I wake up too damn early, pre-dawn these days, 3:30 maybe 4. This morning it was 3:10. I got up took a pee, drank some juice and back to bed. I tried to read. I fell asleep, woke up again when my Kindle hit me in the nose, I laid there for awhile and finally got up at 10 to 4. Been up since. What time do I go to bed, you ask? Around 10:30.
What do I do when I get up in the pre-dawn hours? I read, I drink coffee, I talk to Anze the Dog.
This morning I read a long article about Elon Musk and Tesla. The Tesla S is a hell of a car, in Europe it outsold the big Mercedes S Class, the BMW 7 Series and the other big money Lux-O-Boats, the base price is right at 70k, most go out the door for over 100 grand. The Tesla S out sells those cars in California, too. It's a status car, big time. Ah, but there are problems. Biggest owner complaint? Squeaks and rattles. Electric cars are quiet, no engine or drive train noise making everything else seem louder and more annoying, tire and road noise is amplified or as one owner put it, "Unless I have the sound system one, the car drives me crazy." Another problem, everything is run off the screen on the dash, even the damn door locks. The biggest problem? there no parts in the pipe line, one Tesla S has been sitting at the dealer waiting for a replacement hood for 14 months...as former Ford and Chrysler CEO Bob Lutz said, "Musk is finding out building cars isn't easy." And Lutz is a guy who firmly believes electric cars are the future. We won't even begin the discussion of Tesla production problems assembling their new models...
On a more personal note
We are in the 2nd week of no construction on our house, it's been nice not having workers tramping around every f'ing day, Monday through Friday since the 1st of March, that's 6 god damned months. So far they've finished a retaining wall on the hill behind the house, a hill so steep they couldn't use machinery to dig the foundation. The hand dug the thing, 70 feet long and 6 feet high and had to haul all the concrete block, re-rod and by back breaking human labor. It took 3 months and it looks like shit.
Speaking of shit, the 2nd major project was the replacement of the septic system. We now have 2 new tanks and a mound system, all built to the new standards, 1250 galloons of tanks, and automatic pump to move the effluviant lup hill to the mound which is 75 yards away. It's an engineering miracle.
Sadly the crews will be back at it after labor day, next up, new porch railings on both levels. Why? They are out of code by 6 inches. Our skylights have to be replaced, two of them, because they are plastic and that's a no-no. Then we get a new roof...the list goes on and on and on.
We've lived for almost 4 years and never closed on the house, because it's is a code violation nightmare, all caused by the guy who lived her since '68 and thought he could beat the system by never filing for a building permit for anything, then he tried to sell it to us and the shit (there's that word again) hit the fan and the county threw the book at him and then threw it again.
As the old song says, "bustin' rocks in the hot sun" since I'm up and have been close to 5 hours I'd better get to work. It's going to be a long, hard pull to get it to match the other side of the front damned lawn!
Arrrrgggghhhhh! What else can one say?
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