blog422

Laundry, Part 2 (shirts, sheets, towels, washcloths). I didn't get everything hung until after 1:00 PM, but a strong southern breeze had everything dry PDQ. When I went to town for shopping in the afternoon I took the alternator out of the defunct Suburban and had it tested. It checked out OK. I'm going to ask around and see if any of the auto shops in town make house calls. I'd rather not hire a tow to town for $60 if somebody can fix the thing here. I really do need to get it running so I can use my trailer. I have hauling to do, both on the trailer and in the vehicle.

The forecast claims little or no chance of rain for several days, and the wind died down to an occasional very light breeze, so I sprayed. I used up 2½ gallons left over from last week, then mixed ten more gallons and used that. After a trip to town for groceries I mixed another ten gallons and used up half of it by quitting time. The remaining five gallons should be enough to cover the rest of the theater of operations I'm currently attacking on the south side of the road. While I was spraying today a man rode by on his bike and Shorty chased him and snapped at him. I called him back and gave him my phone number and asked him to call me before his next ride. I'll drive up the road and meet him and give him my starter's pistol so he can fire off a few blanks when she chases him. I once did that to some aggressive neighbor dogs and it cured them nicely, so I hope it will do the same for her.

Best-laid plans. The plan for today was to finish spraying along the south side of the road. I wasted too much time online and didn't get to work until afternoon. It wasn't all that cold, but a half hour of watery eyes and dripping nose from wind chill was enough for me. I decided to quit and finish later under less annoying conditions. I need to get started on taxes, so this afternoon I looked up my farm income. Adding up the numbers I found that the crops brought in enough to pay the property taxes and insurance, so 2021 was a good year. After I fill out the forms I'll know if it was enough to also pay the income taxes. That would make it an even better year. I went to town to order some eye drops at the pharmacy and buy a new battery for my defunct 1950 WD tractor. I need to get the thing running because I have a lot of projects to do with it. By the time I got back from town the day had warmed up and the wind had died down, so I got back to spraying weeds and used up the rest of the weed killer I had mixed. I have some infestations of invasive honeysuckle to attack too, but I'll wait on that until the stuff leafs out.

This morning an experienced mechanic I know came to check out the Suburban. He found that the engine is stuck. Why? When he was working underneath he touched the oil pan plug and it fell out. It was so loose all the oil had leaked out. No wonder the engine seized. It will require major work, but at least now I know what's the matter with it. Thanks, Rick. In the afternoon I was headed to town for some eye drops and some port (first Wednesday is 15%-off day) when my phone rang. It was my cousin Pete. She told me after I was done shopping I should stop at Wally's house. When I got there I found that my cousin Gloria and her husband Jerry had been to a funeral in Missouri and stopped for a short visit on their way back to Montana. What a nice surprise! Gloria told me one of her grandsons who was here for the family reunion four years ago was quite taken with Model T's after going to town with me in the 1915 runabout. I hope to make a Model T trip north and west some year soon, so I'll go by way of Fargo where he lives.

A chilly blustery day was good for staying indoors. I hot wired my angle grinder. The trigger switch has always been unreliable, but finally quit working altogether. So I ordered a replacement switch. On aliexpress.com it was only $4.59 with shipping. But estimated delivery is June 6, so I'll be operating the grinder with a pedal switch until it arrives. A visit to Walmart for paint failed. The Rustoleum I want to use on ceiling tiles is no longer sold in the store. They will sell it to me online with free shipping, for only about three times the store price. I expect I can do better than that. I'll keep looking. My other chore today was filling out tax forms, not one of my favorite activities. I spent a couple of hours on it, and that was enough. I'll take another dose tomorrow.

Looking out the north window of the shop this morning I read 42º F on the thermometer, which was shaking in a stiff north wind. Another good day to stay inside. In the shop I reorganized and put away two boxes of electrical supplies — wire, terminals, shrink tubing, etc. I also hooked up an extra wire antenna for the stereo in the shop. Upstairs in my office I have an FM transmitter hooked up to my desktop computer. It broadcasts whatever station I choose from the internet, and I can listen by way of radios in the office, house, and shop. Usually it's Kansas Public Radio or XERPA in Michoacan, Morelia (Radio Ranchito). I like the music, and I hope it will improve my sorry Spanish. This afternoon when I was in town I stopped at the co-op for weed killer and found empty shelves. That's been an annoying feature of the last couple of years. I've taken to keeping extra cheese, butter, cereal, pepper, whatever, to use when the store runs out. Looks like I'll have to keep an extra jug of weed killer too.

Were they intentionally stolen, or did somebody get confused and take them when he loaded up his own stuff? There's no way of knowing, but the tray of clamps and the box of drill bits disappeared while I wasn't looking. Fortunately I paid only $1 for the clamps and $3.50 for the bits, so it wasn't a major loss. Items I did get away with were a large drill for $3 and LOTS of bits for $10. I wanted the drill because it's old enough to require a chuck wrench. Today's "easy" wrenchless chucks start out easy, but before long they aren't worth a damn. It was a humongous sale with thousands of tools. One guy spent over $6000 on high-end wrenches. He said he will keep some and sell most. I wanted to buy more than I did, but I had to leave early. This week's dinner out and movie night was in Wichita. Dinner at Mexico Viejo was my own combination — burrito de chorizo, tamal, and frijoles refritos. Yummy. I carry my own bottle of Yucateco verde salsa in the car because so many restaurants don't have any bottled salsa at all. I went to Wichita for the movie because Everything, Everywhere, All At Once is unlikely ever to play down here in Podunk. Out of fifty online reviews, only two were negative. Most gave it 9 or 10 stars. Does Evelyn Wang really encounter multiple versions of herself, her family, and others in multiple parallel universes, or is it all in her head? That doesn't matter. It's funny. Michele Yeoh as Evelyn is great, as are Stephanie Hsu as her daughter Joy and James Hong as her father, Gong Gong. Ke Huy Huang playing multiple characters as her husband Waymond Wang is wonderful, and Jamie Lee Curtis as IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra is a hoot. If EEAAO eventually does make it to our local theater, I'll go see it again.

This morning I posted this 1947 photo of Dad with Mike and me on Facebook for his 119th birthday. My comment was that when I think of him I think of questions I should have asked, and if your folks are still around you should get them to tell you their stories. My story today included watering the seedlings. The well established American sweet gum trees are budding out, but it will be some time before I find out if the little trees survived the winter drought. The forsythia I planted by the west porch is leafing out, so that's a good sign. When I went to town today I found the absorbent pads I use are still out of stock, as they were yesterday here and in Winfield, Derby, and Wichita. I ended up buying the more expensive brand. I thought I would get a box of rice, but that shelf was also bare. Welcome to the Soviet Union. The shortages aren't really that bad, as they're not caused by government central planning, but they are pretty annoying. I hope as the pandemic fades the supply chains will get back to normal.

Again, everything takes longer than you think it will. Today I set up the sandblasting equipment and started blasting my new MIG welder stand. It was about halfway done when I had to quit and put away the equipment and go to town. I went for bananas, but also bought rice because it was back in stock today. I got two boxes so I can have an extra to use if the store is out of stock again the next time I finish a box.

The forecast says today's 87º F will become tomorrow's 53º F. Some day soon my uniform of the day will change from overalls and a flannel shirt to overalls and a light weight shirt. But obviously that won't be tomorrow. We still have some chilly weather to get through. Some parts of the state are even predicted to get some snow tonight. Around here the first job of the day was getting the dead Suburban into town. Wally came over and gave me a tow so I wouldn't have to spend $70 hiring a tow truck to drag the thing three miles to the shop. The other main activity of the day was finishing the sand blasting on the welder stand. While I was at it I blasted the remains of old corn meal out of a corn bread pan. Years ago in a discussion of sandblasting on the Model T forum one of the guys said recycling sand wasn't worth the time spent on it. So thinking of that today I timed how long it takes to gather all the used sand off the tarp and screen it into a couple of buckets. It took 17 minutes. Applying my meager pension and social security to a standard work week, the time I spend recycling costs a little less than half a bag of sa

Have I ever told you that I hate, loathe, and despise doing taxes? I do, I do. That's how I wasted my day. I spent most of the day in Federal agony, quitting about 3:30 to lay the evening fires and paint the new welder stand. After chow this evening I came back and dealt with the state garbage. All that's left is to print out the forms and mail them and the checks, then I can get back to doing something worthwhile. Why don't I E-file? Several years ago I tried that. After the deadline had passed I found out that the IRS had rejected my return, and I ended up paying a late fee and a penalty. Since then I've stuck with the old fashioned paper way.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I knew better, but I let somebody on Facebook make me waste my time looking up links to debunk loony conspiracy theories. Eventually I reminded myself that these guys are hard wired to reject reality, no matter what. I turned to something all too real — printing out my tax forms, writing the checks, and mailing everything to end the infuriating crap until next year. On the way to the post office I stopped at the co-op to buy weed killer. Last August I paid $54.25 for 2½ gallons of Eraser. Today the same thing cost me $135.63, a price hike of 150% in eight months. That's the highest percentage price rise I've seen so far. I know there will be more, but I hope they won't be as steep.

Back to something worthwhile. I installed casters on the new welder stand, cut Masonite for its shelves, and painted a couple of spots I had missed. I fired up the saw and cut some wood. Some was big enough to need splitting, which I'll do later. There was enough smaller stuff to fill a couple of boxes, which I brought into the house. Wood burning season is almost over. There will be more nights chilly enough for a fire, but not very many. In the afternoon I mixed five gallons of weed killer and attacked the vegetation I missed in previous spraying. I used about half the amount of very expensive Eraser I've been using. In a week I'll know if today's mix was strong enough.

Trees leafing out include dogwood, mulberry, elm, cottonwood, some of the maples, some of the American sweet gum, and some of the oaks. The redbuds came out a couple of weeks late this year and are still blooming. Seedlings that survived the winter drought are a forsythia and an American sweet gum. I'm still waiting to see about the others. Poppy plants that are coming up in the west lawn will bloom in May. I always hold off mowing there until they have gone to seed. In the shop today I set the wire welder up on its new stand, then came up to my office and downloaded the manual and spent an hour or so studying it. I did some wire welding in the welding class I took at the junior college about thirty years ago, but I've long ago forgotten everything I learned about it then. I've done plenty of acetylene welding over those thirty or so years, but no wire welding. I bought this welder several years ago, but had no occasion to use it until now. About 3:00 PM I set out for Wichita. The object was to restock with 김치 at Grace Market. A gallon lasts a little over a month, so what I bought today will take me into June. Dinner was at Mexico Viejo again, enchiladas blancas this time. This week's movie was another viewing of Everything Everywhere All At Once. I can't claim to be so smart that I completely understood everything, but I think I got most of it.

Well, that was a waste of time and money. I drove down to Ponca City to buy some HF tools. Normally the store is open on Sundays, but it was closed for Easter. Bummer. On the other hand, an advantage of these holidays is that the day after Christmas or Easter you can buy seasonal candy at half price. This afternoon I was going to split some of the wood I cut other other day, but the splitter would run for only a few seconds and then die. I suppose there's some kind of obstruction in the fuel line. I'll deal with that later. I was feeling too lazy to bother with it today. I was going to opine abut something this evening, but I've forgotten what it was. I'll strew my pearls of wisdom later if I remember what they were.

Today's trip to town was for a 35 pound bag of cat food. Should I write to the company and tell them that the new sealed bag is the pits and they should go back to the old pull-the-string-to-open type of bag that's been around since the nineteenth century? No doubt they would take my advice. Ha! This was my day to get back to work on that southeast bedroom, fixing loose ceiling joists. In one place I drilled a hole through three 2 x 4's and installed a ⅜" carriage bolt to hold them together. The bolt was from a can of bolts I bought at the Defore auction for $1. I made the hole with the 90º drill I recently bought at the Patterson auction for $3. It's an old timer, with a chuck that takes a wrench. I prefer that. New drills have an "Easy-chuck" when you get them. After awhile it becomes a "Not-So-Easy-Chuck", then a "Hard-Chuck", then an "Infuriating-Worthless-Chuck". Progress. In my elderly feebleness, driving nails overhead has become a challenge, but I got three joists fixed today. I may get the rest done tomorrow, then I can take down the supporting braces and start adding 2 x 4's to make the joists wider to hold ceiling panels. I want to get the walls and ceiling done in this room before the end of May so I can get the bed set up for my brother to use when he's here in June.

There's not much to report. I spent another day playing carpenter. Specifically, that means installing new or better framing to support new sheet rock and ceiling panels. There's quite a bit of that to do, so it's likely to take several more days.

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Not much to report. I did laundry, including Shorty's army blanket. It will be put away until next fall. In cold weather she sleeps on my bed. It's a double bed, so there's room for both of us. The electric blankets went into storage today too, and I opened the bedroom windows. It's possible to still get some chilly weather but more likely the windows will stay open until fall too. After the wash was hung I worked on the southeast bedroom some more. Sunday night TV was a success. Neither Sixty Minutes nor The Simpsons was preempted by sports. Those two programs are the only TV I watch on Sundays. I used to watch Sunday Morning when it covered the fine arts, but when it changed to the lead story being a feature on the aging Viacom rocker of the week I lost interest.

Monday, April 25, 2022

Bedroom rebuilding continued with installing the framing to hold new sheet rock. Not much in this old house is square or straight, so there's a lot of cutting and fitting to get everything level. Reconstructing an old house is a lot slower than building a new one. I had to go to town for a box of screws and was going to pick up a couple of receptacle boxes, but that shelf was bare. Orscheln has always had what I call K-Mart disease: "We're supposed to have it, but we're out." I'll get those later when I go to Ponca city for a couple of tools and some other stuff.

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

This was my Ponca City morning. I went to HF and bought a nailer, and stopped at Lowe's for a couple of receptacle boxes. I got the nailer for putting up ceiling panels because hammering nails overhead is torture. On the way home I stopped at AC Tire & Auto to inquire about the Suburban. As I feared, the engine is toast. Now I'm waiting to find out what a replacement will cost. When I got home I continued the bedroom rebuilding project. I'm doing it all with lumber I bought dirt cheap at auctions years ago. I hate to think what I'd have to spend on new lumber at today's prices. While I was working on the house Dieter Mitchell came to check out my 1950 Allis Chalmers WD. I parked it a few years ago because it was running on just a couple of cylinders. There's more to do than I have time for, and I want an experienced mechanic to get the thing running so I can use the loader for some jobs I want to do. I was pleasantly surprised that Dieter found the compression OK on all cylinders. He took the carburetor and the distributor home to work on them, and I'm hoping I'll be able to use that loader sometime in the next month.

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Never went off the place today. Continuing work on the bedroom project, I fitted and installed more pieces of framing in the east wall, mounted the two receptacle boxes so there will be outlets at both ends of the room, and ran 12-2 Romex to both boxes. I should be ready to start putting up sheet rock soon, maybe in a couple of days. I believe I have plenty of sheet rock left from previous projects, but I will need to buy insulation.

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Today I did go off the place. But first I worked on the bedroom rebuilding project. Cutting boards at odd lengths and angles and shimming with wood shingles to get things level or even is still slow going, but I now have the east wall ready for three of the six pieces of sheet rock it will take. The rest is partly done and needs less correcting, so maybe I can finish it in a day. About 3:30 I left for the Flatland T's meeting in Hesston. That's almost halfway across the state. In good traffic it's about an hour and a half. Today it took longer because I stopped in Winfield to get a new battery for my dead watch, and in Wichita for gas, and then encountered a traffic bog-down on the north side of Wichita. But a Wichita bog-down is small potatoes compared to the ones in big cities, and I wasn't too late for dinner at El Cerrito with some of the club members before the meeting.

The WD at work, 2008.

Friday, April 29, 2022

Continuing work on the bedroom project, I ran an extension cord in from the shop building for my tools and a light, and shut off the power to the house while I hooked up the wiring to the two new outlets. I'll install the receptacles in the boxes after I put up the new sheet rock. The east wall is nearly ready for me to install insulation and sheet rock. I still have to prepare the south wall, but it will be easier because it's new construction I did when I rebuilt the roof and the front of the house a few years ago. It won't require all the shimming and cutting of odd pieces I've had to do on the east wall. After chow this evening I took an inspection walk in the wood lot, a little over half a mile I estimate, and found the road mostly clear until I got to the northeast corner and found a dead tree had fallen across the road. My first impulse is to turn it into part of next winter's firewood right away, but I think I'll let it wait until I get this southeast bedroom usable, I hope by the end of May. The clock is ticking.

Saturday, April 30, 2022

Last night's rain left .62" in the gauge. The plants will love it, and soon I'll have to take a day or two off from everything else to mow before things get out of hand. Today I finished preparing the east wall for insulation and sheet rock, and most of the south wall. There I have just one more board to put in place. I expect I'll be shopping for insulation tomorrow. For Saturday treat night it was tostadas again, two with sardines and two with frijoles refritos. Maybe I'll get back to dining in town next week. Tonight's movie was Father Stu. Some movies are technically excellent, visually stunning, and well acted, but fail to connect emotionally. No so here. Mark Wahlberg carries the film wonderfully, and Mel Gibson is great, but the real star is the script by writer-director Rosalind Ross. This week my movie admission was well spent for sure.