Saturday, February 16, 2019

Every couple of weeks, it seems.

Which also seems to be how often I sit here and pound out a word or two. 

But I'm actually referring to how often (or seldom?) I knock off yet another mouse from the shed.  I think I'm up to around six or so for the "season".  And being ever so vigilant at keeping them at bay has done wonders as far as keeping the amount of mouse poop down to almost nothing. 

When we came back from our little over seas jaunt,  the loft in the shed was well,  I think "horrid" is the best word to describe it.  So I donned my respirator and,  vacuum cleaner in hand,  set about to clean it all up.  And you know,  I'd leave them be,  if it weren't for the disgusting mess they leave.  But,  somehow I suspect that mice are not easily house trained.

Now,  speaking of respirators,  (this is where the segue comes in,  by the way)  I've summoned up my courage to disassemble the dust collection shroud from my tablesaw and relocate the dust port that was installed at the factory.  Well,  I *think* it was installed at the factory.  Not sure.  One thing I'm sure of though is,  the metal working abilities of the workers at General Manufacturing was considerably better than their skills when it came to fibre glass.
When I took the shroud off and took a look inside,  it was pretty obvious that they had simply blown in some "chop",  and then proceeded to glob on some filler.  It was easy enough to chip it away,  and take out the round part.




Here I've removed the chute part from the bottom and cut a fresh hole on the side.  Seems a bit weird to be doing this I realise,  but that stupid hole never was in the correct spot as far as I was concerned,  and it's bugged me ever since I bought the thing sometime back in about 1992.  Maybe '93. 

And,  that sort of yellow stuff there is lacquer thinner,  which I used to clean up the wound for some fresh fibreglass.


This is the respirator segue part:



Stinky business.  And it's too cold outdoors to open up the garage,  so that's that.

Meanwhile,  I had to make a little side trip over to Canadian Tire for some fresh "Bondo",  as the stuff I had hanging around was from back in the pre internet days,  and was just a wee bit too stiff to work with.  And I thought that,  by the time I spent the money on whatever I'd need to thin it out,  I might as well just buy a small fresh can.

I mostly know what I'm doing.




I figured some fibreglass cloth stuck in there with some hot melt glue would keep things in place until I can get some bondo on there.

Hell,  I don't know,  it could all fall apart in a couple days.  But then again,  who knows?


I'll let you know.  Because you know,  "Enquiring Minds"  and all that,  right?

I mean,  you could read this drivel,  or watch the news.  Either way,  nothing spectacular.

Thanks for stopping by.

Keep yer stick on the ice.


Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Observing National Poop Day.

Which is not really a "thing",  by the way.   But,  bear with me here.

See,  at one of our high level conversations at the Pub on Friday,  someone made mention of the notion that,  on the day after The Super Bowl,  (not sure how I should put this)  the amount of sewage heading off to the various treatment plants goes up considerably.

Like,  if there was a 'high gear'  at the local sewage treatment plant,  like that.

Speaking personally,  I think there just might be something to that notion.

This year once again,  T.C. and I went to our annual Super Bowl party,  and I must say,  there was a lot of food.  Like,  three crock pots of chili,  various snacks,  sweets,  and oh,  someone even brought Perogies.  They were just as good as anything else.
Plus,  there's always at least one birthday,  so we had cake!

We were all stuffed.   Or at least I was.   Didn't have a whole heap of desire to eat much come Monday either.  I won't go into any more details than that.


We're no longer in anything remotely like a deep freeze,  and as a matter of fact,  it was something like plus 14 (Celsius)  at one point yesterday.   I wasn't quite tempted to put my shorts on,  but a few degrees warmer and I just might have considered it.

Then of course,  the temperature has been consistently falling to the point where,  now we're expecting freezing rain over the next day or so.  It has been said that,  if you don't like the weather in Canada,  just wait a few days.


We heard some sad news on Saturday that one of T.C.'s former work associates had suddenly passed away,  so that was a bit of a shocker.   And then today I read that George Lehrer of The adventures of Tioga and George fame had passed away as well.   I know he had changed the name of his blog a few years back,  but that's the short cut that I had put in my browser to find his blog.

I had discovered George way back in 2003 when he first started blogging,  and was quite intrigued by the notion that you could live in a class C motorhome full time.  Not something I have any desire to do or anything, but as T.C. and I had a class A at the time,  there was some sort of commonality there.  Then of course,  one tends to "get hooked",  so to speak,  and when the fellow comes to the end,  it can be a bit tough.

There are others who come to mind:

There was Bruce and Margie Mallon,  who were run down and killed in Pismo Beach, California,  and then Rod Ivers,  who came home one day to discover that his wife Loyce and passed away,  only to then succumb to cancer within what I thought was not so very long afterwards.

Of course,  I do realise that,  none of us are getting out alive,  and I'm not quite sure why I get a little choked up when I hear of the passing of what is essentially a total stranger but,  "Blog Land"  seems to have a way of letting us become somehow more familiar with these total strangers than we'd perhaps like to admit.

Sadly,  they'll all be missed.

Thanks for moving your eyes back and forth.   I'll try and dry mine,  while I'm at it.