The Manic Mechanic

Okay, I'm gonna try to play catch-up on some postings I shoulda been doing all along. No thanks to LJ having a case of the butt when I did try. Anyway, enough of that, let us see if there is to be some success.

Jeff and I filled out paperwork today declaring us as domestic partners to be able to share in medical insurance. Our wonderful credit union witnesses and notarizes things like affidavits for free (membership has its privileges!), and the folks there not only don't bat an eye when presented with stuff in that realm, but are genuinely encouraging. The morning's pleasantries done, Jeff had a new task with his new position in his new job that had him doing a cooking demonstration at a D.C. hospital. When I asked him about it, I tried to have him liken it to various Food Network shows. "Well, was it Kitchen Nightmares? Diners, Drive-ins and Dives? Restaurant Impossible (woof @ Robert Irvine)? Iron Chef (Today's secret ingredient is... BEDPANS!)?" Jeff answered with what was to be my next choice, "More like Rachel Ray." Hee, figures. He said he had a good time, people said he put on an amazing show, and he came home smelling of garlic and onions. Someone assisting Jeff got him a chef hat and said, "Here, I got you a 'torque'." This was a demonstration all about cooking and eating healthy. On his way home after 8pm, despite all that cooking, Jeff hadn't eaten anything to speak of. Before getting back to La Casa Mayhem, he stopped to pick us up a little dinner. Of course, after all the healthy cooking and eating schtick, it was McDonald's.

Here at Mayhem Acres, things are a study in contradiction and contrasts. The water heater needed a shot of refrigerant. The no-frost freezer needs to be defrosted. The refrigerator stopped making ice cubes and is instead making puddles. My work is never done.

Verizon just installed a fiber optic connection solely for the landline phone here because the 50+ year-old copper lines in the area are in too bad of shape (I've had ongoing problems with line noise for over 20 years). To this technological triumph I have connected my 1957-vintage, black 500-series Western Electric rotary dial telephone, which is fully functional and has never sounded better. Sadly, there have been a number of growing pains with my newfangled service. Aside from noise, the old copper lines had 99.99% availability.

We had a delightful visitor just before Xmas. erstexman was in the midst of his whirlwind, several-state tour and paid us a visit. It's been a while since I've had a known-you-on-Livejournal-for-ages-and-we-finally-meet meetup. Evan is a delight, and though his time where was limited, we are talking about doing something sometime in summer. Here's my best attempt at a social-media ready, arm's-length self-photo of us:



Unfortunately for Evan, he had an unexpected bumper car ride in one of the roundabouts about a mile from the house. Mind you, I love me some roundabouts, when there's no one nearby and I have the Mini Cooper all warmed up. Unfortunately, there are too many people around to make this joyride happen every time, and they are no fun when I haul around 50 feet worth of loaded truck and travel trailer though them. I normally have to pass through 3 or four of them in succession, and there are nine(!) such circles within a less-than-2 square mile area here, with a couple more to come. That HAS to be some sort of record. None of these nine circles of hell existed here 15 years ago. At least they aren't traffic lighted intersections.

Next time, erstexman says he's not driving here. I don't blame him. ;-)

Speaking of Mini Coopers, we were mulling what to get Jeff's grand-niece Kylie for xmas. She turns 3 soon, and we wanted to make her holiday special. We found a KidTrax electric Mini at Costco. We knew she'd love it and be the only kid in that old coal town with one (turns out she has a Jeep already, but, up there, everyone has one of those). I personalized it with custom stickers that said "Kylie's Cooper" in a playful font (no, not Comic Sans!). She kept getting inside while I was trying to put it together, when that task was finally done, we headed out in the blustery Pennslovakia cold so she could test drive it in the yard. For not even three yet, she's a pretty good driver. We might be looking at the next Danica Patrick.



Jeff's father had been making noises about getting a big flat screen television ever since he spent a few days with us and fell in love with ours. We got him a wall mount and a set of high-def cables, wrapped them up and gave those to him the same time Kylie got her ride. We didn't say that we got the set too. Though he didn't say it, we could tell he was just as giddy as our little girl once everything was set up. Being that the Newtown tragedy happened only a couple days prior to all this, it was nice to see a bunch of kids smiling and happy and safe. Dad included.

I wish I could say that the holidays were full of goodness and light, but sadly it was not to be. Jeff's mom has been falling deeper into the clutches of Alzheimer's, as such, the inability of the home care nurses to keep up with her needs, her increased incidences of falling and such finally forced Dad to put her in a nursing home. They treat her well there, and we know she's in good hands. The future in all this is uncertain, as it is for anyone similarly involved.

This weekend we are headed up to the homestead once again. Dad is lonely, being in the house by himself, and looks forward to our visits more now than ever. The silver lining in the recent clouds there is Dad is afforded much more time to himself, and can get out and around more. As such, we will hit the huge farm show in Harrisburg. This will get him (and us) out of the house, we can peruse tractors and livestock, see sheep being turned into shawls (well, their wool, to be precise), partake in greasy yet delicious fairgrounds food and be farmers for a day. We will also pay Mom a visit too, and bring her lots of love. We plan on sneaking Dad down here again soon so he can have a change of pace. He manages to fit in well in his own unique way. We take him out of Amish country but we bring him to our local Amish market. Wouldn't you know, he manages to find people down here who know the people up there. Dad is given a tray of whoopee pies along with a note written in Pennsylvania Dutch by his new-found friend to take to his relatives up north. Dad shuttles the Amish around as a sort of taxi service for extra money, so he knows a lot of them. The Amish are interesting folk, and, ironically, I can somewhat relate to them, beards notwithstanding. I go to a local Amish hardware store. A delightful place, there is no electricity, the place is only a few years old yet is lit by natural light from large windows, or gas mantles among the aisles. They have great deals on power tools, cordless stuff, high-tech lighting, solar power equipment and other items you can't find at the local big-box. Go upstairs and there is furniture, games, dinner ware, and clothing. The clothing is mostly what you'll find the Amish wearing, including those familiar hats. Dad keeps telling me he's gonna get me one of those hats, since my beard is starting to rival some up there. I guess he's right about that, the last time I was at that local Amish market down here, someone started asking me questions about the baked goods. An honest mistake, I guess. It made my day. It made Jeff and Dad howl with laughter.

This post is brought to you by hyphens.

It might be a blustery, cold evening here, with temps in the mid-upper 20s and some insane winds, but the house is nice and toasty with the woodstove cranking out the heat, and with a nice bonus of a loaf of whole wheat bread baking, making the nice warm house smell like absolute heaven. A few minutes and the bread is done. Jeff has been on a bit of cooking and especially baking binge the last couple days, and tonight is no different.

I'm currently taking new meds to deal with the nerve damage left over from the spine surgery. It's toned down the electrical storm that has wracked my body since the day my vertebra were sawed up, and I am able to plop myself in bed and sleep like a baby for a most part. I'm still plagued with the numbness, but that might not be quite as bad. The tasering feeling is much diminished, but still there too as well as weakness and occasional loss of control. The only side effects are a slightly loopy feeling and a bipolar appetite.

Still taking it easy and holding off on building the roof window light shafts into the living room. I'm spending the time doing little tasks for the most part, and have been cleaning/lubing hand and power tools while not using them. I have almost a quarter mil invested in tools and machinery (really, it even surprised me) and I try to keep things in good working order. It's tough to find decent tools these days, and good ones are seriously expensive. Most of what I have will easily outlast me. Tools are something special to me. They are a way one practices their craft, earns a living, helps others out, creates and fixes. Tools are an extension of a person, and deserve the same respect. During the recent times I have not been able to use my tools I saw them filled with history and work. Taking some time now and then to exercise some TLC on a lot of my tools was a relaxing and fulfilling task. Since the surgery I've sorta jumped the gun to get back into some work, and it was it's own sort of therapy. I guess I'm one of those who has hands-on work burned completely into my very being.

During this post the bread had finished baking and we sampled it warm and fresh. Yeah, a little slice of heaven.

Have a great week, everyone.

Tomorrow morning I get to experience the unbridled joy of having needles plunged into my lower spine. I am simply hoping for some much-needed relief to this spinal stenosis. From what I know about it all, this will only be temporary, and getting stuck in the future will bring increasingly limited returns, with surgery being practically unavoidable. I'll cross those bridges once I arrive at them. In the meantime, wish me luck.

( tl;dr text about gardens, weedeaters, keyboard drawers, closet doors and anger management )

I really need to be doing stuff outside in the yard. The weather, however, has other ideas. So, I am downstairs in the workshop setting up my new Incra miter fence and generally giving the machinery some TLC. The table saw needed some adjustments so I got out the dial indicators and other stuff. I discover my poor depth micrometer set had rusted up despite being in the toolbox in the garage. I had to drop what I was doing to remedy this situation, besides, I needed the mike to set up the saw.

This is what I found:



Luckily, the working ends of the shafts were not rusted, or the shafts would be ruined. Just the rusted body needed some attention.

This is after a few minutes' time spent with a tiny Scotchbrite wheel mounted in a Dremel tool:



I had this set for over 25 years, but I have only used the 0-1" and 1-2" shafts. The rest still have the factory calibration seals on them. Everything got a nice coating of oil and I will pack a silica gel sachet in the box. Apparently the felt in the top of the box is a moisture attractant. I'm no longer keeping these sorts of precision tools in the garage, the environment in there is rough on things.

I should learn to control my at-times short temper. Most of the time I am docile as a lamb, patience of Gandhi, bad stuff rolls off my back like nobody's business. But there are two situations I can positively lose it. Serious bouts of road rage, and while working on stuff. I can forgive a moment's stupidity on someone's part on the road if I know it was accidental. But if I know the other person's (I care not if it's a male or female) actions are obviously hostile, I will proceed to make their life on the road a living, vicious hell. Just ask Jeff. I've chased down sports cars with my big old Dodge Cummins 4x4, and I've taken on semis in the Mini Cooper. And somehow I've managed to remain here and talk about it.

There are times when I am working on stuff and I just get fed up with some recalcitrant part and I end up flinging it across the garage. Or if I clumsily knock stuff off a table I will sometimes clear it the rest of the way. Or if I manage to hurt myself somehow, I get sent into a rage. Take Exhibit A:



This is one of my shop grinders. Not seen in the picture to the right is the wall between the pair of garage doors. Since my latest project in The Garage Of Mayhem is replacing the two garage door openers, I had to attach and futz with a pair of sensors just off the floor and on either side of the big door opening. I found the clip-on mounts lacking, and made up a set of spacer blocks that also attach the sensor bracket to the wall in addition to the door track. This makes the bracket a great deal more solid and the sensors a lot less likely to go out of alignment and preventing the door from closing. After making myself comfortable sitting on the floor and installing all these pieces, I stood up. As my luck would go, I bashed my head on the tool rest attached to the 100+ pound machine. In the haze of stars and pain my instinct was to eke out my revenge. I punched the glass face shield, shattering it and bending up the frame and mounting.

Yeah, it's stupid, senseless, and, as usual, expensive. But for the few seconds after the impact as I held onto my throbbing skull, I did feel better. Reality sank in soon after and I went ahead with my work in the garage. Today while doing more work and cleaning up, I looked around and found an identical shield I had removed when I converted a similar grinder into a buffer, which has a completely open wheel with no enclosure or face shield. So I made up with my trusty machine and replaced it's mangled and shattered parts.

I've been like this for as long as I can remember. The incidents are too isolated to be indicative of some disorder, though I know when I had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed and I should not involve myself in intricate or involving projects or with anything expensive. Still, accidents will happen, then so will I.

Now, before anyone asks, no, I don't bust up people as I do inanimate objects. At worst I will get into a shouting session, but feel awful afterward. And in the case of road rage incidents that became face-to-face encounters, I kept my distance and mostly made the other party back off. But the guy who ran me off the road and cost me more than 1600 dollars in ultra-lightweight SSR Comp wheels, he drove off with the rear quarter of his Accord kicked in. Tit for tat, bitch.

I know I am in good company as well, since I recall a few LJ posts by some on my flist describing similar outbursts, sometimes with pictures of the resulting carnage. And besides, there is something primal and satisfying taking out one's frustration on that which done ya wrong. I stick with objects, since they don't lawyer up.