SchadeBLOG

Okay, most of you by now know that I’m running a little bit of a side business over at Twilight Teez. The truth of the matter is this little business has taken over a lot of my spare time, which is why this blog doesn’t get updated as often as it used to. But it’s taken over a little more than just my spare time. It’s taken over my house. So I had to go buy a new play thing - my new shed.

Actually, it’s not my shed, per se. The company paid for it. It’s just sitting in my back yard. Technically, since I own half of the company, and I own a goodly portion of my backyard, I own half of the shed. My half is the outside of it.

Mrs. Schadeboy gets the inside. Mainly because she’s the one who takes care of most of the administrative duties for the company, including the fulfillment of everyone’s orders. And because she gets the inside, it turns out that’s the most important part. But because I’m the technical part of the company, I get to be the one to build out all of the upgrades we’re making to it.

Now, strictly speaking, there’s nothing particularly impressive about this shed. It’s got a floor, four walls, a roof, two vents, and a window. From an outsider’s perspective, if I were to show it off most people would say, “and…?” But this is not just a shed, but a much needed storage solution. Until this thing is completed, our inventory and order fulfillment center is, quite literally, my living room, family room, and portions of a small storage closet. We have boxes all over the place, and this doesn’t make for a very comfortable environment to entertain. Or even function as a family. A typical conversation in our home lately has gone something like this:

Mrs Schadeboy: Can you hand me that box over there?

Me: Which one?

MS: The one by the piano.

Me: There’s six of them by the piano.

And so on. Needless to say, this kind of conversation gets old very quickly. So it became more than apparent that we needed an actual place to put our inventory. Thus, the shed was purchased.

Now the hard part comes in. It’d be one thing to simply have a water-proof place to put all of our inventory. But we also want a place that can be out of the way to fold the shirts and pack them for shipment. Which means someone will need to work in the shed. And that someone will most likely be Mrs. Schadeboy.

I’d like to remind you that my home is based in a Sunny Sierra Vista. A lovely small town in southern Arizona with a population of approximately 42,000 at the base of a very large mountain range called the Huachucas (you can see their outline in our logo). The problem is, if you know southern Arizona well, you know that we are also right smack in a desert. The word desert is a combination of two Latin words; des which means “place”, and ert which means “that is hotter than Hades.”* In other words, it’s very hot here. And hot plus uninsulated, non-climate-controlled shed equals heatstroke in a matter of six seconds.

All of this to say that my new project with the shed is to get it insulated and wired for air conditioning. I’m also putting in some lights, a phone line, and a data connection. That’s what I did most of the weekend. I had some help from my beloved brother-in-law (who happens to know a thing or two about electricity) and we wired the place up for all of those things. This included digging a 15-foot-long trench from my electrical box to the shed.

Again, I remind you, we are in a desert. Desert not only means hot, but when combined with the word Arizona, means “hot and full of hard dry ground that will cause you to have a heart attack if you try to dig through it.” I was fortunate. I did not have to dig through our famous Arizona Caliche (pronounced cuh lee chay). According to dictionary.com, this stuff is “a surface deposit consisting of sand or clay impregnated with crystalline salts such as sodium nitrate or sodium chloride.” That makes it sound so nice and soft, right? When talking about caliche, the word soft would be like saying that Kevin Federline was a talented musical genius. And I mean that only in the best way possible. Caliche usually resides mere inches under Arizona soil. This stuff will eat you for lunch. I am delightfully surprised that I did not hit a single inch of it. But digging that (naughty word) trench is probably going to be the death of me anyway. I am not anywhere near the caliber of someone like, say, Dog.

So that’s where we stand. We have to wait for the inspector to come by and - I am not making this up - inspect it. Then I can finish off with insulation and drywall (or wallboard, gypsum board, or whatever). Then we can move our inventory into it and then things will really be rocking. Until then, we have to suffer with “hand me that box over there” type of conversations.

*It would be very wise not to use SchadeBLOG as your sole source for word definitions.