chores

Pre-trip Chores.

Today I changed the car’s engine oil and filter, and the air filter. From start to finish, including cleaning the tools and putting everything away, this requires about 30 minutes. Doing it myself saves about US$50, which, to me, is worthwhile. While waiting for the oil to drain, I’m also checking the condition of the various hoses,belts and wiring harnesses in the engine compartment so that I can replace worn items before they cause a breakdown.

After changing the car’s engine oil, I fueled the generator, checked it, and got it ready to use if the power goes out while I’m gone. I’m going on a road trip and while my wife is fully capable of handling everything with the generator, she finds it difficult to handle the 20L fuel containers. This used to be easy for her, but 14 years ago, the surgeons had to remove a lot of muscle tissue because of (advanced) breast cancer and the remaining muscle tissue was damaged by the radiation treatments, so the loss of strength is permanent.

Then it was off to the garden where we ensured the automatic watering system was working properly…and then I extended it to also take care of the water needs for the newly planted apple trees. So far, all looks good; no “transplant shock”. The only worry left is that one of the two weather apps indicates it will be 1C tomorrow morning. The other weather app indicates tomorrow morning’s low temperature will be 6C. One tactic for protecting plants in “near freezing” temperatures is cover them with cloth, but this is not practical for a large garden. The other tactic is to have water surrounding the plants, so tomorrow morning the automatic water valve will turn on the water flow between 3am and 6am. After that, both weather apps indicate there will be no freezing temperatures for the rest of the gardening season. I’m hopeful, and hopeful is is how it goes for all gardening endeavors. 🙂

After the garden work, I ran 6 miles. The weather has been windy and I had not run in more than 2 weeks, so I made it a slow/easy run today. I miss running when I can’t do it and I’m hoping that tomorrow I can do a long run.

Add to this, the dogs’ walks. Each of the two walks, one in the morning and one in the evening, is about 30-45 minutes long and we go about 1-1/2 to 2km. We have decided “it’s the dogs’ walks and not ours”, so we let them stop and investigate (sniff) whenever they want to stop. It’s not fast, but it is both good for them and fun for us. What is amusing to me is that the older dog (almost age 16) is the one that reminds us, “IT IS TIME FOR THE WALK”.

Running and Chores

Unlike our city home, with it’s back yard completely enclosed by a block wall, our new home has only a yard and it’s not enclosed. So, we can’t just have a small door for the dog to go outside on his own. 6am is about the time we wake up and the dog wants outside around 6:30am. At least one of us goes with him to keep him out of trouble (coyotes) and because we enjoy watching him as he wanders/runs/sniffs around the property. It takes him about 15 minutes to check his P-mail, and when he’s done with that, he RUNS twice around the house and then waits at the door to be let back inside.

Around 7am, my wife and I go running. There is a 2 mile loop we do that is on dirt roads with nearly zero traffic. I had not been running lately because I managed to hurt my knee by kneeling on a stone while I was changing a tire. It’s certainly good to get back running. I missed it. Along the route is a horse that always comes up to the fence and tries to get my attention. I used to stop and rub the horse’s neck but the horse’s owner asked that I not do that. So, the horse is now disappointed when I run by.

I finally got around to putting the little registration stickers on the Jeep’s license plates and putting the registration documents into the under seat tool box. And, after that, I drove the three Jeeps (one at a time) about 5 miles around the neighborhood. Along the way, I stopped and talked with the neighbors that were out….in some cases, making an initial introduction of myself. In each case, I made sure to tell them that I was willing to help them if the need arose…and I got my first chance….pulling hay off of a trailer.

Locks. The lock on the camper door was starting to get a bit unreliable about unlocking. So, I took the lock off of the door and closely examined it. There are a couple of tiny screws that were lose, so I tightened the screws, lubricated the lock with powdered graphite and reinstalled the lock……it’s working perfectly now.

It’s only the early afternoon and I’m done with today’s “gotta get it done” stuff. Now I can work on tomorrow’s stuff before tomorrow becomes today or even yesterday.

They Were Right.

The roof vent on the borrowed trailer blew off in a recent storm and, fortunately, I noticed it a few minutes before it started raining. Duct tape came to the rescue (holding the broken vent in place) until I could find a new roof vent cover and get it installed.

The replacement cover’s box label….”Fast and easy installation in less than 10 minutes.” made me laugh when I it, but, as it turned out, they were right. I’m guessing it took only 5 minutes to get this done.

I also took care of several other chores that needed to be done before we go bring another trailer load from the city. Amazingly enough, those chores took only a few minutes to complete. So now I have rest of the day to do other stuff.

Job 1 is to move three shelves from storage unit 1 to storage unit 2. The shelves were brought up from the city, but we had to put them into “the wrong” storage unit because we couldn’t fit the truck-trailer combination to where the unit 2 was located. The shelves were made from shipping pallets and are both awkward and heavy enough I don’t want to carry them too far, so I’ll use my old Jeep truck (which does fit “the right place”) to move them.

If I get done with that, job 2 will be to install the post needed to hold a 6BTV ham radio vertical antenna. The antenna looks vaguely like a flag pole and normally doesn’t need much to hold it up–just a 4 foot long 1-1/2 inch diameter piece of water pipe driven into the ground so that 18 inches of the pipe sticks out of the ground. However……the spring time winds here are such that I don’t think that “normally” will apply. I have a 6 foot piece of pipe, a small bag of concrete and a post hole digger. If I manage things well today, I’ll be able to play in dirt, water and concrete. 🙂