The annual Christmas letter was at center stage today. I worked on it until about two in the afternoon, then went out and spent a couple of hours on firewood. Finding that I was down to my last can of gas for the splitter and other yard equipment, I took four empty cans down to the gasino and brought home twenty gallons, which should last until spring. Chow this evening included a slight variation from the norm. I usually have some dry roasted peanuts. I toss a few to Shorty, and she catches most of them. Tonight  I made popcorn instead. Shorty catches that too, but I think she likes the peanuts better.


Monday, December 6, 2021

One of the questions often asked when old people fill out health questionnaires is "How many times have you fallen down in the past year?" I'm never sure what to answer. First, because I may not remember everything that's happened in the past year, or that what I do remember was in the last year. And second, because I'm not sure what "falling down" means. Does it refer only to suddenly losing your balance and toppling over? Or does it include tripping over something (stick, branch, vine, old fence wire hidden in the grass)? I don't do the former, but I sometimes experience the latter. Fortunately I usually hit the ground in a way that doesn't do any damage. This morning it was a light stand in my office with a leg sticking out. That's what made me think of this. Again, no harm done beyond annoyance, so I went on with my normal activities. Today that meant starting to prepare the southeast upstairs bedroom for renovation. Before I start tearing down old sheet rock and Celotex, I have to get the bed and other furniture out of the way. And before I do that I have to box up the books, pictures off the walls, and other small items that add up to lots of stuff in my way. The hardest part of this will probably be finding places to put all the stuff I clear out of the room.


Tuesday, December 7, 2021

When I went to town for shopping I stopped at the Walmart for a blood  pressure check and found the Pursuant machine still out of order, I decided the time has come to get my own monitor. Looking online to see what's available I found a likely candidate at Target. The Target website promised free shipping until I got to checkout. There it wanted to add a shipping fee and a tax on the shipping fee. No, thanks, I'm not having any bait & switch today. Moving on  to the Walmart website I found some similar monitors at similar prices. They may be in stock at the local store. If not, I'll order one online and pick it up at the store. My work today was moving more stuff out of that southeast upstairs bedroom. The item that will be most difficult to take out is the bed. I may just turn it on its side with a tarp over it and work around it.

Today being Pearl Harbor Day, this was my Facebook post:
On this day 80 years ago I missed the news, because when you're six months old you don't pay much attention to such things. But at age 31 though, Mom was very aware. In those days the nearby Palos Verdes peninsula was agricultural, with miles of farms overlooking the Pacific owned by Japanese immigrants and their American kids. Mom didn't know any of them. One night after Pearl Harbor she dreamed that Japanese spies from Palos Verdes had tied grenades to the springs of her bed, and she woke up desperately trying to untie the grenades from the bed springs. Five years after the war we moved from Wilmington to Lomita, and Mom met Teruko Mitoma, who was working as a checker at Vista Market where we shopped. Mom and Terry became the best of friends, and our families hung out together a lot. Like many first generation Americans the Mitomas maintained a little of the old country culture, but were as American as Jimmy Durante or Babe Ruth, a couple of other kids of immigrants from Axis countries. Today when I hear people talk about Japanese Americans as if they can't hear the American part, I wish they could have gone to school as I did, with good American kids who spent the war in prison camps but then lived good lives.


Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Today when I went to town for celery I stopped at the Walmart to see if they had any blood pressure monitors in the store. They did, and I bought the house brand for $30.68. There were others costing more, with extra electronic bells and whistles, but all I want is a BP reading. I tried it out this evening and it seems to work OK. I got a reading of 124/74. Ten or twenty years ago a systolic pressure of 120 or more was a little high, but my doc says now that I'm 80 it's fine. The goal now is to stay under 140/90. Fortunately I'm making that goal most of the time these days. Email report: Still a mess, with long delays receiving and even longer delays sending. Meanwhile, the obsolete Macbook Pro with its ten-year-old operating system, handles email just fine, both sending and receiving. The fly in that ointment is that the old browsers compatible with that OS can't handle a lot of websites now. I would have updated all that by now, but I would lose a couple of programs I like. I suppose the solution is to keep that laptop for those obsolete features and get a more up to date model to take traveling. I can tell you it definitely won't be anything infested by a Windows operating system.


Thursday, December 9, 2021

Professional success and lots of dough don't cure human flaws. Today I read an article on Bing and Dixie Crosby's four boys. What a sad tale. I'm a fan of Bing as a performer, but he wasn't much of a dad to those kids. Two of the boys died by suicide, and the other two struggled with booze and died relatively young. After Dixie died and Bing remarried, apparently he did better with the second family, but that didn't help the boys. Along with reading of the tragic rich and famous, I did a lot of online schmoozing today. But I also did some research on garage door insulation. Cold weather is coming, and that means burning lots of gas to heat my shop and office. I want to cover the leaks around the big doors at the north and south ends of the shop and perhaps reduce what I spend to keep the heater going. When I used that new blood pressure monitor today I had such a fight putting on the cuff with one hand and got so mad I was afraid it would send my pressure sky high. But eventually I figured out how to put on the cuff and found out that my pressure wasn't bad at all. In fact 109/64 is quite good, especially for a person of the elderly persuasion.

Friday, December 10, 2021 This being Friday, this morning I posted this photo in one of the Facebook Model T groups for Front End Friday, with the comment that Lizzy is in the shop for some surgery and rehab, and I'm looking forward to hitting the road again. The view is on old Route 66 in Missouri, on one of my trips to Detroit for the Old Car Festival. I have a lot of things to do to the car before touring season rolls around again, but fortunately nothing major. I spent the morning mostly addressing envelopes. I still have to print out the Christmas letter to put in them. In the afternoon I got outside and split enough firewood to fill a couple of boxes, and this evening after chow I finished addressing envelopes. Getting Christmas letters out almost two weeks early is a bit of a surprise. I don't know what's made me so efficient this year. Saturday, December 11, 2021 When I came out of the theater this evening about 9:15 I could hear Canada geese. It was dark and I couldn't see them, but I assume they were nesting in a field across the highway, probably a field that had a crop of milo in it this year. During harvest some of the grain falls on the ground, and the geese enjoy it. I had been to see Encanto again. I found the second viewing just as impressive as the first. Perhaps more so, noticing some details I missed the first time. An animated detail I noticed this time was the natural way people's clothes move as they walk. Last week I mentioned the nuanced facial expressions, some obvious, others subtle and fleeting, and all beautifully animated. This aspect of the animation was especially effective in some of the interactions between Mirabel and her little nephew. I noted the wide palette of colors, the backgrounds with interplay of light and dark, and attention to textures. And of course there is the music, especially Sebastián Yanta singing Dos Oruguitas. I won't call it gorgeous, though it's certainly beautiful, because that carries a certain connotation of splashy, in-your-face beauty. This song, the way Yanta sings it,  is simple, tender, and powerful.

Domingo, 12 de Diciembre, 2021

San Antonio, October 13, 2007

El Idolo de México ha fallecido. The news from Guadalajara this morning was the saddest possible. The passing of Vicente Fernandez brings to an end sixty years of great singing. He was only a year older than me, but the news did not come as a surprise. Chente was a cigarette smoker, and in recent years he let his weight go as he declined physically. I'm just glad I went to four of his concerts before he retired from touring. When I saw him his hair was white but his voice was still in its prime and he was still on top of the singing game. The first time I heard him sing was in a movie in 1974, while I was in Cuernavaca taking a summer school course. He quit making movies in 1991, figuring that at 51 he was getting too old to play romantic leads. But his singing only got better, and well into his seventies he still turned out albums that contained major hits and sold millions. RIP Chente, one of the world's best singers. A little trick he did at least once during a concert was put down the microphone and show how he could fill the arena with his voice and make the folks way up in the top rows hear him. He was very dynamic, taking a phrase from full force to a dramatic whisper, and could bring an audience to cheers and tears.
Regressa a mi  
El Hombre que mas te amó
Guadalajara

Monday, December 13, 2021

"You can't get there from here." For many years I have always bought ink for my Kodak printer at the local Walmart, the only place in town that sells such things. Saturday afternoon my printer ran out of black ink, so yesterday I went to buy more. I bought two black cartridges and one color for a total of $81.28. When I got them home I found that they didn't fit my model of printer. The boxes no longer have a list of models printed on them, so buying them was a losing gamble. So today I returned them. I went online and bought a package of ten correct cartridges, four color and six black, for $63.90 with free shipping. Ten for about $17 less than three is quite a difference. I don't mind waiting three or four days for them to arrive. My outside work today was splitting firewood to fill four boxes, and taking them into the house. Currently we're having a few mild days, with highs in the sixties or seventies, but soon that will drop to more normal forties and fifties, and I'll be burning more wood.


Tuesday, December 14, 2021

The forecast for tomorrow predicts wind from the south with gusts up to 55 or 60 mph. Of course. This is Kansas. I believe I read that Kanza means people of the south wind. That also means warming, and in this case a December 15 record high is expected. I'll be finishing my tree planting. A few days ago my bare root trees from the Arbor Day Foundation were delivered and have been waiting in the cellar. There are three American sweet gum and one free red maple that comes with every order. I got two of the sweet gums into the ground this afternoon, but the other two trees have to wait until tomorrow. I don't know if the current dry spell has been going on long enough to be an official drought, but I dug today's holes a foot deep and the soil was powder dry all the way to the bottom. The place for the third hole was so hard that I dug it down only halfway and filled it with water to soften the soil. I'll find out in the morning whether that was enough. Another of today's projects was soldering a leak in one of my running board cans. The cans sit together in a carrier, and the leak probably came from two cans rubbing together. I intend to use defunct inner tubes and glue rubber on both side of each can to cushion them. My third project of the day was removing the left front fender from the runabout and taking it to a body shop in town to have Luke Myers check out a dent. He hammered it basically straight and gave me a homework assignment to see if it fits properly on the car. Then I'll sand blast it and take it back to him for the fine body work. Some of the other fenders have cracks in them, but I think I'll be able to fix those myself.


Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Never went off the place today. My first job was finishing the tree planting. The hole soaking softened the ground nicely, and I had the third sweet gum in the ground in a few minutes. I planted the red maple by the road in the wood lot, but I took a little time out from planting to shoot some video of the windy day. I'll post a link when I get it edited. There were reports of wind gusts over 70 MPH, and trucks on the interstate tipped over. Wind doesn't interfere with sand blasting, so I set up the equipment and got started on blasting that runabout fender. I got the top side about half done, then stopped and finished the day watering all the new trees. I intend to water them daily for at least a week, maybe two, then at least once a week unless it's raining. I want these things to survive the winter in good shape and ready to take off when spring arrives.


Thursday,December 16, 2021

The last couple of evenings I've lit no fires, and slept with the electric blankets turned off. Now we're getting back to normal, with the ten day forecast showing mostly highs in the forties and fifties and lows in the twenties and thirties.  Tonight I lit fires, and after dinner burned trash in the fireplace. This morning I watered all the new trees, then dealt with an unscheduled interruption in my sand blasting efforts. Yesterday at quitting time I neglected to cover the blaster and the pail of sand next to it. An unexpected shower came, and some water blew into the blaster funnel and the sand pail. It wasn't a lot of water, but resulted in enough wet sand to interfere with blasting. So this afternoon I spread the pail of sand out on a tarp to dry in the sun. I removed the funnel and stopper from the blaster and dumped all the sand out of it too, and spread that out to dry also. I turned on the compressor, replaced the funnel and stopper, and blew air through the blaster to remove any remaining moisture. I left the sand and the blaster to dry while I went to town for shopping. When I got back I strained the dried sand through a screen and dumped it in the blaster. Then I removed the funnel and stopper from the blaster again, added a rubber washer cut from a defunct inner tube to the stopper, reassembled, and turned on the blaster. I was happy to find that the extra rubber on the stopper made a better seal and produced a more forceful stream of sand from the nozzle. I'll resume blasting the fender tomorrow, and I expect the work will go a little faster than it did yesterday.  And the lesson from today's adventure, which I really already knew, was that a few minutes of prevention can avoid hours of cure.

Wednesday: Blasting

Thursday: Drying out

Friday, December 17, 2021

Today's Job One was collecting beer bottles along the road, then driving halfway to Winfield taking two boxes of bottles and jars to the recycling center. When I got home I looked at my real estate tax bill and found that it's due Monday. If I paid on Monday I would have to wait in line, so I drove to Winfield and paid today with no waiting. I went to the lumber yard and bought two more bags of blasting sand, and intended to pick up a couple of calendars for the new year. The calendars hadn't arrived yet, so I'll have to try later. Yesterday the mail brought the printer ink I ordered, so I finished printing my Christmas letter. Tomorrow I'll stamp and send the ones going to Alaska, Florida, and other distant places, and the rest on Monday.


Saturday, December 18, 2021

OOooops! I never got around to watering the new trees yesterday, so after stamping all the Christmas letters going to distant places and taking them to the post office, that's what I did. Watering the little trees was the extent of my outside work today, as it was chilly enough to make this a good day for staying inside. My main job of the afternoon was online shopping for LED lights. When I install tail lights, brake lights, and turn signals on my 1915 runabout, LED's will draw a lot less current than incandescent bulbs would do. Saturday dinner in town was at my favorite local restaurant, La Fiesta. The food is as good as ever, but when the pandemic hit they got rid of salt shakers in favor of little paper packets which I despise. They also got rid of knives and provide only a fork, so now when I go there I carry a salt shaker and a knife in my pocket. Tonight's movie was Benicio del Toro's Nightmare Alley. I've never read the 1946 book or seen the 1947 movie, so I can't compare it to those. Del Toro's version is in color, but it's classic film noire. The all star cast shows why they are all stars, and the production values are wonderful. Production designer Tamara Deverell, cinematographer Dan Laustsen, art director Brandt Gordon, set decorator Shane Vieau, and director del Toro pull off the look and feel of the noir era very nicely. A great many of the shots are artistic compositions. The locations contribute wonderfully to the 1939 and 1941 ambience. Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchette as two  attractive people who do bad things to others and each other are first rate. Some reviewers thought that at two and a half hours it was too long, but it certainly didn't drag for me. I was fully engaged until the last ironic shot.


Sunday, December 19, 2021

The centerpiece of today's activities was online shopping. I ordered LED towers for brake and tail lights and front and rear turn signals, indicator lights, and a couple of flashers. Other than flashers, that will be enough of everything to do two cars and have plenty of spares. After that I put on my winter duds and got outside to water the new trees and a couple of the small ones planted last year. I also found that after a few days of being dead, email on my desktop has decided to start receiving messages again. That's fine, but I'm not going to press my luck. I'll still use the laptop for any messages I need to send.


Monday, December 20, 2021

The outdoors warmed up above 40º today, and I fired up the splitter and filled a couple of boxes with firewood. By now I've used the splitter enough to be able to start it with just two or three pulls of the rope. My other outside work was on the 1926 engine I intend to use as a pan jig. Some of the valves and lifters are rusted in place, keeping me from removing them and the cam shaft. Each day I pound on the stuck parts with a heavy hammer and squirt on another dose of penetrant. That may eventually free all the stuck parts, or I may apply the heat wrench and turn them red to break up the rust.


Tuesday, December 21, 2021

The first day of winter begins my ninety day countdown to spring. My outside chores today were watering the little trees, bringing firewood to the house, and pounding on the 26-27 engine block. None of the lifters has budged yet. I'll give it two or three more days for the penetrant to soak in, and if that doesn't free them I'll bring on the heat. My inside jobs were filing receipts, paying bills, and more shopping. I ordered wire for the tail/brake/turn light project. I'm buying enough of everything to do two cars. I hope I ordered enough wire. This afternoon's mail brought the green indicator lights I ordered for the turn signals just two days ago. I tried one out this evening, and I'm pretty sure I won't be one of the old guys who drives around with his blinkers flashing. These things are so bright I think it will be impossible not to notice them.


Wednesday, December 22, 2021
89 days to spring
After a couple of days of normal email on my desktop computer posting messages without delay, this morning it was back to dysfunction. I have no clue whether I'm doing anything to cause its schizophrenia.  The main job today was adapting the left side lamp from the runabout to serve as one of the front turn signals. The first step in that was drilling down the center of the mounting bolt to make it into a threaded tube, a passage for the wire carrying current to the light. That part was simple enough. The slow and time consuming part was making an adapter to hold the #1156 socket. I worked on that until after 4:00 and quit to lay the evening fires and water the little trees. This evening after chow I came back and finished installing the socket in the lamp. While I was doing that I laid the socket wire and spring on the floor by my chair. Of course when I was ready to put them back in the socket the spring had vanished. It is absolutely infuriating when you set something down and it seemingly evaporates like that. Fortunately it usually turns up later, often lying out in plain sight.


Thursday, December 23, 2021
88 days to spring
In the morning I finished installing the #1156 socket for a turn signal in the left side lamp. I spent a good chunk of the middle of the day answering emails. I consider myself a fairly good writer, but mighty slow, and my correspondence took much more time than it should have. After watering the little trees in the afternoon, I laid the evening fires then fired up the splitter and filled a couple of boxes with wood and brought them into the house.

Friday, December 24, 2021
87 days to spring
Today's project was installing the #1156 socket in the left side lamp. Having done the right lamp already, this time I didn't have to figure out what to do, and I was able to finish the second lamp in one day. In our next exciting episode I'll start making the control panel. It will have switches for tail lights, turn signals, emergency flashers, and outlets for a phone charger and a navigation device. That will take more than one day.

Saturday, December 25, 2021 86 days to spring Today I made a stiff paper mock-up of the control panel for my new lights. That showed me what will work and what won't. Now I'm making a corrected version. If that works out OK I'll use it for a template when I cut the metal for the actual panel. Saturday is my traditional eat-in-town night, but with the restaurants closed it was treat night at home. The treat was a couple of tostadas with sardines, onions, and jalapeño slices, and three more with onions, frijoles refritos, jalapeño cheese, and more jalapeño slices. This week's movie was A Journal for Jordan, directed by Denzel Washington. Michael B. Jordan,  Chanté Adams, and Jalon Christian lead the cast in this well made story of a real soldier who kept a journal for his infant son. Sunday, December 26, 2021 85 days to spring No fires tonight. By noon the front porch thermometer read 73º,  and I opened doors and windows to let the warm air into the house. I won't be turning on an electric blanket tonight. But I'm not fooled. I know the freezing weather will return. In the shop I continued work on the lights project, making a second stiff paper mock-up of the control panel. This one worked out OK, so I used it as the template to mark a piece of sheet metal, then drilled the holes for switches, indicator lights, charger sockets, and terminal board. I was going to do the cutting this evening, but I decided to do another installment of sewing instead. I'm putting a Model T era Ford patch on a shop coat, and I'm so slow and clumsy that I sew just a few inches at a time and come back to it another day.

Monday, December 27, 2021
84 days to spring

Work on the lights project continues. Today I made two mounting brackets that will clamp the control panel to the dash. When I went to town I looked at the farm supply and the so-called hardware store for some machine screws. No 10-32 round head slotted screws were to be had. I'll have to check the Fastenal store later, because at two in the afternoon it was closed! I suppose I'll end up using the wrong screws temporarily while I buy the correct ones online and wait for them to arrive. My other stop in town was at the clinic to see my doc. Since August I've had a very mild trace of nausea that comes and goes. It has never put me at the door of the barfitorium, but sometimes I feel like I'm in the neighborhood. From my description she thought an ulcer might be the problem, and prescribed some pills aimed at that. We'll see how that goes.


Tuesday, December 28, 2021
83 days to spring

Time out for laundry. My depleted supply of clean sox told me it was time to do a wash. In the afternoon, after a run to town for shopping, I got out the chain saw and cut firewood and split what was big enough to split. Some of what I cut up was the rotten logs I laid out in the sun to dry out last month. That rotten wood will burn fast and heat up the kitchen PDQ. The hedge wood will burn longer, but with plenty of heat too. The forecast says I'm going to need this wood. After a week in the fifties and sixties, Saturday's high is predicted to be 22º, followed by a Sunday morning low of 6º.  Fortunately, this far south that kind of weather usually doesn't last long. But I think I'll do more firewood tomorrow anyway.

Wednesday, December 29, 2021 82 days to spring The pictures tell the story of my control panel work today. Cutting the sheet metal, stripping off the plating so paint will stick, bending into shape, and welding up the corners. The panel and the machine screws are painted and baking overnight. Next will be assembly. Acquiring the machne screws was entertaining. Round head slotted machine screws are no longer sold here. So yesterday I ordered ten at the Fastenal store. This morning they arrived, and when I went to town this afternoon I stopped to pick them up. The charge was $1.77. I pulled a handful of change out of my pocket, and the young guy said, "We don't take cash." OK, so I'll use plastic. "We don't take Discover." OK, so I'll use the Visa card. Nope. The card reader declined it. Finally the manager came out of her office and told the kid to take the cash, and I gave hm a dollar, a half, a quarter, and two cents. Now, see how easy that was? Thursday, December 30, 2021 81 days to spring "This army is just one damned disappointment after another." A sergeant at Fort Belvoir told me that in 1965, and I thought of it today when I observed that life is just one damn thing after another. Today's damn thing was a broken starter on my chain saw. I drove to Ponca City to order parts, and they are supposed to arrive in about a week. I think (hope) I have enough wood in the garage to get me through a week with no saw.

Friday, December 31, 2021
80 days to spring

Fortunately there was wood in the yard already cut, only needing to be split. So I did that and brought a few boxes of it into the house. I made up five kindling bags and put them in the garage to stay dry. I drove the truck down to the wood lot and hauled a load of cedar kindling up to the house, and tarped the pile to keep it dry. I cleaned ashes out of the stove and the fireplace, and laid the fires for this evening. Finally I tarped or moved under cover all the equipment that should stay dry. I think I'm ready for the serious winter weather that's supposed to arrive tonight with rain, snow, and plummeting temperatures. Sunday morning's low is supposed to be 7º F. Happily that kind of cold rarely stays here more than a day or two.