Beautiful Tuesday & Hot Water Wednesday

Monday morning, fleet was in a bit different position from normal.



Monday I was surprised at first when I got home and the temporary service pole was gone after seven years :D



I had driven mom around on errands for a couple hours, when I got home the day was so absolutely perfect I just sat outside for 30 minutes before going inside.



Taking Wednesday & Friday off as comp days for last weekend, and still have eight more use-or-lose days this year.

Started around noon finishing up the water heater. Plugged away at it taking breaks as needed, finished at 4:32...some of that was going to mow for a bit while the heater drained, and taking an hour break and drive but the clouds moved in; was hoping for spectacular peak foilage like the last two days. Maybe 45 minutes of actual work.





















Last thing is to retrieve the dolly and table; I've never cleaned the basement from the construction so I left the bag from the heater in the basement. This weekend I'll go down with a shovel and clean up a bit in addition to retrieving my stuff.

Failover Weekend and a Little Bit of Stuff...

Did our annual failover test...which once again didn't quite go right and it was decided to abort.

So instead of 7pm-9am Friday-Saturday and 7pm-7am Saturday-Sunday...we failed back starting at 9am so I was at the office 7pm-3:30pm

Friday I was home during the day, so I finally got the water heater into the basement :D, thinking I'll likely take Wednesday off this week and actually hook it up.



Driving home Saturday, in Thompson on I-395 just north of Route 200 I saw the comet in the sky! The sun must've been just right hitting it's tail, I thought the pics I took driving didn't come out till I looked on them on my the big laptop screen.

Took me a moment to realize what it was. But it quickly disappeared, getting smaller then I couldn't find it at all once I got to a big clear area to park that I thought I could get a better picture.







When I went to bed at 6pm I had been awake 34 hours (though I layed down and rested Friday afternoon a few hours). Slept till 2am, watched videos till 4am, and then slept another 4 hours.

Still kind of shot on Sunday, but I plugged away in the afternoon and did a few little bits.

Eric swung by and we got the TV up on the wall, and while I didn't get a picture we finally took down the temporary service pole from when we rebuilt the house 7 years ago.

Plugging away

So we had a great northern lights night on Thursday, I had already taken Friday off, and was planning to head out around 9:30. I sort of got obsessed with making sure my good camera was ready to go.

Photo from Eric since by the time I got out at 9:30 the best of the show was over :(



Later on, after driving a bit hoping they'd kick off again, around 11pm I was in Woodstock behind the Evangelical Lutheran church which had a good northern view. Driving up I though the sky was vaguely getting a red glow. No good photos from my good camera but it definitely pulled the red of the aurora out of the sky.

Figured out I could use the tripod without getting out of the Jeep :D

Hat was blocking an outdoor light reflecting back in my mirror.



Mostly slept on Friday...this old man doesn't do late nights to well anymore! But Saturday plugged away in the garage.







Tested the new heater, I liked it.



Back of Jeep with another four bags of trash.



Kiya gave me the Just Ducky sticker.



Getting the lift table working was a three hour cluster fuck -- it is the finest Chinese "cheapest parts this week" that didn't match the shitty photocopy of photocopy of a parts diagram. Had to watch like three different YouTube videos and take bits and pieces from each because each table was just a little different.



Needed to pull a couple c-clips to flip up the top, since bleeding it required the cylinder to be all the way down, then pump until it burped, then top off the hydraulic fluid.







Sunday we had showers with bad timing...but I did get cardboard on the hand truck and cart so I won't scratch the new heater.



Monday afternoon I finally got the table into the basement. Everything is just so !@#! slow for me to do, and man my shoulder was barking that night!



And the heater is ready to go down next time I have an opportunity to get it into the basement.



Tuesday morning light frost on the car.

First weekend in October

Did some more surveillance, gonna try and install the new water heater myself.









So bought a tool to try and do my own alignment on the Jeep; it's bare metal which would rust in the garage; what I settled on was some industrial cling wrap for it.


Picked up the water heater on Thursday, got it unloaded in the garage on Saturday so I could better size things up.



Saturday was like four dump runs from the garage, and by 3pm it was absolutely perfect weather for a Jeep drive (it was a bit chilly with the top and windows open when I started the dump runs at 11:30). So decided to finally deliver the small motor for Ed's old canoe to Kiya & Wes. Didn't realize everyone was visiting that day; just missed Eddie Boy.

Sunday morning I attacked the corner...that was more work than I expected :D But by the time the Patriots were coming on I was kind of running on fumes for the weekend and went in for lunch and a shower. Did do a few more things in the house and garage.





I have shelf space!



I have no idea what is in these two boxes, and I can't pull them out unless I roll the whole rack out. Tried searching for those part numbers to no avail.



Though low on my priority list, at some point I'd like to put a new tank on this air compressor -- pump was running fine but the tank rusted out after darn close to 20 years. The freaking tank alone is $300 ( https://www.summitracing.com/parts/cam-ar040700cg ) but a similar new compressor is $1000. I think I only paid $300-400 back around 2000.

As electric Milwaukee stuff becomes more common, I don't use the compressor nearly as often but it is real handy and the little pancake compressor I'm using now you can only use most air tools a very short time.



Of course I'm sort of questioning stuff since it basically became "make a mess in the garage to clean it up" stage :/ (Mice got into that chair, that's why it's being disposed of.)