The last few weeks has been quiet around the SkyCastle, spring is here, flowers are blooming, the days are warm and the nights are generally cool, making for great sleeping! Speaking of sleeping, it’s something I should be doing right now, but being the night owl I am, I am still up messing around on the internet.
I do have to work tomorrow, but work has slowed down from the insanity that ensued for a couple of months, now it’s down to a steady pace. I was offered a second job, and it came at the perfect time. I’m now the Foster Grant gal in far west Texas. It’s really a simple and easy job, I already knew the district manager from about four years back when he trained my friend who used to work with me. I was essentially already trained, I just needed to learn the administration part and I was good to go. Fortunately it’s in stores I’m already working in as a merchandiser. This will help get me through the lean times that hit during the holidays for merchandisers. Most stores don’t want us in there doing major projects, or really much of anything else during their busy season so our hours get cut until after the first of the year, when reset season hits for us and it starts all over again.
PB is still working on the wall, he has dug a trench around the outer perimeter and is pouring concrete in the trench as a base for the wall to rest upon. I am continually amazed at how quickly he can do something with just hand tools, and he did most of the digging while I was asleep so he not only got the trench dug, he did it really quietly so as to not disturb me, he is so sweet.
I assume he is going to move the wall to cover the concrete, mortaring the bricks into place one by one, it’s really looking good. He still had a lot more of these papercrete bricks, I asked him how tall the wall will be and he said around 6 feet tall when it’s all said and done. I don’t doubt anything he says about building, previously he said he wanted to build the SkyCastle up a couple of more floors, we already lived on the second floor, he has stopped at 4 floors tall, the 4th story being the observation deck, as I said, I don’t doubt anything he sets his mind to do.
Oh I almost forgot to mention, he and a good friend of ours built a carport, putting the roof on it just today, the roof was reclaimed metal from another neighbor, the one I mentioned giving a haircut to last week, bartering in action! All that needs to happen is a few finishing touches, moving more stuff out of the way and I’ll have a place to park my truck that is out of the sun and most of the weather.
One last thing, I have been in the market for a camera, I have been able to take great pictures with my tablet, most people can’t believe I use a tablet but I do and it works great, the only thing it doesn’t do well is zooming and low light photography. I narrowed it down to a Sony QX1, a Nikon CoolPix B500 and a Panasonic Lumix FZ80.
I really like the Sony camera, but it is just a hair outside of my price range right now, especially since I’d have to buy a lens (or three!) to go with it. I had been leaning heavily toward the Nikon because of the long optical zoom, 40X, but all of the images I kept seeing that people snapped on that camera looked flat, nothing had a pop or wow factor, I saw one photographer who took great pix AND he also was a master at post production so his pictures looked pretty good, but for the most part, I wasn’t impressed with the image quality. Then I found the Panasonic, has better zoom (60X optical) and more features I liked. But the most important part is the sample pictures I saw taken from this camera had great color and depth, pictures taken by average people looked good so I knew that anything I can do to them after that will only make things look even better.
The only thing I’m waiting on are some Amazon.com gift cards to roll in from some extra curricular “secret shopper” things I’ve been doing that pay in gift cards, I’m nearly halfway to being able to cash in and should get enough this coming week to get another $50 from them.
I really do need to get in bed, even though it’s not a big work day, it’s still a work day coming up in a few hours, I can sleep in a bit, but will need to get up and get out of here at a reasonable time. Night all!