Taking advantage of another day of good weather, I went down the lane to the wood lot and resumed cutting off little trees at the ground and poisoning the stumps with Tordon. It's slow work, but I did make some progress. Even better, I've recovered enough to work down on the ground and get back up without it being a major struggle. I cleared little trees for a couple of hours in the morning, broke for a rest around noon, then came back for another couple of hours in the afternoon. I ended the afternoon with two more jobs. One was taking dried sox down off the line, bringing them into the house, and bringing in the pail of clothespins. The other was taking the garbage pail from the back porch out back and dumping the contents for the wild critters, rinsing the pail, and putting it in its place on the back porch.
Saturday, November 2, 2024
The day began with a visit to the hardware store for a foot and a half piece of ¼" ID plastic tubing. Why? The heater in my shop wasn't working. When that's happened before, I had to stick a piece of wire into a metal air tube to be sure it was clear. To do that I had to remove the plastic tube that was covering the metal one, and I wanted a new plastic one a few inches longer than the one I had. Did the clean-out work? Yep. I came back later and found that the heater was keeping the place at a steady 69º F. I'll be a happy camper if it will still do that when really cold weather arrives. Dinner for Saturday treat night was tostadas, with chopped onions mixed in the frijoles and jalapeño slices on top. The movie was Here. It's a picture with a different concept. It is set in the same location over two centuries, with stories of various residents who lived there at different times. An interesting feature for me was the technical achievement of aging. We first see Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as teenagers, and they age with the years until at the end we see them as old people. Many of the characters are not on screen long enough for the audience to care about them, but those two are shown enough to make their story interesting.
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Little by little, I'm getting back to normal, whatever that is. Today I got back to filing receipts. For years it has been my practice to keep computer files of expenses, As I enter each receipt in the file, I put it in an envelope labeled with its month and year. Today's assignment was last month, October. It took a long time to do a whole month at a time. It's easier when I made it a habit to keep the filing up to date every day or two. Letting it go for a week or more can make it more tiresome than I like. This morning I stepped on the scales and found my weight at 150 pounds. I prefer 140-145, so I need to cut back on the calories a little.
Monday, November 4, 2024
One more rainy day kept me indoors. Recent online posts by young drivers of Model T Fords have reminded me of that favorite activity, and at the same time reminded me that the remains of my 1915 runabout remain in northern Indiana. After my wreck a friend came to the scene and got the carcass, which has been sitting at his place ever since. I haven't seen it in person, but the pictures suggest it may be rebuilt or might supply important parts for another 1915. Whatever I do with it, I'll need a place to keep it. So today I started the big task of making room for it in my shop. That's a big job because the place is a mess. Some of the clutter only needs to be put away. Finding a place for everything will be the biggest challenge.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
The first job after breakfast was walking over to the city building to vote. That took me east to the cemetery and south to the next road, a total of less than a mile. It got me to thinking of all the generations of kids who walked a mile or two every day, getting to school and back home. It was just a part of the daily routine, a feature of life that wasn't considered a problem unless the weather made it so. If you know me you can guess how I voted, but a Facebook post by my cousin Lori reminds me: "How you treat someone that votes differently than you speaks volumes about your character." That tells me that the coming days and weeks will be a test of self control.
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Weather has cooled enough that this week I lit the kitchen stove Monday evening to kick off the wood burning season, and tonight I had the first fire of the season in the fireplace. I took advantage of the fire to burn some trash, which I can do during wood burning season. Beginning in spring, trash burning has to be done in a burning barrel outside. Today I returned to the project of putting my shop back in order. I still need to figure out where to put a lot of the clutter in there. I'm giving up on the notion of ever getting everything here sorted out. When I'm gone the relatives will be faced with deciding what to do with everything, but I don't need to worry about that. While I'm still here I'll do some of the things I'm still able to do, and if I never get around to most of it, so be it.
Thursday, November 7, 2024
More wheel-spinning than progress today. The high-top winter slippers I've been using for years have reached the stage of falling apart where I should replace them. The local Walmart no longer sells footwear of any size larger than 10, and that won't do. I phoned the store in Ponca City and was told they have larger sizes. Looks like I have an errand in Oklahoma soon. While I'm down that way I'll see about stuff that I consider too expensive here. It doesn't hurt to hope. Part of today's activity was boxing old slides in the shop, and that got me thinking about copying slides. I did that on my old copier, but I'll have to make a new holder to fit the present machine. So I bought a sheet of black poster board to use for making that.
Friday, November 8, 2024
Today's time-eating activity was a bit of catching up on reading. Newspapers have been piling up, so I read two of them and did the puzzles. That and taking a nap killed a big chunk of the day. I never even got around to working on a slide holder for the copier. Maybe I'll get to that tomorrow.
Saturday, November 9, 2024
First up was a drive to Winfield to check out a couple of auctions. Neither one had anything that tempted me to stick around. Being out gave me a chance to get a little grocery shopping done on my way home. This afternoon I took advantage of the good weather for a little outdoor work. I got the chain saw and took down a couple of low hanging branches that were obstructing the road down to the wood lot. I used the clippers to trim off the small branches, and used the saw to start cutting up some fallen trees in the road. One of those trees has enough dead wood to make quite a bit of firewood. Getting it all cut, split, and put away won't be done in a day or two. Dinner for Saturday treat night was the buffet at Pizza Ranch, and tonight's movie was Heretic. Hugh Grant seems harmless at the start, but it doesn't take long for him to become a menacing figure. Excellent performances by Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East make this show a good one.
Sunday, November 10, 2024
This was a big day. At least it felt bigger than most. My first job was getting the Suburban ready to go to work, which required a trip to town for a gallon of ATF. After filling the transmission I drove the vehicle to the front yard and left it in front of the dead truck. Next was clearing more small trees from the lane and the wood lot, and poisoning the stumps to keep them gone. I was able to spend a couple of hours doing that, and was pleased with how much I got done. A little after three Zack came to help me move the truck. We attached it to the Suburban with a chain, which was through a ten foot pipe to keep it from dragging on the ground. We spent over an hour dragging the truck to Topper Automotive Repair south of town. I drove the Suburban, mostly between 10 and 15 mph, and Zack steered the truck to keep it directly behind the Chevrolet. I had planned to make the move tomorrow, but that will be a work day for Zack and we decided to get it done today. I'm not planning to have the truck back in service right away, because it's likely to need some parts that will need to be shipped here. That's OK. Even if it takes a month, there will be some periods of decent weather during the winter when I'll be able to use it.
Monday, November 11, 2024
Today brought me another reminder of being being so old. The only hitch pin I could find was a little too wide to fit, so I went to TSC in search of one that would. All the alleged hitch pins they had were specially made to induce sticker shock. $15 or $25 for a hitch pin? Hell, no. I bought a $1.10 bolt to make one. That's the part that reminded me of being so old. A few years ago cutting the bolt to the right length and drilling a hole for the clip would have been simple. Today it took me well over an hour. Oh well. With a proper hitch pin I attached the little garden trailer to the Dixon mower and drove down to the wood lot and fetched a load of the wood I recently sawed. I stopped with the little trailer next to the splitter, and that's where my work on firewood ended for today. No matter how much I tried, the splitter refused to start. Maybe it will be more cooperative tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Given the human talent for screwing up, it's amazing that anything works at all. Last February I had an ambulance ride from my brother's house to a local hospital. This summer I received an emailed bill from the ambulance company for $2442.70, with no indication of any adjustment to the original amount. This morning I phoned both my insurance company and the ambulance company, then both of them. The word from the insurance company was that my part of the bill should be $303, and the ambulance company had no record of anything other than the full $2442.70. After more than two hours of nonsense by telephone, the situation is that I will wait a week or two for the ambulance company to get their act together and notify me of a revised (corrected) bill. After that experience I went to a less aggravating activity. I got the splitter started, and did some firewood splitting, and put the wood where it belongs. I did put a tarp over the splitter, just in case the rain shown in the forecast for tonight actually happens.
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
This was going to be my day to take the saw down to the wood lot and cut firewood, but the chilly north wind told me this wasn't the day. The temperature would have been OK on a calm day, but today's wind was too much for me. The forecast says tomorrow will be better. We are now in wood-burning season, but not every evening calls for a fire. Yesterday was mild and I didn't need any evening fires. Tonight was a little more chilly, and that called for fires in the kitchen stove and the living room fireplace. In a week highs will be in the forties and we'll be on our way to winter.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
I should have taken advantage of the decent weather for some outside work, but I was inside all day and into the evening filing receipts. I completed two months and part of a third, and made a couple of phone calls to find out what I bought. Usually I can figure out what the product is, but occasionally that's such a mystery that I have to ask the store what the code on the receipt means. I've been pretty lax about keeping up with with the filing, and it will be better if I make it a habit to file each day's receipts within a day or two.
Friday, November 15, 2024
With the arrival of the wood-burning season comes a need for kindling. Dried out cedar branches are excellent for that, so this afternoon I went down to the wood lot and brought up several days' worth of branches and started a pile east of the house. I put a tarp over the pile to keep it dry, with bricks to keep the cover from blowing off. An indoor project this morning was putting prescribed pills into dispensers for the coming three weeks. That took a visit to the pharmacy to refill a couple of prescriptions. I won't need to deal with that again until December.
| Saturday, November 16, 2024 I've been neglecting my photography this
year, so today I got back to it. I have two sort
of working A-640 digital cameras, and this
afternoon I set out to determine which is more
usable. I took both of them down to the wood lot
and shot several views, each of them with both
cameras. The results tell me which one works
better. This picture of Shorty with a fallen
tree blocking the road was taken with the better
camera. It's in focus, while a similar shot with
the other camera is a little blurry. I've
started sawing up this log for firewood. There's
a lot more of it to cut up, and there are
several more fallen trees and branches
presenting other roadblocks. I expect I'll
continue working on this one a little at a time,
hauling the pieces to the splitter with the
Dixon mower and little garden trailer. Then,
when I have my truck home and working, I'll get
seriously busy clearing the entire road. I think
I have enough dead trees to keep me in firewood
until spring.
Sunday, November 17, 2024 Taking advantage of decent weather, I did more sawing on that roadblock in the picture. I cut enough to fill the little garden trailer, and left it on the ground near the splitter, with a tarp over it. |
 |
Monday, November 18, 2024
Today's main activity was a drive to Ponca City for a bit of shopping. At Lowe's I got a trash barrel for the shop. That was the successful part of the day. The waste of time was a stop at Walmart for footgear. Several years ago I got a pair of hi-top winter slippers which are now in the time-to-replace stage. I hoped the Ponca City store would have more of a selection than the "supercenter" here. Well, it does. But not so much more that I could find anything that would fit me. It seems that a direct replacement for what I need to replace is no longer considered worth making and selling. I forgot the rule which says that if you find a product that suits you, it's best to buy a lifetime supply because the next time you want it you wont find it.
HOME
BLOG LIST
OCTOBER 2024