Pouring cement and digging!

Location, At home, CA

I had mentioned in my blog of June 11th that my camera had quit working while we were at Mammoth and also the GPS wouldn’t come on as we prepared to drive home. Here is an update on those subjects.

First the GPS: I charged the GPS in the truck as we drove from Tehachapi to Santa Paula and over lunch behind a service station I tried to see if it would come on. Wonder of wonders, it did. It told me it was loading which to me indicated the battery had become discharged and the software was in memory. I managed to navigate home with the unit but was not comfortable with the way it worked. I received an email from Magellan which told me how to restart the unit by holding the ON button for so many seconds then doing it again for so many seconds. It worked! I did ask them how long the battery should normally hold a charge but have not received an answer yet.

The camera: After calling Canon and receiving assurances that they would fix it for nothing, I received 3 emails from them. One was a UPS shipping label, one was instructions on how to ship the camera and I forgot the third. Anyway, I double packed the camera and shipped it off. It eventually arrived at their repair facility in Elgin, IL and I received an email telling me that along with a tracking number. Today, I received an email saying the camera is being shipped back to me via FedEx and I should receive it within 4 days. How cool is that?

Now on to other happenings. Today was another Aleve day of pain and work. We started out by pouring the first section of fence footings for Paul this morning. It went fairly quickly as we mixed the cement with his mixer which holds 2-60 lb bags at a time. We actually did it in about an hour.

Later, I started digging in the bed we removed the junipers from yesterday to find the drain line. The ground is really too hard to dig much so I started soaking it with water. I did manage to dig the section along the new fence only because that had received water from the neighbor’s yard so digging was not a problem.

The drain is not buried very deep which helps. I do need to remove the juniper stumps before I can finish the digging and Paul came to my rescue again. He used his Kabota tractor with the ripper bar attached and we managed to get most of the stumps and roots out. All except for the big Armstrong stump. That will require hand digging and chopping of the roots to get that big baby out. The ground is really nice and loose after a few passes with the ripper bar. Tomorrow, more of the same followed by more Aleve.

Working like a slave!

Location, Home

Has it really been almost a week since I last posted? Hard to believe! I have been working like a slave on the planting beds along the rear fence. I am digging down about a foot and sifting all the soil to get all the roots out. It is a back breaking job especially for me as I have been somewhat of a couch potato. I do walk every morning for an hour but that requires few muscles and none in the digging, bending, lifting area of my body.

I work for a while then rest for a while. Sometimes my rest breaks are longer than my work periods but that’s what being retired can do for you. During my rest breaks I sometimes work on other small projects.

When I arrived in Quartzsite in January, my refrigerator would not run on propane. The first thing I checked was the burner to see if any rust had fallen down from the vent tube. When this happens, the igniter can’t light the propane as it gets shorted out by the rust. This happened to be thee case so removing the rust allowed the burner to light. However, some rust particles did manage to fall into the burner openings so I made a mental note to remove and clean the burner after I got home. I did this during one of my breaks the other day.

I carry a small barrel stove on our winter camping trips to ward off the cold on those nights we want to sit outside. Believe me, we do sit outside when we winter camp except on those nights when the wind blows. I have been using the same stove for many years and because of the hot fires we have in it, the bottom was rusting through in places. My friend Jack had a new barrel this year and gave it to me as a replacement for mine. He had found a larger barrel to use for his stove. During some of my working breaks I have been getting the old hardware transferred to the new barrel. Here are a few pictures of the completed stove.



The door has a damper which can be adjusted to regulate the amount of air for the fire and there is even a plate atop the stove for heating water, etc. There is also a spark arrester on top of the chimney. When fully fired up, the stove glows cherry red and flames come out the chimney. You can site all around the stove and everyone can be warm.

To keep the bottom from burning out I have added a metal pan to keep the fire off the floor of the barrel. Thanks for the barrel Jack.