The Transition to Our New Life Continues
Mar. 12th, 2021 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aSkotos. Stick a fork in it: Skotos is done. Yeah, it's been a long-time coming, but this week I helped Chris file the Certificate of Dissolution for the corporation and dropped a letter to the IRS saying we were done with the EIN. Whew. It takes a lot of effort to properly close out a corporation! And that's also a capstone on twenty years of my work-life. Granted, there's still one machine to take down, the trickiest one. And I'm still offering some extremely light support for RPGnet. But, whew.
Flooring. My dad and I have now been working on the flooring in Kimberly's office forever. I mean, most of it is that we're slow-walking the job. We've only once or twice, I think, put in more than one afternoon in a week. But it's also taken a lot of time. Nine afternoons, I think: one to rip out the carpet, one to clean up the floor, three to lay the main flooring, three to lay the flooring in the closet, and one to pick up wood for transitions and trim. (With us not doing any more that day in part because the road back from town was temporarily blocked, in what would turn out to be the first of two times this week. We need a backup road!) As that count might suggest, the closet was the biggest problem. There was one afternoon where by my count we put down five square feet of planking! There were two issues here: one, getting the planking under the corners and under the trim we left in place; and two, a built-in shelf which caused us to have to do the closet in parts, then connect it up. (When we get around to my closet, it'll be a little easier, as there's no shelf there.) Still left? Cutting the trim, painting the trim, placing the trim, placing the thresholds. And then building the murphy bed that arrived in February. Then Kimberly gets her office back and we get a guest room, for use post-COVID.
Rain. Ah, it has been raining here in Kauai. Like most of the year. But especially the last month and a half or so. The few times I've been able to make it out to a weekend hike, it's been by dodging rain. Last time I went out to Mahaulepu, I wore my rain jacket part of the way, and came back an hour or two early when it started pouring. We thought it was a particularly wet January when we arrived last year and it rained for 30 days straight, but this year has seemed even rainier.
Flooding. And then there was today. We got 5 inches of rain in the last day, 2.5 inches in the last 12 hours. At times it was absolutely pouring outside, the most rain I've ever seen here. And, there was flooding. Out on the main street near our house, one of our neighbor's dirt driveway was being washed down into the street, and so the whole oncoming lane was filled with red water. There was much worse flooding elsewhere on the island. Old Koloa looks like all the shops got hit, something I expect they really didn't need after a year of pandemic. The main road into town was closed for a bit (again). Here in Kalaheo there was flooding reaching up into parked cars on the other side of the highway, near the reservoir. (Thank goodness we're at the top of a hill.) We had flood warnings going off every few hours, and the police were really serious about only driving in case of emergency. We'll see how bad the damage is in the next few days. (Meanwhile, north shore was already cut off before today's deluge, due to a landslide yesterday morning that cut off everything west of Princeville. So, welcome to the wettest place on Earth.)
Writing. Meanwhile, I've felt a bit less stressed about writing this month. Though that's primarily because I'm still in the research phase for next month's Designers & Dragons, which means that I've been able to make time for both the TSR Codex and the Elf Book, my other two major projects. (The TSR Codex got a major chapter in draft already for the month, while the Elf Book is as usual trailing, because there's so much technical and thoughtful work that takes a lot of time for a little words.) Anyway, feeling good, especially since that's all been while I've also been preparing tax info for our accountants: I've literally got a PDF of 100 pages for them, with just one topic to go: the house sale. Which will be a big pain, but the end is in sight.
And that's life on Kauai.
Flooring. My dad and I have now been working on the flooring in Kimberly's office forever. I mean, most of it is that we're slow-walking the job. We've only once or twice, I think, put in more than one afternoon in a week. But it's also taken a lot of time. Nine afternoons, I think: one to rip out the carpet, one to clean up the floor, three to lay the main flooring, three to lay the flooring in the closet, and one to pick up wood for transitions and trim. (With us not doing any more that day in part because the road back from town was temporarily blocked, in what would turn out to be the first of two times this week. We need a backup road!) As that count might suggest, the closet was the biggest problem. There was one afternoon where by my count we put down five square feet of planking! There were two issues here: one, getting the planking under the corners and under the trim we left in place; and two, a built-in shelf which caused us to have to do the closet in parts, then connect it up. (When we get around to my closet, it'll be a little easier, as there's no shelf there.) Still left? Cutting the trim, painting the trim, placing the trim, placing the thresholds. And then building the murphy bed that arrived in February. Then Kimberly gets her office back and we get a guest room, for use post-COVID.
Rain. Ah, it has been raining here in Kauai. Like most of the year. But especially the last month and a half or so. The few times I've been able to make it out to a weekend hike, it's been by dodging rain. Last time I went out to Mahaulepu, I wore my rain jacket part of the way, and came back an hour or two early when it started pouring. We thought it was a particularly wet January when we arrived last year and it rained for 30 days straight, but this year has seemed even rainier.
Flooding. And then there was today. We got 5 inches of rain in the last day, 2.5 inches in the last 12 hours. At times it was absolutely pouring outside, the most rain I've ever seen here. And, there was flooding. Out on the main street near our house, one of our neighbor's dirt driveway was being washed down into the street, and so the whole oncoming lane was filled with red water. There was much worse flooding elsewhere on the island. Old Koloa looks like all the shops got hit, something I expect they really didn't need after a year of pandemic. The main road into town was closed for a bit (again). Here in Kalaheo there was flooding reaching up into parked cars on the other side of the highway, near the reservoir. (Thank goodness we're at the top of a hill.) We had flood warnings going off every few hours, and the police were really serious about only driving in case of emergency. We'll see how bad the damage is in the next few days. (Meanwhile, north shore was already cut off before today's deluge, due to a landslide yesterday morning that cut off everything west of Princeville. So, welcome to the wettest place on Earth.)
Writing. Meanwhile, I've felt a bit less stressed about writing this month. Though that's primarily because I'm still in the research phase for next month's Designers & Dragons, which means that I've been able to make time for both the TSR Codex and the Elf Book, my other two major projects. (The TSR Codex got a major chapter in draft already for the month, while the Elf Book is as usual trailing, because there's so much technical and thoughtful work that takes a lot of time for a little words.) Anyway, feeling good, especially since that's all been while I've also been preparing tax info for our accountants: I've literally got a PDF of 100 pages for them, with just one topic to go: the house sale. Which will be a big pain, but the end is in sight.
And that's life on Kauai.