Bugs, vans, signless
The weekend was good. Once again I took the strategy of knocking out almost all of the household stuff on Saturday, leaving our Sunday pretty much free. It makes for a rough Saturday sometimes but the carefree Sunday makes up for it in my book. We did all the outside chores although a lot of it was delayed because we had off and on showers in the morning as the remnants of tropical storm Barry blew through.
So while we were waiting to go outside I decided to rotate the tires on the Camry. It’s something they recommend doing every 10k miles. Of course the dealer is happy to do this for you, although I am sure they charge you a bundle for it, I bet at least 40 bucks. Since I have two hydraulic floor jacks, I can do the job with not a ton of fuss. It probably took me around a half hour doing it that way.
We have been mowing every other week but it may soon be getting to the point where it once again turns into a weekly chore. The grass is really growing fast. When I was weeding I was pysched to see the two melon plants we have in the garden, a cantaloupe and honeydew, are both producing fruit. Both of them have fruit on them ranging from baseball to softball size. The key now is to keep the f’ing insects from destroying them. We were quite liberal with the application of the anti-insect oil. Our fruit trees are going nuts too. The apple, lemon and key lime trees all have a large amount of fruit coming in right now.
After maybe a solid 4 or 5 hours of work the outside and inside stuff was done. We were done in time for us to take showers and have dinner at a small pizza/deli place that is only a couple miles from our house. We both got sandwiches that were both HUGE. We each only ate half and took the other half with. After that we went to Home Depot and Wild Oats.
At Home Depot we picked up several things. Ali had a coupon that gave you 10 bucks off any sale over 50 dollars. We figured it out just right, coming in at 52 dollars. Saving 20% off the bill was a nice bonus. At Wild Oats Ali needed to pick up a couple things. Wild Oats is an all natural, all organic grocery store. They also were a big sponsor for Ali’s 5k race she organized. She got her things and then I offered that we could “quickly” take a look around, since I was never there before. I wanted to get back home shortly because we were going to watch a movie. Well before I know it, Ali is in her mode where she examines every item on a shelf. She enjoys doing this, picking stuff, up, looking at it, reading the label, putting it back and then repeating. Well I was ok with it for awhile but then I said something, not wanting to spend an hour inspecting the store’s inventory. Ali said “Well you said you wanted to look around…” I said “yes, but you forgot an adjective, QUICKLY” Annoyed, she cut her perusing short and we paid and headed home. It’s a nice store. I had no idea there was that much organic stuff out there.
So we got home and quickly set up to watch a movie I downloaded with Amazon Unbox to the Tivo, Man of the Year. This was an Ali pick, she wanted a funny movie. Wow, the movie was totally average. It got a couple smiles or smirks but really did nothing for me. I wouldn’t recommend it really unless you have nothing else to watch but Lawrence Welk reruns. I give it a C.
Sunday was a nice day, the weather was better and we had a very light list of things to do. The day got off to a noisy start for me when I was getting ready to take Nicki out. I heard dogs barking and then all of a sudden I see a rabbit sprint by followed by two dogs in hot pursuit. One of the dogs looked like a beagle, the other some sort of lab mix, I think. Of course Nicki was going crazy. So I take her out and the beagle ignores us but the lab mix comes over. It has a collar but no tags. It’s bark sounded exactly like the one we hear at all times of day or night. The dog is probably the unfortunate pet of a Mexican family. Well anyway, Nick and her got along really well. They were sniffing and chasing each other around for quite awhile. Eventually they both tired of the games. I told the dog to go home, like it understood me, funny. If Ali was awake and was involved she probably would have restrained the dog and called domestic animals. I am almost immune to seeing loose dogs by now, it happens so often. So Nicki and I went back inside without further action. (oh, the rabbit got away)
After Ali got up, we decided we would finally go out to our land in Lehigh Acres to check on the condition of our For Sale signs. I haven’t gotten any calls on them for quite awhile. I decided to take the party van. But before I did I wanted to pull the passenger side rear wheel to look at the brakes. This is the wheel that gets abnormally hot after driving. The rear brakes were totally overhauled as part of my $1600 repair bill I footed last year and there has only been maybe 3000 miles driven on them since that time.
My 2 1/2 ton floor jack struggled to get the big fat van rear end off the ground. I pull the wheel and the brake drum and a bunch of junk falls out. The junk is pieces of burned up brake pads. The pads are a mess and for whatever reason must not properly retract or are improperly adjusted. I cleaned out the junk, sprayed the assembly with WD-40 as I had Ali press the pedal down. I put it back together and then would check it after our drive. (it was still hot) So I am going to have to take it to the garage once again.
Other than a hot wheel, the party van performed admirably on the trip to Lehigh, no horrible shakes, braking felt ok and the ac was cold. Oh and the windshield washer pump and wipers work well. They got a huge test, trying to keep the windshield clear of the endless splatters from f’ing love bugs. They were terrible. You would drive through swarms of them, it looked and sounded like someone was shooting the front of the van with a paintball gun. I must have gone through a half gallon of wiper fluid up and back.
So we get to the first property, the sign is still up but the area where we wrote in the phone number is totally blank. Evidently the elements totally dissolved the permanent marker. So I pull the sign out and have Ali rewrite it. Nicki watched Ali’s work intently. I put the sign back and we are off to property number two. We come up to where I think it is but there is no sign. I pull over and walk back and forth, looking for it. It is nowhere to be seen, not knocked over, not thrown in the bushes, just gone, great. Well that would explain why the calls have dried up. One property had a blank sign and the other had no sign…. So we are going to have to make a new one and travel back out to stick it in place. I am not sure if I want to put in the standard sign from Home Depot or make one out of wood and paint the information on. It would be less stealable and also would be more resistant to fading.
After stopping at the second property we stopped for gas. The party van has a locking gas cap. I keep the key on the dash of the van. I find it rather annoying to have a key for the cap so I I try to not tighten the cap enough to engage the lock. So after I fill up, I plop the key back on the little tray area, it bounces and disappears from my sight. Where the F did it go?? It was almost like a magic trick, it disappeared but there wasn’t an obvious space for it to fall in to. So Ali and I are looking around. I pull on the console to look if I see the key wedged down there. Nope. I decided, f it, I don’t like the gas cap anyway. There is an auto store right down the street. So I go there, buy a non-locking gas cap (along with some bug dissolving wiper fluid) and my problem is solved for less than 10 bucks.
Once we got back home I had the pleasant job of getting the hundreds of dead love bugs off the van. It was disgusting. First I hit them with the hose to knock the majority of the body off, then I hit it with a soapy brush to get the rest. After a half hour of elbow grease I got most of them off. This is definitely the worst and longest I can remember the love bug problem being.
On Sunday I also got a chance to talk to our neighbor across the street that got the new tractor. I was excited when he said I could borrow it to move fill from our pit. That will be awesome and such a big time saver for me. Hopefully sometime during the next two weeks I will get to give it a try. It has a bucket on the front and a leveling blade in the back. Growing up we had a tractor about the same size we used to mow the grass in Gouglersville. It only had a mower deck though, nothing else.
Ali went to some ballet thing with Michelle late Sunday afternoon. I played some WoW and then sat down to watch Minority Report for the third time. I like the flick, what can I say. It has a scene in there that is incredibly funny to me. It is after John Anderton (Tom Cruise) has his eyeballs replaced so he can’t be identified with a retinal scan. He has it done by some scuzzy criminal doctor in a slum like apartment. After the surgery his eyes are bandaged and he has to leave them covered for 12 hours. The “doctor” shows John two ropes, one leads to the kitchen, the other to the bathroom. Well John gets hungry and follows the rope to the kitchen. The doctor put a jar of milk and a sandwich in there in case Tom gets hungry. He pulls himself to the kitchen, opens the door and the viewer gets an eyeful of a fridge filled with the rancid food and a jar of green milk, all around the good milk and sandwich. Well Tom Cruise doesn’t know that there is bad food in there. He picks up a green, slimy, disgusting sandwich and takes a big bite. He immediately spits the food out and scrambles back into the fridge feeling for the milk. Of course you guessed it, he grabs the green milk, takes a swig and projectile vomits that out as well. That scene makes me laugh my ass off.