Friday, October 15, 2004
first 'fallish' day
No politics today. Maybe never again. Well, except for Kirsten.
Yesterday dawned absolutely beautiful. 54 degrees with my glasses on the stand by the open window. Put them on and wondered if I'd developed cataracts overnight. Warm face, cold specs, instant foggy windshield. Eversonice, wandered around for a couple of hours before looking for a bit more in the way of coverings (painful mental image, eh? ;o) just enjoying whole-body goose bumps. Two months from now this dawg will be barking a different tune.
Cleanup and winterizing get to work together this year. When the abode and environs seem totally hopeless (I'm still working under the assumption they're not), it takes a while to get some type of rhythm going. There ARE other things necessary, cooking, general housekeeping (HAH!), attempting to do things to fund the homebrew, dawgfeed, and bean sammich habits, that kind of stuff. ...plus the piles of paperwork, looong, aggravating story... Yesterday was typical except for the fortunate change of weather making it highly desirable to do outside stuff but.. Got 2 hours in the morning, then 4 hours at the attempted product goodies, then 2 more hours loading Rustbucket with more bags of choking, mildewed debris for the dump. I'd noticed the rear tires looked a bit low, figured it was just the weight but measured anyway. One was at 18 lbs, the other at 15. Many years ago I had a young GSD pup, maybe around 6-8 months old at the time, that was gnawing on one of the tires. Ssssssssssss. He looked bemused. Nyerlathotep (as a pup) also liked to play 'fetch' with concrete blocks.
Back to the low tires - on the way to the dump in the early evening, I stopped by a convenience store that has had an air hose out front since before Highway 90 was built. Re-pressurized all, then decided to go buy a spare pouch of Bugler. The fella clerking was bringing out tired hot dogs and passing them out to a trio of old sooner hounds that had gathered. It's a daily ritual, no eager eater stuff, they'd take their goody and just amble back across the parking lot. I went in and talked with the young man for a while, just country stuff with a few chuckles, bought my Bugler and left. BTW, the Bugler was WW II surplus. Extra-crispy. Hard to roll.
Well, I did leave. ..in a huge cloud of smoke. Yep, another hydraulic line blew up. Made the dump, made it home, then spent the remaining daylight draining the system which had to be done with the engine running. Messy. Bad way to finish up an otherwise decent day. Not too sure what to do about it yet but since the line is original with Rustbucket, I can't grouse too much. Unfortunately since the line goes from a steel line to a swaged flexible to a different size steel line that snakes all over the place to another swaged flexible to another steel line that vanishes into the deep, dark undercarriage with another set of the above (at least), it'll probably cost approximately 18 times what I could get for Rustbucket at salvage. It also looks like a 2 day job to change. Children, can you spell 'diminishing returns'?
Time to get back to work for a while..
Yesterday dawned absolutely beautiful. 54 degrees with my glasses on the stand by the open window. Put them on and wondered if I'd developed cataracts overnight. Warm face, cold specs, instant foggy windshield. Eversonice, wandered around for a couple of hours before looking for a bit more in the way of coverings (painful mental image, eh? ;o) just enjoying whole-body goose bumps. Two months from now this dawg will be barking a different tune.
Cleanup and winterizing get to work together this year. When the abode and environs seem totally hopeless (I'm still working under the assumption they're not), it takes a while to get some type of rhythm going. There ARE other things necessary, cooking, general housekeeping (HAH!), attempting to do things to fund the homebrew, dawgfeed, and bean sammich habits, that kind of stuff. ...plus the piles of paperwork, looong, aggravating story... Yesterday was typical except for the fortunate change of weather making it highly desirable to do outside stuff but.. Got 2 hours in the morning, then 4 hours at the attempted product goodies, then 2 more hours loading Rustbucket with more bags of choking, mildewed debris for the dump. I'd noticed the rear tires looked a bit low, figured it was just the weight but measured anyway. One was at 18 lbs, the other at 15. Many years ago I had a young GSD pup, maybe around 6-8 months old at the time, that was gnawing on one of the tires. Ssssssssssss. He looked bemused. Nyerlathotep (as a pup) also liked to play 'fetch' with concrete blocks.
Back to the low tires - on the way to the dump in the early evening, I stopped by a convenience store that has had an air hose out front since before Highway 90 was built. Re-pressurized all, then decided to go buy a spare pouch of Bugler. The fella clerking was bringing out tired hot dogs and passing them out to a trio of old sooner hounds that had gathered. It's a daily ritual, no eager eater stuff, they'd take their goody and just amble back across the parking lot. I went in and talked with the young man for a while, just country stuff with a few chuckles, bought my Bugler and left. BTW, the Bugler was WW II surplus. Extra-crispy. Hard to roll.
Well, I did leave. ..in a huge cloud of smoke. Yep, another hydraulic line blew up. Made the dump, made it home, then spent the remaining daylight draining the system which had to be done with the engine running. Messy. Bad way to finish up an otherwise decent day. Not too sure what to do about it yet but since the line is original with Rustbucket, I can't grouse too much. Unfortunately since the line goes from a steel line to a swaged flexible to a different size steel line that snakes all over the place to another swaged flexible to another steel line that vanishes into the deep, dark undercarriage with another set of the above (at least), it'll probably cost approximately 18 times what I could get for Rustbucket at salvage. It also looks like a 2 day job to change. Children, can you spell 'diminishing returns'?
Time to get back to work for a while..
