Captain Cliché

I am starting Twenty Twenty-Three out in classical cliché style with a declaration that I must lose weight.

Today I weighed in at 232.6 pounds. I have shirts that I cannot button, dress slacks that are really hard to button, and at least one pair of cargo pants that I really like that I cannot fasten as of three weeks ago.

I am going to go through my closet and purge and I need to take another one of those fat pictures to post here for the purpose of shame.

I'm also going to continue my project of cleaning up and organizing the Carriage House. It is the perfect place for me to work on projects but it is so full of crap and so disorganized that it is essentially useless. 

It was only a week ago that I needed to find my roof heat cable that came off the roof  a year and a half ago. I have come across it several times, even going so far as to wrap it around an extension cord sling, only to be completely clueless as to where it may be now.

I've been this way for 65 years it I think it should end.

I have three chores I want to complete today.

Number one is to get the vacuum into the basement and clean up the area near the boiler chimney flue. I also need to get the flue door duct taped into place.

The second item is to shred a bunch of paperwork I have here in this designated office space in the back bedroom upstairs. However, I am unable to shred until I empty the shred chamber. 

Before I can do that, I need to clean out the fireplace, which is my third item. I will throw all the shredded paper I have in there in order to facilitate the making of fire as well as the total disposal of all this shredded material.

4:23 PM: I think I did pretty good. I managed to burn up the shredded material by just feeding it into the fireplace. There was still some burnable debris in the firebox. So I threw in a bunch of newspaper, kindling and then shred.

The shred does not go up in flames like you might think.

I finally finished fixing the Flue Flap.

I'm happy with what I've done. How permanent and durable it is remains to be seen.

I have started a cleaning initiative for the Carriage House. That's how serious I am about it. It's an Initiative! 

I call it "One Item a Day". I shall pledge to make a strong effort to endeavor to make a significant change to one item in the Carriage House.

That means finding a better place for it or throwing it away.

Today I moved our camping tent and a big Dutch oven into a good spot upstairs and threw away an old cordless phone set. That gives me some much needed storage space under the work table.

I've also gotten a good start on Blogging for the year.