emotionally draining for me in general. My superiors clearly value my input into the process and my participation, where my direct boss sees it as meddling more or less and clearly doesn't like it when I work on sketches, make phone calls, etc. This puts me in a very awkward position where I don't feel I can operate the way I normally would. Given the importance of this project I would have focused on it, actively researched some of the key issues, made phone calls to keep abreast of progress, etc. Instead it's gravitated into the back of my mind resulting in me not paying as close attention to it as I feel I ought to have, and I think the project has suffered, in as far as my more active involvement might have brought some of these issues to the fore sooner.

We do have a "pre-meeting" for the tower project this Thursday which I said I would come in for. I'll feel better once I see how folks react to the fact I didn't end up going to the show after all. I know it's not rational, yet down inside I'm afraid they will get upset with me about this. It's weighing on me more as Thursday draws closer. This all playing on a hurt deep inside of me, yet I'm not quite sure it's source or why it's so strong, but I do know I've felt these feelings before. Perhaps this situation will help bring more of it into the light.

As I mentioned, I've stayed home this week and am working on the basement. It's scaring me a bit how long it's taking to go through what I've gone through so far, but I'm very pleased with how the parts I've completed have turned out. More on this in my upcoming posts.

Back into the routine

Life falling back into it's pre-holiday routine, but some changes on the horizon. I talked with Steve and Cheryl who lead our home group on Monday night about my easing out of the group. Turns out they have thought about going to a bi-weekly format anyway. This would free up Monday night every other week, yet keep me in touch. We will talk about it more as a group tonight.


Next week I'm going to Chicago for the Air Conditioning Heating and Refrigeration Expo. They have it in Chicago every three years which works out great for me. I stay at one of the Extended Stay Hotels, this time Studio Plus, so I can cook my own meals for breakfast and dinner.Saves a lot of money over eating out every meal for three days. I'm going to take the whole week off so I can stay at home when I get back and work on the basement. Sure would feel good to get another room into the shape. The basement key, as several items on the upper floors belong down there in the first place.

We finished overhauling a major piece of equipment at work between Christmas and New Years. After New Years the factory rep. came over to do a start up with us. It normally takes about an hour, he stayed until 9P and we still didn't get everything done. Nothing major, just lots and lots of little things we needed to iron out. The unit cools a poor man's supercomputer of sorts housed in our building. The humidifier portion hasn't worked in years so the room bone dry and prone to static electricity build up. We got all the humidifier problems fixed, now just a problem with one of the cooling circuits remains. My boss looking into it as he does 99% of the refrigeration work, where I do most of the electrical side of things.

Now that I own my own locomotives and rail cars I'm contributing to an overcrowding problem in our clubs main yard. To help alleviate this I've tried to find an inexpensive way to store my cars under the layout when I'm not running a train. My first idea a bust, but idea number two shows much more promise. I found some Rubbermaid tubs at Menards that fit the cars perfectly. For the prototype I put cardboard in the bottom and cut up cardboard dividers to place between each car. I set the cars belly up side by side, then laid in another piece of cardboard to support a second layer of cars. Turns out a tub holds about 16 50/60' box cars, which works out nicely. For the next generation I'm going to look into different foam options for making the dividers and to cover the cardboard. Some members concerned over time the roughness of the cardboard by itself will rub the paint off the sides of the cars. Especially if I ever transport them this way.

One room transformed, eight more to go

Today I continued getting my bedroom into shape.

When my dad moved into the new house he built for himself and my step mom, he left behind a lot of stuff they didn't need in their new place. I initially (going on 7 years ago now) went through the house and emptied every drawer and closet onto the floor in neat piles. This way I figured I could tell what I had on my hands and start grouping like items together. My mom had put things into the drawers in seemingly random fashion. In one drawer I first came across a layer of old greeting cards, under that my old school report cards and under that a bunch of my mom's personal papers. I dove into this before I became depressed and still had a lot of energy. I had found a new home for or thrown out about half the stuff when my slow slide into severe depression started. Everything in the house has sat in suspended animation ever since. Just this last year I'm starting to make progress and am picking up where I left off.

A couple years after my dad moved out I started moving into my mom and dad's old bedroom since it's bigger and faces the front of the house. I never quite got my clothes moved though, so I've lived split between the two rooms for the better part of 5 years now. I had taken a peek in my parents bedroom closest and have kept the door closed ever since, a pretty scary sight in there. Our house has strange bedroom closets. They are about 10 feet long, but have one standard sized door down towards one end, making 2/3 of the closet pretty worthless. My dad had added high and low rods in their closet at each end so you could put four additional racks of clothes up. Only problem, the front normal height rods in the way so they never touched the clothes on the back rods. When my dad moved out, he and my step mom got rid of some of the clothes, but not all of them. Those remaining clothes haven't moved for 38 years I'd guess, that is until today.

I've spent the last couple days assembling the cubes and putting up shelves. Because of the odd closets, I decided to try putting all my clothes in the cubes, like you see at the store when you go shopping for pants. So far, I've moved about 1/2 my shirts, all my pants, socks and underwear. I'll move the rest once I order some more of the cube divider clips so I can split more of them in two. I couldn't use all the parts for the "cat" shelf in front of the window and realized today the remaining parts would make a nice stand for my laundry baskets, pretty cool. Today I finished getting everything off the floor I had pulled out of the hall closet and my dads old dresser 7 years ago and vacuumed the whole room. Now I could open the closet door again, the last step in reclaiming the bedroom.

I found it as I recalled, all horizontal surfaces covered in a thick coat of dust, covering the floor, baseboards, rods and top of all the remaining clothes, even the light bulb, just like you see in the movies. I went in with the vacuum first to get up the worst of it and then started pulling the clothes out. My mom all my life weighed over 200 pounds, but my aunts always told me she actually quite skinny until she had me. Indeed she was. My mom also a very simple dresser all the time I remember. This clearly not the case before she became a mom. I found some very sharp looking outfits (50's and 60's vintage), sized I'd guess for a 140 pound person. Once I got all the clothes out I separated them from the hangers and put the clothes in garbage bags for when the next textile recycling day comes up. I put the hangers into two piles, plain metal hangers go to the local dry cleaners, all the other odd birds into the trash. I vacuumed the whole closet from the top down, including the walls and the light bulb and removed the rods. Now I have some boxes in one end, my ironing board leaning up in the other and a shelf centered in front of the door for extra bedding type stuff.

The bedroom about 95% complete now, just have a few things that need to go in other rooms, but this will have to wait until those rooms ready to take them. In the mean time they are safely tucked away on the new shelves awaiting their final destinations. I also got the shelf put up in front of the dining rm. window. Looks even nicer than I imagined it would. Of course, I had to move the stuff occupying the floor in that room into the living rm. to make space.

Like I said one room down, eight to go. The other two bedrooms (0% complete), dining rm. (30%), sun room (50%), living rm. (50%), kitchen (70%), basement (40%) and attic (70%, one of the first things I did 7 years ago was take over 150 cardboard boxes from our attic to the recycling center).

The basement my next area of focus, as it will open up space for various items on the other floors that belong down there. A couple years ago I took down one set of the nasty wooden shelves a previous owner had built to make room for metal bulk storage racks. With the help of a friend, I also removed 30 or so grocery bags full of pine branches my dad had kept along with 100 or so newspaper logs and a wall full of larger pine limbs. Last year I bought several light duty bulk storage racks from Menards and set them up. I've also bought a supply of clear plastic tubs. A couple months ago I consolidated all my Christmas, phone, audio, PA/DJ, video and networking stuff in addition to my extension cords into these tubs. Now I'm working on electrical stuff, lubricants and misc. hardware type stuff. I used to do a lot of electrical work on the side for folks. It had gotten spread out into 20 or so cardboard boxes. Looks like it will consolidate into about 3 tubs, plus some cardboard boxes for the bulkier items. Once I complete this I can throw out the unused cardboard boxes that have stacked up, remove the last set of nasty wooden shelves, cut up the two 50 gal drums my dad used for trash years ago and probably buy one more bulk storage rack.

A new plan

In our last episode Stevo planned to go see a friend at work play drums at a local night club for New Years Eve ...

I ended up doing something much better, but first a story ...

The Geer family at our church experienced nothing short of a tragedy about 6 months ago. Carol, the mom, went in for a very routine abdominal surgery. She had a severe reaction to the muscle relaxant used as part of the anesthesia process. Her heart stopped for 18 minutes, leaving her in a coma and the doctors saying she would never recover. The family not content with this made arrangements for a regime of hyperbaric oxygen treatments down in Florida. A few weeks after starting the treatments hurricane Wilma came roaring through, cutting off power to the facility for almost a month. Despite the interruption, the treatments did wonders and she's now considered conscious and alert. She's clearly aware of her surroundings, shows emotions, follows all activity in the room with her eyes and even tries to talk. Unfortunately she still can't move her extremities to any extent and her muscles have atrophied as a result. To add insult to injury the insurance companies won't cover the treatments, considered "experimental", won't pay for nursing home care until she's moved into a "participating" facility, all of which in our three county area have year long waiting lists and Medicaid has rejected their application. This has resulted in a crushing financial blow to the family, so their friends have put on two fundraising dinner/auctions over the past few months to help "Meet the Need", raising about $30,000 or so. Seems like a lot, but I'm guessing the family has experienced at least $60,000 in out of pocket expenses at this point, so they are really hurting on all levels. Financial, emotional and spiritual.

I'm not able to make a dent in their financial situation, but I do have a spare 19" TV. Ironically enough, my grandmother used this very same set in this very same nursing home some 20 years ago. Dan, the son, has a spare DVD player and a huge movie collection. So he's going to fix Carol up with her favorite movies to help pass the time when the family at school and work and provide visual stimulation. I got to know Rich, the dad, a bit better while we set up the TV and rearranged some of the furniture. Sometime the next couple days I'm going to take over a set of shelves as well, so they have a place to put up some pictures and such. Right now the room only has a small dresser, one of those rolling tables and a chair. This the first time I had ever met Carol. Indeed she did look alert, studying this newcomer for a long while and clearly experiencing a lot of thoughts running through her mind.

I attended the second of the Meet the Need dinners. Afterwards, while helping tidy things up, Rich and Dan invited me to spend New Years Eve with them. They go every year to a friends house who doesn't mind seeing a few new faces turn up at the door. The friends house right near the place my folks church having their New Years party. I called up my folks and made the arrangements. In the end I went to my folks party from 7 - 8:30P, went over to the Geer party till about 10P. Went back to pick up my folks and took them home. Returned to the Geer party just in time to see the ball drop. The friends house really cool and the basement full of all the toys one would want. HDTV, pool table, air hockey table and one of those basket ball things. I'm not much good at sports but one of the guys, Brad, really got into the basket ball thing. I started watching and he eventually convinced me to give it a try. I never got over 51, but still had a fun time. Even though he much better, he got 136 one time, he never did make fun of me. When I got home I realized how much this meant to me. Most of my previous competitive sports experiences not so good. Brad goes to Hope along with his brother Brian. I hope I'll run into them again some day.

To my total surprise I also got invited to a third New Year's Party. One of the guys from my model train club invited me to come over to his place. He and his wife decided to throw a New Year's bash at the last minute. It turned out I couldn't squeeze it in with everything else going on, but it gave me a lift to think he'd go to the trouble to call me up and invite me. Hopefully the next time they throw a party the timing will work out better.