July 28th - In Tennessee

I drove to TN last Thursday. Construction at 2 locations and minor loss of time at an accident site turned my normal 9.5 hour trip into one that was over 11 hours long.

One Praise the Lord is that I did not have tire problems during the trip. I didn't drive anywhere Friday but Saturday morning I needed to go into town. At above 30 mph the front end of my truck shook very noticeably. The tire shop Tom, my brother-in-law, uses wasn't open on Saturday. After making sure there was nothing loose, that I could detect, in the front end I came back home. Monday I went back to town and with only a quick look the guy at the tire shop showed me a "knot" on the left front tire. I had them put the spare on. It took 4 guys to finally get the spare down from the underbed storage. The spare looked like the original spare, and like it had never been on the ground. Boy am I glad I didn't have to wrestle that spare out from under the truck along side the road, in +90's heat and lots of humidity, when driving here Thursday. I now have a nice new set of tires on my truck, a few months early. I had planned on replacing them before winter.

I was "puny" the first several days I was here. Not bad, but enough so that I went to the walk-in clinic in town on Saturday. They thought I had some type of stomach virus. Thankfully it wasn't bad enough that I suffered from vomiting or diarrhea. Yesterday was the first day I felt like I was back to nearly 100%.

I didn't go to church Sunday AM, just didn't feel up to driving to town. I did go down to Tom & Mary Lou's for a couple of hours. Dave, their son, his wife and 4 of their 5 kids, were up from the Atlanta area and had spent the night. They sure gave the lake a good work out. It was good to see Dave and get to know Maryella and her boys a little better.

Friday, even though I was "puny", I did spend over a half hour weed eating. Yesterday I finally got a few more things done.

Kathy preferred to have kitchen shelves instead of wall cabinets. I finally installed, temporarily, the first shelf yesterday.

I bought a 12' long 2x12 for the shelf but the guy put a 14' long one in my truck. I didn't realize that until I put it up on the shelf supports and noticed that it stuck beyond the end of the wall. It is warped on one end, which is why I have the concrete blocks on it. After it dries out a little (from 85 degree, 80% daytime outside temp/humidity down to 73 degree, 50% humidity in cabin) I will cut off the warped end. I will have to make, or more likely have made, the custom type shelf bracket she wants. She saw them on one of the home rebuilder shows on TV. The temporary "store bought" ones up there now will suffice until I decide how to proceed with the custom ones. (OK, yes my kitchen counter is a little messy <grin> but it suits me fine.)

The trees along the west edge edge of our lawn have grown to the point where the power line drop to the cabin is beginning to be encapsulated in the branches. They are mostly trash trees. Yesterday I cut down a couple of sourwoods, one 4" diameter and one 5" diameter, plus some other 1-2" stuff. Several black pines still need to be removed along with some other minor trimming of branches on some larger trees. The pines are 4-6" in diameter and are easily tall enough to take down the power lines if they fell during an ice storm.

My property manager <grin>, Tom is up in Ohio so I'm going to have to mow my own lawn for maybe the 3rd time in 6 years, this week and next. (It was freshly mowed when I arrived Thursday evening.)

Early Monday AM I looked out the back window, down the "lane" I cut into the woods, and saw 2 hen turkeys with a bunch of chicks. The chicks were probably 10" tall. You can barely make out one of the hens in the photo below. They were only about 50 yards from the cabin.

A few photos from before I left MO. Lydia was giving Nolan a ride in her car. He initially enjoyed it, but after a few minutes he was tired of it.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.