What are you doing today, II

Just picked up my first gen from getting the AC serviced, tomorrow I’m taking them another one for AC service

Spent a good deal of the day in the hospital immediate care.

A week ago I fell while working outside pruning trees. Caught myself by falling on my left hand, which has zero cartilage in my left wrist, lots of bone deformation, and very limited range of motion. The farmer 100 acres away heard me. Kobe watched it happen and thought I died. The lovely Mrs_Bob slept through it.

So I have been working at Melen's condo remodeling her master bath. Came home yesterday and my left wrist was hurting a lot. Noticed that there was a 'bone' pushing outward under the skin. More alarmingly, noticed I could move it by pushing it around.

The lovely Mrs_Bob assumed I broke something last week, and went the swelling went down the problem emerged. So off to the doctor I went.

Walked in, explained what happened at 'check in' and a nurse came out while I was checking and told me to go straight to X-Ray as soon as I checked in. 15 minutes after walking in the front door I was already in x-ray. 15 minutes later I was in an exam room. Dr arrive a couple minutes later, she was going to just refer me to an orthopedic guy, but then I showed her the moving profusion under my skin and told her my story. 15 minutes later I was having a CT scan. WOW this is record speed service!

Literally 40 minutes after I walked in the door I had X-rays, vitals taken by a nurse, a consult with a doc and inconclusive results from the X-rays, then a CT scan . . . and then it all came to a halt . . . about 90 minutes later the reading came back from the CT scan saying there was no broken bone. But a whole lot wrong with my wrist. Well I already knew that. So nothing new. Except there is now an added cyst. So I was not moving a broken bit of bone around, I was moving a cyst.

A wrist brace to immobilize the wrist.

Tomorrow I see the rheumatologist. Hopefully a steroid shot for the wrist. Not sure what he will say about the cyst. But I want the pain gone.

Sounds like Glenfiddich would help.

FrancSevin said:

Sounds like Glenfiddich would help.

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Actually I'm drinking some PADDY's Irish Whiskey tonight.

It won some gold medal at some event I never heard of. It is cheap. But it came in a fancy tube, with a fancy internal wrapper and a not-so fancy bottle.

Irish Whisky is generally pleasant and mild. I prefer Irish Whisky to Scotch, whicj is generally a MALT based whiskey. This Paddy's checks both of those boxes. I could use of a bit more proof, or a bit more sweetness (like Bourbon) or a bit more spice (like Rye) but the Paddy's is inexpensive and tastes pretty good.

Higher proof would work better on the pain. honestly I'm sippin. And enjoying the flavor. Maybe I need a big swig and to go to bed to get rid of the pain.

iJust went to take my other first gen in to get the AC serviced and it started then quit and wouldn’t re start. It’s been sitting about a month, so I actuated the primer on the lift pump and noticed diesel leaking from the injection pump. Looked it up on the net. There is an O ring on the engine side of the pump under a cover that’s famous for that when it sits for an extended period, easy fix but the injection pump has to come off. I was planning to address the killer dowel pin these old trucks have anyway, so 90% of the work is removing the front cover, it’s not a big deal to get the pump off and change the O ring. Better to happen in the driveway than on the road.

Right before I left work this morning, other staff members were coming in.
They said there were sirens and police vehicles leaving town toward US24, that traffic was backed up in both directions and that it seemed like a bad situation going down.
It turns out there was a high speed chase that began outside of a town near here and ended here in Napoleon.
In the end, police officers tried to quell the situation to no avail.

The man in the car turned a gun on himself.
Ty was texting me the entire time and said he heard on his truck cb radio that an ambulance was dispatched- then the coroner was on the way.

What a horrible start for the day.

I had an online appointment this morning at the same time as the dishwasher repair guy was here. Thankfully it was only a clogged line. I headed out afterwards to finish mowing. The mower was getting hot cutting thick wet grass yesterday. Afterwards I hooked up my sweeper behind the mower and rode around collecting the cut grass. Once I was done that, I turned my attention to the fifth wheel camper washing it.

My tractor is leaking hyd fluid. A friend came over and we replaced 1/2 of the seals in the hyd system. Still leaking. He's coming back today but I felt bad as it's simple hydraulics so I did it myself. When he comes over later, I'll let him inspect (and help put the tractor back together).
I'm going to go mow. 90+ degrees but gotta get it done.

I was in Chicago disconnecting plumbing and tearing out bathroom fixtures.

We are remodeling Melen's master bath.

I also buried some wires for a couple of surface mount wall sconces for her.

We had a nice lunch, left early and STILL got STUCK in traffic out of the city.

This evening I went to the fencing club, did some minimal coaching, fixed some body cords for fencing using the electronic scoring steps, and socialized a bit too. A day with much less grief and much less pain than yesterday. So a better day.

I'm packing up a few things in the fifth wheel camper as the missus and I are heading out 3ish hr drive northeast after she's done work to where I was born and raised for a high school reunion covering 1975-96 years. There's a bunch of different events planned. We'll be staying at our friend's camp. We're definitely getting some use out of the camper this summer. In two weeks after we get home, we have a weekend country fair that we're going to be hauling it to and staying at. The fairgrounds property is actually backed up to our property so it's essentially hauling to the neighbors and setting up for the weekend.

if it dries enough before I leave for fencing I'm going to start mowing.

We had a month++ of dry weather when I was watering flowers and gardens, but now we've had 4 days of rain and the grass went from dry crunchy straw to tall lush and green.

bczoom said:

My tractor is leaking hyd fluid. A friend came over and we replaced 1/2 of the seals in the hyd system. Still leaking. He's coming back today but I felt bad as it's simple hydraulics so I did it myself. When he comes over later, I'll let him inspect (and help put the tractor back together).

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Yeah! I think my hyd leak is gone! I was losing upwards of 1 pint per tractor hour of hyd fluid.
My buddy came over, checked my work (it was good), adjusted the tractor brakes (I haven't driven it yet to tell) and reassembled the tractor. Good for another 30 years.

Outside temps are high 70's F and cloudy with low humidity. A significant change from the last two weeks.
So, I am outside finishing work I started two weeks ago.
1) grinding pruning's from trimming my he hedges and trees which have piled up fairly high in the back yard.
2) spreading the grindings ( green mulch) out level in Madison's playground area. Better than sand.
3) starting out on rebuilding the Koi Pond.

About 6 inches of the bottom is black loamy pond bottom dirt. great for gardens and flower beds. It is mostly going in the flower bed I created last week with the new Handystone wall. My hope is the budget in August/September allows for a few mums. Purple and Orange.

The Koi Pond is a 6 month project. I have most of the expensive stuff, Deep sump container, pump & Hoses and a waterfall kit a gift from my B-I-L some twenty years ago. What he gave me was too big for the original Pond so, I have held off. That wait was much longer than I had planned but such is life.
I should only have two costs. Sand and gravel and a plastic liner for the bottom. Commercial liner material is ridiculously expensive. I may go with 12 mil black poly. I have had success with it before and, it currently lines the upper pool of the system. It is easily good for 10 years.

Luckily so am I. That should work out.

We hauled the fifth wheel camper 3hrs northeast of our place to our friend's camp for the weekend. There's a high school reunion this weekend for my school. We'll be heading to check out a few things in town this afternoon and attend an evening social. Tomorrow is a dinner and dance. Sunday morning is a breakfast.

Nothing much but seems a lot. Found this forum, registered, and posting.

Got several things done but...
Fighting with insurance company.
If I remove a vehicle from my policy that's $600/year for that car, I'd think my policy would go down. They said if I do anything that changes my rate lock, my premium goes up $1200. So that's a net loss of $1800/year. I'm insurance shopping.

Any cats that you rarely drive and could be considered collectable?
Put those with hagerty.
My 6 Benz convertibles, 2 with v12 engines, are a total of 2000 for the year. And we agree on stated value. Car gets totaled, I get the full stated value. No depreciation. Plus I get to keep the car.

Replaced the starter in my suburban I watched 3 youtube videos and still couldn't get the starter out found another one that said to take the fender liner out and disconnect the wires did that but still couldn't get my ham sized hand in there I needed 1/4 inch so i jacked the motor up some on the motor mount bing batá boom i'm in there got the wires loose and starter almost fell out in wasn't bad either total time about 4 hours I told my wife I'm going to start charging by the hour in stead of the flat rate of 0$

I've once again been busy as heck, but not so much that I can't take the time to log into my favourite forum.
Facebook honestly bores me now lol
Had some time today in Wauseon, then shopped, did a goofy annual test this morning at work to check that we nurses are still capable of doing it right. (I AM, thank you veddy mooch).
Came home and napped then made a BLT.
With pickles!

Weather has been beautiful so getting a lot done outdoors.
Just got done painting the steel roof on the new pole building. It's going to need a second coat. I'll do that tomorrow morning while it's in the shade.

Digging pond bottom soil by hand to spread on my flower beds.
Budget restraints prevented the planting of hundreds of bedding plants this year as I usually do. So many of the beds are empty and this work will be relatively easy.

I suspect about twenty or so loads in the wheelbarrow. That is just the black dirt. Later, this summer, I will be reconfiguring the pond and adding the filter intake piping for the pump system. 4" PVC drainpipe with holes covered by a fabric sock filter. This will be connected
to a standard PVC sump pump liner that is about 42 inches high that I will sink into the pond bottom's heavy clay.
Covering the filter pipe with Pea gravel and coarse sand will also help to filter and clear the pond water.
The black liner will have a lid that can be 4 to 6 inches above the sand bottom for easy access.

The pond is kidney shaped at 20' X 8' X 3' deep (average) some 480 to 500 cubic feet of water. This is up from the 250 cubic feet of the original pond. At least, that is the plan.

We will stock the pond with cheap goldfish as they do well and are attractive to watch. Most likely next spring.

Granddaughter Madison is 8 and loves to watch them.

Wow! Very productive work @FrancSevin. Kudos.

Early in the day I mowed the 'dog' yard and part of the front lawn, got the small tractor stuck, I'll need to pull up out of the ditch with the big tractor. Spent some time in the swimming pool mid-day. Then late afternoon we headed to the county fair with Kobe to ride rides, eat fair food, and watch the MONSTER TRUCKS!

I had a 'bucket' of Lemonade and a smoked turkey leg. $30!!! The lovely Mrs_Bob had a funnel cake and a 'bucket' of Lemonade, $26. $60 for 2 wrist bands to ride 'unlimited' carnival rides. Seriously WTF? Prices on everything were outrageous. Beyond outrageous. But the parking was free.

Roughly $275 for us to spend 6 hours at the county fair? I'm so old that I can remember the fair being cheap family fun. BLAH Blah blah . . .

I didn't get a ride bracelet because my arthritis is seriously flaring up so I was sidelined for the rides.

eyi said:

Wow! Very productive work @FrancSevin. Kudos.

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OK but what did you do today?

We've been attending a high school reunion covering 75-96 yrs. It's been fun seeing different people I haven't seen in years. Even if they were older than me as I worked with many of them over the years at different places. One of the highlights so far was being able to reunite with an old high school teacher who was very influential in my life. He ran an extra curricular program called "outers" which taught canoeing camping winter survival skills etc. Basically everything I teach the scouts. So that was nice. That's him on my right. On my left is one of my old shop teachers.

Got the 250 (4.1L) out. Now I got some welding to do, patching holes in the frame and stuff. Got to order a new throw-out bearing to go with the new clutch. Whomever did the modifications to this thing, 40 years ago or so... they didn't make it easy for the future mechanics. I'm going to cut the whole nose off so I can get the radiator out to make it easier to get the new engine in. Should be an an easy fix. The nose needs to be removable, and the "other guys" made it all permanent. I almost couldn't get the engine out with the cherry-picker..... it wouldn't go high enough and I was risking tipping the whole thing over.

I'm anxious to dig into the 250, I have a feeling that it might have a little crack in the head gasket, somewhere. I'm gonna have to move the alternator and the carb from the 250 onto the 292(4.8L) ... the wires aren't the same on the alternator and I'm gonna have to rebuild the 292's carb.

So I got the engine out......... that is what I did today.

Trimming the Bradford Pear back. A little bit at a time. I will have it eliminated by end of summer.
Diggin in the pond area.

SO, Today I began tearing up the old pond structure. After some digging today, it looks like this.



The original pump was where the shovel is resting. I will be moving it to the other end, extreme left in the picture. The pond was two feet deep, not three as I thought. That's the black dirt coming out.

All that black pond bottom dirt will be sifted of graven and placed in my flower beds for next year. It is about 8 inches thick. A lot of good stuff.

A lot of big rocks that seemed much lighter when I first install them some 30 years ago. many are local limestone. About half of them are granite and came from Connecticut. I traded them for an 88 450 Benz sedan.

FrancSevin said:

The pond was two feet deep, not three as I thought.

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When you finish the pond, re-stock it with bluegill. Then you can eat 'em.

Happy smoky Monday. We're packing up and heading home today with our fifth wheel camper from my high school reunion we attended over the weekend. It's been very smoky here. To the point where my mouth is always dry and eyes watering. I can almost taste it. Yesterday, we went for a long sxs ride down old rail beds and old roads where we came to a now shallow lake that used to be a floodway where there was a dam. The dam is no longer in service. We rode along the shoreline halfway around the lake and stopped to do some fishing.

I can only imagine.
We live in St Louis MO area. We are getting your Canadian smoke all the way down here.