Sept 4th - Rain Again This Morning

Sunday I went to the worship with the Christian Fellowship of Jefferson City. It is a small group, probably only around 40 people were there Sunday morning. I had found them on the web and listened to one of  the Pastor's previous sermons. He is doing a series on Acts 2:42-47, guidelines on how a body of believers should function. I think both the message I listened to online and the one Sunday were spot on. Based on my brief encounter with them it seems that they are striving to be the "church" described in this passage.

After church I had a chimichanga at El Jimador and then I went to Walmart to get a couple of prescriptions refilled. The lunch was good, the Walmart experience was not so good. They had no problems filling one of the prescriptions but the last time I had  the other one filled was when we were in Washington. For some reason the Washington Walmart cancelled the prescription. I have no idea how it could even do that. After two hours without getting the mess straightened out I left. Hopefully they will keep working on it. I need to call them and build a fire.

Yesterday I split some more wood. I didn't get out early and it got HOT so I quit. I think it got to 93, with a heat index of 96. Today and tomorrow the high is supposed to be 98. Have I mentioned how much I like Missouri weather. Actually Friday the high is only supposed to be 78. That will be the first time since we arrived here, on June 6th, that the high has only been in the 70's.

The last couple of times I had the splitter going I split the wood in the back of my pickup. There isn't all that much there with only a 6' bed and the tool box in the back but there was more than enough to finish filling up the building with the wood furnace. I threw the rest in an outbuilding that I plan on using for additional wood storage.

 The photo below was included in a previous post showing photos of some of the piles of wood on the place.

Below is a photo of the same pile after splitting the wood that was on the truck. I also burned several pieces.

 Sunday afternoon I also burned the brush in the piles below. I had a good fire going for 5 or 6 hours. Actually it burned most of the night, I only fed it for 5-6 hours. Yesterday it was still hot enough that I raked it around a little, piled some more trash on it, and it took off again. I burned stuff for another hour or so, but the fire was much smaller than the one I had going Sunday. I still have one more brush pile to burn, some of the stuff we cut down while trimming along the driveway so that we could get the motor home back here. Actually there is still a lot of junk laying around that needs to be burned, some day.

We go another half inch of rain this morning so that put a halt to trying to burn that brush pile.

Kelsey dropped Lydia off about an hour ago. We get to babysit until Andy gets off work.

Hope you all have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Sept 1st - No Rain Today

I went to California, MO for breakfast this morning. Breakfast was good but not anything great. On the way home I stopped in Centertown and talked to a guy who has used tractors for sale. He doesn't have anything with a loader right now. He said that when he does have one it usually sells quickly.

We didn't get any significant rain today. On the way from California to Centertown it misted enough that I had to occasionally had to turn on the wipers, but that was about it. It was really humid all day.

I didn't do much until late afternoon, then I split some more wood. Before Kathy left she and I move the splitter over next to another pile of wood.

Goodnight and may God bless you and yours.

Aug 31st - RAIN!!!!

We are finally getting some rain. It started a little before 8AM. So far it has been a nice gentle rain. After a little over two hours of it I am just starting to notice a trickle running down our sloping, hard packed, gravel driveway. It is pretty amazing that it was so dry that two hours worth of rain soaked into the hard packed gravel.

The rain is supposed to let up, maybe stop, this afternoon and then really come down tonight. Forecasts are that we might get as much as 2-3 inches. Most of it will come down slow enough so that a lot of it will soak in. I bet the fish in our small pond are loving some fresh oxygenated water.

Yesterday I started digging through one of several "board piles". At one time it contained 20-30 rough sawn 2x6's that were 12-13' long. A few of them still appear to be OK but most now have bad spots somewhere along their length, or they are so bowed that they are only good for firewood. I moved the good ones inside. I have a few more to sort through in this pile and another couple of piles of boards that don't appear to be good for anything but firewood. At least they will make some easy to stack firewood, but I doubt that they will have a lot of heat value.

Yesterday, after the board pile work, Kathy and I went into town and, after a nice lunch at one of the local Mexican restaurants, we went to an "antique/junk/second hand" store to pick up a bedframe (head board, foot board, bed rails) and a couple of night stands, for the downstairs bedroom. She still hasn't found anything, at least anything worth the money, for our bedroom. We just have the boxsprings and mattress we bought sitting on the floor, plus a couple of misc tables for night stands. We don't have box spring nor mattress for the bedframe she just bought. I think the plan is to move the one we just bought down there and get another new set for our bedroom. The set we bought does not agree with her back.

Kathy is on her way to Indy to dog sit, and chicken sit, for Doug and Anthony. They are heading out this afternoon, pulling the travel trailer, for a weekend vacation. Kathy left at 5 AM. She called a few minutes ago and was between Decatur and Champaign. She had stopped at Eleanor Walkers, a friend from our time in Niantic, and had a good visit with her. She took the route north through Mexico, MO and Springfield, IL, rather than through St. Louis. She missed driving in all the rain that she would have hit had she gone through St. Louis.

I will probably just "veg" today. I can handle that without much problem <GRIN>.

Have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Aug 30th - More "Wood" Work

I went to bed at 8 last night. I had stayed up late then night before, watching stupid movies, on Netflix. I find it amazing that now that we supposedly have 200 channels available (first time we have had pay TV in many years) AND a subscription to Netflix, yet there still is virtually nothing worth watching. Got up around 3 this morning and figured I would add a blog post. I will probably go back for a "nap" before "officially" getting up.

Yesterday I fired up the splitter and did a little more clean up work. Temps were only in low to mid 90's. Thought I might need to find a jacket <grin>. High is forecast to be 99 today, but drop clear down to 85 tomorrow as weather from Isaac moves into the area.

I finished cleaning up an area next to the barn, actually I didn't really finish cleaning it up I just finished getting rid of the big pieces that were still in good enough condition to use for firewood. I had enough to make two rows across the back of my truck, maybe half a cord. Most of the wood is pretty junky, but it should burn in the wood furnace. When I split one of Carl's "bowl leftovers" I realized it was walnut. The piece was large enough to have made a nice size bowl from it. As I think about it I wonder if all these "bowl leftover" pieces lying around are actually rejects. I bet they are pieces that he trimmed on the band saw, to reduce the amount of work on the lathe, and after trimming he noticed a defect that made them unsuitable for further work. Carl had used a chainsaw to "quarter" a some of pieces that I split today. I almost wasn't man enough to get two of them on the splitter. I figured that I would be pretty sore today because I felt some chest muscles protest when I put the heaviest piece up onto the splitter. So far I'm not sore at all. PTL.

These are some photos of other areas that still need to be cleaned up. They are by no means all of the areas. These are just the ones that are just off the circle drive on the front side of the outbuildings.

 A couple of pallets that I need to move to the outbuilding where I plan on storing the majority of firewood. I've already moved several pallets to that building as well as moving four to the furnace enclosure.

 Rough cut boards. There are a couple of larger piles out back. Not enough to build anything but enough to be handy for something. A few of the ones lying around area rough cut 2x8'sx14'. None in this pile are that big.

 A pile waiting to be split.

 Carl started cutting the log in front into sections and got it to the point where it needs to be rolled to finish the cuts. Most of the sections are 16-18" long. The wood furnace can take a piece about 14x14x28. A piece of good wood that size would be heavy enough that it would be hard to get into the furnace.

 I might be able to cut up the log in the foreground with my chainsaw, but it will take cutting from both sides.

 Same with this one. Note the piece lying flat, on the left side of the photo. It will show in a later photo.

 I don't know what kind of trees these logs were from. They are all 15-18" in diameter, some of the smaller stuff lying around.

 These is a photo of the piece noted above. I started splitting it in the afternoon and ran out of steam. It is old enough that the center isn't even worth burning, but the outside 6-8" is still decent. The center will just go into one of the burn piles.

After tiring of wood splitting I did some tree trimming with my pole saw. There were a couple of places behind the outbuildings where limbs hung down low enough to brush the top of my truck. I removed them and added them to a burn pile. Hopefully we will get enough rain from Isaac, supposed to hit here Friday and Saturday, so that I can burn the two piles that I now have. (There will be much more to be burned, as clean-up progresses.)

Kathy bought a used headboard and bed frame while she was in town yesterday. We need to go pick it up today. I think we will have lunch in town. If I can motivate myself I should get out a little earlier than normal and move some of the boards that are lying outside under cover before the rains hit tomorrow.

PS. Mom, I'm not working that hard, I'm quite certain that the exercise I'm getting is good for me. I usually don't get started until 10 and I take breaks when I need one. Not to worry.

Aug 28th - Mom Called

My Mom called me last night to find out what was wrong with me. She was worried because I not quite posting. Told her all was fine, just didn't have anything worthy of posting.

Our return trip to Missouri went fine. Our patch job to hold the motor home awning in place held up and we had no problems with it. (See earlier post about ponding on awning causing it to collapse). I called our insurance to see about having repairs made and when they called me back they told me that our policy had been cancelled last November because we had not paid our premium. We knew that there had been an issue with them not getting the payment on time but thought that we had resolved. The fault was ours, somehow we managed to let sending them a check fall through the cracks. We found no record that we actually did pay the premium. We have travelled from southeast Missouri to central Missouri, then on to Texas, from there to southern California, up through California into Oregon and Washington and back to central Missouri with no insurance. The recent trip to Tennessee and Michigan was also made without insurance coverage. We consider ourselves blessed that we did not have an accident during those travels. Our policy, which costs about the same as coverage on my pickup, was a $1,000 deductible. As it turns out we will end up ahead from a money perspective. The repairs will not cost more than 10 months premiums plus the deductible.

During the past week we continued working around the property. We received a quarter inch of rain on Sunday so yesterday we burned one of the piles of brush. I started the fire around 10:30 AM and finally put it out (didn't actually put it out but damped it down) at 5:30 PM.

This was the fire about noon yesterday. The shed in the background houses our wood furnace. Several of the pieces were so large that I could only roll them up next to the fire. There are lots of pieces of wood around the property that are to big to lift and also to gnarled to split. The other pieces were to far away to roll to the fire. After the next rain I will set fire to one of the piles back behind the outbuildings. I should use the skid steer to move some of them to that brush pile prior to lighting it.

 This was the pile left over when I hosed it down.

 As we were cleaning up the areas behind the shed, never went further than 100' from the house, we also cut up some of the wood and put it in the woodshed. Later in the afternoon I cleaned out he woodshed up by the furnace and took the old ashes out of the furnace. Even if we decide not to burn it this year I need to get someone to come out here and make sure everything operates property (before our homeowner's warranty expires), that I know how to run it and that I know how to switch back and forth between the wood furnace and the propane furnace in the house.

This building will hold over two cords of wood. We have several other much larger building where we can store more, if  get around to splitting more of the stuff laying around.

I just did some research on the climate in central Missouri. In terms of heating we have about 10% more heating degree days than Crossville, TN while Coldwater, MI has 30% more than us. In terms of cooling Crossville had only 62% of the cooling degree days that we have while Coldwater has only 40% of our cooling degree days.

The guy who built my log splitter for Carl, the previous homeowner, called and wanted to work out some type of deal so that he could use it. Carl said he is an OK guy, April (Carl's wife) isn't so sure. He has access to some "hedge"(?) trees and offered to let me have as much of the non-merchantable wood as I want to cut, in trade for letting him use the splitter. He plans on selling the logs and making fence posts out of the straight stuff. The site is about 15 miles from here. Probably a good deal if I needed the wood but since there is already more wood here, already cut and waiting to be split, than we could use in one winter I'm not to excited about cutting more when I don't even know if we are going to use the furnace this winter. Of course there is nothing wrong with storing the wood since I have buildings available. The guy also has a dump truck and has hauled gravel here, for the driveway, in the past. He might be someone good to know.

Time to get out and do something. I need to take advantage of the cool weather. High temps have dropped down to the low 90's.

Good day to all and may God bless you and yours.

Aug 19th - On the Road Again

This morning we head back to Missouri. I think everyone had had a reasonably good time but we (at least me) is getting tired, even after two naps yesterday <grin>.

Last night we had supper at Maggiani's, an Italian restaurant up on the northeast side of Indy. The food was excellent, although pretty expensive for a cheapskate like me, over $300 for 7 of us. It was a feast. We ordered family style and they brought us far more good than we could eat. We carried home two sacks full of left overs.

400 miles and we will be home. A girl Kathy knows from when she was working at Teen Challenge will be riding with us. Kathy is taking her on to Kansas City so she will have a 700 mile day before she gets home.

Have a great day and may God bless you and yours.

Aug 18th - Indianapolis

We arrived at a campround on the southwest side of Indy around 2 PM yesterday. It isn't much of a "campground" but it does have full hook-ups, and it was the only thing we could find within an hours drive of Doug & Anthony's place.

Kathy, Kelsey, Lydia and Doug went up to Lebanon to visit Phyllis this morning and they, as well as Andy and Melissa, are now all at Anthony's salon.

I'm going to take a nap and enjoy the peace and quite.

Weather is not to hot, but it is warm.

Tomorrow we head back to Missouri.

Good day to all. May God bless you and yours.