False Progress

It certainly felt like a Fall morning with the misty-rain coming down, and since it was a bit chilly out, I stopped at a convenience store and grabbed a small cup of coffee to sip on while at office. In spite of it being an early Saturday morning, I was surprised to find so few vehicles on the road. There must've been a whole lot of partying going on last night which created a greater number of sleep-ins.

Upon arrival at office, I found I had a number of emails to return, so I proceeded to get that done, and once it reached the hour of eight, I picked up the phone and called a gentleman whom I'd not spoken with in months, and only to find out how his summer had been, along with his having officially entered his retirement years.

I was glad to find he'd been doing some free-lance work instead of sitting around waiting for God like too many do after closing the doors on their careers. We did have a nice chat, and since we have similar interests, there was no lack of finding something to talk about. Unfortunately I kept getting interrupted by phones, until finally I had to bid him farewell until another day.

Another person on my list to call, didn't pick up which now has me a little concerned because I've not heard hid nor hair from her in at least two months. I'll have to try again tomorrow afternoon, and if she doesn't pick up, I'll have to call one of her relatives to see if everything's OK. As much as I attempt to stay connected with those whom I find delightful, I too oft times find my road to Hell paved with all the many good intentions, but I am diligently working at getting better with my staying in touch.

I received a call from a prospective buyer on 1165 Hwy 9 in Manly this morning, so it looks like I have an appointment to show it Monday afternoon, and wouldn't you know, another Realtor only moments later sent a text asking if she could show it Tuesday afternoon. I'm beginning to believe that even if our market starts slowing, the acreages will continue to be the hot items. One young man I spoke with last week is also wanting an acreage, and one of my questions was, "Why do you want to live in the country?", and his response being, "Because I hate the taste of this City's water." Oh did I have to bite my tongue because if that would be my only reason, I'd be buying one of the most expensive reverse osmosis systems and have it connected to a separate drinking tap. Let's hope he has more reasons than that. He was the second person in a week who freely told me how much the taste of our City's water is hated. Personally, I don't like it either.

My fractured hours of sleep last night was partly due to our being only a day away from the full moon, and the other waking times were caused by the deep itching I had to keep from scratching around my ankle where four new flea bites had appeared, and the only place I could've possibly been bitten, was when I was showing that acreage yesterday. There were three outside cats running around me, and of course I was also doing quite a bit of walking around outdoors while there. You can be sure I could feel the itch beginning late yesterday afternoon, and when I took my socks off, there they were in their swollen glory. The bites from that last flea episode haven't completely healed yet, so now it'll be well over a week before these new ones start healing. I wonder if they have human-safe flea collars for ankles. I was beginning to think I was going to dodge the bullet of getting bitten by fleas this season, but these recent weeks are making it feel like just another one of those summers. Oh well, there's not much I can do other than be a little more pro-active, and just today I purchased a super-effective bug spray which I'll have in my car at all times.

With my day being relatively free, I changed into my work clothes and decided to attack a stripping job which has been waiting on me for nearly a month, so after I got over to where it was, I made my preparations and then took a deep breath and started on it. If there's one thing I know about myself, is that once I get started on a specific project, I nearly always finish it, which is why I oft times put such things off because I know there'll be many hours spent before they're completed.

As much as I wanted to work at least four hours on it, I was getting too many text messages and phone calls, and of course every time one would come in, I'd have to take my rubber gloves off to either check the text or answer the phone. The last disturbing call was the one that prompted me to quit after only two hours. Oh well, at least I've got it started now, and that for me is always the biggest hurdle. I also have an idea what the finished product is going to look like, along with being able to judge how much stripper and steel wool I'll be needing to finish it up. There's a band of wood missing at the top which I'll have created out of a similar piece of seasoned wood. The key to matching wood, is of course the type of wood, but more importantly its age. After a few trials and errors, I did manage to discover that on my own and it works.

Just before leaving office this afternoon, I decided to watch an online Service being held at one of our area churches. Unfortunately I couldn't force myself to watch anymore than about fifteen minutes of it, and mostly because of how terrible their music was. I'm sorry to say that person singing is in great need of being permanently banned from public singing. Yes, it was that bad. Whenever seeing and hearing such, I'm reminded what was told me a number of years ago by a man of the cloth when speaking about how poorly some are at shepherding their flocks, and that being, "You've got to remember that when living out here in the hinterland, you get what you get." My how that rang true today.

Tonight's One-liner is: Indeed, the greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.

original post ... https://niowarealty.net/life/2022/09/10/false-progress/