Good morning!!!!

[toppop52]

I slow cooked a three pound pot roast for eight hours, carrots onions, potatoes, with fresh garlic, pulled apart with your fingers. It’ll make good sandwiches too.

I guess I’m in tier three too, Don, now. I’m 68 with several underlying factors, but it is what it is.

I got my flagpole ready for the new parts when they come, I’m even treating it to a new topper ball.
Step dog went home this evening, fairly uneventful, she latched on to me 90% of the time, I guess she knows I’m a sucker for animals and kids. Gracie likes dog visitors for about an hour, then she’s ready for them to go home.

It’s been raining and cold pretty much all day.

Mostly, sounds like you had an easy day, for you.

Have a great night folks.

 

[rswyan]

35F and cloudy @ 22:30 ... headed down to an overnight low of 32F.

Decided to just go ahead and bite the bullet and replace the valves, didn't even bother to try cracking the old ones open today.

Placed an order with The Depot for two 1/2" sweat ball valves (with drain) at the Canton store and got a text a short while later saying they were ready to pick up.

So I headed down and checked in with Curb Side Pickup after I got there. A young lady was out in fairly short order with the valves and I thanked her and started on my way out of the parking lot (my personal contribution to the day's stupidity) to the South Akron Depot to pick up the remainder of that previous order that had to be special ordered.

Made it about 10 car lengths out of the lot and thought to myself: Probably outta check ... just to make sure they gave me the right stuff.

Sure enough - 1/2" ball valves ... but with no drains on them ... :mur:

So I turned around, pulled back in, parked, and headed inside.

Had a customer service guy - young Indian or Pakistani maybe ? - wave me over to take care of me and I handed him the valves and the order printout and explained that I had just picked up these valves but they had given me the wrong ones and I needed the right ones ... you know: the ones I actually ordered.

He proceeded to pull up the order on his terminal ... and then scanned the bar code on the valves ... and that's where his confusion apparently started I guess, because he was having some trouble - probably because the SKU on the valves did not match what was on the order (Duh ... they were the wrong ones)

So he turned around and asked for help from the young lady that was standing at the next register behind him. They did some conferring and she started punching stuff in on her terminal - with neither one of them asking anything further from me - and about that time I started wondering exactly what they were up to, so I took a couple of steps forward and as I did a sheet came out of her printer and the girl grabs it and turns towards me and says "Here you go ... I've cancelled your order and credited your account ?"

What the ... ??? :confused2:

So I said "I don't want a refund - I want the correct valves - the ones I ordered. When I picked these up a few minutes ago you guys gave me the wrong ones."

At that point she pulls up the valves on the order on her screen and looks at it, then scans the ones I brought back and pulls it up on the screen and looks at it ... then back to the first ... then the second ...

Yeah ... they do look quite SIMILAR ... but they aren't the SAME.

Ahhh ... a revelation !

So she sends the other guy back to pull the correct valves and bring them up front.

He's gone for a good while and I thougt, ya know I probably ought to just head back there and give him a hand.

Of course by the time I got back to Aisle 34 he was long gone, having apparently chosen to take a different route back to Customer Service.

So I headed back up to the front and sure enough, he had managed to find them.

Grabbed them and headed out the door to the next Depot Stop, which I did Curbside as well.

But I wouldn't let that guy leave the car until I opened the box and verified it was the correct stuff ... :laughing:

After all that The Woman decided that we really needed to do a little fish tank maintenance instead of all this plumbing stuff ... so we spent a couple hours feeding fish and working on about a half dozen tanks.

Hope everyone had a great day ... :thumbsup:

 

[RoyJackson]

2020-12-21, 0328

29 right now...high in the low 30's...
3 day week, then Christmas shutdown until 02 January...looking forward to it!

 

[Eric Salop]

Good morning all. I can well believe we are at the shortest day, I am sat in the gloom, waiting for a little more daylight before I go out to check on livestock.

Don, the order of vaccination here is much the same as yours. They are rapidly working through health workers, my SIL got hers last week.

A new form of the virus has been spreading here for a while. This mutation appears to be even easier to catch than the original Covid-19, though the good news is that the vaccines are still effective. It has caused London to be placed in a total lockdown, with the general public not allowed to move in or out. More worrying is that France has decided to completely close it's borders to the UK, with not even food trucks being allowed to come in from the rest of Europe. It is expected this will cause another round of panic buying.

Only 4 sleeps until Christmas !
Has Covid changed your family plans for Christmas day ? Our house will be much quieter this year with no children or grandkids around.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

having just bought shutoff valves, I would never consider curbside pickup for hardware, it’s bad enough getting items in person, with usually the wrong items in the bin as customers will mix them all up.

Will stay home at Christmas, but wife wants to go to her moms for New Years, which would be fine if her sister wasn’t camped out there.

Is France closing it’s border a bad thing?
Sorry for all the lockdowns.

We had people at church that were supposively in quarantine show up for worship yesterday. I didn’t have a part in leading worship, so I stayed back in the sound room where I stream the service, and ducked outside when the coast was clear. They might have tested negative, wasn’t going to get close to ask. Too many people socializing too close after service.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Up too early for bathroom break, then couldn’t sleep. Then back was hurting, probably from moving pellets, so came down to lazy boy. Forgot to fill pellet stove last night, it was just running out, so got it full before it stopped.
33° out, interesting that at 9 pm the temp rose suddenly from 30° to 36° then a gradual decline. Like this weather station.

 

[Buppies]

35 high of 52 today off to work

Prayers for all our Country

 

[daugen]

good morning all.
a little warmer out this morning, 33 going up to 40 in fog and then rain showers tonight.
Forecast for Christmas is a wet one, 1 1/2 inches of rain and 60 degrees.

The only time I had a deep fried turkey was when I spent three years in Florida working for Richard Merritt in his yacht agency.
Richard, may he rest in peace, was a very large obese guy who loved to throw a big party the day of the Boat Parade, which in Ft Lauderdale went
right past his office on the water. He would bring out his big cookers and do two turkeys and a pheasant for the crowd there.
I thought it was darn good.

not much planned for today. Might build another feeder, and friends coming over after lunch to pick up a bird house, my last one on the list.
Have built 17 so far. Am curious to inspect the one I built yesterday with construction adhesive instead of wood glue and see how it turned out.
Some of those glues foam out and increase in size, hopefully I didn't get that variety.

When I got a box of grapefruit as a present for Christmas from family, I had to write Hale Groves and tell them two of them were rotten. Very unusual, never had
that happen before. They promptly replied and said they would replace the fruit. I immediately responded with could you please substitute oranges instead of grapefruit
since I take a statin every day. That didn't work...a new box of grapefruit showed up yesterday. I'll have to give most of it away, along with 3/4 of the big Christmas Kringle cherry danish
that came yesterday also. Danish tasted very good, made in Michigan, with recognizable cherries in it, but whole thing hugely fattening and unhealthy. So folks stopping by today will be going home with more than they expected... I have been less good about giving away cookies, hate to get my blood sugar tested right now...

Roy, lots of threads on this site and elsewhere about modifying controls to allow hand operation. Some use the cruise control circuit to do this, some have a control bar down to the
pedal.
Farm Again - Hand Controls
Buy Heavy Duty Control Lever online at Access Truck Parts

 

[riptides]

36 outside heading to mid 50's. Anything higher to dry up the ground is welcome.

Managed to see the planets last night, hope tonight is better. Yesterday was an in house repair and refresh day. Managed to hang wifes new lamps (hit studs every time!), fix toilets, and did minor truck work. All in all, a jack of all trades day. Will run out this AM to go get some more decking. Looks like I came up three pieces short. Cannot complain though, it was a math exercise with some unknown variables. That's my story.

The girls all came in last night, our Christmas get together. We feasted and shared stories. They will all be working through the holidays.

Hope all have a great day. Be safe and stay healthy my friends.

Back to the shipping topic - it is out of control here. Most of my packages have not shipped yet, the other family members are ending up down at the street, lost, at the neighbors or on the property other than the front door. I think the services are stressed and a lot of new people are in the game. The packages down at the street (end of driveway) are a concern, others...well...just dealing with it.

 

[wngsprd]

38 and fog, going to 47. Forecast was for freezing fog, so glad it is just the regular variety.

We entered winter a little over an hour ago. Seems like it's been here a while already. Tomorrow will be a longer day!

Tried to see the planets last night...cloudy...tonight just after 5pm is supposed to be the "peak" for the Christmas "Star."

Christmas will be very different here...plan to meet for a hike with middle son from North Carolina and GF this week, older son and wife will do a "drive-by" out in our yard. Youngest son not able to come from New York. Wife waiting to see if assisted living will let her bring her mom here for a couple of nights...They had a couple of cases last week...they have been really doing well there, with only one previous case.

Package deliveries have been close to perfect here from Fedex, UPS, and Amazon...if anything, they are earlier than promised. Only exception is from the post office, where their tracking system just plain lies...however mail carriers are real nice and the folks up at the Beaverdam PO and the Doswell PO are great. Tracking says Coco's CBD oil will arrive from Seattle today via USPS. If it arrives, I'll balance my comments about them. But it is a tough time of the year, and a tough time to keep employment at full staff.

Roasted a Kenya coffee for the first time in a while yesterday...can be a tough bean to get right. Tasting it now and quite pleased. Need to do a few more roasts today so I'll have plenty to give my son and GF.

Only fried turkeys twice...first time was a few years ago...the 2nd best turkey I'd ever had (best was the first wild turkey I killed and plucked). Last time I tried to fry one it was about 25F outside and windy. I built a temporary windscreen out of plywood and cardboard, but just couldn't get the oil to stay hot enough...so brought it in and finished it in the oven. Still was okay, but I was disappointed since it was for a big family gathering. Will try again but only on a warm day.