Yesterday I ran a hose to the pool and stuck the drain fitting in. By about 7 PM it was nearly empty, so I folded it over to collect the water by the outlet and opened the plug on the inflatable support ring to let the air out. It should be just about ready to flip over and roll up.
I'm not sure what I want to do, exactly. My original thoughts had been to get rid of it. It cost us $160 in 2018, which works out to $80 a year for it. It's got at least one hole in it (which I patched) and the bottom of the pool has faded due to chlorine bleaching and sunlight. The outside bottom is covered with dirt and sand which has been pressed into the vinyl by the weight of 3,000 gallons of water.
But...
I could get the dirt off with the pressure washer. We could then fold it up neatly and put it away, and reuse it next year.
On the other hand? April of next year, we're going to prepare a site for a pool. My initial thoughts are just to make a kind of sandbox, such that there is a level sand surface on which to put the pool; but then I think that if I'm going that far, it's not much farther to put brick atop the sand, and have a nice patio surface. Laying the bricks atop the sand is actually easier than everything up to that point, believe it or not; if you have a nice flat, level sand surface, then you can lay bricks atop it and compact it with a plate compactor and have a friggin' patio.
YouTube video showing how to do it.
...and it'd be a shame to put a faded old pool atop a new brick patio.
Best part? The grass is already gone from most of the area, because the pool sat there. Just need to skim off the top 3" of topsoil so we can lay down the base and the sand etc. It's going to be a lot of work, but like I said, laying the brick is a minor fraction of the total effort required.
Whee!
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I originally had a couple of tabs open, and was going to comment, but upon further reflection I decided not to.
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So, I'm hearing tell that SpaceX plans to fly a Starship (SN-7, or maybe SN-8) to 60,000 feet.
I didn't call the hop of SN-5 "unprecedented" or even groundbreaking for the simple reason that DC-X did it first, to 10,000 feet.
My commentary on the SN-5 flight merely said:
Going 500 feet in the air, going sideways a similar distance, then landing itself on a bunch of tiny little landing struts, is a tiny little hop compared with what its eventual mission is (going to Mars) but how many other rocket companies do you know of that are building rockets out of stainless steel and then flying them?Although I seem to have left out the fact that this was a privately-owned prototype and was not finanaced with government money.
60,000 feet is six times the maximum altitude of DC-X's forays. It's a significant step forward.
And DC-X was made out of exotic materials, not plain old stainless steel.
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Well, it's Sunday.
Recently I have been sleeping very well. All it took was taking a whole tablet of the Paxil rather than half of one.
I don't want to keep this up, though. On this dose, instead of taking the edge off of the peaks and valleys, it levels the landscape into a straight, flat line. I don't have any anxiety that keeps me awake; but I also don't have any excitement or fun. There's no bad, but there's also no good.
It's turning me into a Vulcan, for friggin' my snack. There is such a thing as too much emotional equilbrium, something which I could not have foreseen myself saying.
Maybe ask the doc if he could switch me to 10 mg tablets and then take 1.5 every day? Or is there a 15 mg dose?
However, it is very nice not to wake up in the middle of the night three, four, five times because I suddenly feel as if I'm not getting enough air in my lungs, because I am and my body is breathing appropriately and the freaking problem is in my brain, not the way my lungs are functioning.
The COVID-19 nonsense is having a deleterious effect on me. The constant drumbeat of "BE AFRAID! BE SCARED! FEAR FOR YOUR LIFE!" from the media and the government is rejected by my conscious brain, but the part that runs the flight or fight response doesn't listen to that part. And even though I lay there in bed telling myself, "You are perfectly fine and there is nothing wrong," my subconscious brain doesn't believe that, and continues to panic over every last less-than-perfect inhalation. "That last breath was a little deeper than normal DEATH IS IMMINENT". And that is exactly what it's like, too; I am not exaggerating.
*sigh*
Meanwhile, my wife is getting stir-crazy but nothing is open and there are no tickets for anything. To make matters worse, I've had to put the kibosh on doing anything at all in the city, because it's just too damned dangerous right now, and it's not going to get better before next year at the earliest. But nothing is open in the city, anyway, and probably won't be for the foreseeable future, because "Day 190 of the 15-day lockdown!"
But the new medication regime is working. The generic Pepcid is keeping the acid reflux under control, it seems, as is the new "no snacking before bed nor during the night" rule. Stop eating or drinking at least half an hour before going to bed. Take pills for brain, heart (blood pressure), and stomach.
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Well--better get after that pool, I suppose.