Trim trees, vanishing van parts, Rocker, boring win

Ali had a big conference Saturday for the dietetic association she is heavily involved in.   She was responsible for all the refreshments which was considerable.  I told her Friday night I could help her take the stuff to the meeting since the image of her having to lug all of the stuff herself did not sit well with me.  We had to be there by 7:30 but it didn’t bother me.  Compared to a day we have to time a race, that is like sleeping in.

We split the items between the car and the truck.  I brought along my dolly to make things easier.  We had everything up in the conference area in 15-20 minutes.  I had to stick around for a little bit until the one guest speaker arrived.  Ali wanted to make sure he could get his power point presentation to run on the projector set up they had there.  While I was waiting I passed the time screwing on my Iphone and talking to several of the women that were in attendance.  Everyone seemed nice enough.  I was able to leave a little after 9.  Ali told me how much she appreciated my help.

As soon as I got home it was immediately into home projects.  I don’t even know if I could recant everything that I worked on/did during the day so I’ll just stick to the two biggest.  I decided to start trimming trees.  I decided to break it into multiple sessions, trimming trees is bust ass work.  For Saturday I worked on the 2 sets of trees in the front yard.   I decided to get aggressive with my trimming.  The first thing I did was pull out the chainsaw.  The one clump of trees had 4 mature cabbage palms and three, unwanted smaller palms that keep coming back even though I have pruned them back hard over the years.  Well I decided to get serious.

After my second pull on the chainsaw the start cord got stuck in the fully extended position.  Shit.  Luckily it was corrected with the careful prodding of a straight blade screw driver.  It only took a few seconds of actually using the chainsaw until it jammed.  I took the cover off and removed the caked mulch/wood chips that was jamming up the works.  As I was putting it back together I burned my fingers when I inadvertently grasped the muffler, nice.

So I go back to the dwarf palms and let them have it, sawing away at them with added anger after burning myself.  It only took a few minutes to have the trees cut down to ground level.  After that I came over with the ladder and proceeded to go around the entire cluster, lopping off everything I could reach.  I cut down an incredible amount of fronds for only 4 trees, a full 3 trips back to the ditch with the Tacoma. 

Pruning the other two trees meant using the pole saw since the one tree is a good 30 feet high at this point.  Using the pole saw is not much fun.  Within minutes my neck was a cramped up mess.  The combination of using the pole saw and loppers did a number on my tendinitis  as well.  My forearm was burning.  After about two hours I had everything trimmed and cleaned up.  I was glad I didn’t set a mental goal of trimming all of the trees myself.

The other big project was my attempt to fix the rear van door.  The outside handle broke, making the only way to open the door to crawl in from the inside.  I had bought some small automotive hose clamps, thinking I could rig something up.  So I climb over the bed in the back and pull the handle.  Instead of opening I heard the all too familiar “crack” followed by the sound of small plastic pieces falling into the door.  SON OF A BITCH.  Now the inside handle was broken as well…. How in the F am I supposed to fix it now? 

Well I immediately started looking for a plan of action.  I discovered that I could remove the cut out for the license plate from the inside which would get me access to the defective, shitty cables that had broken. Once I had access I  was able to pop the door. I examined the shitty, brittle cables and tried to come up with a number of rig jobs to fix the problem.  I tried using a combination of zip ties and hose clamps to come up with some way to open the door without having to spend cash to fix it.  Well after more than an hour of f’ing around and giving myself several cuts and gashes on my hands I gave up.  By the time I was done I had the rear latch totally out of the vehicle.  The various parts and fasteners were strewn across the bed in the van.  Without the latch there was no way to securely close the rear door.  If the rear door is not securely closed I risk having the dome light come on which will kill the battery after a few days as well as having a large access point for unwelcome frog visitors to crawl into the van where they will later surely die and stink the thing up.  So out came the packing tape.  I pushed on the door while I slapped tape across it to temporarily hold it closed.  We’ll see how long that holds up.  

I called the dealer today and explained what I needed.  He said they had them in stock and it was about 70 bucks.  He said they break all the time, hence them being kept in stock.  They don’t just sell the cables alone, they come with the rear latch and they are already attached.  So after work I plan to grab one and hope to successfully reassemble everything next weekend. 

We watched The Rocker, Saturday night.  It was a Rich recommendation.  The last movie I remember him turning me on to was Napoleon Dynamite which is one of my all-time favorites now.  The Rocker wasn’t in the same class but it still was quite funny.  There was some similarities in the movie to someone we both know that added to the humour of it all.  I’d give it a solid B.

The Eagles won an extremely boring game yesterday.  Things started out badly when they gave up a 90 yard TD on the Seahawks first offensive play.  Thankfully that amounted to the total Seattle offensive output for the entire game.  The rest of time the Eagles grounded out a convincing win.  Of course I’m happy they won, too bad it was as exciting as watching grass grow.  Maybe the Phillies have me spoiled.

Last night I made the mistake of posting my current mood on facebook as being “fed up with everything”  By the time the morning rolled around I had a half dozen commenting on my status.  So I decided to change my status to “farting sunshine and burping fluffy clouds”  I suppose it is better to keep facebook light and cheery.