Still catching up

So we go back to our house around 7:30 Friday night.  We didn’t want to go crazy with getting things back to normal right away so we just unloaded the van and did some basic unpacking.  We even got to do our Friday night pizza routine which was cool.  We knew there was tons of stuff to do over the weekend.

So I step out the door Saturday morning to start the festivities and am immediately smacked in the face with the heat and humidity.  At 9 am it was already 87 degrees.  The first thing I had to do was fix the mower deck so we would be able to mow down the grass that grew like weeds over the past two weeks.

So I ripped the deck off the mower and began the tedious process of getting all the packed, rotting grass clippings off it.  Then I brought the pressure washer up to blast the deck clean so I could begin the repair.  My original thought was I could simply buy another tube of JB weld and slap the same metal patch back on.  Once I got the deck clean I placed the metal patch on the deck and realized that the rip in the deck had grown, the patch no longer covered the hole.  I had to reevaluate the repair plan.

I just happened to remember the various pictures my youngest brother Patrick had posted on Facebook regarding the interior restoration of his old Vanagon.  He used pop rivets to attach various pieces.  I thought that pop rivets may offer me a better solution for fixing the deck so it was off to Home Depot.  I grabbed a pop rivet gun, rivets, some more sheet metal and some tin snips. 

I had never used a pop rivet gun before.  It wasn’t too hard to master, simply drill a hole big enough for the rivet to squeeze through, stick the rivet in the gun, insert it in the hole and squeeze the trigger a few times until the shaft of the rivet snaps off.  I used 7 or 8 rivets to secure the original patch.  I then cut a small piece of the new sheet metal to cover the rest of the hole and riveted that in place as well.  After riveting I followed up with dropping a bunch of gorilla glue around the edge of the patch and then flipping the deck over and shooting some Great Stuff into the repair from the bottom.  The patch felt pretty solid.

While the glue and great stuff was drying I joined Ali who had already started on the arduous weeding process.  It’s amazing how many weeds can sprout in a two week time period.  By this time the heat was downright oppressive, it felt like we were being broiled for dinner. Ali and I spent at least 2-3 hours doing just the weeding.

I checked back on the mower deck.  The glue and foam had hardened so I reattached the deck to the mower and fired it up.  I mowed a few laps around the front yard to test the repair out, the patch held.  I told Ali the mower was ready to go.  She hopped on and mowed while I grabbed the weed whacker.  Tending to the grass took another couple hours as well.  Thank god we have a pool, it did a nice job of cooling off our elevated body temperatures in short order.

Even though she was helping me outside all day, Ali was motivated enough to make another great apple crisp desert from the tons of apples we pulled off our apple tree.  The dinner she made was also mostly from our garden as well utilizing spaghetti squash, white and black eggplant all grown by ourselves.  It was all very good.

During the evening I started getting a sore throat that typically leads into some sort of illness.  My nose started running as well.  I’m not sure if I picked it up during the trip or once we got back.  By Sunday it was full blown cold symptoms with lots of blowing of the nose, sneezing and general feeling of unwellness. 

Ali worked on Sunday so I tended to various other things that needed to get done around the house.  I also started on getting the new timing system ready for the 4th of July race.  I ran a 1000 timing chips across a reader one by one.

I still have general cold symptoms.  Monday night I tried taking Nyquil but I woke up the next morning in such a haze I went without it last night.  The past two nights I had a weird thing going on as I laid down to go to sleep.  As I tried to doze off I would start coughing then my nose would start to run like mad and my eyes would start dumping water like faucets.  It’s very weird.  Once I get up, blow my nose and wipe my eyes I have been able to lay back down and fall to sleep without the coughing and tearing returning. 

It’s good to be back but I I also really enjoyed getting out there to see some new sights and break out of the box of everyday existence.

I forgot to mention on the trip I watched two movies on my Iphone, Max Payne and Don’t Mess with the Zohan.  Max Payne is based on the video game from 5 or 6 years ago, I played the game all the way through.  I expected it to be pretty lame. For the most part it was although Mark Wahlberg did a good job of doing the best he could with the story.  It’s the classic revenge storyline with a dose of double crossing thrown in for good measure.  Yea it’s all been seen before.  I’d give it a B- or C+.

Don’t Mess with the Zohan followed the same structure as most Adam Sandler movies, lots of physical comedy, funny accents and silly faces.  There were a decent amount of funny moments but I saw far too much of Adam Sandler’s bare ass.  It was an ok flick. B