a few of my favorite things

Instead of painting ceilings tonight like I wanted, I am waiting for joint compound to dry, and hence, jotting down a few of my favorite things.

The website www.doityourself.com arms the willing with some know-how and companionship for fixing things. I have gleaned from there quite a bit about my furnace. Tonight I got a multimeter to test voltage getting across some of the components in my heating system, and let me tell ya, I think I can take on the world.

I like a grapefruit that has a half a cup of juices to squeeze out after you've eaten out the fleshy goodies. It is not a requirement for an excellent grapefruit, but it is a nice bonus.

I really like sweet olives. Sweet Olives, where have you been my whole life?! The other evening Trent and I were wondering about a delicious fragrance in my backyard. What is that smell? we wondered. It smelled like peaches, we decided. Mmmm, that smells just like sweet peaches, we exclaimed. But we could find no blossom among the flowers that gave off such a scent. Plus, this was not just some faint whiff of some remote blossom.

(You might wonder about flowers in November, so real quick, let me list off some in our backyard that are blooming now: ginger, camelia, azalea, canna lily).

Curious, I emailed my neighbor to see what he knew. Maybe, I thought, they have a cobbler in the oven. He knew nothing of the scent or its source. Google was my next go-to-resource. Nothing informative, but I did find some local LSU Ag Center faculty who contributed to a column that indicated to me they knew which way was up in local horticulture. I sent them a message, like one ant in the colony transmitting brain signals to a couple others. One of them wrote back soon about two likely candidates for such a smell right now.

And sweet olive was the winner. When daylight came, I found a small sweet olive tree in our backyard, with little white flowers easy to miss. I also found three largish sweet olive trees behind my neighbor's property. Let me tell you, what a fragrance. And at this time of year, what a treat.

Olive is a great name, but we have no name set in stone for our XX offspring in utero.

I am thankful for self-employment. A gal checking me out at Lowe's today thanked me when I wished her a Happy Thanksgiving. "Do you work?" She asked. I was a little puzzled. When you turn 1,000,000,000 seconds old, your lightning fast neurons take tours to Svalbard and other exotic locales. "I work a lot" I replied. I had a multimeter in the bag and a 10 foot 1x4 so I thought it was an odd question. "I mean, are you working..." and then I understood that she meant to ask if I was scheduled to work on Thanksgiving. But again, my answer was awkward: "I work for myself, so I work every day." But I assured her that I'd be spending some quality time with the family, and work hard to make Bonnie happy, which is the best work of all (I left out those last details in my conversation which was coming to an end as I was hustling out the door).

the salvage yard

the salvage yard

acres of twisted frames

left where piled

strewn out across another kind of car lot and

silently laughing at time

eating away a working world while

the graveyard of spent dreams

sleeps its undeath

a paradise of other men's treasures:

in one windstar like mine

only red and with no tires et cetera

two intake manifold runner controls for the taking,

in another windstar like mine

only red

and with the gas tank in the back seat

and with the engine dismantled but laying sidewise in its chamber

and thorny brambles growing into the hood

and with no tires et cetera

two more intake manifold control runners for the taking

(spares for the spares)

for $20, plus $2.50 in ATM fees

and $2 in bank fees for using a nonChase ATM

but actually for free,

except for giving a guy some cash

since he had some tools to help take out

four intake manifold runner controls

a great alternative in this economy

for paying $400 a piece

for two new intake manifold control runners

plus labor

but also a paradise in the usual sense

you know, literally,

where the cars' souls wait

and with grace are saved

by God or man

or as nature does

by the nature of that which waits.

car talk

First of all, my experience at the salvage yard yesterday deserves a poem, and definitely should be mentioned up front so you see that it really made an impression. What a marvelous experience, which I'll narrate another time. The end result is that I found some mechanisms which I needed to replace in our van in order to pass an emissions inspection. The mechanisms new cost about $400 and I need to replace two, so I was happy to find some for practically free.

My morning this morning consisted of replacing these two mechanisms. It took three hours, but let me put it into perspective. Four bolts. Unfastening four bolts, then refastening them. In order to making the replacing easier, we dismantled the alternator, which gave us some more room, but it was still a tight space that was barely manageable. The alternator didn't take much time at all. If you do the math, that's a lot of time, for unfastening and refastening four small bolts.

I like Autozone, which helped with some tools, although I had to buy a flexible extension. I also am grateful of Eddie who helped over the phone. And I am even thankful for the mechanic whose shop got $200+ from me for him doing some diagnostic work, changing out a solenoid (which itself cost $65 of the sum) behind everything which he had to do with his fingers and not his eyes, and also for checking out the replacements, and doing some coach work. I learned quite a bit tackling this problem myself. I now know quite a bit about intake manifold runner controls.

Ah, the joys of bedtime! I just put the boys to bed, and they are squalling their heads off. Now they have quieted down some. Hmmm. Yep, they were getting out of bed and out the door, down the hall, to start to beseech us to read them a story. Now they are squalling their heads off in bed again. But you know me, I will go read them a story soon. Probably a Curious George story.

Well, there was more to blog about, but this will have to do for now.

Except, let me say, the fall weather is beautiful!!!!!!!!

code P1537, etc

I bit the bullet and had our van Windy taken in to the shop for a mechanic to figure out what is going on with the intake manifold control runner (bank one). It took me a few weeks to actually find the two valves. This morning I found I could take off the top to check for vacuum, but that is about as far as I got, except for the other day when I squirted WD40 at them and got the malfunction indicator light to turn off for 60 miles. I would like to keep fiddling with it, but our free emissions re-test deadline is Saturday.

Trent and I moreorless alternate days working with the tree service. The other day, actually, just before Ida blew into town, we cut the top out of the large gum tree behind where Trent is living. by top, I mean the top 5/8 or so. It was exhilarating. Trent helped with trimming the oak trees we have there, and now I need to get him over here at the place where we are staying. Aside from all the available tree trimming, we need to finish changing out windows and so on. Plus, I am turning a little shed we have out back into a handy tool shed.

I used bamboo poles cut out of our backyard for the dowels in our closets. Great idea! Also, we are cutting up small ones for ornamental curtain rods.

Today is bebero day in Korea. Those are the candies like Poky, or tall straight chocolate dipped unsalted pretzel sticks. If you arrange four in front of you on the table it looks like 11 11. Happy Veteran's Day.

Isaac started jumping today. That is, stepping from one high thing onto another, with glee.

Orry woke up the other day talking about cantilevers. What?! Yes, that's right. I think we have Curious George to thank for that.

Proud, And Not Proud

Happy November!

The things I am proud of:

Having a new niece and nephew is a great celebration. But there are the other things. For one, I have fixed our furnace, which wasn't working. I had to dig in and study it, and it turns out to be a mysterious missing flame sensor is all. But I ordered one on line and installed it and everything is working and the total cost was < $25. I really like fixing things. I am also tackling some small problems with our van Windy that are causing it to fail emissions testing.

We also picked a bag full of satsuma oranges in Houma, and lots of persimmons and some limes. We have been eating lots of satsumas lately, enjoying them being in season.

Bonnie made some awesome Halloween outfits. I'm proud of that, of course.

The things I am not proud of:

I am no good example these days when it comes to Halloween candy. The way I stuff it in would make you think I was 12. Plus, Bonnie was making delicious cookies, so I've decided to focus on abstinence in my diet.

There were some other things, I'm sure, but none come to mind now.