One year ago today: September 10, 2021, masks become mandated.
Five years ago today: September 10, 2017, more hurricane bull.
Nine years ago today: September 10, 2013, Dee-Dee became a dodo.
Random years ago today: September 10, 2011Y, playing the Wayside.
What a beauty of a morning, I as out there dawn to mid-afternoon. Shown here is an attempt to start some new oregano, Madagascar periwinkles, and Mexican you know, the thing. I filled the birdfeeders and re-routed the spray lines so they don’t startle the birds sometimes when the water comes on. If the feeders are filled more than half, the seeds sometimes get soggy, so I may reschedule how that is done. It sprinkled after sunrise but working inside the shed makes it easy to keep busy.
Howie says the place he used to work throws out pallets by the boatload, but they don’t know when that will happen. If I had a steady source of pallets, I’d at least consider producing those sawhorses on a larger scale. I’ll go green, recycling pallet lumber, blah-blah. I’ve easily priced out the production costs including painting them whatever color is free at the depot. The red scooter definitely has a carburetor problem and this time I will try a fix myself. I know the reason shops don’t like them is the labor makes them not worthwhile. But if I ignore the labor and find what makes it work, I’m way ahead.
There it is, a picture of the tool chest. This shot makes it look much nicer than it is, as the box is a bit off square and the metal strips are cut by hand. Lots of sharp corners until I figure something out. This view also shows the latest sawhorse design and a temporary work table set up to let the plywood dry out. The rain is not cooperating. I may use the setup shown here to see how fast a sawhorse can be cut and then how fast it can be assembled. If I build them, I would use jigs all the way. Most of the wasted time is the way the sawhorse becomes unwieldy after the first leg in attached.
The sheers were drawn but I do believe Grandma Red was at the window feeder late today. I could not get a good look, but she is near the end. She certainly had the best I could provide. One of her offspring is a regular, this year as his red coloring is undeveleped. More common are the titmice who have learned to share the feeder four at a time. It’s hilarious, I’ll try to get you a clip of that.
The shed needs another shelf which I’ll try to get to but this late summer heat wave saps all energy. I’m serious, sometimes you don’t even want to open that door. The time inside is not wasted but nor is it creative. I balanced all the bank accounts and this year Tennessee has cost me $843 over budget. That’s my fault, I’d rather it be there. Maybe I should not say over budget, since that implies the money is lost. Heaven’s not, I’ll give an example.
My rule is to not let the gas needle go below one quarter (yes, I prefer a needle to an icon). So if I use the car just to pick up pet food or something, I’ll fill it up even if I don’t use again for a month. You don’t do that very often without it adding up big. Or the other side of that coin is I don’t expect others to have a firm control on finances and when in doubt, I know how easy it is to just use the “joint” account because there is always money in it. I worked hard for a lot of years to make it so.
And now I’m actually pricing out sawhorses from recycled lumber. What a thing that is. A cost management accountant looking at such a project. I know in advance to the third decimal point what the 21 wood screws will cost. How many saw cuts, pilot holes, time, two drills, the angle to set the saw, and I have not even used the “assembly” yet. The sawhorses out there now were build by hand one at a time.
1920s Shipboard radio station.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
It was blustery enough to keep me in the shed. Longer working hours are not resulting in work on the house, but then summer isn’t the best time to be swinging a hammer. I am almost finished the Admiral book and at the end the wording remains too stilted for casual reading. The Admiral is back on his estate, where most of the tenant farmers remain. He hired some of his old crew but the other people are a mystery from the beginning chapters. Some expressions are quaint, like the women talking “twenty to the dozen” and I learned the opposite of an Admiral being yellow is being blue.
Here is a closeup of a dulled star driver bit. I don’t know if it is too much torque on the drill or bad quality manufacture of the bit. This is tricky to see because my microscope has no driver, so this is a picture of a picture. I’ve got a small box of card readers but I can never find them. This is a hex driver designed for deck screws and I not only am I using softer wood, I drill pilot holes. Yet some of these bits do not last three screws. In this view, the screw is lying from the 10:00 o’clock position toward the 4:00 o’clock. One of the pins is visible and it should go right across the picture. Instead, you can see where it is flattened, along with the other five pins you can't see. Yeah, my intention was to look at diatoms, but how was I to know metals and minerals were more interesting? I’ve taken one biology course in my life and that was in the tenth grade.
Later, I finished the book. We never find out about inclosures, but the Admiral ships off to Chile and is just settling in as he is recalled to duty. It seems Bonaparte did not like Elba, a rather common condition throughout history. So the book has no real beginning and end, but adds a Mitchener-like series of fictional events and characters attached to a time period. This book gets a 2/10 unless you have an intense interest in such matters.
ADDENDUM
A wrap up of some news. The FCC proposed satellites must “de-orbit” in five years, you know, like they outlawed telemarketing so successfully. European studies show boys who were bullies tend to commit violent crimes, duh, Europe. The newest book on Dr. Mengele is a crushing blow to the last big unchallenged story of the Holocaust. So-called eyewitnesses are, for a variety of odd reasons, coming forward to say they were pressured to lie. In fact, they say, Mengele is credited with saving many lies. The witnesses behave like they are still under pressure, saying things like their memories failed them. But a lie is a lie.
