What did you do today?

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Ok, I have to ask because I am not smart enough to figure it out. "SnS Day"?
Some members have too long of usernames to type a lot. Many times I’m just Bud and oldognewtrick is oldog and slownsteady is SnS. From now on I nickname you Fire. :D:woo hoo:
 
Bud, sounds like your day was off to a bad start the moment you got out of bed in your sleep. You didn't get a chance to stay in bed with that. Hope your chest is feeling better. I've had the SnS days many times.
One of the good things about being a caregiver is that some days I can just stay in bed (although I do have to get up at some point to cook). There have been a couple of days where my mother was able to grab stuff out of the fridge & make herself a sandwich when she knew I wasn't feeling well so I was able to sleep all day. I am spending more time awake lately but I have some days in between where I'm almost dead to the world. No matter how long I sleep I don't feel rested.
Today is an in-between day. Got a mild sinus headache & am tired but still have some energy although its fading. I always have to nap after eating.
 
I drained the 650-gallon inflatable pool we had in the backyard. Lifted the tarp, saw algae growing on the bottom, decided "Enough of this!" and drained it, then broke everything down and got the pool ready to store in the shed.

Now, I knew all the grass underneath where the pool was would be dead, but I was not ready for the stench. It's like the pig sty at a historic re-enactment farm. (Anaerobic bacteria, I figure.) I was catching whiffs of it even walking around the block with my kids, and the smell got into my mouth and I can still taste it. Not sure what to do, just hoping the brief rain we had last night and sunlight during the next day or two will help.
 
I finally got around to replacing an outside water faucet for hoses to attach to. I got scraped up by blackberry bushes but didn't even feel it. I only know bc my arms and hands are bleeding & have scratches all over. It leans a bit because it doesn't have something to reinforce it to make it stay upright. It had originally been right next to a fence where it was tethered to a wooden post to hold it upright. Unfortunately, when the tree fell it took out the post which brought the pipe down with it. I put in all new pipe & new spigots but now I need to find a way to hold it up so it won't break if anything tugs on it. It's right next to the house, but there is a gap and I don't know if I want to try to tether it to the house.
Any suggestions?
 
As an addendum, I found a hose holder that stakes into the ground & has a stabilizer. I got some foam wrap for the pipe & some all weather tape. Taped it all up, stuck the stake into the ground, and tethered the pipe to it. I'm not happy with the current position exactly so I might move it though. Guy at HD gave me some zip ties to use but they wouldn't reach. So I'm going to move the thing later. Thorn bushes were eating me up though. I got a machete to try to cut them down but it didn't quite work bc they are tough.
 
Today was busy. I picked up my friend to help me with the phoneline. He opened the box & we plugged in a phone-- no dialtone. Went & got a second phone just in case. Dialtone-- so a new corded phone was apparently bad. Tethered new line to old line & tried to pull it through-- wouldn't budge. I climbed under the house (meeting many stickerbushes, sharp objects, spiders, etc along the way). Followed the line all the way back to the hole & found it shared a hole with an electrical line (that I couldn't pull out). The electrical line was inside PVC & the phoneline was next to it but was sealed in with what looked like tissues or cotton but it was so compacted it wouldn't come loose. We couldn't access it from the top bc it's under the bed so ended up deciding to just drill a new hole (bc the line wasn't long enough to wrap around the outside). I had to crawl in & out a few times bc of some issues. The old line actually broke off when I was pulling on it so we had to do a new line. My friend threaded the new line through the floor and I pulled on it and then tethered it to the old line when I realized I was too fat to fit through some of the spaces to get it all the way to the front-- there were waterlines, electrical, and defunct metal plumbing in the way. I did have to crawl around and move it over and around some things that it snagged on, but then I got my friend to go to the front & pull it-- unfortunately we didn't think to have him tie a knot in the end so the new line came out. I had to crawl out to tell him & then go back under and push the wire back up-- but the carpet was getting in the way. Eventually he managed to see the end and pulled it up. I decided to see if I could fit out from under the edge bc I was right next to the exterior wall-- instead of crawling back to my entry point. I had to lie on my back and drag myself. Fortunately, I'm at the age where if I'm on my back my "ballons" fall into my armpits so they were out of the way. My friend had opened the window and could hear me grunting and muttering about being too fat-- he looked out and shouted "PUSH! PUSH!" so I started laughing while trying to drag myself out. I grabbed the edge of the house to get some leverage and made it out-- flattening a bunch of weeds in the process. My friend also used the machete to annihilate some of the weeds in the front.

Then we tested the inside line-- no dial tone. Turns out the new jack I bought was defective-- or at least not assembled properly. My friend has better vision & saw that one of the internal wires was never connected properly to begin with. So he fixed it & then we ran the line to the surge protector but it seems it is fried & wouldn't work (or maybe one of the lines going to it was messed up-- not sure) but it had to be taken out of the connection so it's now wired to the phone instead. But it works. I'm going to have to get a new surge protector bc I'd rather have to replace a surge protector or jack than get a new phone again. That thing was expensive to replace.

My friend had already changed the wheels of a truck & removed a tree from someone's roof before he came out. He was exhausted & sore & out of $ for food so I bought him, his fiance, & his daughter a bunch of food from Popeyes.

I ended up getting a chocolate shake after dropping him back off in town (and popping in to the hardware store to see if they had the surge protectors-- which they didn't-- but their huge yellow dog was there so I petted him for awhile before heading to pick up my prescriptions at Walmart). I'm exhausted & sore but happy that we got the job done & can now make phonecalls.
 
0727191454-00.jpg Had some scrap 1/4" plywood lying around and a half-empty box of shingles in my shed, so I made a cute little A-frame birdhouse. Climbed about 15' up into one of the trees in my back yard to hang it up so it's clearly visible from the dining room windows.
 
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We installed a weather station. Pole unit is wireless, solar powered and has no moving parts. Measures Wind speed/direction. Rain amount, duration of rain and real time intensity of the rain. Measures UV, solar radiation and tells you if the sun is out or not (good if you happen to be gone somewhere I guess).
Ground unit has temp, barometric pressure, dew point, humidity, records lightning strikes and how far away they are and records when they happened. Hub connects to the home network, so we can get backyard weather anywhere on the phone or notebook. Has phone alerts for lightning and or approaching storms. And it uses AI to continually calibrate the system so it stays accurate. Also can be connected to Alexa, so it can do things like close the garage door if the wind picks up or adjust the home AC with changing weather conditions. etc.Weather Station 7 27 19 2.jpg Weather Station 7 27 19 1.jpg
It's a toy I've been wanting to get for awhile, finally did it. It'll be fun to see what the weather is doing when we're on the road.
 
Flyover, that's a cute birdhouse! My late elderly friend used to make a bunch of birdhouses. We had a nice one up on a pole in the backyard but I think the storms eventually took it out-- but hornets had started nesting in them so the birds were staying away.

Gary, that looks cool! I wish I could trust my ankles on the roof slope these days. My balance isn't what it used to be. I used to be like a mountain goat & could climb on all sorts of things easily but now I sometimes start to fall over on level ground. LOL.

It's raining & my stomach isn't doing well today so I'm checking messages & looking through Ultimate Guide WIRING 8th updated edition to see the rules for grounding wires. I actually am 10 pages ahead of that section because it's explaining amperes, volts, watts & the capacity of different wire gauges.

The inline surge protection for my phoneline needs to be grounded so I'm trying to figure out the best way to accomplish that. I highly suspect my main wiring is not properly grounded & need to figure out how to remedy that.
 
Thank you Bud for your explanation. I was out of town all week helping my daughter with a project and had not checked e-mails. Trying to rehab a flooded finished basement.

I understand the "should have stayed in bed" days. Seems they come very often anymore. One of my father's favorite sayings was "My mother told me there would be days like this, she just didn't tell me there would be so many so close together." He grew up in southern Illinois and they had saying for everything.
:green man:
 
Had to run a couple of errands and spotted a power washer sitting at the curb for free. I stopped and checked it out gave it a couple of cranks and about two tablespoons of sludge and oil came out of the exhaust. I got back in the car and drove as far and as fast as i could.
 
Had to run a couple of errands and spotted a power washer sitting at the curb for free. I stopped and checked it out gave it a couple of cranks and about two tablespoons of sludge and oil came out of the exhaust. I got back in the car and drove as far and as fast as i could.
If you lucks like mine, free stuff costs me more in the long run than if I would have just went and bought one.
 
It's raining here & the power has been surging. I'm hoping it won't kill the phone-- still waiting on the surge protector to arrive. I was finally able to call the power company to come fix my security light (which got knocked down by the storm).
My stomach is still feeling queasy so I'm trying to get motivated to be productive.
 
Thank you Bud for your explanation. I was out of town all week helping my daughter with a project and had not checked e-mails. Trying to rehab a flooded finished basement.

I understand the "should have stayed in bed" days. Seems they come very often anymore. One of my father's favorite sayings was "My mother told me there would be days like this, she just didn't tell me there would be so many so close together." He grew up in southern Illinois and they had saying for everything.
:green man:


Your Grandma wasn’t one of The Shirelles by any chance? ;)


 
Your Grandma wasn’t one of The Shirelles by any chance? ;)

No, I don't think so. But maybe I should check into that. Might be a fortune laying around somewhere with my name on it. :woo hoo:

Dang, I've been singing it wrong the whole time??

I guess I need to listen more carefully in the future. I was unaware of the correct lyrics as well. Everyday is a learning experience!!!!!
:thumb:
 

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