I took a nap late yesterday afternoon, a rare but sometimes necessary thing.  I went to bed later as a result but still did not sleep well.  We have too many things going on simultaneously with significant dollars attached to them and that has a tendency to disturb our sleep.  I also planned to visit three County agencies today and the anticipation of that no doubt contributed to a less restful night.

I was up at 5 AM and awoke to heavy fog; literally, the air temperature had dropped and it was very foggy outside.  I decided to concentrate on uploading my blog posts for the first 10 days of May but ended up also working on the materials estimate for the new bus floor, checking and responding to e-mails, and making adjustments to the SLAARC website and e-mail forwarding addresses.  Once Linda got up and we had some coffee she spent the first part of the day working on the banking and roster for SLAARC, so it turned out to be a somewhat “slaarcy” day for us.  The fog changed over to rain as the day progressed and intermittent heavy rains moved through the area after lunch accompanied by a tornado watch that continued until dinnertime.  I did, however, get the blog entries for May 1 through 9 edited, tagged, and posted.  I really need to get back to posting each day as it occurs.

Our male cat, Jasper, was having tummy troubles today.  He tends to follow me around the house anyway, but today he stayed very close most of the day.  He climbed up in my lap while I was working at my desk no less than six times and went to sleep for as long as an hour at a stretch.  If not there he was curled up on my desk, on the carpet near my chair, on my lap or next to me on the couch, or alongside me in bed.  He has a loud, resonant purr and I heard (and felt) it a lot today.  It is one of my favorite things.

Linda finally persuaded me over the weekend that, as much as I was trying to contain the cost, the current approach to the bus barn project was just going to be too expensive.  I have not given up on the idea of building a bus barn but I am now rethinking my approach yet again.  Ironically, I am back to the idea of a true pole barn, which eliminates the concrete foundation.  Instead of wood trusses, however, I am looking at an arched steel roof.  That would eliminate the bottom chords of a wood truss which determine the ceiling height.  Downsizing the building would further reduce the cost and not pouring a concrete pad, or perhaps only a partial one, would reduce the cost even more. A 24′ x 48′ building with a 16′ center ceiling may only require 12′ side walls, which would keep the posts and other lumber costs reasonable. The site prep and finish grading cost is there no matter what we do.  The main things we give up with this approach are the 19′ ceiling in the center, which would have allowed me to walk on the roof and work standing up, and an overhead door which would be expensive anyway.  Working on the roof would require moving it outside and the door would have to be a two-piece exterior slider or “barn style” pull open.

Chuck and I have been talking seriously the last couple weeks about trying to agree on a metal arch building design so we can order two buildings and get a quantity and shipping discount.  I called Chuck before dinner to let him know what we had decided we were not going to do that, at least not this year, and explain the reasoning behind the decision.  He is faced with the exact same issues and we had a long bus barn chat, to be continued in the days ahead.

While I was on the phone with Chuck my sister called my cell phone so Linda took the call.  My grand-niece, Lilly, had experienced several more seizures since she returned home from the hospital on Wednesday.  She was at a different hospital where they were going to hook her up to an EEG for 24 hours as none of the one-time EEGs have shown anything abnormal.  Lilly is only 27 months old and this has to be a bit scary for her; it certainly is for the adults around her.

Linda prepared a simple meal of fresh asparagus, white rice with soy sauce, and mock chicken with orange sauce.  We had another piece of the vegan cake for dessert later.  We have also decided that now is the time to replace the refrigerator in the bus so we spent time after dinner continuing to look at units online.

The current fridge, which is a side-by-side Jenn-Air, is a 22.6 cubic foot model.  Newer refrigerators with similar case dimensions tend to be smaller in usable volume but even 17 cubic foot models do not appear to fit in our refrigerator cubby.  The newer ones tend to be more energy efficient, so they may have thicker insulation thus reducing the interior volume.  The problem is that they also tend to be taller as a way to maintain the width and depth dimensions.  The unit that has our attention at the moment is a Fisher & Paykel 13.5 cubic foot model.  That is a lot less refrigerator storage than we have now, and would have to adjust how we shop, but we would be able to take it in and out through the main entrance door of the bus and recover about 11 inches of width for a pantry that would be 67″ tall and 29″ deep.  That is a lot of storage and may be a good trade-off.

We finished the evening watching Season 2, Episode 1 of Sherlock.  I do not generally enjoy watching TV programs a second time, but the BBC Sherlock series holds up very well on repeated viewing.