Carbon Monoxide!?

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Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...
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Busy and Busier

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It has been busy and somewhat stressful. I am reflecting on the comparatively relative low stress of traveling alone in Southern Africa last year at about this time. I mean in Africa, I only had to worry about getting in car accidents (maybe running someone over), missing flights, getting robbed or attacked. All of these possibilities in a very unfamiliar land. Now interestingly, I seem to have more stress -- over what? It is probably a very good example of good stress versus bad stress. Good stress comes from calculated self-directed challenge. Bad stress comes from captivity and what we feel we "should" be doing. "Should" indicates there are external forces we are beholden to --without our own devices or agency.

In April, I am speaking at CIDM Convex in San Jose CA. https://convex.infomanagementcenter.com/. I also learned I am speaking at LavaCon in October https://www.lavacon.org/. There were 150 speakers considered and only 40 selected. It will be my first time at this particular conference and it will be in the hometown of Atlanta.

The house projects are stacking up a bit more than usual it seems. A rotten step board quickly turned into a complete staircase replacement --as an example.

The view from my top-down convertible is where a nice neighborhood house once stood. It didn't burn. It didn't flood. However, it also didn't optimize the land it was on. They tore the nice house down and are buiding a new super nice house. People are buying for lot value on our lake even in this up-market. Always buy real estate for land, the particular land. Understand the dependancies that makes it "particular land".

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