Life in Tyler, TX

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and that’s basically because I haven’t been doing anything directly RV-related.  After getting the power and water turned on, there were still a bunch of other little things to do before really settling in, and that took some time.  Now that I’m settled, I figured a posting was in order.

Over the past months, I’ve racked up some debt.  Not terribly surprising giving that I purchased a truck camper almost on a whim, had extensive truck repairs (plus general older-truck maintenance items), paid for a new deck, and the miscellaneous of life too.  As a result, I don’t plan on buying anything for the camper, trailer, or anything else that isn’t really necessary until I’ve paid off the debt.  At my current income and expense level (assuming the Shoreview townhouse gets rented out relatively quickly), I should have all debts paid in 5 to 6 months.  I really wish I could dig into building the trailer right now, but this might be a bit of a blessing in that I’ll be delayed until the worst of the hot weather has abated.  It’s only mid-May here in Tyler, and it’s already getting too hot for me.  Maybe in the late fall or winter months it’ll be more tolerable.

For now, my days are starting to fall into a pattern.  Get up, do morning stuff, do computer work until all emails have been cleared out, then start working on everything else.  Oh, and try to get two 30-minute mowing sessions every day too.  The “everything else” has been the process of moving in over the past couple weeks, but is slowly starting to turn into fixes, upgrades, and improvements in the house.  For example, today I swept and then mopped the kitchen and living room areas.  For the entire time I’ve been here thus far, those rooms have been somewhat dirty.  Dirty enough that I placed a rug outside of my room and wiped my feet every time before entering.  Now that they’ve been cleaned, it feels much nicer.  I’ve also begun the process of removing Ikea-made closet organizers from the garage which were home to far too many insects and were literally falling apart.  Just another item on the todo list.

With regards to the mowing: the “Cottage” as my parents are calling it sits on a 2.5 acre plot of land.  With that much grass to mow, everyone around here has a riding lawn mower to handle the square footage.  Since the house didn’t come with one, I had to figure out some other option until my dad arrives and picks out a riding mower he likes.  Since there is also a significantly-sized and fenced garden with raised beds, I figured a regular push mower would be required to handle that area, as well as other spots the riding mower simply couldn’t get to.  With that in mind, I went and bought a mower.

With me being who I am, I bought an electric mower.  Best mower I’ve ever used.  Quiet, light, and easy to use, I’ve been quite pleased with it.  Instead of checking the oil, checking the air filter, adding gas, priming, then pulling on a rip cord (a couple times), you simply press the button and it starts.  It has the same power as a gas-driven mower, just without the fumes, noise, and maintenance of a gas mower.  It’s also, not unexpectedly, much cheaper to operate, costing only a few cents in electricity per charge versus gas, oil, air filters, spark plugs, gas can, and trips to the gas station.

It is limited to a maximum of 38 minutes per charge, and in typical usage, seems to last around 30 minutes.  This works out well for me, since I generally don’t really feel like mowing after a half our or so.  When the mower stops, simply remove the battery and place on the charger.  About six hours later, it’s ready to do it again.  With the six hour charge cycle, I can get two sessions in per day, assuming I’m not busy with work and the weather is cooperating.

Another little project I threw together was some speaker stands.  Having a fully-functional home theatre (yes, British spelling) is very helpful for my mental state, it gives me a place to relax physically and unwind mentally.  And for me, sound is just as important as the picture, and something I find lacking in so many television set-ups.  As such, I have always had a nice surround-sound system with properly-placed speakers for quite a few years now.  When I set up the system in its current location in Tyler, there was no good place to put the rear speakers.  Since I knew where I wanted them, and I had spare 2×4’s laying around, and a bit of extra time, well, speaker stands got built.

The next major item on the todo-list in Tyler is a “Catio“.  In our case, it’s going to be built somewhat like a 3-season porch, but we only need to build one wall with a screen door.  The design of house is such that the other sides, including the roof, are handled by existing structure.  I’ll probably post a few pictures of that once it’s done, which of course has nothing to do with RVing, but it’s just part of my journey to getting there.