Jan 25th - Warming Up

Its going to be a beautiful day here today with a high in the mid 40's.

Hallelujah, a plumbing job that went well. I replaced our malfunctioning toilet yesterday and all went well. Perhaps it was because I had such excellent assistance.

I wrote the above this morning and as I was writing it our Internet service quit. It is now late afternoon. The outage covers more than just us. The service is supposed to be restored by 10 AM tomorrow. In the mean time we went to Jefferson City for lunch and Kathy bought a few groceries. It was the first time she was off our property since she came down with her cold. I am currently accessing the Internet through my phone. It is the first time I've done it since changing phones and cell service providers. The speed is slow, but at least I've got a connection.

I cut down a couple of small cedar trees 5" & 7" trunks) this morning and drug them out back next to a burn pile. I will cut them up back there. I wanted to get them out of the way before I cut down the dead oak tree that is in the middle of the "island" between the house and the shed. When it comes down it would have fallen on them.

High is supposed to hit mid 50's tomorrow and then drop all the way down to single digits for the overnight low. We even have an overnight low of below zero in the 10 day forecast. There is a propane "shortage" around here. Instead of them not wanting to make a delivery for less than 200 gallons, now you can't buy more than 200 gallons. The price is going up dramatically. The least price increase I've heard is 70 cents a gallon. A weather forecaster said that this will be the coldest winter in central Missouri in the past 30 years. Praise the Lord for our Hardy furnace. As long as the Hardy keeps plugging along we have enough propane to last us until fall, at least. Before then the price will be back to normal. Hopefully these high prices, and profits for those in the propane business, will spur some more fracking to increase the propane supply.

Hope you have/had a great day. May God bless your and yours.

Jan 24th - Still Cold

Today's high was 11 and tonight's low is supposed to be 4. At least we aren't getting blasted with snow.

Kelsey made it home safe and sound around mid-afternoon. It sounded like she had a good time.

We continue to be amazed at Lydia. I showed her a Netflix kids move on my phone a few days ago and now everything is "Movie, movie, movie." Those were the first words out of her mouth when she hit the top of the stars this morning. Andy has a Fisher-Price cartoon app on his phone. Lydia picks his phone up, turns it on, moves to the apps page, picks the cartoon app out of a full page of apps and activates the app. She does it all by herself.

She is fascinated by my hearing aids. It is a real struggle for her to keep her hands off them. I tell her it is okay to play with my ears but she can't touch the hearing aids. This afternoon I put new batteries in them. I put the old batteries in the case and left it lying on the coffee table. The case hinge is spring loaded and doesn't pop open easily. I was on my computer, at the coffee table. I looked over and she was trying to stuff one of the batteries in her ear. She had opened the case and taken the batteries out. When I asked her where the other battery was she looked down at the floor. Kathy and I searched and searched without finding it. I checked Lydia's ears to make sure she had not already stuffed on in her ear, no luck. We moved my "stuff" around on the coffee table and again, no luck. We were getting very concerned that she might have swallowed the battery. Kathy finally found it under the edge of a chair. We (me) are going to have to start being more careful about what we leave in her reach. That's a lot of area because she is a very capable climber.

I went for my first exercise session at the YMCA today. Part of it was laughable. Tom, one of the assistants, was taking me around showing me the equipment and showing me how to use the different machines. The first weight machine was one the exercised your legs. Every time I bent my legs to lift the weights I got a cramp in my thigh and had to get off the machine to work out the cramp. After 3 tries we gave up on a leg machines for the day. Things went fine with the upper body machines and I finished with a 30 minute cardio walk on a treadmill. Kathy is going to drop me off at the YMCA tomorrow and then go get groceries while I exercise. I will give the leg machines another try.

I've given up trying to figure out what is wrong with our inoperative toilet. Tomorrow I plan on buying a new one. I might break the old one apart just to see why water won't flow into it.

Hope you all had a good day. May God bless you and yours.

Jan 23rd - Brrrrh!!

Last night a little after 5 I filled up the wood boiler, the temp 32 degrees. The official overnight low was 2. At 9:15 this morning I went out and threw in some more wood, we still had heat but it was ready for more wood. The temp on our front porch was 6 degrees when I added wood this morning. Today's high is supposed 11 and the overnight low tonight is forecast to be 3. This is cold weather for central MO. Normal high/lows are 40/20.

Mel and I worked on the McCarty street house again on Tuesday. We think we are snake bit. Never have either of us had so many problems with plumbing. I've worked on the kitchen sink drains every time I've been there, trying to get the leaks to stop. Every time I leave nothing is leaking but by the time I return one, or another, of the fittings has started to drip.

In the bathroom, after reinstalling the toilet the tank/base connection leaked, and we thought the new wax seal might be leaking, but neither of us had ever had a new was seal leak. We took the tank off and replaced the "donut" gasket between the tank and base and we replaced the bolts that hold the tank on the base. That took care of that leak but by then we were more concerned that the was ring was leaking. We pulled the toilet again. We couldn't see why the was ring would have leaked but we installed another new one. After reinstalling the toilet we think it is okay. Then it was leaks at the new tub faucet. Fortunately Mel is smaller than me because, with the toilet in place, there was no way I could come close to getting to the faucet. He spent nearly 2 hours working on it. Finally, after 10 thickness of Teflon tape on one fitting and 8 thicknesses of Teflon tape on another, we had the metal to metal fitting leaks stopped. He never was able to completely stop the drip at one of the fittings on one of the flex hoses. Those fittings have rubber washers and should not leak, but ours did. Mel is still going to try resurfacing the steel tub when it warms up. It needs to be warmer so that he can put a fan in the window and exhaust the fumes from the coating materials.

I went in yesterday and had my hearing aids adjusted again. The only reason I wear them is because Kathy thinks I can hear better with them. I know I can hear some sounds better, but most of the "new" sounds aren't something I care about. I really don't need to hear her wad up a plastic bag when I am in the living room trying to listed to TV and she is in the kitchen. I haven't noticed much difference after the adjustment but we will see.

We also have plumbing problems at home. One of the upstairs toilets has quit working. It will flush OK if you dump a bucket of water in it but something is blocking the flow of water from the tank to the bowl. Water won't flow out of the bowl nearly fast enough to start the flushing action.  Even holding the "flapper" full open water only slowly drains from the tank. I talked to a plumber about it and he has never heard of such a thing. I think a new toilet is in order. I'm tired of messing with it.

We joined the YMCA but haven't been there yet. I'm going in today for an orientation on the equipment they have.

Jan 20th - Another Beautiful Day

The weather was beautiful again today. I didn't hear the official high temp but the thermometer on our front porch read 57 around 2 PM. Temps are dropping and the lows the next 4 nights are supposed to be 11 degrees or less.

David, Andy's Dad, tells him that he spent some of Andy's inheritance every time he buys something expensive (farm machinery, etc.) Today I spend some of our son's, granddaughter's and great-granddaughter's inheritance. I tried to buy a brush hog last November. I thought they store would be happy to get it off their lot during the winter. Actually I tried to buy a couple of things from them. The best deal they would give me was a 5% discount, if I paid cash. I wanted 10% off so I didn't buy it. I was going to go over the last week of December to see if they wanted to get the stuff off their books before the new year started, but I never managed to do it.

Today I went to California to get my $8 haircut. (That is all the guy charges, he even trims my beard! I almost have to fight with him to give him a $20.) While I was over there I stopped at the store (actually it is Orscheln Farm & Home hardware, which is a chain in this area). Today I got 10% off and I paid with a credit card. The credit card company gives us a kickback of 1% of the cost of all purchases, so it was really 11% off. I bought a 4' brush hog, a 5' rear blade and a 3 point carrier.

I plan on building a box on the 3 point carrier so that I can carry my chain saw and accessories in it when I go to cut wood. I always end up with the bucket full of wood and no place to carry the chain saw back when I return to the house.

I had the blade on my tractor and played with it for a short time. The brush hog will take some assembly time. I have to read more about how to shorten the PTO shaft to the correct length.

Our (Kathy's and mine) colds are still bugging us, but we are pushing on. Lydia's cold has improved noticeably. She stayed with Amy today. Kathy has her all day Tue, Wed & Thur. Kelsey made it to DC OK. They did some sightseeing today. She returns home on Thursday.

A couple of nights ago we watched the movie Blind Side again. It is based on a true story about a white family in Memphis who took in a homeless black high school student. The kid was really BIG and a Christian school had recruited him to play sports. The white families two kids went to the school. The "kid" is Michael Oher who now plays pro football for the Baltimore Ravens. The movie makes me wonder how many other kids like Michael are out there and how many families would be willing to help them if only there was a way to connect. Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, the Mom. Tim McGraw plays Sean Tuohy, the Dad. I highly recommend the movie if you haven't seen it. There are some funny parts and some sad parts, but everybody is living happily ever after.

May God bless you and yours.

Jan 19th - Beautiful Day

FLASH!! My phone has not been working since Friday evening. I am in the process of changing phones and service providers. We are switching to Net10. It will save us a quite a bit of money. The down side is that it appears that their service is even worse than Verizon's. I called them Friday morning to "port" my old number over to them. Friday evening my Verizon phone quit working but my Net10 phone was still not working Saturday morning. After talking to them three times Saturday it ended up that they have to send me a new SIM card to get the phone working. It was working fine but they screwed something up when they ported the number over. I won't get the new SIM until Thursday or Friday, they wouldn't send it via overnight mail. It is kind of funny. I went years without a cell phone, in fact I didn't want one even after they were popular and reasonably inexpensive. Now I consider a huge inconvenience to be without one. (Kathy's new phone works fine, they had no trouble porting her number to her new phone.)

It is a beautiful day here today. Temperature is 50. Kathy and I are a little under the weather but we have still be out getting some fresh air. Lydia has had a cold and I think she gave it to us. We stayed home from church because we didn't want to take a chance that we would pass the cold along to others.

I split and stacked some more wood yesterday morning, for maybe 90 minutes. It started sprinkling and I was glad to quit. We didn't get any significant rain it just drizzled, on and off, for the remainder of the day.

Andy sold his Civic yesterday. Prior to the sale he was driving it into Jeff, with the potential buyer, and it quit. I towed him back home. It didn't have any spark. The guy ended up buying it anyway, at a significantly reduced price. The buyer and a friend came out late in the evening, put a different distributor on it and it started. They still put it on a tow dolly to haul it away.

This morning I stacked some of the wood I split yesterday. I also hauled enough wood from the shed out back, to the building over the boiler, to last for several days. I have enough wood by the boiler to last for at least a week but I'm trying to get the building filled back up. I restacked the wood that was in it and burned up all the crappy wood. I want to fill it back up with full lengths (22-29" long) of good wood. I'm also going through the wood in the building out back, trying to burn up all the crappy stuff first.

This afternoon I cut down a couple of small trees. They were next to the driveway and kind of in the way. Almost every piece of the smaller one bled sap from the cut ends. I can hardly believe that there is sap up in trees in mid January. They are in the wood shed now waiting to be stacked up. They will provide a few days heat next winter.

Kelsey left for Washington DC about an hour ago. She and several other Ott ladies will board a charter bus in St. Louis and then on to DC. They are going to participate in the March for Life Rally on the 21st.

Jan 16th - More Work on McCarty Street House

Weather has been decent here during the past several days. Our snow is gone except where it was piled up when plowed.

Kathy is now to the point that she can lift Lydia again. She has watched her several days this week.

I helped Mel on the McCarty St house 3 days this week. We worked a half day Tuesday and then all day yesterday and today. I am amazed at how long we have spent under the kitchen sink and in the bathroom.

While we have worked on the house we took out the garbage disposal that didn't work and re-plumbed the drains under the kitchen sink. I tried to reuse as much of the old plastic drain pipe as possible, bad move. The pipe may not deteriorate but the joints/gaskets were scummy from previous leaks and I've had a bad time trying to make them stop leaking. Tuesday I ran hot water into each sink basin for 2 minutes and didn't have a leak. This morning we checked and one of the connections was slightly dripping AAARGH!!! I'm really getting  tired of being under that sink <grin>.

We previously removed the toilet, pulled the vinyl flooring out of the bathroom, patched a bad section of the floor, removed the old tub surround and removed the tub faucet assembly that was broken. This week put a sheet of luan over the floor to make it smooth.

Today, after working on the drain AGAIN, we installed the new tub surround, put down the new vinyl floor, re-installed the toilet (we now know the rubber washer between the tank and the base leaks so we have to replace it).

I've been working with Mel Calahan, he is associated the Missouri Baptist Builders group. Mel is in the photo below. We just finished gluing down the vinyl. The paper you see taped above the tub is to protect the new tub surround. Mel is going to try resurfacing the tub. It isn't in that bad of shape but the people we are helping wanted a new tub. The resurfacing is compromise.

There is a little storage area behind the end of the tub, in front of Mel. It is about 16" wide. I spent a lot of time wedged in it today while I put in framing to stabilize the new faucet assembly and to support a section of wall that could be removed if the faucet assembly needs to be replaced in the future.

We are taking tomorrow off. A guy lives in the building part time but he can use the tub/shower and toilet in the other half of the duplex. Hopefully we will finish up in another two days.

Our next job is replacing the floor under the kitchen sink, in a mobile home. Mel has looked at the job and met the lady we will be helping. He found out she needed help when he went to the wrong address to look at a job, it was definitely a "God incident" thing.

May God bless you and yours.

Jan 12th - WARM today

Yesterday was  the first time Kelsey was able to get out of the driveway with her front wheel drive car, since the recent snowfall. Actually she had not tried prior to that, nor had I tried to get my truck out. I think she might have been able to get out Friday but don't think my truck would have made it.

We haven't been housebound. Their 4WD truck and our AWD CR-V have made it out with no problems.

Lydia and I had built a small snowman last Tuesday. On Thursday we built a larger one.

I fired up the wood splitter for the first time yesterday and spent about 90 minutes splitting wood. Andy and I spent about an hour today. We have quite a pile of good wood (mostly oak) in the wood storage building. We stopped when we got a chunk stuck on the splitter, and the splitter ran out of gas. We figured it was a "sign" <grin>.
Yesterday I got a big chunk of hedge stuck on the splitter 3 times before I quit trying to split it. The middle photo below shows the wood that we still have left over from last years cutting and splitting. There is a double row 16' long by 6' high, and a couple of short partial rows.

Below is the stump that I was cutting off when I cut my ankle with the chain saw. I'm going to have to cut it in half with the chain saw before trying to split it again, once I get it knocked off the splitter.

The splitter ran great, at least as good as last year. I still need to take the hydraulic pump off to have the seal fixed, just haven't bothered yet.

I don't know how warm it got yesterday, but it was into the 50's. Today the high was 66. It was a great day to be out and about. I hope it was as nice wherever you were.

May God bless you and yours.

Jan 7th - Warming Up

It is supposed to get up to 30 degrees today. Yesterday the highest temp I saw was 2 above. So far this year we have had 20% more heating degree days than last year. I've been out burning anything I can find, trying to increase the amount of man induced global warming <grin>. To be fair, this winter has only been 4% colder than the average since records have been kept. (I think it is probable that the planet is going through a "warming stage", as it has in the past, but it is absolute hogwash that we "know" that man is the cause of this warming trend.)

I am sure that our Hardy furnace/boiler has saved us a lot of money and I'm thankful for it. We have burned a lot of wood this year but it was basically free. We use propane for the two gas fireplaces, which we hardly ever burn, the two gas stoves, and the clothes dryer. We had the 500 gallon tank filled after moving in. I think Kathy told me that when  it took a little over 200 gallons to fill it. I checked a couple of days ago and the tank is still a little over 40% full.

Kathy had a regular check-up Doctors appointment yesterday. I am impressed by the ability or our AWD CR-V to get around in snow. I haven't done any plowing and we had no problems driving through 6-8" of snow in our driveway. While it is this cold, much more traction on snow that is below 10 degrees than snow at 30 degrees, I think I might be able to get out with my pickup but I have no need to try. (If I didn't make it I would be stuck in the "valley" in the drive, I would not be able to back up to get back to the house.) Kelsey has driven their 4WD truck to work the past couple of day while Andy has stayed home to play Mr. Mom. With all the snow on the cars on the car lots he would not have been find dents that needed to be fixed. Andy & I took their truck up to gas station in Centertown today to fill up a couple of cans with diesel fuel. My tractor is getting low and I plan on doing some plowing today. Andy then headed out to Jeff to check out the car lots today. Kelsey is going to drive our CR-V to work.

It looks like we may be getting new neighbors in the empty house at the top of the driveway. Someone was up there last night and plowed out the driveway. I walked up and got the paper this morning. I saw a car parked in the driveway. I don't think anyone was in the house because I didn't see any smoke/steam from the "chimney". I wonder if they plowed so that they could get a truck/trailer backed up to the garage, to unload furniture.

Time to get out and play in the snow. Hope you all have a good, and safe day. May God bless you and yours.

Jan 5th - SNOW!!!

We received our first substantial snowfall last night and today. It stopped snowing around 1:30PM, I'm not sure when it started but late last night. When I went out to put wood in the boiler this morning, around 8, we had 4.5". I haven't been out again. Kelsey had to be at work at 1 PM. She drove their 4WD truck and managed to make it up the driveway. She took extra clothes because she thought maybe she would not be able to get home tonight. Not because of the roads but because of other nurses who could not get to work.

Yesterday Kathy and I took our motor home up to Columbia for some repairs. After not making it up the driveway on my first attempt I worked on the drive for several hours and finally made it out. I knew if I didn't get out yesterday I probably wouldn't be able to get it out the rest of this week. I dumped about 20# of salt along the wheel tracks on the asphalt section of our drive and then spread used the tractor to take up 4 buckets of gravel. I used a shovel and spread the gravel where the duals would track, or it would have a lot more gravel. After letting things set for awhile I cleaned all the ice/snow off the asphalt so that I had a decent "head of steam" built up when I hit the packed snow and gravel at the upper section of the drive. I don't think I spun a tire on after that.

Kathy and Kesley took Lydia out to play in the snow some this morning, before it got to cold. Yesterday evening the temperature was still above 40 degrees at dark. It has dropped  constantly since then. It was 25 at midnight and now, at 2:30, it is 12. It is supposed to get down to -10 by tomorrow morning. I think -7 is the current record low.

I hooked our Wii up to our TV and just finished watching a movie on Netflix. I don't plan on leaving the house, except to fill up the boiler with wood at dark. I can't see any reason to get out in the cold. If necessary I think our AWD CR-V would make it to the road, but there is no reason for us to get out.

I think it may be time for a mid-afternoon nap. <grin>

Safe travels to all who have to get out on the roads in this weather. May God bless you and yours.

Jan 2nd - Snow

We received a couple of inches of snow last night. The asphalt section of the driveway was warm enough that the first of the snow melted and then froze. Kelsey was unable to get up the driveway in her car. She ended up driving their 4WD truck. Andy stayed home and played Mr. Mom.

One of Lydia's current "things" is to come up to you and grab your fingers so that she can lead you around the house with her. The other evening she led Andy and I over to play house with her.

She doesn't like it if you sit in a chair, she wants you on the floor. She was in the process of heating up something in the microwave in this photo.

The girl LOVES to be outside. Kathy got her all suited up and took her out even though todays high didn't even get to 20.

As soon as she got off the porch she stuck her mitten in the snow and licked the snow off it. She continued to do it over and over again the entire time we were outside.

We don't have a sled but hey...take a plastic trash can lid, drill a couple of holes in it, thread a rope through the holes and you have a sled.

 She had a good time on the sled. By the this time she was getting cold, and her mittens were wet from sucking on them. When we headed into the house I had to put the "sled" on the porch. To bad the photo below is so dark. You can't see her big smile.

We were supposed to take the motor home to the Camping World in Columbia today, to have some things repaired. There was no way I was going to attempt the getting up the driveway. I did push most of the snow off the drive with the tractor, but the asphalt was still slippery. I put some salt on it and by mid afternoon there were some decent sized sections of asphalt exposed. We have Lydia tomorrow so we will try to take it up there Saturday. Tonights low is supposed to be zero but tomorrows high is supposed to be 31. With some sun the asphalt portion of the drive should be reasonably clear by Saturday.

Good night. May God bless you and yours.