Oct 13th - Pond Cleaning

Yesterday we went to town in the morning. Kathy had a doctors appointment. I got a much needed haircut from Larry, I love going to his shop. I picked up my new glasses, they are a disappointment. I don't notice that much improvement in my vision. Had I know the change was going to be so slight I would have kept the nearly $600 the glasses cost me. Yes, nearly $600 for one pair of glasses. My uncorrected vision is so bad that glass lenses would be horrendously thick. The lenses I get are some super duper high index plastic that allows them to be much thinner (but still quite thick), and lighter, than glass lenses.

We got our annual flu shots while in town. After some grocery shopping we stopped for lunch at the Dragon Kitchen's buffet and then headed home.

In the afternoon Kathy cleaned up dust from Doug's construction work and I cleaned up around the pond. The water is LOW! The lowest is has been while we have been here, and it has never been that high. It is probably about 3' below the spillway. I did a "walk about" Thursday, after Mom and Doug left. I walked our south property line, down below the pond. I sure wonder why they put the dam where they did. Had the dam been located closer to the property line the pond could have been much larger. Probably 5 times larger, but still less than an acre. I guess they didn't do it because the dam would have been larger, more expensive. We did see lots of fish in the pond while looking at it with Doug one day. I can hardly believe that it is large enough to support all the fish we saw. I've never seen any dead fish on the shore.

Below is part of the wood I cleaned up. I dragged most of it, used my tractor on the larger pieces (LOVE THAT TRACTOR) up from the edge of the pond. I added a couple of more small trees (4 & 6" diameter by 12-20' tall) to the load after I moved to the other side of the pond.

I though about getting out my lawn tractor, just so I'd have every piece of equipment that I own involved in the clean up <grin>.

Still no rain. Rain forecast is 50% today and 30% tomorrow. Radar looks like we may get some in the evening.

This afternoon I'm going over to Kelsey and Andy's (and Lydia's) and we are going to install the exhaust for her microwave. Andy got an "emergency call" this morning and is in making repairs to a new car that was dinged this morning. It is supposed to be delivered this afternoon. Kelsey and Lydia picked up Kathy and they went to town.

I've decided it is to late to see Utah's canyon country this fall. I'll wait until it warms up next spring to see it. My current plans are to start volunteering at a camp near Bryan, TX about Nov 1st.

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

Oct 12th - Workers Have Gone Home

Doug and my Mom left after lunch yesterday. By the time both had gotten home they had a nearly 600 mile, butt-numbing, trip. They sure helped a LOT while they were here. My Mom nearly wore me out trying to keep up with her as she helped me cut and split wood <grin>.

Doug did some wiring (we now have a light in the stairway down to the lower level!), trim work and installed some braces on the back deck. He tried to install some lags in the ledger that attaches the back deck to the house but couldn't find anything solid enough to hold a lag. That is probably bad news.

Kelsey and Lydia came over for a "goodbye lunch". Below is a photo of my Mom rocking Lydia. Lydia must be getting some teeth because she sure is chewing her fingers, or a pacifier, a lot.

In the afternoon I cleaned up my tools we had out for the work at the house and cut a little more wood. Mom and I had started cutting up a tree that had fallen out in the woods while she was here, I finished cutting it up. I could only get the tractor to within about 40' of it because of logs I have not yet cleaned up. The three yellow pieces on top were from a small log that was in the way. They are hackberry and are supposed to have great heat value.

Time to head off to town for errands. Have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Oct 10th - Grocery Shopping

Yesterday Mom and I split wood for awhile in the morning. The wood pile keeps growing, but slowly.

We then went to Russellville, picked up Kelsey & Lydia and went to the Amish grocery store near Versailles, MO. The grocery is in the middle of nowhere, about 25 miles from our house. Every time that we have been there it has been busy. Give generations of family in the photos below. My Mom &  Lydia, Kathy, Doug & Kelsey.

 Five generations outside the grocery. I took Lydia out to the "barn" , where the workers keep there horses and buggies. There were two horses in the barn. Lydia was not impressed. I don't think she cared for the smell of horse manure.

 We had lunch at a restaurant just outside Versailles. I had an open face roast beef sandwich that would have rated a 10 had it been 5-10 degrees warmer. There had to be two cups of mashed potatoes on the plate, with gravy, and over a pound of roast beef on a slice of homemade bread. It was as good a "hot beef" sandwich as I have ever had at a restaurant.

On the way back we had to stop at another place to check out the lawn furniture. Doug and Lydia took some time to go swinging. The sun was bright enough that I'm not sure Lydia had the opportunity to get the feel of swinging. She was more concerned about the bright sun.

In the evening we went to Moose Brothers, in Russellville, for supper. It was good but it seems to me that they just raised the price of their tenderloin sandwiches and that the sandwich was smaller. Not the great deal it used to be, but still not bad.

I'm not sure what today will bring. Doug is still trying to figure out wiring. I think he will need some help with it. I still have several pieces of wood near the splitter that need to be split and stacked, and more to cut. (Doug needs a tool, got to go.)

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

Oct 9th - More Cleaning & Burning

Just more cleaning and burning the past few days. Doug, our son, came out with my Mom (Beverly) last Saturday. It has been good to see them.

Doug has been working on our mystery wiring. We have lots of switches that don't seem to turn anything on or off. Mom & I have been cleaning and burning trash wood. We have also added some to our wood stores.

The wood burning boiler/furnace seems to work fine. In this mild weather (highs mid 50's, lows mid 30's) I only have to fill it once a day. We have been keeping the house FAR warmer than we have in the past. We used to set the thermostat no higher than 70. We have had it up to 75 while Mom has been here. Doug had to strip down to his tee shirt. We do have the registers in our bedroom closed. We have the windows partially open at night, even the night that it got down to freezing. We sleep way better when it is cool. One nice thing is that our master bath has its own register and we can keep it warm while having the bedroom cool. At our house in Lebanon our bathroom and bedroom were on the same hot water heating zone so if one was cool/cold, so was the other.

I like my tractor. Getting chunks of wood the size of the one in the photos below onto the fire would be a problem without it. This piece of wood was partially rotted, but it was still heavy.

I took the photo below at 6:30 last night, the last time I checked the fire. I started this fire Saturday morning and it has burned continuously since then. In the morning it will have burned down to mostly coals but it will still be hot enough to set whatever I throw on it afire. I stirred up the fire at least three minutes before taking the photo. I was surprised at that it was still throwing off sparks.

Today the plan it to go to Moose Brothers, in Russellville, for lunch. They have the best tenderloins, onion rings and breaded mushrooms.  I can already feel my arteries clogged up from all the grease <grin>.

After lunch we are heading over to the Amish grocery store to check it out. It is about 10 miles on the other side of Russellville. Going to a grocery store that has a place to tie your horse, and a place for the employees to corral their horses, is always interesting.

Oct 4th - PM - Wood Burner Fired Up

I cut a little wood today, worked on the motor home parking area a little and started up our wood fired outdoor boiler.

BOY DOES IT SMOKE!!!

Within a few minutes after starting it looked like this.

A few minutes later, after starting up the draft fan, it looked like this. I've never seen a wood burning locomotive smoke any worse. The EPA will be back here fining us.

The wood I'm burning in it isn't the greatest stuff, but it is plain wood (no paint, varnish, treated wood, etc). I think maybe some of the volume of smoke might be caused by drying out the inside of the furnace. It will be interesting to see if the level of smoke decreases as we use it  more as the temperatures drop the next few days.

Making smoke was today's excitement. Well not really, we had Lydia again today; although I was outside most of the time she was here. Kathy took her around on a couple of stroller rides and took her by where I was working.

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

Oct 4th AM - Granpa's Helper

Didn't do much on Tuesday, but did get the lawn mowed. I also worked a little on the rock walls for the motor home parking spot. I am now at the stage of "finding" rock that close to the right size and shape for the wall. Once I happened to run across a few pieces I move them over to the wall area. I still have quite a bit of wall to finish.

Yesterday I moved the wood I split Monday into the wood shed. I didn't stack it, just threw it on a pile in case it rained. We got a few very light sprinkles in the morning but that was it. The pond is now back down to about as low as it has been while we have lived here. There is a 60% chance of rain tomorrow. Hopefully we will get a good long shower.

The guy at ARSEE who took over Tate & Lyle (Staley) as a client called yesterday. Actually we had been trading phone calls for nearly a week. He wanted to discuss some work T&L is proposing for an area where I designed reinforcing some years ago. I need to get on the stick this morning and go through my computer files to see what assistance/insights I can provide. I gave him copies of all my files before retiring, but it is really difficult to find things in other people's files, especially because I was not a very organized person.

While it was sprinkling I did some work on water hoses for the motor home. The motor home currently has a triple filter system. Water is filtered through a 10" "string" filter to get out the worst of the stuff, then through a 10" carbon filter, to get out finer material and to improve the taste, and finally the drinking water goes through an under sink filter. All that was great until we started using a water softener. I want something to filter stuff out of the water prior to it entering the water filter. I'm adding a 10" string filter prior to the water softener. I will remove the cartridge from the onboard string filter. (I'm removing the cartridge to help minimize loss of water pressure because of all the filters.) This is all work with water hoses that are outside the motor home. I tried some quick disconnect hose fittings and they appear to work well (no leaks), a pleasant surprise. I still need to make up one more section of short hose that will connect the pre-filter. Once it quit raining I had other things that needed my attention. I will finish up if it rains tomorrow.

Kathy had post surgery follow-up Doctor's appointments yesterday. All went well. I got to be the chief baby sitter from a little after 2 PM until she got home, around 3 PM. Lydia was just a ball yesterday. She was in such a good mood.

I did a little grading on the motor home pad and trimming on the cedar tree next to the pad. I've trimmed the heck out of the tree, and torn up some of its roots doing grading. It will be a near miracle if it survives all my "attention." I also did some more clean-up work. I have a pretty good sized burn pile ready to light.

My helper

 Kathy brought her out to see what she thought of the tractor when I was driving by the front porch. Her shirt says, "Grandpa's Little Helper."

I loaded up the outdoor wood boiler yesterday. I'm going to start the fire in it this afternoon. Tonight's low is supposed to be 45 then 40 Friday night and 34 on Saturday night and 36 Sunday night. We have already had an overnight low of 40 and didn't mind not having the heat on but the highs aren't going to be as warm as they have been. It is supposed to get to 75 today, 55 tomorrow, 52 on Saturday and 54 on Sunday. The forecast is for it to warm up some starting next Monday.

Time to get some breakfast and get going for the day. Hope all of you have a great day. May God bless you and yours.

Oct 1st - Working at Home

We had another new mattress and box springs delivered today. We will see if this one better suits Kathy's back. I moved the one we had been using to the downstairs (guest)bedroom and moved the head board, foot board and frame from the downstairs bedroom up to our bedroom. Kathy had found some matching end tables and wants to get a desk she saw, but hasn't bought yet, to put in the bedroom. That would complete our bedroom furniture.

About a month ago she ordered a new mattress and box spring from Sears. It was supposed to have been delivered last week but Sears screwed up the order and today Kathy could not even get an answer to her query as to when it would be delivered. She cancelled the order at Sears, bought one locally. The guy delivered it this afternoon. Guess he actually wanted our business. After all the problems we have had with the new Whirlpool refrigerators we got from Sears, and now the mattress issues, I can't imagine why we would ever again buy anything from Sears.

I used my tractor today. The bucket is kind of small but lifting capacity if adequate for anything I've wanted to lift so far. I had to chain some of the chunks of wood into the bucket. These are two of the chunks of wood I cut from a log early last week. They were small enough that they rode in the bucket OK.

I used the tractor/bucket to raise the splitter to the upright position, it was not an easy task. (The lean-to in the background, on the right, is where I parked the skid steer and where I parked my tractor.)

 This chunk of wood is similar to the one that took me 118 blows to split last week. Splitting this one was much easier <grin>. It still wasn't a piece of cake since these chunks are HEAVY. The splitter base is not flush with the ground, wrestling these chunks onto the base is a chore.

I got a good nights sleep last night but I was sure tuckered out by the end of the day. Tomorrow I think I will take it easy. I need to go to town and order prescription refills. I think Kathy is going to go along and we will have lunch in town. After we get back I need to mow the lawn and if I'm really motivated I need to run the weed eater and do some trimming.

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