The old ways...

Ange and Becky asked what I was using to treat Dillon's new boots...

Up until now I had always used "mink oil" and still have a bit of it around, but I found out the other night that a lot of what gets sold now has synthetic things in it. Silicone, while waterproofing things for the short term, tends to do funny things to stitching, some sole material and also isn't really good for leather over the long haul.

So the lady at Cabela's encouraged me to try the beeswax treatment stuff her husband uses on his, working construction here year round. Invented by a forestry firefighter, it went on very easily and putting 3 coats on took about an hour. It did darken the leather of course, mink oil would have as well. It didn't seem to draw the cat and dog like mink oil did...




(A link for their webpage.)

The boots my son's wore when they got to the ages where they wore "real ones" went to my nephews and survived them and probably were given to other kids in the Scout troops they were involved with. Dottie has a set over 20 years old now, still going strong.

For myself, I bought an $18 pair of Wal-Mart felt-pacs (rubber boots with 3/8" felt liners) over 20 years ago and other than a small hole or two in the rubber (duct taped, of course) they are still going strong. When I replaced the liners after about 15 years I cut the bottom out of the old set and put it in the bottom of the boots with the new liners on top...a boon to my old feet!

I did buy another pair of slip on felt-pacs for myself last year, as I try to keep a set in the truck in the winter and was tired of going out to get them when I needed to shovel snow or something.

Someday maybe I'll buy myself a "good" set, lol!

May the rest of the week be kind to each of you!

alan

"But they're on sale"...

I've fallen prey to that so many times through the years! Usually my wife is the one trying to talk me out of it, or remind me that I'll find a better deal later, or there is some hidden cost I'm not figuring in.

This time it went the other way!

:o)

When we kept Talia the other weekend, the size T-shirts I had bought for Dillon the first time were also too small for her once they were washed, so we went to get the same size we ended up with for him. While there she saw a set of pink and white snow boots on a sale table...winter closeout, half off.

Of course Grandma said yes...then searched the rest of the table to find a pair for the two grandsons. Luckily she found some Spiderman ones for Caleb. $15 a pair for both sets.

My wife is one who always tries to even everything...her Christmas lists go back and forth between the number of items and the dollars spent until the grandkids are "even"...she used to do it with our boys as well. There are times I've truly despaired as the registers kept ringing in the name of "even"!

For the last two weeks she has checked every shoe department in every store she's passed to try and find snow boots for the older grandson. He is a "youth 6" meaning that next is men's 7's, probably sooner than later given his growth rate. No "felt pacs" to be found...not even 6's in most stores. Clerks keep suggesting a women's 7...the boy won't even watch Disney movies anymore because someone at school has him convinced they are "girl" movies!

Monday night she was out 'til 9 after she got off work! Dinner is hard to plan sometimes...

So finally last night we went to Cabela's. No felt pacs of course, I couldn't be so lucky! A set of Winchester 400 gram Thinsulate boots for $54, or a set of Cabela's labeled 800 gram ones for $66.

The Cabela boots won out because they are about 3/4 of an inch longer though they are the same size; we're hoping he can wear them next year as well, then someone will put them away for Caleb in a few years...

I came home and put the requisite 3 coats of sealer on them like I used to the boys boots 20 years ago and we'll take them to Dillon when Dottie gets home from work tonight.

When I go back to work I wonder how much of it will be to pay off "even"!

Of course, I guess better that than paying for Citigroup's corporate jet!

Not that I ever planned on "sitting" for the next 30 years, but there is a difference between wanting and having to!

Off to fix some breakfast and then take her Malibu to the dealer to see about a drip in a transmission cooler line!

May the rest of the week be kind to you all!

alan

4 days that shook D.C.!

So far I'm very pleased with the results of each of them!

The lobbyists have had a "warning shot fired across their bow"!

The doors to the Treasury are at least being watched now!

The Constitution is in the process of being restored along with the rights that have been trampled these last 8 years!

Sunshine has not only been allowed back into the bowels of the government (FOIA restored), but much is coming to light about our exchanges all having been recorded and archived!

The Fund-ublican-t claws in health care were just blunted a bit!

Not bad for 3 and half days!

______________________________

Caleb (the littlest grandson) is here for the weekend...he's happily waching "Boomer" cartoons right now and petting Angel. I spent 3 hours trying to brush her out yesterday while it was warm; got two grocery sacks worth of fur off her, and still haven't gotten her hindquarters brushed all the way out yet, though she and my back had both had enough by the time I stopped, lol!

I hope each of you is warm this weekend...the end of the month seems to be further and further away at the end of the money! May the weekend be kind to each of you!

alan

My good intentions aside...

I had planned to get here earlier today...

A few new photos from Vermont in the Flickr stream. Photoshop runs so much better on this thing with the extra RAM! I've been reading the "Dummies Guide" I bought and learning things I hadn't managed to find on my own in the years I've been playing with it...not surprising I guess, but I'd have thought I knew more, lol!

Should have bought the book long ago I guess.

We finished shopping for Talia's birthday yesterday. Her actual birthday was on Monday, but the family party will be on Sunday. Before they went to go take her birthday portraits John called to borrow a space heater as his central furnace had stopped and it was down to 50F. in the house. He also called the service people who had just worked on late last summer because the A/C had stopped working. It turned out to be a dead thermostat and since they were already there and he didn't want to take time to go get one and for us to change it he paid them to. I'm glad he had them diagnose it, because the idea of burning up his Lennox Pulse with me trying to jumper things didn't enthuse me much...

Bill and Laura have found a place to live for a while in Virginia, a house where they will rent one floor from a couple with a toddler. It won't be more than where he has been, with more room and they seemed to hit it off with the couple, unlike his current "landlord".

Of course, they still can't take their cats...

So that's the view from the Heartland for Wednesday!

May the rest of the week be kind to each of you!

alan

Too good to pass up!

There comes a point in your life when you realize

Who matters,

Who never did,

Who won't anymore ...

And who always will.

So don't worry about people from your past,

There is a reason why they didn't make it to your future.

____________________________________________

Borrowed from the blog of a friend...

A lesson that could have saved me much anguish in my 53 years, though it will still save me from even more!

Thank you, Liz!

Far too often I've wondered through the years what I had done, what was wrong with me...never realizing it wasn't me, it was them!

May the week be kind to each of you!

alan

90%...

maybe even 92 or so!

My back is finally better; I haven't taken a muscle relaxer or pain killer since I got out from under the hood of my nephew's Galaxie last Sunday. I was very still on Monday, but it has eased and the time has come for me to finally start going back downstairs to my little gym.

I call it "The Dungeon" sometimes because that's what the original downstairs gym in Venice, California was called by the guys who attended it in the early 60's. Bare minumum of equipment, lots of work to make up for the things that machines do now. No 20 minute workouts here, it takes that long to do one exercise because you can't rotate between machines...at least as things begin. Later in a workout I can do some supersets by rotating between multiple bars and dumbells, but it's still not the same.

I haven't stepped on a scale since I hurt myself, either. I fear it, since not only have I not been downstairs but the holidays interceded as well. Though my egg nog consumption was down this year, I fear it wasn't enough to save me!

So here's me resolving to get at least a half hour on the treadmill each and every day, and if I can't find 4 hours to lift on a 3 on/one off cycle, perhaps I can find two to lift every day with no off days...

Lesson learned, however, this time, instead of just doing things to strengthen my back I shall also remember to work on the abs and obliques I never got around to last time. The ones that would have strengthened the rest of my "core" enough to have not "done myself in" the way I did last month trying to help someone out of my yard!

I was told in therapy that anytime you build one side of anything stronger than the others you set yourself up for failure. I even kept telling myself I needed to make sure I made some time for those other muscles...but didn't!

Sometimes those little voices know best!

Dottie is off tomorrow, and Talia is spending the weekend, so I have no idea what is in store for me, except that she wants to make some T-shirts like Dillon did last weekend!

She's "into" horses now...I have a funny feeling...

May Friday be kind and your weekends be wonderful!

alan

P.S. I finally figured out after 3 hours yesterday how to add a Flickr slideshow; those photos going by are from the last two Vermont trips and I'll be adding more once I reduce their size to web-friendly. I hope you enjoy them!

Obsolete knowledge...

When my nephew turned 16 my sister found him a '67 Galaxie 500 for his first car. One owner, good body and driveline, $800. His older brother took it to school with him and reupholstered it in his classes at WyoTech and it's done well for the kid.

Just before Christmas he complained of it "dieseling", trying to run after the key was shut off. Before I could gather things and go take a look at it I "dinged" my back up and only got around to it yesterday.

In attending some classes in the early 80's they were talking about the electronic revolution in automobiles and stating that not only would electronic ignition and fuel injection soon become standard, but they would be doing away with the distributor as well. I couldn't believe it at the time, but most everything on the road now is sans both distributor and carburetor.

Which brings me to my "header"...

I dug out my "dwell meter" and a "timing light", "feeler gauges" and "plug gap gauges", "distributor wrenches" along with some other tools and went to tune his car before he went to work yesterday afternoon. It turned out Brett had put points, condenser, cap and rotor and plug wires along with a set of plugs in it somewhere along the way; the point gap was OK and I double checked it with the "dwell" part of my meter. The timing was way overadvanced, so I pulled it back to "stock" then reset the hot and fast idle speeds. In trying to readjust the idle fuel mixture (made passe by fuel injection in what is in most of your driveways) I discovered a vacuum line that was off and another that was plugged. The one that was plugged was the "main feed" for the dash with all of it's vacuum controlled A/C and heater doors and switches. Since Jordan had been complaining of no heat and no defrost, I'm hoping that is fixed now. The doors definitely work now and didn't before, so as long as the thermostat is the right temp and the heater core isn't plugged he should have heat. A good thing as they're predicting 17 for a high later in the week!

The "vacuum advance" in the distributor is also "blown" (another function that magic box now takes care of) and with it being 20-25% of the gas mileage, I told him on the next warm Saturday I will come up and pull it. NAPA seems to be the only source of them lately, and they will have to match up numbers and order it. Since he only drives a few blocks to school and work it's not such a big deal, but when he starts college in the fall it will become a much larger issue!

I wonder how many more times I'll use those old tools before I'm "gone"? Of course, I also have Dad's "flathead" valve spring compressor and special tappet wrenches along with his "flathead" Ford manual as well...I've never used them, but had always planned on it somewhere along the way.

Dillon spent the weekend with us. Friday night, since he's been digging through car magazines when he's here, I let him watch "American Graffiti". Saturday found me digging up some photos of the yellow "Deuce" coupe from the movie and we made him two t-shirts with the coupe on them and two from aircraft photos I've collected through the years, a B-29 and a B-52. He was delighted with all 4.

The "critters" all seem to have settled into "toleration" of each other. Throwing 2 8 year old male cats into a house with a 2 year old male cat and a 13 year old dog and having them all survive proves to me that humans have no excuses...none...for some of what we do to each other!

My back is doing much better, though it will still "complain" on occasion. Usually sleeping is the worst as after I doze off, I tend to roll into positions that make it say "Hey!" when I try to get up. Especially if the phone rings, lol!

May the week be very kind to each of you!

alan

The skies are gray...

but it's 55F outside, the freezer and the fridge seem OK, so things are looking better! Despite the snow in the forecast for the evening, despite the plunge back to 20 degrees by midnight!

My back wasn't very happy after wrestling the fridge out of it's assigned space and crawling around to vacuum under and through the back of it before it went back, but a few of the muscle relaxers and hydrocodone I had weaned myself from in the few days before it smoked it's circuit board and I'm feeling better again.

So it's off to make the shopping loop in time to be here when Dillon comes for the weekend. Chili for dinner, Dottie's off this weekend...I won't be around much 'til Monday.

I hope that each of you finds some brightspot in their Friday and their weeekend to particularly enjoy!

May the days be kind!

alan

________________________________________________

I put it here a long time ago, but for those who didn't see it:

Chili...

1 pound lean ground beef
1 pound Jimmy Dean Sage sausage (no substitute I've found will do)
2 cans dark red kidney beans
2 cans tomato sauce
1/4 cup (or one envelope) Williams chili seasoning
1 tsp. mesquite liquid smoke (sometimes a bit more depending on my mood)
Salt to taste

Pour your tomato sauce in a 5 quart pot along with one can of water. Rinse the beans and add them. Add the seasoning and the liquid smoke and turn on medium heat, stirring occasionally until it starts to simmer then reduce heat to keep it there.

While it's heating, knead the sausage and ground beef together. I make a huge patty out of it and start cooking it like a giant burger, turning it several times and pouring the grease off as it cooks before I crumble it. It's usually pretty well cooked through by the time I do crumble it.

To reduce the grease in the chili I place a strainer in the sink with about 8 layers of paper towel in it, covering the whole strainer. I work the crumbled burger out of the skillet into the strainer, then fold about 6 more layers of paper towel to protect my hand and "mash" the burger between the layers. It will pull 95% of the grease that's left in the meat out. I work it over the top of all of it, changing the towels under my hand as they soak through. Usually by the 3rd time there's no grease left.

Take the strainer to your pot and you can pour the meat into it by pulling on the upper edge of the towel...stir it in and let it come back to a simmer. If you like your chili thin, it's ready. I usually let it simmer down for 20 minutes or so.

This isn't a tongue roasting "hot" chili, but very flavorful. If I haven't eaten it for a while it won't make me "sweat" but just bring me to the verge of it...

alan

Tuck Foo thousand nine!

Refrigerator just died...

Of course, we just did part of the shopping today...

25 outside, half the food's in coolers in the (unheated unattached) garage, the other half on it's way to my son's, the freezer stuff we made room for in the deep freeze by culling what was in it...

Sure hope it's a defrost timer!

May the rest or YOUR weeks be kind!

alan

UPDATE: 2:45pm Wednesday-

I just kicked the circuit breaker back on after having changed the "Master Control Board" because the "defrost timer" that used to be a seperate component, a box a bit smaller than a cigarette pack that was less than $25 the last time I put on in 15 years ago in my last "fridge", is now on the circuit board. The $154 one.

I paid $24 extra dollars for a lifetime warranty on it; my last one went through 3 in it's of 26 years. I paid a service call on the 1st and watched them change it, then did the next two myself. The symptoms were identical this tiime; it was running constantly, the "reefer" wasn't cooling at all, and the freezer was up to around 50F this morning, though it was chugging merrily away.

When I pulled the circuit board you could see the burnt place on the back of the old one. (I've also seen that in voltage regulators in cars, and ignition control modules as well.)

So, it's running again...a thermometer sitting on the freezer shelf and in a half hour or so we'll see if it's dropping!

alan

Out with the old, in with the same old new!

Five and a half hours on the phone...we finally have prescription drug coverage again...

Dottie tried to call in her blood pressure med to Medco on Friday and was told we weren't covered. I called GM's benefits "broker" Fidelity, was assured that we did have coverage but it was a computer glitch and it would be settled by Saturday.

Meanwhile the doctor calls in an antibiotic for her as well, as the amoxicyllin she got for her sinus/lung infection wasn't killing it. It was denied as well.

When you have replacement joints, infections can settle in to your joint and cause all kinds of nasty problems. She was better, but still coughing stuff up, with one day of the other med left.

Saturday? No change...

Sunday? No change...

Today? At 9:30 I called Medco and played the wait game only to be told that GM had changed our coverage to a different company without telling us. I hang up, get a notepad and all of the PIN's etc. and call Fidelity. At 11:37-

I got a human at 2:13. At 2:17 they had forced Medco's computer to accept the new group number.

At 2:20 I called her BP med in and it worked! Then I called CVS and they put the antibiotic through again and it worked as well.

So for good measure I called in my eye drops to add to that order.

Finally I'm eating lunch and then I'm off to the pharmacy!

Not what I had planned for my first blog of the New Year!

I planned on raving about how much more cooperative my desktop is with the two 1gig ram sticks my youngest helped me put in (actually, he put them in and I held the light, lol) on Friday. About how when I picked those up at Microcenter this external dual-layer Lightscribe DVD burner also followed me home, along with a new slideshow program.

But that was before I spent 10-12 hours in voicemail hell over the last 4 days...

Happy New Year!

May the week be kind to each of you!

alan

Goodbye 2008!

May the New Year be bigger, better and brighter for each who visit here (and if I'm lucky, for myself as well)!

My birthday found us with Dottie juggling the books as is becoming common each month; I'll be hitting the bricks this next month or so to find a job. After she deposited some of the cash we'd saved for the weekend (what with Bill moving and all) I paid the last bill due for the month. Between my back and the cold she brought home from work, I didn't really feel like going anywhere, so after we finally ate breakfast we spent the early afternoon putting together a scrap wood riser to fit the new scanner I mentioned onto my desk as it's to a point the only way to go is up! I spent the rest of the afternoon deleting old software and installing new.

John, my nephew and a friend of John's dropped by to lend me an anime series I had read some good things about so I could watch all the episodes in order and not have to Netflix it. Dottie made me a pumpkin pie for a "birthday cake", since she's made pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas but we never ended up with any of our own except the cherry one I made a while back.

I got cards from Dottie's family in Vermont and phone calls from the grandkids and Noel. My sister sent a nice e-card; our New Year's Eve tomorrow night at her house will also be my family birthday party.

My mother didn't call, though last week she could find the phone each and every day for something inane. I'm sure she'd have wanted Galileo imprisoned as well for saying the world didn't revolve around her!

Since Bill and Laura hadn't paid to take their cats to the vet for the last 2 years, ours said keep them apart from ours until he could give them their shots and do bloodwork on them this Friday (after I get paid). Meanwhile, knowing they had "food issues" Dottie let them have full bowls of food anyway and the last two nights have been spent cleaning up gallons of cat puke. Thank goodness we covered the spare bed and love seat in the room they are in with plastic and old sheets first...

Bill called last night a bit after midnight; they made it to Alexandria safely. Laura called earlier to say that she had hung up Bill's heavy winter coat and an hour or so later uncovered another; mine. I guess it will be returning to me by parcel post; hopefully before we go back to zero again!

Bill was at work; tonight they planned to unload the rest of the stuff in storage and return the Budget truck. They have until Thursday, so hopefully if they don't return it tonight they will tomorrow.

As 2008 winds down I thank you each for your visits, your kind words, your support and for "being there" this last year!

May 2009 be kind to each of you!

Happy New Year!

alan

Life in a cat house!

Christmas went well- both days of it. Yesterday we ended up at my sister's to say goodbye to my nephew before he returned to western Kansas; the next time we see him will be his brother's graduation in May. The 2nd round of Christmas took place with her family then Dottie and I came home to try and get Angel and Frankie settled before Bill and Laura arrived with their cats.

Up until now Bill had been renting a bedroom from someone with plans to get an apartment or house when Laura joined him. He's not allowed pets where he is, so until they have a place Dottie and I are keeping her two male cats, 8 year old littermates. Both "large" for housecats, one a very "type A" personality, the other very not a type A (thank goodness)!

We shut our pets in the back of the house to let hers acclimate a bit, then let Angel in. Willow immediately hid; Alley immediately was hissing at her, bu tfinally started to settle down.

So then we let Frankie in. 2/3 their size, he has claws, they don't. It's his house, but Alley immdiately tried to put him in his place which Frankie wasn't having any of. Dottie squirted them both with a water bottle to try to convince them they didn't want to do this, which only irritated them both even more!

This all starting at midnight, finally Laura took them both to the front bedroom to go to sleep at 2, we put Frankie in the bssement; they haven't seen each other since.

Today Angel and Alley have seen each other, but there was no hissing, though Alley won't leave the front bedroom. The only time we've seen Willow is when the breakfast ham was frying.

John and my younger nephew Jordan are helping move Bill because I couldn't really deal with 6 flights of stairs to their apartment. Laura's Mom, Dad and brother are there and most of their stuff they sold or is books and clothes now. Bill's treadmill is the only heavy piece that has to come down the steps, and they should be able to handle it.

So, that leads me back to my header...I'm petsitting!

I keep thinking my back is better right up until I let the meds wear off, then it convinces me otherwise. I'm going to eat something and take the next round and start trying some of the stretches and therapy things they had me doing last time and see if I can loosen it up a bit.

Dottie is off until Tuesday, so I won't be around much in the next few days. Perhaps if I'm feeling better we'll slip out to a movie on my birthday, but we have more than enough things to watch here at home if we don't. One day next week John is going to help me put some more memory in this old Gateway (it's a 256) which should help with Photoshop and such...

Hopefully I'll be around to visit you each before New Year's Day but just in case, I hope each of you has a wonderful Happy New Year and that your dreams all come true in 2009!

alan

"I'm dreaming..."

and it actually looks like it will be a "White Christmas" this year!

My sister called a bit ago and despite the "black ice" on the two-lane last night my nephew made it home for his birthday (today) and Christmas. He won't be around to celebrate mine on Monday as he has to work on Saturday, but given the current job market, there are worse things than having to work on Saturday when you're 22!

We finished the wrapping last night, me stoned on pain-killers and muscle relaxers doing the "easy" packages and Dottie doing the ones you had to "think about". She is at work now but when she is done this evening she is off until next Tuesday. Most years I end up making my own birthday cake (except for the year I bought one at Costco) and fixing dinner. Perhaps this year I won't!

Tomorrow we'll go to the nursing home to take my Mom presents in the morning, then go to John's house to have Christmas with the grandkids. Bill is flying in from D.C. as we speak and this year my sister is coming with her family as well because Brett has to leave on Friday to go back to work, so there won't be a chance for the "family" Christmas party later.

New Year's Eve will be a combination New Year's/November-December birthday party at my sister's. Dottie works the next day, but said not to worry about it, because New Year's Day is actually rather quiet at the nursing home. I don't know whether that would have more to do with New Year's Eve or football, but I think I should just be happy for her!

As we speak I'm waiting on UPS to deliver what we're calling our Christmas to each other; a new flatbed scanner. The one I have is "Ok" but doesn't do exceptionally well dealing with anything but a "good" print. The few slides I scanned with it in the early days of this blog I was less than happy with the results.

I have every negative that Dad and I shot back to 1967, and slides back to 1950. He and I both shot a lot of larger format film (2.25 square, 6x7cm, 4x5; Dad even had an 8x10 view camera and I have transparencies he shot with it). This new Epson will scan all of those formats and has the "good" digital enhancement software with it for scratches and such. I've needed to sort through them all and cull the "unimportant" stuff and digitize the others for "posterity". Next will be breaking them into the right size packages to "burn" to disc and filling a file cabinet with hanging sleeves!

The 20% we saved on the scanner I selfishly spent on an "infrared" Hoya R-72 filter that had been on my wishlist for 4 or 5 years now, along with a stepdown ring to fit it to the telephoto as well as the normal lens of my Nikon. At almost $90 for the filter I really didn't want to buy two; the step down was less than $10. It will also let me put the "cross-star" filter I bought before Bill's wedding on the telephoto, since I hadn't thought about "not being able to" before and since I didn't get to use it at the wedding (I planned on a "starry-eyed" bride and groom shot that I was told wouldn't "look right") perhaps some icicles will find their way in front of it.

So, as the sun starts to drop behind the hill to the south and I start to contemplate dinner, I wanted to take a chance to wish each of you the Merriest of Christmases and to hope that tomorrow finds you close to someone you love, be it family, spouses, lovers or friends!

Under my "Christmas tree of life", you have each been a gift richly appreciated!

alan

Muscle relaxers and painkillers...

and suddenly things feel much better!

Dottie needed to get antibiotics for the cold she's been fighting for the last week, so she called at noon and got us in to the Dr.'s late this afternoon. I came home and took two of each and for some reason I'm not hurting nearly as much!

Perhaps tomorrow I can start trying to stretch things a bit and start doing the therapy excercises I got last time I went through this...longer ago than I thought, actually it was 5 years ago, as the Dr. was digging back through my chart.

Dottie is off now getting apples to make pies for Christmas dinner at John's and when she comes home I may try and sit at the table and do some of the wrapping so she isn't stuck with all of it.

Thank you all for the kind wishes!

May the rest of your week be kind, and may Christmas and the holidays be especially wonderful for you this year!

alan

Walking wounded!

Or, alternate title: The Price of Stupidity!

Last night: 11PM

Dottie and I just finished watching "Southland Tales" and as we got ready to settle back in to watch the "extras" there was a commotion in the street in front of out house.

In it's efforts to save money, the city didn't bother plowing for 4 days after the snowstorm; on Friday after they were predicting the subzero stuff we're in the middle of now, they laid salt on half the street. On a wicked hill, with two curves on it, in opposite directions...

The neighbor two doors up couldn't get in her driveway the other day and slid across her own front yard and through the next one before she managed to get back onto the street; she still did better than she did 3 years ago when I pulled her out with my nephew's 4-wheel drive Dodge I was working on at the time.

Another neighbor down the hill on the outside of the other curve had someone go down it and over their 3.5 foot railroad tie retainer wall, through the yard below them and back out, taking the top of the wall with them.

So when we looked out the window we saw a full size Ford 4 door pickup, long bed, "dually" stuck in the corner of our front yard. In their effort to get enough traction to drive out, they kept backing up until the hit the telephone pole between the neighbor's and us. Though I really didn't want to get involved, the idea of them totalling the neighbor's Continental (that I know she can't afford to replace, she's a widow on fixed income) and possibly knocking her gas meter over as well (right next to the car in the driveway) finally made me bundle up (it was 2 above 0F., or -16C. with a 25-30mph wind).

I drug the barrel of sand I keep for my driveway around to the front yard and started throwing sand under the tires on the street, the ones that were spinning. Dottie climbed in the bed over the spinning tires (no weight in a dually on ice...stupid people...)

It almost got out after the lady's brother got there and started trying to ease it out instead of just heating up the tires...between my sanding and his rocking it was one tire short of going over the curb when I started to push to help...

and I shouldn't have!

It still didn't make it out...I finally gave up and had Dottie pull her Malibu out so I could get my truck out, along with Dad's log chain. When I got partway down the driveway to my truck I knew my back ached...by the time I had the receiver hitch in and the chain out of the garage I knew it was pretty bad.

I pulled onto the other side of the street, where they had sanded, we hitched the chain from my hitch to the recovery hook on the passenger side of the dually. I locked my transmission in tow-mode and low, and pulled the truck that weighs half again more than it out without slipping a tire.

They thanked me...told me that they would get some weight in it today...the whole time the brother was chewing the girl out in Spanish...

I knew I ached last night, but thought I'd be walking it off today...

So far there's not a lot of walk to it. If I hadn't had Dottie dig the cane I used last time out of the closet I wouldn't have managed to get around so far today.

I'm dreading the idea that anyone might show up at the door because I really don't want to get dressed...

My Dad used to joke about "no good deed going unpunished". Hopefully by the time we need to load Bill's truck on Friday for their move to D.C. I'll be getting around a bit better!

I hope you all are warm and dry!

May the week be kind!

alan

1-2=5!

Just climbed out of the shower after spending 3 hours shoveling the inch to two of snow that is a lot more like 5 or 6, then spending another half hour cleaning off my truck and digging out my sandtubes and their safety box and loading them in it...

Now I know why I've been spending what time I can downstairs!

Hope everyone else is warm and dry!

May the rest of your week be kind...

alan

You know you're living right...

when you get up on the morning of your 32nd anniversary as your wife is leaving for work...

you trade her car for your truck because it's 59F (15C.) outside and you really need to change the oil in it.

You eat breakfast...

you drive it far enough to get it good and hot...

you come home and pull the drain plug...

and the wind that's been howling ceaselessly for the last two days swirls (20-30mph with gusts over 50mph) down the hill and under the car just enough to cover the side of your face with the oil, and give you a nice lingering taste of it. Though Mobil 1 is about $5 a quart, I can assure you it doesn't taste any better than regular motor oil!

You let it drain and drip until it's done...

when you go back out it's 25F (-4C.)...

Which is twice as warm as the high is supposed to get to tomorrow!

The wind is still howling...

The rain is due shortly, to turn into freezing drizzle and an inch of snow of course!

And after I take a quick shower I'm going to go trade her car for my truck so she has the car for the drive home, and so the truck is in the driveway first, before it gets any colder!

Never wonder why they say truth is stranger than fiction!

May the rest of your weekends be warm and wonderful, and may the work week be kind!

alan

Friday fly-by...

The Christmas box from Vermont just arrived; hopefully the one going will leave tomorrow.

The letter I still have to write; the shopping's at about 98% but the stuff isn't wrapping itself very quickly. Tonight we're keeping Dillon overnight and my sister is keeping Talia and Caleb so John can take Noel out for her 30th birthday. Tomorrow we're taking her "antiquing" for her birthday and perhaps part of Christmas, since we hadn't gotten a list from her yet.

I shopped yesterday and bought what I needed for Noel's "birthday dinner" tomorrow after we come back...she wants chicken breasts and mushroom and pepper skewers in Italian marinade off the grill.

A friend asked what I think of the bailout package...I had pretty much said my piece a few weeks ago but seeing the fiasco of the last few days has made me wonder...

Not very long ago the entire "raison-d'etre" for the GOP was "America First"..."Country First"...

Yet we have the "Senator from Toyota" (Richard Shelby of Alabama) and some others ready to flush not the 3 million jobs they count as UAW workers down the toilet, but also all the related ones, with the additional foreclosures and repos and everything else that will entail, to please their contributors from across the ocean who above all, beyond losing their tax breaks beyond losing their incentives, fear having to deal with a unionized workplace.

The payscales in the plants that Toyota, Nissan and others have scattered through the South are within a dollar an hour of what I made when I retired. In the last contract the UAW signed with the big 3, they agreed that new hires would come in at half that, and not only would they not come up to scale for 3 years, but if they are involved in anything except putting parts directly on the car (sub-assembly, material handling and delivery, sanitation) they never come up to that scale!

They also gave up pensions for anyone hiring in from this point forward.

Retiree health care, mine included, was no longer the companies responsibility after next year.

So the "wages and benefits" argument was already slain; it just makes nice soundbytes...

The thing that those other companies fear is being told "you can't"

You can't fire someone because you don't like them...

You can't fire them because of their skin color,

their gender,

their sexual indentity,

or their religion...

You can't fire them because they asked you to make something safer...

You can't fire them because they told you you were wrong about something...

You can't fire them to cover up your own mistakes...

You can't fire them because they needed to go to the restroom...

You can't fire them because they missed a day because they were sick.

You can't fire them because their parent, or child or their grandparent died!

It's sad that those who would like to wave the flag come election time don't think those are important things!

It's sad that those who would claim "Country First" as their mantra mean as long as it suits the shareholders.

I never built as "tight" a car, or well-engineered a car as the last ones I built. Finally, after 30 years of my banging my head against the wall, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel...all that was left was letting the last vestiges of "old management" retire and move out of the way.

Had the credit market not "locked up" like it did, there would have been no need for any of this discussion. The fault lies not at the door of the "big 3" but the door of Wall Street and the Treasury that did nothing except throw money at the problem and hope it went away!

Already the ripple effects had begun here...lay-offs, downtime, people knowing that by the end of January they will be drawing unemployment without any of those additional benefits everyone thinks we get because they don't have enough seniority...those were given up in that last contract as well for those new hires I spoke of.

Hopefully, the whispers of someone finally acting like a President and doing something about this are true and by Monday it will be "old news".

It won't save the 350 being laid off from my old plant, or the thousands across the country in the same shoes.

But that number will swell into the millions very shortly if something isn't done; and for every one of those others are going to lose their jobs as well.

The writing is on the wall for those who would care to read it...

Or even those who don't!

Sorry to be such a downer at what should be a happier time of the year, and on a Friday no less!

May your weekends be kind!

alan

My life in post-it notes...

Saturday morning-note on bathroom mirror:

"The floor feels wet, I think the toilet is leaking".

Sure enough, when the first plumber came last spring and pulled it to run his auger because there wasn't a clean-out in the front yard, he put it back down the first time and it still didn't flush right, so he pulled it a 2nd time and found the tree roots that had dropped out of his auger. Sadly, when he put it back down, he didn't use a new wax ring, because he had just put a new one down. That night the toilet "wiggled" so I tightened the bolts and thought all was fine.

Apparently not...

The underlayment was already screwed up and the tile was as well from the other times it had overflowed. I was planning to replace them this spring and had started looking at tile...guess that got moved up in the priority list, though at least for now a new wax ring seems to have solved the problem.

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Sunday morning- note on mirror:

"The furnace smells like exhaust".

Years ago when I replaced the original Winkler "closet furnace" because I couldn't weld up the liner in it that kept splitting open anymore, I put in a Sears "wall furnace", as the house didn't have central heat and air and I had two new window unit air-conditioners and didn't plan to be here the next time it needed work.

To put a 50,000 btu furnace in a foot square 7 foot tall box, the burner liner in it narrows down very quickly at the top, and when it was about 5 years old it did this same thing. Turns out that it tends to carbon up the inside as it necks down for the flue. That time Sears came out, charged me over $100 to clean and check it because they had to do that first, then sent someone else out for another $80 to hitch a vacuum hose to it, string it out to something that looked like a parking lot sweeper truck, and vacuum it out.

Ever since I've cleaned it out myself every other year by running an old piece of steel cable up inside it and beating on the outside of the liner with a rubber hammer.

Sunday I went and bought a "flue brush" thinking it would be easier, got as much stuff out of it as I usually do, and all seemed fine.

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Monday's note on mirror:

"It's going to be 50 today and you said you need to change the oil in your truck".

Yep, found out last week that I had used the last of my free oil changes from the dealer, so it was time to change it over to Mobil 1.

Did that and was getting ready to rotate the tires on it when some kind of commotion started across the street, and someone's brother I don't really want knowing what exactly I have in my garage showed up, so I pulled the door down until things settled down. Of course it was almost dark...I finished what I needed to do, put new "winter blades" on and put things away just in time for Dottie to come home, so I put new "winter blades" on her Malibu as well. (I love not having to knock the ice out of the tensioner arms all winter long...try a set, you'll love them unless you drive over 80 in the winter time!)

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Tuesday...

Dottie was off...we went to "Australia".

One helluva good movie!

"Famous Dave's" had a sign out for a Tuesday special and it was too good to pass up, so we picked that up and eased our way home in the snow and ice, then settled in and watched "In Bruges". An odd, dark, unsettling comedy I guess I would describe it. A beautiful place, though!

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This morning's note:

"The furnace still smells like exhaust".

So I just cranked it up to 80 to get it warm enough in here to shut it down for a few hours as it's only 20 degrees outside. Instead of just using the flue brush this time I'm going back to my old tools and try again...if that doesn't work I guess I'm going to try to call someone and figure out how to get one of those trucks out here again without having to pay Sears for the service call first. Being stupid, I didn't write down the name on the side of the first one...

I haven't managed to make it downstairs to my little gym in a week!

And I thought retirement would be "living the life of Riley"...

Guess I hadn't counted on "Murphy"!

Having been a Navy helicopter mechanic, I should know better!

May the rest of your week be kind!

alan

Into the sunset...

Metaphorically, at any rate!

It's taken me a while to gather my thoughts to write this post...since before Veteran's Day.

35 years ago, the day before Thanksgiving, I boarded the USS Kittyhawk at North Island. At 17, I had Thanksgiving dinner away from home for the first time aboard her, and soon after we departed for points west. I celebrated my 18th birthday aboard her.

I rode her all the way to Mombasa, Kenya visiting Hawaii, Subec Bay, Hong Kong, and Singapore along the way... with some time off the coast of Vietnam along the way. With over 5,000 of us on board, there were places we had to pass up that smaller ships would have been able to visit. We rode out a typhoon off the Phillipines with not only our own aircraft aboard, but more that they flew out to get them out of the islands because they were safer aboard ship! When we left Kenya we were the first carrier to ever sail into the current hotbed of the world's attention, the Persian Gulf. Along the way, I became a "Shellback", and somewhere lost my boyhood as well.

Not all of us that left on that cruise were lucky enough to come home.

The above photo is the Kittyhawk arriving in San Diego for the last time. The photo is from her archive...I don't think they'll mind me using it. The following is a snippet of the press release announcing her arrival:

"As the oldest active-duty warship and last diesel-fuel powered aircraft carrier in the Navy, Kitty Hawk made history during its return to the U.S.: it is the only aircraft carrier to have more than 100,000 launches from one of its waist catapults.

Throughout its lifetime, Kitty Hawk has had 407,511 arrested carrier landings and 448,301 launches."

Amazing numbers!

If anyone would be interested in more of her history, this link has a summary of the service of the first "super" carrier.

My Dad spent a lot of time through the years trying to convince me that I couldn't keep cars as pets; I realize that there is no way we as a nation can afford to keep a fuel-oil carrier sailing one minute longer than necessary. I also know that the sailors serving on the nuclear carrier that replaced her won't miss the fuel oil/jet fuel cocktail (in my day there was also avgas mixed in for flavor) that found it's way into our freshwater through the tank venting...



That photograph is her entering Puget Sound for decommissioning. I shall hope that not every city that wants a carrier for a museum has one yet! I shall hope that perhaps that although most likely she'll never launch another aircraft, that destiny has something else in mind for her besides being scrapped or sunk as a reef.

I have met men who served aboard before me, and ones who have served aboard her since. She is a touchstone in millions of lives at this point, and I shall hope that she finds a way to remain "alive" for each of us!

May the rest of the week be kind, and may your weekends be wonderful!

alan