October 25, 2019

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 25, 2018, Myakka City.
Five years ago today: October 25, 2014, give me free coffee.
Nine years ago today: October 25, 2010, slight bingo success.
Random years ago today: October 25, 2017, scary transfusion fact.

           Today is one of those comedy of errors day but the real clincher is all the ATMS went south in a rain squall that started late afternoon. The blustering kept since dawn, preventing me from loading the car. That’s okay, did you know there is no way to place anything in a station wagon by itself that it will not fall over in some way? I’ve decided this trip to take the new router table and again, the small chop saw. By now I have a small work area in Tennessee and I want to incorporate the router into the way I’m now building boxes. I like building boxes.

           English pubs have a novel way of writing sidewalk pub signs to make you think it says something else from a distance. “The NAKED truth is our WAITRESSES are all taken.” Whirlpool enters the race with this 35 year warranty. Oops, it’s one of those hipster come-ons that says this fridge till pay for itself in 3 to 5 years. What a weird bunch. That claim is good enough on its own, so why the fake-out sticker? I know American business has had to curtail normal hiring practices down to the sixth-grade mentality of today’s graduates, but come on.

           Those tie rod ends on the Taurus need replacing, that’s around 1.5 hours each, and with related replacement parts, we are talking $900. This makes the car replaceable, since it has no heater. You don’t need that if it was only driven in Florida but 2019 has changed the situation out of all recognition. Shop time in most reputable places is pushing $100 per hour. We saw this before out west during many recessions. The shops that survive have a free hand to gouge. In Tennessee, I may shop around the lake district. I’m willing to pay $25 per hour.

           Who’s this on the line? Charla. The Karaoke amp is on the fritz. And tomorrow is the big Halloween party. Folks, I still have ye olde 600 watt Gigrack that I have not used in probably six years. I’ll drop it off tomorrow. You see, I had planned on continued work on the bathroom floor these past few days, but that didn’t happen because each step is a day long and Florida won’t allow me that much uninterrupted time. Coupled with the canceled trip to Miami, I’m kind of sitting around waiting on Sunday. What would you do? I know, leave a half-day early. Don’t tempt me.

           Some of today’s pictures are un-themed material over the last month. Stuff the future historians might like. Here’s a peek at a box build in Tennessee from a fence picket. It lacks finesse but shows what I’ve learned about making them sturdy. This box now has handles but I’m still behind on making separate lids. That’s as opposed to building an enclosed box and cutting the lid off afterward. I’m still getting to that. Having many boxes of this sort has done wonders for the organization in my work shed. Another forty of these and I should be okay.

           While moving boxes (for the umpteenth time since I got here) I found a hand-written scribbler from 1994. This is the year I went to Angel Falls, what an adventure that was. Six days by jeep and canoe, today it is a twenty minute plane ride. I don’t know if these pages have been key entered, but they are marked as if they were. Give me a chance to follow that up. If not, this is all new material. I recall the time and the use of the term “grunt-stomp”. This is the process of trying to get things done on schedule in a third world country. How to get things done, you figuratively have to stomp on the grunts that get in your way. Nowadays, we don’t say grunts, we say millennials.

           [Author's note: yes, I have already received flak from my people about the disgrace of leaving my 600W Gigrack PA to end its days as a Karaoke tug. Agreed, I owe my Gigrack an apology. But it was that or another winter in the shed. What would Jimmy Buffet have done?]

Picture of the day.
Bell ropes.
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           Miami. I’ve got one massive hunch I’m going to regret canceling that leg of the trip. I’ve got a craving for more of that strange food at places the Reb likes to go. I’m not an adventurous restaurant eater. I regard them as places of convenience, not celebration. That’s the Reb for you, influence beyond her companionship, but she could say the same on me. This year I’ve had the Japanese burrito, this flaming dish of pork, spices I could not swallow, fried lettuce, and cucumber-mint soda. Even after I’ve left, she’s got me trying things like deep-fried pickles in Jacksonville.

           I agreed to Thanksgiving on the phone before looking at the calendar. This means the stay-over this trip will be around two weeks. This is what I mean, when she invited, anybody else I would have first looked at a calendar, with her I blurted yes. Thanksgiving. Last time she invited, I drove from Bakersfield to Nashville in three or was it two days? There is no problem staying over and when I’m there nothing goes wrong, repairs get made, the pets get pampered—but shouldn’t I be working on my own place?

           This is a matter nobody can define, why I would make any improvements on rental property just because she lives there. It goes against my rules. The pets are completely used to me now and they’ve learned when the cat’s away they get real chicken now and then. I’ve been meaning to get a hand grinder that will handle bones the way the electric ones can’t. The dogs go through three pounds of turkey a week, and yes, she’s happy that doesn’t cost anything when I’m around. No need to tell her I like ground turkey meat loaf, pie, and casserole dishes myself.
           This extra work for nothing explains more than my fondness to keep busy. I dislike accepting help from anybody who might turn around and make demands in return, you tell ‘em, Theresa. Pretty women know all about that type. The Reb and I work more on give than take and we can get an amazing amount of work done together. Here’s a picture of her shed last month. The amount of lumber alone tells you plenty. Hey, you can just see one of the little sawhorses there, and the chop saw. Neat.

ADDENDUM
           This close-up shows the bad Bell design. This tool pushes the rivet out of the broken link. For openers, it is too small to get the leverage needed to get the pin moving. I resorted to a couple screwdrivers to get a grip. I had wanted to buy one of those models that looks like a small wine press, but the smallest I could find was for heavier chains. The bad trouble here is that tiny black pin just visible at the left end of the threaded key. It fits inside the shaft where the pencil is pointing.

           On the other piece, there are two small metal pegs that hold the chain link. When in one position, the black pin won’t thread in far enough to push the pin sufficiently loose to remove the broken link. In the other position, the key has to be unthreaded so far to accept the repaired link that the threads disengage. A simple gronk tool and they can’t get it right. I will bench grind the pin shorter all the while imagining it is the thumbs of the asshole who designed this gizmo. He knows for seven bucks, I’m not driving all the way back to Wal*Mart.

           Or how about this next object? I’ve come into possession of a small box of them, but could not at first visualize how it worked. It’s some kind of door stop that, out of context, I could not right away imagine. I wondered if parts were missing. With no Internet service at the cabin, it sat until I figured it out. You remove the pin from the bottom door hinge, then reinsert it. The amount of door swing is adjustable by the top prong, which is set on the long narrow screw.

           I finished the book on heavy woodworking and the chapter on English tools and carpentry was the only interesting section. Wood was expensive, labor was cheap, the English built accordingly. I did learn that the prized wood was oak and the settlers scoured it all out of the hills almost completely. I would have thought the mountain areas had an unlimited supply.

           Turns out the settlers cleared the land but did not stop clearing the trees and there was a shortage of white oak within just a few decades of their arrival. I learned what a lot of old woodworking tools looked like, enough to know I’m glad somebody invented electric models. Can you imagine shaping a 90-foot barn roofing beam by hand? They used oxen and pulleys to raise the pieces, which including framed walls build lying on the ground. I can see why some of those barns are still in use. It took most of the community working in unison.
           I’m still trying to finish “Lost in Translation”, the DVD. They are still pussyfooting well past the half-way mark. I think Bill Murray is trying his hand at serious acting and Johansson is taking a stab at comedy. If this is where I think it is going, it’s like that gal you meet who plays hard to get for a month, then can’t understand why you regard her as a kid sister. In another tidbit, I learned that “Beauty and the Beast” was originally written to encourage women’s acceptance of arranged marriage. I suppose it couldn’t be any worse than the job they are doing their own.

Last Laugh