Good Morning All. Mostly cloudy and 66°. With 81° predicted to be the high, there will be no A/C today. It's only been running 2-4 hours a day lately anyway. Forecast here hasn't changed much, warm until the weekend, fair for a few days, warming back up Wednesday and maybe rain Thursday. But still warm.
Yesterday started OK, we took the Accura to the repair shop to have the suspension rebuilt and stopped at Dollar General on the way home. Then I mangled the back of my right hand trying to get the mower deck belt back in place , unsuccessfully. I am not sure why it jumped out of the pulley track, but it did. I'll have to remove the deck to get it off, and I will replace it with a new one since it got mangled as well. Even in my area, Amazon is offering 4 hour delivery once I ascertain which belt I need. So I shredded tree prunings instead. Should have been done this summer, but with triple digits every day, I just wasn't up to it.
The afternoon brought a surprise. The farmer who leases and farms the land south of me, sent a crew out to trim back all of the trees along the road. They were growing out over the easement and much of the road and were scraping the sides of his very expensive new John Deere equipment as they drove by my house on the way up the road to access the field
. They were originally going to pile them in the corner of that field to rot, but I told the head guy to deposit them in a somewhat remote part of the yard next to my hayfield. No sense in wasting all of that good Hackberry firewood which I will cut up and use in the winter of '24-'25. They were cutting down whole trees with diameters up to 10". They did leave enough trees to still intercept the dust from when they work that field, although they normally take wind direction in consideration when stirring up the soil or spraying fertilizer or herbicide. My initial guesstimate is that it will be enough for more than one normal season, thus saving my woodlot for a year. Being Hackberry trees, new growth will spring up from the remaining stumps and fill in as well. BTW, Hackberry wood has more BTU's per cord than the best Oak does.
On tap for today is garden clean up, more brush shredding and other outdoor tasks that were delayed by the summer heat. I'll probably have to make time for picking up the car as well. But that won't take more than 45 minutes. Gee, I sure miss the pool greatly.
We went to town for dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant last night. Noted on the way that gasoline at the rural country convenience store about 6 miles away, was $3.06/gal. The original plan was to stop there on the return trip and fill up. However when we got to town, the newly opened Quick Trip location was $2.93/gal. Couldn't pass that up. It was jammed pack full, but a quick observation of lane flow got me in to one lane almost immediately.
Several projects going on in the train shed yesterday. I finished the last white glue windows in the red car which I believe is an older generic Mercury. This is the rough start on the final side window.
The overlap is trimmed away during the drying process before the glue has a chance to take it's final set.
Remember that this will be a background vehicle once I clean it up and add a little more paint.
Meanwhile, I drilled 29 post holes and installed fence posts around the fuel distributor. Haven't cut the fencing material or the horizontal poles yet, but that's coming up.
In the background of the car pictures, you might have seen the Mack truck that is going through rehab based on some of your suggestions and pictures.
Chad - I wasn't really aware of water bottles being in ml, as I don't buy them. I have a leftover one with no label that I fill from our tap.. It's very good soft water.
James - Normally when my locomotives including ST's hit the rails, they don't come off except for maintenance every few years. So I haven't noted that issue. I haven't had any of mine long enough to have required maintenance yet. They all run like they did out of the box.
Terry/Tom O - My Dad was originally an accountant by trade. When he made his will, every "I" was dotted and every "T" was crossed. A separate list contained all of the info on his 33 different retirement/brokerage/savings accounts including passwords and estimated $$$ made just 6 weeks prior. He maintained the list for years and updated it every 60 days or so. He set aside $5K for the wake, and gave instructions for the dividing up of all personal possessions. His artwork was a lottery from oldest to youngest and than reversed until all were disbursed, over 60 pieces. Very organized and no infighting amongst us. He actually reviewed the will with all of us about three weeks prior to his passing so there would be no misunderstandings. Even his liquor stash was divided evenly among the six of us; I came away with 72 bottles. I traded my bourbon and gin to my brothers for their wine since we (me and wife) didn't drink hard spirits. I haven't been a particularly good student, as our will is still disorganized!
David - Best wishes on the ankle.
Everyone have a wonderful hump day.
