Good Morning!!!! 44F @ 7:30AM. Partly cloudy skies during the morning giving way to a few showers late. High 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
I'd love to pass out a gift card or two to the mail and garbage men, but the mail man can't seem to get the parcel locker locked half the time, leaves letters sticking up out of the anti-theft slot in the front of the mail box, and has a bad habit of folding magazines making them hard to read. The trash guy somehow manages to get garbage all over the cul-de-sac at least once a month, and misses the can all together at least a couple times a year. That puts both of them on the naughty list, so no goodies for them.
Tuesday I finally managed to get the burned up battery for the gate opener pried out of the battery box that held it. The battery case and box were both plastic, and the two pieces had melted together. My idea of screwing eye bolts into the top of the battery didn't work; the screws just pulled right back out. Ended up using a 4' pry bar and just bending the sides in enough to make some clearance. The battery box was set into 6" of concrete, so it came out in a few pieces. I was lucky enough to buy another of the same battery box and it slipped right down into the concrete where the old one was. Found the same deep cycle marine battery replacement as well, so I'm done with the gate opener replacement job and back to even on that count, anyway. Dropped off the battery remains at Walmart and got my core charge back.
Stayed in town Tuesday night to help my evacuation hosts celebrate the wife's birthday, so didn't post to GM thread yesterday AM. Hit the grocery store for a bouquet of flowers for the birthday girl on the way over. It was one of four she got that night, so it's a good thing she loves flowers! Nice gathering at a local up scale bar/restaurant, and met a fella who's company will be building 200 pre-fab homes for those that lost theirs in Paradise. Not double wides, but a range of ten floor plans with standardized option lists to keep things simple and maximize the economy of scale for the builders. He thinks they can be move in ready by fall of next year if they can get through the county permitting process in a timely manner.
Ran some errands yesterday morning then started another round of spraying the weeds that are popping up like crazy. Got almost through the first tank when I hit the satellite Internet dish with the Kubota side-by-side, snapping off the receiver, leaving it hanging by the cable.:duh: Fortunately it was a tubular structure and a little lathe work on a piece of scrap aluminum got it going again temporarily, but it's on my list of things to do today to call the installer that put it up and see if he'll sell me just the bracket to replace the one I broke. It's always sumthin' huh?
New battery for the touring bike showed up yesterday, so I put it on the charger so it gets a fresh start when installed. Today I'll get the BMW I worked on all summer put back together and the fuel drained, then do the same for the zebra bike, putting them away for the winter. If there's time left over, I'll try to get the touring bike washed; fixing the antenna stole the time I was going to use to do it yesterday. Looks like next week's trip south is gonna start in the rain, but I like to check things over on the bike while I wash it and I like working on a clean machine a lot more than a dirty one.
