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Had a little family party for my daughter's birthday last night. We were going to break mom out of the nursing home for a couple hours and take her to the arboretum but two of the staff there tested positive for Covid so they locked it down, no visitors for two weeks. Apparently the Delta strain has made its way to central Iowa now. Anyway, we had to have the party without her, which was heartbreaking...

My sister in law gave my 15 year old daughter some very fashionable clothes for her birthday. First was a pair of $65 jeans. They were almost unbelievably tight and the cuffs looked like they had been run over by the lawnmower. Apparently that's the new "in" thing. I hope my SIL got those jeans on a good sale! Then came an off the shoulder top. I wasn't real sure about my little girl wearing an off the shoulder top, but it stayed up, so I guess she's old enough to wear it...🙄😂
 
I hope you are feeling better @backlash !

This morning walked first and so far that's it.
Going to walk dogs next.
Trying to get a call back from vet to spay a half ferrel cat.
Will do some laundry.
Prep meat and veggies for making mass quantities of dog food this evening.
That's about it for today.
 
We got a break from the summer heat today. It is raining and in the low 70s. I have the windows open and airing out the house while I can.

Moving files around on my laptop to clean the mess that is my desktop. I had some files K didn't want me to keep on the laptop so I had to move them to a thumb drive. I need to back up all my homeschool files again to a separate drive. I have a backup drive set up for auto backups but I want a drive not plugged into my laptop to store the files. I keep one in my wallet with most of the files on it but I want one in the safe for 'safe' keeping.

Organizing the dry goods pantry and trying to fill gaps asap. We ran to Target yesterday morning and grabbed some things to fill holes (their canned veggies are cheaper than the grocery store). In the afternoon we ran to the grocery store for produce and ice cream.

Staying on top of Roo while she works on her Texas state report. She has to finish it before school starts in 2 weeks!

Replaced the overflow tank in my car and now it will not hold coolant while in use! It boils out FAST! Not sure what happened. It decided to fail on me when I took Roo to her friend's birthday party on Saturday. I had to call K on the way home to bring coolant so I could get home! Weird part is it holds coolant when cold and not turned on. No leaks in the tank or any of the tubes but when it is hot it is GONE.
 
backlash said:
I got vertigo on Friday so I'm either sitting very still in my chair or lying in bed.
I'm doing some movements to get it back under control but it takes time. It's hard to do anything when the world is spinning around and you have trouble staying off the floor.
Click to expand...
Backlash, sorry to hear about the vertigo. I hope that it’s passed by now. One thing that worked for me and might work for you is to take a finger to each ear and push hard on that little flap. Count to 60, slowly. That came from a chiropractor and has worked for some.
 
Doing Geek stuff, loaded software 3 times last night and once this morning before I got the system set up the way I wanted (still not the way I really wanted but close enough)... I keep running into a little known linux installation error related to UEFI partition tables. At first I thought it was caused by the bios settings on a Dell. But figured out any bios can trigger the error. Anyway, posting this afternoon from a much improved operating system. And at some future date I can add up to 2 more operating systems creating a multiboot system.

This morning I scheduled a date/time to take my truck into the chevy shop in town. Thursday they'll install a new radio system in it. I bought the system I wanted, they'll just install it for me. GM had a security feature built into vehicle radios in 2002... It made it almost impossible to replace the factory radio (hoops to jump through).

I have to go to town later...
 
We survived the overnight with the granddaughters and spent Sunday studying machine shop and steam engine videos. So much to learn so little time.

Today i picked up all of the scrap copper that came out of the remodeling house. The Princess has been after me to attend to the appearance of the place so it doesn't look like a house in flux. Getting rid of the pile of copper pipe helped with that goal.

My brother stopped in to use the place as a work shop to prepare some bifold doors for one of his projects. We agreed that I can start to install insulation in the outside walls. I may start that tomorrow.

I hauled all of the copper back to my shop to process into cubit long sections. I settled on a quick low cost method to do so. First I crush the pipe in a vise so I can bolt cutter on it.

20210726_153825.jpg


The bolt cutter does cut all of the way through.

20210726_153935.jpg

But gets close enough that 2-3 bends and the pipe breaks off nicely.

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Add it to the pile then lather rinse repeat.

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I ended with a good pile of copper when I was done for the day having had enough of the heat. I have plans to learn how to cast metals with copper being what I will start with due to its lower melting point. If i can do that with injuring myself I will move on to other metals. (May as well make use of those 4 years or material science AKA metallurgyI studied in college).

Behave

Ben
 
I've been collecting eBooks for a couple of years. I read them too, but searching out sale prices and free ones to collect is a hobby in and of itself. OK, it's a weird hobby, but that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Today I found myself researching various translations of Beowulf. Thinking I might want to read that one again (I was forced to read it back in either college or high school, I can't remember which it was now). Man, there are a lot of different translations of that poem. After an hour or two of researching which translations were supposed to be good and whatever, I started searching for samples of each translation so I could see for myself how they read.

My conclusion? Why in the world would I ever want to read this again! This quest for a Beowulf translation was a couple of hours of my life I'll never get back.

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
till before him the folk, both far and near,
who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!
Click to expand...

Does anyone know what the heck that just said? I certainly couldn't tell you.

I think I might do just about as well understanding the un-translated original:

beowulf.jpg


OK, back to the Clive Cussler adventure novels for me.
 
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I am wiped out. Dragging big hedgewood limbs to the burn pile all across the pasture. Granddaughter helped, but it pushed both our limits. It was hot and humid. Collapsed at lunchtime, and did some mega shopping after lunch. Have some scratches, cuts, and bruises I need to soak in the shower. Enough of today. I'm old.
 
There is a feral cat that had kittens in my carport, so spent this morning getting the old chicken coop ready for "prisoners" as I do the Trap/Neuter/Release cycle. Stick the colony in there, then one by one take them to rescue that does neuter/spay and release.
 
My GF and I took our 4 youngest kids on vacation from last Thursday through Sunday. Ages between 11 and 18, 2 boys and 2 girls. Piled into the Acadia after I got home from work Wednesday night (midnight) and drove to Idaho. Thursday the kids were swimming at the big pool at Lava Hot Springs while the GF and I went to soak for a few hours in the hot mineral pools 106*-112* depending on location in the pond. We brought the rechargeable pulse massager and used it on sore muscles after each soaking session. Felt great after a few hours. The next day we did the innertube float thing down the river, 15 minute fun float with small rapids then a quick shuttle ride back up to the top to do it again. 7 trips down the river in 2 hours, plenty of fun, everyone enjoyed it. Followed that up with a couple hour ride around the area, went back to the hot springs to buy some pictures a guy took of us on the river, great shots of our group and the first 4 pictures I will hang on the wall of the house, if I ever get the walls finished. Saturday we drove to Yellowstone and saw some fun stuff. Old Faithful is less than faithful lately, they will only guestimate one eruption at a time, giving a window anywhere from 64 minutes to 95 minutes or more, and they they tell you give or take 15 minutes because it is very irregular. It was fun to see but having seen it twice before I noticed the height of the geyser and the volume of water was significantly less than in the past, but the others never saw it before so it was still way cool for them.
Sunday we headed for home driving south down I-15 in Utah. You night have heard of the 20 car pile up on I-15 due to the sandstorm, as we were approaching that area we saw the big storm in the mountains east of the highway and as we approached the winds were just kicking up and we saw the first of the dust begin to kick up off the dirt east of the freeway. It wasn't bad for us, we just had to roll up the windows (it was a nice cool day and we had the windows cracked for fresh air even though the AC was on low) to keep the dust out of the car, but an hour later is when the big pile up happened. Very grateful we missed that deadly mess. One vehicle involved had 5 people killed, Sympathy for their family but thankful is wasn't us.
Yesterday we had a good rainstorm for about an hour. We were spared the 2" hail that others nearby got from the same storm. Thanks to the rain our temperature forecast for the week dropped from the upper 90's to the low 80's for the next week or so. Finally!!!
Drywall today.
 
Walked first this morning and walked dogs.
Started one last load of laundry.
Am in the middle of pressure canning dog food. Already ran two canners--14 quarts and getting ready to start round two.
Not doing much else today--93 out with heat index of 101.
 
We'll, well.
The wife and I have put off being vaccinated for covid , for a year and half.
But,
Today her rheumatologist , whom we greatly respect, spent 20 minutes admonishing us to get the shot.
We then went to my primary care people and ask their advice for me with all my health issues.
Their advice..get it.

So tomorrow at 9:30am we both have appointment for the shot.

Then I got to get the Lebaron To my mechanic...I think it has covid...it coughed and stopped breathing.😬

Jim
 
90 plus dgrees so I took it easy took lots or breaks and drank a lot of water. I started working on theexterior wall of the master bedroom. It was previously a utility/landry roo so there was some prep work before installing the insulation.

20210727_140447.jpg

After removing the dryer duct etc it was ready for insulation.

20210727_142400.jpg


20210727_162842.jpg


If it weren't so hot and humid I think I would have much more done but if I kill myself in the heat my brother will be left to finish this project himself

A little bit every day...

Ben
 
Got the meat chickens done this morning, they're chilling in the fridge, will be ready for the freezer tomorrow. Picked three buckets of veg from the garden, emptied dehydrators, filled them up again. Finished putting away food storage from yesterday, cooked a big pot of beets from the garden and got those cleaned up. Two loads of laundry done and hung. Just dropped granddaughter off to work, and went to the little amish store for tortillas. Doesn't look like a truck's come in this week, nothing new. Visited two cousins to give them flyers for our upcoming reunion next month.
 
@phideaux sorry about that. I'm a little freaked about it too. Supposed to get the second one this week. But most likely not since...my health problems are minimal but felt exhausted today so I stayed home.
I keep dozing off. Had plans to get stuff done before work, maybe tomorrow. TX has yearly auto inspections and I've got to get one auto inspected very soon and some other business stuff. Will have to get the code reader on to it.
 
Bacpacker said:
Glad yall had a good time. Yellowstone is on my bucket list
Click to expand...
It was a great time for all of us. The only complaints were from 2 of the kids about the long walk to see an attraction, but back at the car they were given a B-12 vitamin and they were good after that.
Yellowstone is a good visit but probably best for 2 days just to see the important parts. Long hikes or nonstop photo shoots would require several extra days.
Just one important point to share, the one time we stayed at the lodge in the park it was a very uncomfortable night due to the lack of AC. They supplied a 20" box fan but it didn't help much. Even with the window open and the fan blowing in the outside air was still above 80* and did little to cool the room off until about 5:30 AM. May be something to consider for anyone planning an overnight in Yellowstone, I doubt they updated electrical enough to install AC in the rooms.
 
Good info about Yellowstone. Thanks

Worked on multiple projects today, made good progress on one of them. Went by the tire shop and got a set for my dally driver. Got home and wife had bought some steak and taters for supper. Fired the grill up and the temp never came up. Can't complain, we got 10 years out of it. Hope I can find a good one on sale somewhere.
Wife put up another batch of maters
 
Today was a fairly long work day, followed by an educational retirement fund webinar that turned out to be a sales pitch... Then I went out and weeded one of the older raised beds planning on putting something in there for Fall.... Did some hedge trimming and lawn mowing, then bagged up everything with the clippings from the squash plants (including squash bugs) to be hauled away in the morning. By the time I was finished I was so itchy that I had to take a shower to avoid being sick (allergies).
 
I’ve been working my tale off day & night since I got back from Vegas a month ago. Mon-Thus usually starts at 6:30 or 7am and I get off from work at 11 or 2am. The night projects usually don’t start until 6pm each day.

I don’t get enough sleep most nights & work on zero sugar energy drinks every day.
 
Went to the bank. Unlike last time, it went by much faster.
My plan is to get a new ironing table. The old is years old and well, poor thing is done. Making a trip to the supermarket.
And I'm getting the pieces for a plant stand I'm making.
I need to talk to the main architect today and ask him for updates on the entire house's plans. I also need to set up a meeting with my client to get the rest of the tiles on Friday morning.

Also threatened my dog to give his treats to the neighbor's dog if he doesn't eat them. Waiting to see if he bites.
 
Lucky2beAlive said:
I don’t get enough sleep most nights & work on zero sugar energy drinks every day.
Click to expand...
I had a friend who drank Monster like it was water and he'd often complain of heart palpitations.

But don't get me wrong, I also get that you have to keep your energy up.
 
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