Tag: moving

November 4, 2026 – The Real OC

November 4, 2026 /

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Unknown. I know, you are going to say that was Mark Twain. He certainly said things like that but his own institute denies ownership. It seems to be an evolving quote that different people have said similar things until it got to a quaint, concise and readable quote. Nevertheless the sentiment is true and that is what I want to talk about today.

I am going to admit something. Sometimes I get caught up in stereotyping. It is one of the mechanisms that we humans use to process large amounts of data. It happens when you are ignorant of a subject, you don’t really care about it and you have other over-generalizations overlapping. I am going to give a couple of examples here.

I have primarily been a knowledge worker my whole life. Because I have never really held a job that works outside day in and day out it was my belief that by the time the calendar hits November, it is always raining and wet. Now, I am not stupid, I know that it does not always rain. Since my kids have been little, most Halloween nights have been dry. But, there have been some where it was really raining. Based on that one piece of data, I cannot say with certainty that Halloween will be dry.

When I started delivering Amazon, it was my belief that I was going to be wet everyday. I packed my raingear and mentally prepared. When I look back, there was only two days that I actually got wet and I didnt pull out my raingear. Not because I am foolish but because it really didn’t rain all the time. Was it sunny and pleasant? No. It was often gray and damp. But it also wasn’t full on raining. In fact, I was surprised that it was actually sunnier than rainier.

Knowing that lesson from several years ago, I completely ignored it and thought I knew what living on the Oregon Coast was all about. Because it sometimes rained on my camping trips over the years, because we do get double to triple the amount of annual rainfall than where I moved 40 miles in land I figured that it was always going to be wet.

Before we get too carried away, it is almost always damp here outside of the summer. This October has had pretty good weather, half of the days have been sunny with high temps near 60 degrees. The problem I have seen is that it takes a long time to get to that daily high and the humidity is high as well. As an example, the thermal energy to dry out the grass to mow is never high enough. I end up with wet feet and a plugged mower. But, the grass keeps growing and it is not raining, but sunny.

If it is sunny, then it is going to be windy. That is mostly true. What happens is that as the inland temperatures heat up, it starts sucking the cooler and moister ocean air east. But, what I have observed is that this phenomenon typically starts around 2-3pm. So, if you want to get out on the lake before noon will be calm, albeit cool because it is almost never ‘warm’. Because I live about a mile from the ocean, it is not quite as cool or cloudy or windy then the beach.

I thought that in the wet season (Oct-June) was just that. That is actually not true. In fact because of the summer wind, some of the best and most pleasant days are actually in the wet season. You don’t get the thermal drive in the wet season and because the temperature is nearly the same all year around it can be unexpectedly nice. The real problem is that is difficult to predict any longer than a couple of days in the future.

I have lived in tourists towns before but never during the peak season. I expected traffic to be a headache. What I found was that traffic can be a pain Friday through Monday but being that I live here, I know the tricks to get where I want to go and avoid the highway except when necessary. The town also starts to roll up after 8 PM so the peak traffic hours are 12-7 PM. I can work around that schedule and route so that traffic is not much of a factor.

End Your Programming Routine: The real Oregon Coast has been better than I expected. Things are still damp and mild steel rusts pretty quickly. I haven’t sweat much and I relish those days where I go inland and warm up as well as dry out a little bit but that is only a season. I am looking forward to establishing my beach head here and really starting to take advantage of what is around me in a more meaningful way.

August 2, 2026 – Main Street Oral History

August 2, 2026 /

This is a special edition of the podcast. We are coming to finally close on our house, selling it to new owners this week. I wanted to make sure that the history that I knew it was documented and passed on. Yes, there are some facts but it is largely about how this house was part of our lives and how we changed the house as a result. One hour is not enough time to cover over twenty years of life.

As I listened to the playback, I realized that there were a couple of mistakes or omissions. I am OK with that as this is always an imperfect effort but the gist is there. What I want to convey the most is that this was a place of life, giving and growth. I won’t lie that I got a little choked up at the end. It is the closing of a chapter, the longest place we ever lived, the place where our kids were born and grew up and left.

Once the house is no longer ours, I have no right to comment or critique the decisions that others make. I do want to say that the house was an integral part of Altf4.co; arguably the most important element. I do hope that the love we gave and vice versa goes forward for generations to come. Good luck to the new family, may you be blessed as we have.

May 4, 2026 – When Things Go Silent…

May 4, 2026 /

After putting out a podcast week after week and then all of a sudden to go silent, it is strange. I will admit that I think about it a lot, but time, time, time. And even then, what to say? If there was something important to say, I would probably make the time. With me trying to stay out of politics and living in boxes, what the most important thing to do is actually survival to the next phase.

March 26, 2026 – You Know What You Value By How You Spend Your Time

March 26, 2026 /

As predicted, the hangover is on from my vacation week. Since I am always thinking a week out, I didn’t do that planning while I was off and packing. This is a picture of my partially disassembled office while I was packing to move. It actually took me a couple of days to pack up my office.

Now, to be fair it wasn’t a couple of days but a couple of days at a couple of hours each. By the time I started packing, it was already known that there is no deal in place. I didn’t really feel the urgency to be solely focused on packing. But, the amount of time I spent was quite eye opening.

The picture represents my life over the last couple of years. First of all, you are looking at the back wall of my office. I worked on it from about February 2022 to my moving in in August 2022. But, even more so than that I see how I planned the outlets, the speaker wire for the preplanned surround sound. The antenna wire for the FM antenna that I built in previous years. What you cannot see is the later added wiring for the AM antenna.

All the AV is sitting on the table that I built. This was built with the tree that I milled in 2005. It dried for almost 20 years before I built the table. I custom sized it to fit in the space. It would accommodate all of the techno-junk that I had accumulated perfectly. Not just that but it also perfectly allowed for the placement of the lamp in the corner.

You see the roll of cables on top of the box? Those were all custom sized to fit the room or custom built to fit the components. As I was unplugging everything I realized how many cables I had built over the years. All of those end plugs were ordered, waited for in anticipation and then satisfactorily put into service.

Honestly, I thought that I would spend even more time in my office enjoying surround sound or reading on the book. I should have known that this is the room I spend the majority of my waking days, I probably wasn’t going to get away with more time holed up in the basement. It wasn’t the enjoyment of the room that drove me, it was the building it.

As a youth, I spent a lot of time playing role playing games. These were primarily kids that were in my Boy Scout troop and so I saw them a lot. However, I remember getting bored after playing a couple of hours. I would start building a new character that I thought was perfect for the current game that we were playing. I have thought a lot about this over the years, its not the act of doing/using/participating that moves my wheels, it is the act of building or the thought of potential that does.

I suppose this is what has invested me into preparation. I have no desire to turn my home into a compound and patrol the perimeter for zombies. But, the idea of building the perfect pantry, shop, parts inventory is exciting. I am building for the potential of the future, not hoping to spring into action.

This process has been cathartic for me. I have made numerous trips to the donation centers for all manner of things. Tools, hardware, material of all kinds have left to hopefully find new and better homes. All that has brought countless memories for me about when and where I was when I purchased it. The funny thing is the least sentimental items were the ones that I acquired via inheritance. It was the ones that I remember getting as a present to our very first home or purchasing when we lived in South Carolina. Never mind the fact I haven’t used it in over twenty years.

My wife says that I am a hoarder. I disagree. To me, a hoarder might have good stuff but it is also surrounded by garbage. I had very little garbage, just stuff that has been sitting around and not used. It had a time and place and that has come and gone. Most of it was there, just in case.

End Your Programming Routine: I know that I am more interested in building than doing. If we do end up moving, my techno junk is going somewhere. If we don’t move, it is probably coming back into my office. That is one example of my madness. What I will say is that this is exactly why I look forward to settling again. The rebuilding cannot occur until that happens. That is what really drives me forward.

March 25, 2026 – It Is Forever

March 25, 2026 /

Last week was an emotional one. We were supposed to be moving and then we weren’t. I have to admit that I have no idea what to do. The safest thing is to continue preparing to move without any real guarantee that it is going to happen. I am taking you down with me this week.

March 20, 2026 – Surprised By Joy

March 20, 2026 /

A quick note today. I am not reviewing C.S. Lewis’ “Surprised By Joy” today. I have not had time to read recently and the time I have had, I was reading “The Whole Fish Cookbook”.

I have also decided that instead of covering three chapters a week, I want to do five. That puts this series at a month instead of six weeks. I feel like three chapters a week for a memoir is probably too long and I am going to have a difficult time mining the AltF4.co type content.

Consider this a day off. Hopefully I can find the time to get caught up so that next week we can get back on track. If not, I probably won’t mention that I am busy moving again next week. This is my warning.

March 9, 2026 – It is the Last

March 9, 2026 /

This is a swan song to my podcasting in my office. Man, I am going to miss this place when (if) we move. There very well may be one more podcast after today but I don’t know where I will record it. I expect that there will be a hiatus while we move so this is why this podcast is titled the last even though there is a chance it wont be. There is a brief mention of world politics but I use it as an illustration to my main theme; Do Things That Matter.

March 2, 2026 – It’s a First

March 2, 2026 /

Brace yourselves, this is my first podcast in my new office. Yes, the audio quality is not good at all. The room is super echo-y and I am on my Bluetooth headset for a microphone. That makes the resolution low to begin with, nevermind the acoustics. This is all about what I have been up to and I didn’t just seemingly disappear. That means that the podcast stays. I will work to make this better just not today.

February 5, 2026 – I Am Warming Up To This

February 5, 2026 /

It should be no surprise that I am not an early adopter. I am not opposed to change if there is a valid reason for it. I guess what I find acceptable is different then a lot of people. In most cases, I don’t need to change anything. I am happy with me, I am happy with what I have and I am happy to live within my means. That being said, not everyone feels the same. My wife for instance wanted to move to the water.

Here I have a shop, a garage, a large lot and even a second house. Why would I want to leave somewhere that I am comfortable and setup? Even more so, why would I want to sell my woodworking pile of wood, spend every weekend going through all of our things and totally disrupt my life when I am already happy? I was looking forward to having a lot of shop time now that my kids have moved out.

Despite the fact that there is only one (personal) reason I would want to move, I have been going into this with the best possible attitude. I want to make sure my kids don’t have to deal with my woodpile and all of that outgrown ski wear. But, if I am going to move, I want to make sure that it works financially and it works for my life. One of those things is deeply re-connecting with fishing.

I have been patiently waiting to try my luck at fishing on the lake. I have fished the lake before, but it has been nearly twenty years ago. My brother’s bachelor party was here, on the north end of the lake. Our house is a couple of miles south of that rental house so long ago. I have always assumed like so many bodies of water that not everywhere is equal habitat. It was no barnburner when I fished it last time.

I did find my pole and tackle amongst all the packed boxes. The forecast was great, it was going to be dry and warm and we were planning to stay over until Saturday. Since I get up so much earlier than everyone else in the house, I pinned Saturday morning as my inaugural attempt to see how lucky I was.

When I got up, I kind of drug my feet. What if the neighbors see me and question whether I belong or not. We are renting the house and I have only met one neighbor so far. What if it is all weedy and I am wasting my time? I finally got over my nerves and rigged up my pole. I also put on the hot water so that I could make some instant coffee. Once everything was done up, I opened the door and headed to the dock.

It was a beautiful morning. The eventual forecast was a high in the lower sixties but it was a bit brisk at 8AM. We are about a mile from the ocean, I could hear it in the background. A blue heron was annoyed by my coming down to the dock and flew off in disgust. The perpetual Canadian geese started swimming away honking. I assume that was their warning noises that something is not right here. I carefully stepped around all of the goose poop in the grass and the dock and started to cast.

It was my plan to only spend about thirty minutes fishing. I wasn’t going to re-rig to try different lures or spend the whole day doing this to get a limit. This is how I intend on fishing when I live here, a few minutes during lunch time or a few minutes before dusk. I am not opposed to taking fish and eating them but I am more interested in the fact that I can catch them or not. Especially now, I am not setup to clean, save or preserve fish. I would have to eat it now.

I did my 270 degree pass around the dock and nothing was doing. My stomach was growling and I started dreaming of heading back to the house and starting breakfast. This wouldn’t be the first trip that I didn’t catch anything. In fact, I didn’t actually expect to catch anything. I didn’t have any sort of vessel to put fish in if I did catch something. I told myself a few more casts and then I would head back to the house when I felt a tug.

It was a lazy tug. I thought that maybe I snagged something. But as I was reeling up I saw that there was a fish on the other end. It was a nice fish too. I would estimate that it was probably twelve inches long and around a pound. It was a rainbow trout, which means that it was put there as a hatchery fish. Now that I had it, what to do?

I really wanted to put it back for another day. The treble hook on my Panther-Martin spinner bait is not easy to remove with a flopping fish. I eventually got it on the dock and was able to get the hook out. I crossed my fingers that the fish would swim away because I had no net if it started floating after I tossed the fish back in the lake. It swam away and my heart was floating. It worked, this is exactly how I wanted this morning to start.

End Your Programming Routine: This is what I talk about when I say do things that matter. Maybe fishing isn’t your cup of tea but I wasn’t thinking about the ridiculousness of the world or what I might write about next or even the things that I wanted to do later in the day, including packing up and travelling home. It was no traffic and no boats on the lake just me and the geese and the heron and the fish. Even though I have most everything I want, maybe this is what I need and moving just gets me closer to that.

January 29, 2026 – Is This Where My Heart Is?

January 29, 2026 /

If you were to ask me six months ago about where I would lay my head, never in 100 years would I have said the central Oregon Coast. It was about that time that I was watching the show Port Protection and I was wondering if I could convince my wife to move to coastal Alaska. I didn’t think she would go for the isolation. My dream is more the mountain west with mountains, livestock and cowboy boots not rain gear and rubber boots anyway.

We were coming home last week and my wife said, “it is time”. I said, “what do you mean”? She said the lake house feels more like home then our current home. After sleeping three nights on an air mattress, I was ready to get back to our true home. But a lot of that is only because I have no stuff there, the house is cold and I had a lot of problems with my work computer that I suspect is related to our makeshift internet situation. I am in no hurry to move but I am getting kind of tired of living out of boxes.

As this thing drags on, it is getting more and more real. Each weekend, I spend time boxing, organizing, trashing, donating and recycling. I sold my woodworking pile of wood two weeks ago, now I have next to nothing. As I go through all of my sheet goods off cuts, each one has a story. That one was from my Grandpa’s ice table. That was from the soffit that I replaced. That was the ottoman I built in SC. There was a piece of T-111 that I took off of the house when I fixed some rotten spots prior to residing. It goes on and on but if they are too small, they get cut up and thrown away.

My son and I took my last range trip for my birthday. Not only could I not find ammo to go, but when we got back, I couldn’t find my cleaning supplies either. I have a universal kit that I keep with my hunting bag, but I ran through all of the supplies that it contained. I have a bulk bag of patches somewhere along with other parts that I want, but for the life of me, I don’t know where it is right now and I am surely not going to move all the boxes around to find it.

I guess when I started packing, it didn’t occur to me how long I might be in the situation of getting ready versus actually moving. I can’t afford to sit around and wait for certainty, I will actually be out of time. The thought does cross my mind, what if this falls through? The cabinets I gave away, the shelves I broke down, all of those things in boxes have to get put back? It is kind of overwhelming and motivating at the same time. This can’t all be for nothing.

The picture above is Friday night sunset at our closest beach, about two miles from the house. It has been a beautiful run of weeks at the beach. It is clear and cold with an arctic wind blowing. We felt sorry for the dog being cooped up all day and thought this would be a nice ending to a long week. So did a hundred other people that you can’t see behind me.

I think that there is a metaphor there. I am sunsetting my time at my current home. I couldn’t have been more fortunate to have a warm house, a shop, a nice yard and loving family that has arrived, blossomed and has now left. My memories are like the day this photo was taken, bright and sunny. Even if there is now a freezing wind blowing, this is still is a moment to be savored. If I really boil things down, I am not wishing that it stays twilight forever, it is just inevitable that the night will come. Fortunately, a new dawn will be coming tomorrow.

I will never be ready to call the lake house home, until it happens. There is always something that will need to be done here and I feel like I owe my heart that. But, it will happen and it will happen when we actually complete the move.

End Your Programming Routine: Since we were going to stay into the weekend with a clear forecast, I was going to take my takedown fishing pole. Guess what, I couldn’t find it. It must be boxed up somewhere. Yes, I should just take a regular fishing pole which I know where it is but that is illustrative. While I may not call the lake house home yet, it feels like it is time to get this show on the road.