I Think

Fair warning to you guys that live in Texas. Everybody's friend, Zimmerman is in Texas packing his gun. STAY CLEAR if you value your and your loved one's lives.

bump

I don't have a hoodie and I don't buy Skittles. I should be fairly safe.

Getting the car worked on took so much time and energy, yesterday afternoon, we went out for dinner afterward. Didn't even clear the sink last night. Car inspection deadline was yesterday, so, before we went to the mechanic, I took it to get inspected. At least we now can prove to the law we tried. I hope to get it all resolved by the weekend. Optimism does not seem the order of the day, since there is still an evap system issue.

There were two little black wasp type creatures in here this morning. I swatted one. The other keeps brushing against me. I was once stung by one of these things. They are shiny black and remind me somewhat of a cricket.

The check engine light came on for my car. That is hopefully the evap system and not the just installed catalytic converter.

I am happy to have a quiet day. But I may run over to the job site later. Lots of loose ends.

I want a pet duck, but we are not allowed have one here.

There is a stretch along a sidewalk, at the apartments, that has sprinklers that have never worked the 21 years I have been there. Nobody knows where the underground valves are located. Last summer, I ran a pipe from the nearest working sprinklers and tied the two together. The already working sprinklers continued to work well, but the newly added on sprinklers barely had a trickle. Even after I flushed the lines and replaced most sprinkler heads it was the same. I had other issues to deal with and left it alone, until last week. I put a sprinkler control on a faucet and separated the two systems, this time tying the non performing set to the new control. I hoped there would be more water pressure and a satisfactory result. But the sprinklers only marginally worked better. I am seriously considering tying the water line with the new control to a series of soaker hoses. Got to come up with something.

Get a duck and dress it in a dog costume. Teach the duck to bark or be ready to come up with a handy excuse that the duck is hoarse (of course, of course).

sounds like you have a leak in the line that was not working.

if you can't pressure them up, the water is going somewhere.

if you run it long enough, you should get a wet spot...

chickens are much better pets than ducks, IMHO.

Yeah ducks are only trainable by the extremely patient. Oddly, chickens seem a bit more mallardable.

I have had many chickens in my life and I loved some of them the way you love any good pets. As a kid we had a duck and I never saw that it was a bad risk. Maybe I just didn't notice.

The sprinklers I wrote about let out water at each station. But they don't send the water out like they would with a bit of pressure behind them. There are perhaps a dozen sprinklers on the line.

I didn't sleep in this morning, but I laid in. It felt so good to stretch out and just lie there in a stupor, I didn't get up until after my wife had gotten up, showered, and went to the kitchen. I got up in time to have a cup of coffee and watch some news shows. Finally cooked us eggs, biscuits and sausage. I reserved the little links for her, because she always says the sausage is too spicy. My take is, the links seem more like franks and I don't care for them. The sausage patties with a bit of spice is what I want. Eggs over medium to hard. Biscuits with lots of butter. Preserves inside one. And another half cup of coffee. Ate while watching Gabby Hayes on the TV.

The football game last night took me by surprise. Didn't know it was preseason already. I haven't built up the requisite enthusiasm to watch any of it yet.

They made a change in the black salve I have been buying. Used to be it pillaged the cancer spots and left a scar, but it took just one and sometimes two applications. The gentler concoction takes multiple applications and is much too slow.

When I first learned that my half brother, Jack, was dead, I searched the web a number of times without finding out anything. It was as though he had never existed in his last days. Finally, a half sister managed to get a death certificate. Turns out, his girlfriend supplied all the information and none of it was correct, not even the full name. She is working to get it changed.

The car no longer has a readout of having an evap leak. But the light still comes on and it is still the evap system. I am on the verge of taking it to the dealership. It may be expensive, but I've got to have my car working.

Replacing sprinkler valves again this week. I have five to go. They are so deeply buried in the roots and mud and are divided to two opposite property locations, I don't know when it will get finished. One set of three will have to be done with the water to the property cut off, because the valve that should cut the sprinklers off no longer turns. Other than that the vacuum it creates works fine so they don't want to replace it.

Punky the dog patiently stands here, waiting to be petted as I work the mouse and keyboard. Sometimes she gets lucky.

Time to start hoarding money to put new tires on the Ranger. It never ends. Truck always wants something. I gave it oil and antifreeze recently and filled it with gas. But is that enough? No. Well, I will give it one tire at a time, based on its good behavior. But its going to wait, getting the tailgate latch repaired.

the tailgate latch is pretty straightforward, ed.

probably something you could handle yourself...

I took off the plate on the inside. The little plastic looking thing on the rod broke off. But I'm making the truck pay for being so much bother right now.

Just got back from having the car inspected. The mechanic replaced the charcoal canister yesterday and that seems to have cleared up the final problem. I told my wife not to kill herself now that it runs so good and has such take-off.

The dust in yesterday's wind blew here from the Sahara Desert. There are times we get smoke from Central America and, when Mt Saint Helens blew, we got ash on our cars. And yet when bad weather approaches from the north it often changes course before it gets here. We sometimes get predictions of 80% rain chances, only to receive nothing. Amazing.

Ed, I'd gladly share some of our rain with you.

Ok, but I'm not paying shipping charges.