My OperaA busy Week
Thursday, April 29, 2010 12:38:55 PM
It all started last Friday when Kari and I drove up to King George to see D J in his school's rendition of Greece. I must say I actually enjoyed the production. It was great, those kids worked hard to pull off a fantastic show.
Saturday morning we drove into Fredericksburg and visited Kari's aunt Mary Jane and family for a few hours before heading back home. Kari drove up and back in her car. She did very good even when we were lost due to the GPS unit telling us to turn left instead of right. Ha, I of course went bonkers, but Kari kept her cool. It was good practice for her dealing with the feelings one has when lost.
Then Sunday as I was driving Kari's car to work at 7-11 in Hopewell, the Check Engine light came on. Oh dear, that stressed me out, because last Thursday Ann's car did the same thing and her car needs a new transmission. I bit the bullet and kept driving for the remaining 25 miles to work, sweating the entire way wondering if the engine would blow up or the transmission would fall out. HA!
After I was finished at work I called my buddy that knows everything mechanical, Bill, and asked for his advice about the check engine light problem. I performed the checks that he specified and found no faults. He decided it was probably a minor problem and that it was safe to drive the car home. I called Kari and canceled her practice session for the day and headed home. Then I had a great idea. I bought the car on the previous Sunday, perhaps someone would be there this Sunday to ask about the light. So I drove over and talked to a couple of salesmen about the problem. They assured me it was probably nothing wrong and figured it was caused by the fuel system loosing the vacuum. When I got back to McKenney, I stopped at the Exxon station and filled up the car. When I got back into the car and started it up the light went out. Yeah!
Monday I had to go to work in Emporia with Steve. Steve's passion is his Retrievers and he competes his dogs almost every weekend somewhere on the east coast. This weekend the competition is on his farm. We had to lay gravel on his dirt roads around the ponds and access points to the different areas of the competition areas. But first, he wanted to fill holes and ruts with dirt.
All went well for a while, but then on the way back with a load of dirt in the bucket of the tractor, Steve sunk the tractor in mud. We could not get it out. We had to hike it back to the barn to get the other tractor and chain and then go try to pull the stuck tractor out of the mud. We finally got it out of the mire. Well, the tractor that got stuck is the new one and Steve had to take it back to the house and wash it. I was thinking, "It is a Tractor, it is supposed to be dirty." Anyway, we got it washed up and headed back out into the fields.
Steve found a new place on a hill by one of his cotton fields where he could scope sandy soil and we started over. I figured a few loads would finish it up and we would be done for the day. Wrong! After we filled the holes and ruts in the road, he decides we have to fill up the holes and repair the damage that the Muskrats had done to one of the fingers that juts out into the pond. By that time I was getting tired. Ya see, Steve drives the tractor dumps the loads and I have to shovel and rake, basically do the labor. We usually work 5 hours a day at the most. This day he worked me over 8 hours and I was getting a little cranky by the time he finally decided we were finished.
I went home that night ate supper and fell asleep on the sofa.
Tuesday morning I got up ate, showered, and then, drove Ann to work. Her car is still in the shop, but this day they were giving her a loaner car. I had to get Kari's glasses fixed, a screw had fallen out so I stopped at Wally World and picked up one of those repair kits and headed to her house to insert a screw. Well, the kit did not have a screwdriver thing in it, and of course, Joyce and Kari have no tools at their house. Had to go back to Wally World and buy a jewelers screwdriver set, but Joyce and Kari had a shopping list of "little things" for me to get while I was there. Got that done, came back and got a screw in after much frustration, as the screw is tiny and my thumbs and index fingers are totally huge. It was the wrong screw but it worked. Good enough till Saturday when we could take them to the shop.
I went back home thinking I could finally mow the lawn. First, I paid the bills and then headed to the dump with the trash on the way to mail the bills at the post office. I got a call from the TV repair shop in Colonial Heights that the TV was fixed. I decided to go back to town and pick it up. Now it is later in the morning so I decided to pick up Kari's glasses and get them fixed correctly since the shop was now open. You can never go to Kari's house without having Joyce asking for a ride somewhere. I took her to the post office and headed off to the One Hour Optical shop to have the glasses fixed. On the way back, I spot Joyce walking back home so I pulled into the McDonald's parking lot and called her to come to the car for a ride back home, as well as, give her Kari's glasses and the spare key to Kari's car that I had made on the first trip to town.
Now the funny thing is that I was maybe thirty yards from Joyce and she is looking at the car asking, "Who is it?" She would not come. I drive around the building to intercept her on the far side. She had to get right up on the car before she recognized me.
I think she is blind. I started thinking that she never has had glasses from an optometrist, just those reading glasses that ya get at the drug store. In all the years that I have known her, she has never gone to have her eyes checked.
I have decided sometime in the next few weeks, I am going to haul her to Sears and get her checked out. She will not do it on her own. Then I am going to take her to One Hour Optical and make her purchase a pair of glasses. I bet when she puts them on it is going to be a new world for her. She is gonna squeal about having to spend the money, but as soon as she can see, she will not believe how blind she is/was.
Anyway, I got back home Tuesday around one thirty and it was raining so mowing was out of the question. So I horsed around on the computer playing Free Cell for a few hours till Ann came home.
Wednesday I had to get up at four am and head to Hopewell to do the paperwork at 7-11. The manager had an emergency and had asked me to do it for her. I finished that up and headed to Emporia to put gravel on the roads we had worked on Monday. That went well, not as much labor involved as we have rigged up a dump trailer that spreads most of the gravel in the tire grooves but not in the middle of the roads. All I have to do is get the last tone or so out of the tailor by pushing it to the sides with a rake. We were soon done. No we were not. Steve decides he his gonna get one last 5 ton load of gravel and spread it on the ground under the shed where he keeps the tractors and other gear. It is 36 X 24 and he wanted the gravel about an inch thick. Let me tell you, I was not to happy about shoveling 5 tons of gravel on the ground and then raking it out. Steve could not lift the trailer and spread the gravel the way we did the roads, so he was gonna dump it at one end and use the tractor and my labor to spread it. Huh! I talked him into raising the trailer as high as he could under the shed and driving through and dumping the gravel that way. It worked well and what would have taken four hours ended up taking a few, with way less labor. We got done around 5:30.
It is now Thursday morning, I am sitting here rambling on on the computer waiting for the sun to get up high enough to warm the place and evaporate the dew off the grass so I can do something I like to do for the first half hour, mow the grass. After the first half hour, I start asking myself why I did not just leave the trees in the forest and have a small lawn. Ha!
See ya.
Saturday morning we drove into Fredericksburg and visited Kari's aunt Mary Jane and family for a few hours before heading back home. Kari drove up and back in her car. She did very good even when we were lost due to the GPS unit telling us to turn left instead of right. Ha, I of course went bonkers, but Kari kept her cool. It was good practice for her dealing with the feelings one has when lost.
Then Sunday as I was driving Kari's car to work at 7-11 in Hopewell, the Check Engine light came on. Oh dear, that stressed me out, because last Thursday Ann's car did the same thing and her car needs a new transmission. I bit the bullet and kept driving for the remaining 25 miles to work, sweating the entire way wondering if the engine would blow up or the transmission would fall out. HA!
After I was finished at work I called my buddy that knows everything mechanical, Bill, and asked for his advice about the check engine light problem. I performed the checks that he specified and found no faults. He decided it was probably a minor problem and that it was safe to drive the car home. I called Kari and canceled her practice session for the day and headed home. Then I had a great idea. I bought the car on the previous Sunday, perhaps someone would be there this Sunday to ask about the light. So I drove over and talked to a couple of salesmen about the problem. They assured me it was probably nothing wrong and figured it was caused by the fuel system loosing the vacuum. When I got back to McKenney, I stopped at the Exxon station and filled up the car. When I got back into the car and started it up the light went out. Yeah!
Monday I had to go to work in Emporia with Steve. Steve's passion is his Retrievers and he competes his dogs almost every weekend somewhere on the east coast. This weekend the competition is on his farm. We had to lay gravel on his dirt roads around the ponds and access points to the different areas of the competition areas. But first, he wanted to fill holes and ruts with dirt.
All went well for a while, but then on the way back with a load of dirt in the bucket of the tractor, Steve sunk the tractor in mud. We could not get it out. We had to hike it back to the barn to get the other tractor and chain and then go try to pull the stuck tractor out of the mud. We finally got it out of the mire. Well, the tractor that got stuck is the new one and Steve had to take it back to the house and wash it. I was thinking, "It is a Tractor, it is supposed to be dirty." Anyway, we got it washed up and headed back out into the fields.
Steve found a new place on a hill by one of his cotton fields where he could scope sandy soil and we started over. I figured a few loads would finish it up and we would be done for the day. Wrong! After we filled the holes and ruts in the road, he decides we have to fill up the holes and repair the damage that the Muskrats had done to one of the fingers that juts out into the pond. By that time I was getting tired. Ya see, Steve drives the tractor dumps the loads and I have to shovel and rake, basically do the labor. We usually work 5 hours a day at the most. This day he worked me over 8 hours and I was getting a little cranky by the time he finally decided we were finished.
I went home that night ate supper and fell asleep on the sofa.
Tuesday morning I got up ate, showered, and then, drove Ann to work. Her car is still in the shop, but this day they were giving her a loaner car. I had to get Kari's glasses fixed, a screw had fallen out so I stopped at Wally World and picked up one of those repair kits and headed to her house to insert a screw. Well, the kit did not have a screwdriver thing in it, and of course, Joyce and Kari have no tools at their house. Had to go back to Wally World and buy a jewelers screwdriver set, but Joyce and Kari had a shopping list of "little things" for me to get while I was there. Got that done, came back and got a screw in after much frustration, as the screw is tiny and my thumbs and index fingers are totally huge. It was the wrong screw but it worked. Good enough till Saturday when we could take them to the shop.
I went back home thinking I could finally mow the lawn. First, I paid the bills and then headed to the dump with the trash on the way to mail the bills at the post office. I got a call from the TV repair shop in Colonial Heights that the TV was fixed. I decided to go back to town and pick it up. Now it is later in the morning so I decided to pick up Kari's glasses and get them fixed correctly since the shop was now open. You can never go to Kari's house without having Joyce asking for a ride somewhere. I took her to the post office and headed off to the One Hour Optical shop to have the glasses fixed. On the way back, I spot Joyce walking back home so I pulled into the McDonald's parking lot and called her to come to the car for a ride back home, as well as, give her Kari's glasses and the spare key to Kari's car that I had made on the first trip to town.
Now the funny thing is that I was maybe thirty yards from Joyce and she is looking at the car asking, "Who is it?" She would not come. I drive around the building to intercept her on the far side. She had to get right up on the car before she recognized me.
I think she is blind. I started thinking that she never has had glasses from an optometrist, just those reading glasses that ya get at the drug store. In all the years that I have known her, she has never gone to have her eyes checked.
I have decided sometime in the next few weeks, I am going to haul her to Sears and get her checked out. She will not do it on her own. Then I am going to take her to One Hour Optical and make her purchase a pair of glasses. I bet when she puts them on it is going to be a new world for her. She is gonna squeal about having to spend the money, but as soon as she can see, she will not believe how blind she is/was.
Anyway, I got back home Tuesday around one thirty and it was raining so mowing was out of the question. So I horsed around on the computer playing Free Cell for a few hours till Ann came home.
Wednesday I had to get up at four am and head to Hopewell to do the paperwork at 7-11. The manager had an emergency and had asked me to do it for her. I finished that up and headed to Emporia to put gravel on the roads we had worked on Monday. That went well, not as much labor involved as we have rigged up a dump trailer that spreads most of the gravel in the tire grooves but not in the middle of the roads. All I have to do is get the last tone or so out of the tailor by pushing it to the sides with a rake. We were soon done. No we were not. Steve decides he his gonna get one last 5 ton load of gravel and spread it on the ground under the shed where he keeps the tractors and other gear. It is 36 X 24 and he wanted the gravel about an inch thick. Let me tell you, I was not to happy about shoveling 5 tons of gravel on the ground and then raking it out. Steve could not lift the trailer and spread the gravel the way we did the roads, so he was gonna dump it at one end and use the tractor and my labor to spread it. Huh! I talked him into raising the trailer as high as he could under the shed and driving through and dumping the gravel that way. It worked well and what would have taken four hours ended up taking a few, with way less labor. We got done around 5:30.
It is now Thursday morning, I am sitting here rambling on on the computer waiting for the sun to get up high enough to warm the place and evaporate the dew off the grass so I can do something I like to do for the first half hour, mow the grass. After the first half hour, I start asking myself why I did not just leave the trees in the forest and have a small lawn. Ha!
See ya.
