Saturday, August 23, 2014

Bringing the heat....

I love waking up on a Friday morning knowing I don't have to go to work......I just do.  My "like" increases in intensity when there are fun projects to work on during the day.  I'm not being facetious when I use the word "fun".  Since I have retired I have more time to work with my hands, which I enjoy immensely.  Our departure date is rapidly approaching which means I need to finish a number of smallish projects before we leave.

The first project of 5th Saturday was the installation of the new PAW 1500 watt electric heater I purchased from Amazon to replace the now 32 year old one in the bedroom.  Since we have been using our heaters much, much more than the AC this summer I had begun to notice a slight "rattling" sound coming from the old girl, and knew I would just be rolling the dice if I waited much longer to replace her.  As it turned out Amazon had dropped the price of the heater about $12, so I ordered one immediately and it arrived within 2 days via Amazon Prime......as always.  The old heater was 12.5" X 4"......the new heater is 12.5" X 6", so I used my jigsaw attachment for my drill and enlarged the opening.  That was the hardest part mainly because I had to fit my body into a small space to do the installation......I don't fold up as easily as I once did.

Next up was the rubber "diamond plate" veneer on the trailer ramp door.  Over time it has shrunk a little and pulled away from the aluminum strips that hold it in place around the edges.  The sun is a perfect solution to this problem, and Friday we had plenty of it.  I just lowered the ramp door down and let the sun heat up the rubber while I removed the aluminum strips.  Once the rubber heated up it was easy to stretch it back to its proper dimensions and then re-install the aluminum strips to hold it in place.  As a precaution I doubled the number of screws being used, and I hope that will last a while this time.

The final project of the day was to install the new (slightly used) bike tights for my mountain bike, and that of my grandson, Elijah.  I bought the K2 bike off Craigslist for Elijah to use while he was here visiting, thinking I would either part it out on eBay after he left, or donate it, but he fell in love with the bike.  There was no room in the car to take it home so I promised to hang on to it and and bring it to him when we arrive home for Christmas.  That promise necessitated the installation of a bike tight to hold the bike in place while we travel.

Of course there was the requisite nap in between projects, lunch and a little reading, but I finally finished all three projects around 4:30.....by then I was one filthy boy, so I jumped into the shower to wash away the dirt.

Around 5:30 I started the BBQ to grill the Ahi Tuna TLE had purchased while doing a "BIG" shopping a Raley's.  She earned another .50 cent coupon for up to 30 gallons of fuel.....we'll use that a week from Sunday (August 31st) to put 30 more gallons of diesel in the tank at $3.59/gallon.  Then we'll head on Tuesday (September 2nd) over to Dayton, NV where diesel is only $3.69 per gallon compared to the $4.09 here in SLT.  We'll stock up on food at Smith's hoping to earn another .50 cents off a gallon of diesel before we top off the tank for our trip up to Oregon.  This next tank should take us to Oregon and back to Fernley before we need to fill up again.  We haven't had to fill the tank for 4 months now, and the next time will be another 2 months.

TLE cooked up some baked potatoes and asparagus for our dinner which was accompanied by a Coastal Zinfindel from the wine closet. And that capped off another great 5th Saturday.

Sun setting on 5th Saturday

Thanks for stopping by!

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