5/12/2012

Saturday Musings

This morning I ventured out early to get the paper to find my neighbor, John, shuffling up the drive.  A couple of  weeks ago, he had surgery on his neck.  After years of manual labor a vertebra just wore out.  They actually went in and replaced the bone with a cadaver bone.  He is having swelling in the spinal cord and has not got back the full strength in his right arm.  He feels a little better each day but I'm sure he is working way too hard and not resting it enough.  He was with his faithful companion, "No Nuts" and this time I beat him to my paper. For some reason the dog thinks it is a great game to grab my paper and run away.  John said that they gave their daughter a night off last night and they kept the new granddaughter.  Evidently the baby is on a reverse cycle and they didn't get much sleep.  


Yesterday, I went over to my rental house to see if I could find the leak in the old water pipe.  A few years back, I cut the line to the smaller rental house and put it on it's own meter.  The pipe was leaking and I cut and capped it.  Evidently it made a new hole and I had a back hoe come over and dig it out.  Sure enough, right out by the end of the pipe there was a hole and when the guy opened the hole, it played fountain and put about a foot of water in the hole.  I bailed the hole down to where I could cut the pipe and put one of those frost less yard water pipes on the end of the pipe.  I checked and the little red triangle on the water meter was not moving when I turned it all back on.  I did make a hell of a mess but life is hard.  I probably will take a bale of the old garden straw over today when I go to fetch my shovels.  Don't ever let anyone tell you that being a land lord is easy or not a lot of work.


For Mother's day, we are going for a walk on some prairie tomorrow.  The details are up to Barb as she has some plan and I will do my best to facilitate that plan.  She did think we should go out to lunch but I think that eating in a restaurant on Mother's day could be a two hour deal.  I offered to fix a brunch here.  I think our daughter-in-law is going to come with us.  Not sure if the son has the day off.  We'll see.


The other day, a PEX line under Dave's home decided to let go.  At least the little plastic part didn't break, the hose clamp broke and the hose just popped off.  I went to Ace hardware and their wonderful wall of PEX parts was gone.  They had a cabinet in the corner that was just full of the replacement parts.  I was able to put a clamp on it and it will do for now.  Thursday when I was in the hardware  store, I asked one of the people if they knew where the display went.  Finally one of the guys that has been there as long as the store has been open said he thought it was in the "cubby hole."  He led me back into the room where the main light switches and power panel for the store is and right there on the shelf was all the old PEX parts.  What had been parts for $6.00 was tags on the cabinets that said they were marked down to $2.00 I bought an assortment of the parts I know I needed and went to the cash register.  When the clerk rang them up most were 80 cents.  I should have just gone back and bought the entire assortment.  I'm sure that I will need most of it when I start replacing parts on Tuesday.  Oh well, I know now where they are.

Better get moving.


MUD


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