So... What are YOU doing? - Part 5

Off to get my car inspected.

psalms 91 said:

Yeah I live in an overtaxed over regulated state and I hate having to get yearly inspections. Wish we were more like Maryland

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Be thankful you don't have to deal with the yearly inspection in the UK. One year my car failed on one single count. The button for the rear fog lights (high intensity rear-facing red lights) had a light on it that lit up to let the driver know the rear fog lights were on (in the UK it's an offense, although rarely prosecuted, to run rear fog lights unless visibility is severely restricted). The light on the button had failed, and on that basis my car was considered unroadworthy. I fixed it myself with a new bulb that cost less than $5 but the garage was going to charge me closer to $100 by the time they had sourced the genuine part from the manufacturer and added labor to the bill.

Cutting up pieces of wood. Whatever genius designed my windows never considered the possibility I might want to put an air conditioner in them. So the part of the air conditioner that should sit in the channel where the inner window pane slots won't fit there, because of an outer lip on the window. So I've been cutting up pieces of wood to make brackets that fit into that slot and effectively present a raised slot so that the air conditioner can sit in it. I've got one fitted so far, and two more preparing. One has been varnished to keep the water off and is drying, another is clamped and gluing. Hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll have all of my air conditioners in place.

It feels like I haven't stopped today. From getting the study cleaned up (I made a huge mess in the hope that fixing the brutal cold in the winter would be an easy job, and it wasn't. I got so far and then realised that it seems a monkey built an extension, which means I can't put my insulation panels in without taking an angle grinder to the concrete blocks. I don't want to make that much mess again so I'm going to leave it as-is until I've got the new study sorted out and can empty the old study completely.

So the old study needed a good clean so it's ready to put my laptop back in there, and the bracket to mount the air conditioner needed preparation and lacquering to protect it from the weather. Then our bedroom needed a bracket and, once the study was cleaned up, I took the shop vac with the cyclonic separator down to the basement to clean up a mountain of sawdust that has accumulated while the shop vac was upstairs cleaning up the concrete dust.

Now I can figure out how to run my table saw and miter saw into the separator and power it all from a single shop vac. I'll need to run some new sockets but will probably do that based on an extension cord rather than permanently wiring them. That way I can run the miter saw and table saw on the same circuit (they never run at the same time) and the shop vac on another circuit. I need to do it that way because the current draw from one of the saws and the shop vac is more than one standard circuit can supply.

I am listening to some real good music now. Going to turn on the tv. pretty soon.

Just tested out my new router. Never used a router before. So far I only have one bit for it, a Roman ogee bit. I should have bought the next size up, the one I have is a little small. Live and learn....

Now I'm going to need some form of storage for chucks, bits, wrenches etc for the router....

Tomorrow's task is either going to involve using my pipe wrench or designing some form of storage for my growing collection of bits, blades etc. I'm going to need a new table saw blade soon and already have a growing collection of blades for my jigsaw, sabre saw, circular saw etc, as well as a couple for the table saw. Then come the drill bits, screwdriver bits and, coming soon, router bits. Maybe both, if I'm lucky.

It got really warm really early today. I really hope my air conditioning brackets fit well. At least the two units they are intended for don't look like they were made by an ape. It's pretty lame when a $400 window unit has fitted fins that don't fit very well. I used a whole load of caulking sealing up the gaps that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

I figured that since the sun is so hot and shining directly onto the part of my porch that needs a little TLC (brickwork damaged.... what a surprise there) I'd get to it and fix it up. My wife has been wanting me to do it for a while but it needs time when the sun is hot enough to dry it fast, and we're not expecting too much rain any time soon. With the sun so very hot this morning I figured I might as well get to it.

I went through a lot more cement mix than I expected, and it took a lot more time than I expected. I mix the cement in fairly small batches so I'm not stuck with it drying before I've had chance to use it. I probably used about 3lb of cement mix to fill the gaps and smooth it all off to look as nice as I can get it. There's still a part that wants a bit more TLC but I got to the point where the sun on my arms was feeling prickly so I went back indoors to avoid getting sunburn. Having put one of my air conditioners in yesterday I fired it up, and it's lovely and cool now. What's left to do on that piece of wall can wait until another day, I've got the bulk of it done so it's mostly just about making it look pretty now.

Maybe this afternoon I'll get to my plumbing. The electrics in the crawl space will have to wait, I'm most likely going to have to get up really early one morning and do the work before it gets hot in there.

Sweating bullets through my shirt since mowing the lawn and showering afterwards. It's another sweltering day in the northeastern corner of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Sitting in my house, recovering from a gastroenteritis that took me down for a week. Waiting for the time to come to head over to the airport to pick up my husband. Been a rather crazy week.

I am exploring this place. I found it through Tapatalk as it was the first search result for Christian Forum and seems to be as active as any other place around. I logged in through the browser now and I do believe I like this look over my Tapatalk mobile app.

TangledWeb said:

I am exploring this place. I found it through Tapatalk as it was the first search result for Christian Forum and seems to be as active as any other place around. I logged in through the browser now and I do believe I like this look over my Tapatalk mobile app.

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On my tablet I use Chrome and always tell it to render the desktop site. Sometimes it is a little awkward but it means it looks the way I want it to look rather than the way Tapatalk thinks it should look.