October 2024 Island Trip – Day 6

Lawdy, I got the Amerigas account on the slope to closing down today. Amerigas bought out one of the local propane companies my parents had been with forever, and everyone on the Island has been jumping ship since. They have been a frustration for years now. Our tenants, who moved back here from Hawaii, asked me, “Is the propane with Amerigas?” When I confirmed, they said, “Dang.” Evidently, Amerigas has a monopoly in the Hawaiian Islands, and no one likes them them there either. The tenants have been happy to work with me in keeping in touch re the tank levels, creating a propane account with the new local company etc. We have new tanks at the house. The tank at the dryer shed is still more than half full… The weather is changing… It’s gonna get swampy back by that tank soon… The new company has to remove the dryer shed tank, and replace it. Amerigas comes out to collect it’s decommissioned tanks (for a wildly expensive fee). They’ll credit me for any propane in the tanks. There’s a slightly delicate dance in getting the new company to swap the tank before it gets too swampy to easily swap the tanks… And yet use up as much of the propane in that tank as possible to make to job as easy as possible. Rock-hard place. The owner of the new company, or his tech, who knows this property, will call me to sort this out. It feels like carefully deconstructing a house of cards. 😂

I stopped by the house let my tenant know all of these shenanigans, and where I’d placed the key that I have for vendors. Previously it had been in the dryer shed. While they were fine with contractors getting the key from the shed, I felt it was better to place the key somewhere a vendor didn’t have to walk into a space that was included in the tenants lease. While all vendors are 100% trusted, this is just good policy.

More siding priming was accomplished as well as consolidating items in the lower barn. My GC is going to finish priming the ceiling, keeping me and my ankle off of fucking ladders 🙄. Making the space easy for him to mask will save him time and me money.

My high school buddy came by to look at spreading our 5-yard pile of gravel in order to facilitate the new propane company delivering propane to Stella. Their propane delivery truck needs to back close enough to Stella to refill what will be her very own large tank, freeing us from periodically lugging 2-10 gallons tanks to town for refills.

We got together for dinner and karaoke with my classmate and his sweetie this evening. We really enjoyed meeting his girlfriend. She’s smart and sassy! The great thing about Wednesday karaoke on the Island in October is that the crowd js small. We had a great time. There were 8 or so of us that cycled through. My classmate and I sang Picture and Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around. I, of course, sang a bunch of other songs 😏. It was soul satisfying. I miss performing.