Figuring out the work for the day…

Last weekend the boys all gathered to help John with his leaky chimney flashing.  It was fun to see that Andy broght his measuring tape along and was ll prepared to help.  It’s crazy that he’s had this since I first started buying him tools as a child.  Probably from the 201–2012 timeframe.  He’s replaced some of the guts a couple times.  It’s “survived” some pretty big drops and really starting to show it.  But it still works.  It looks like it might just fall about soon…?!

King of the dogs…

Fun with Andy’s truck

It got lettered recently so John and I stopped by to see it and grab a few tools for the day’s adventure. John geeked out over the layout.  Andy showed us his newly built pipe stock storage and his “door jammer” which holds the automatic lock open when he is going in and out of the trunk constantly on a job.  He even built a place to store it on the side of the stock bin.  Inventive!

Fun working through our new Kendama tricks

Andy likes to keep tabs on how I’m doing.  He cheers me on, and also gives me little tweaks to improve my consistency.  It’s kind of impressive how he can watch me for a minute and tell me what I’m doing wrong, then all of a sudden, I’m lacing it.  I’ve gotten to where I can reliably get through all my tricks in three tries or so.  Speed ladder, here I come…

Just my Jeep in a nice setting

Just fun to have my workout buddy plodding along beside me

The blood moon mostly elluded us

It looked like it was going to be a nice night to see it, but clouds rolled in about the time it was a third of the way through.  I like the pic on the right the best just because it’s a decent one of the moon and clouds and has an appropriate lunar eeriness to it.  You can see the earth shadow coming in from the lower left and blocking about a third of the moon. 

The upper right pic lets you see the most complete part of the eclipse we were able to see.  The clouds became thick enough after that so we never saw it again until after it was over.  The lower left pic was the best hint of red we got.  You can see it best in the lower right of the moon.  This was only visible for about two seconds as the clouds rolled by, haha.

Fire certifications

These were my grandma Morey‘s two uncles on her dad’s side. William (uncle Will) was still alive when my mom was a kid. He’s the one her folks bought the old cottage at Long Lake from. He died from getting burned in a fire up there.

And 1897 is the year that grandma Morey was born.

That reminded me of this cool German clock

It was always in my grandpa’s garage.  It’s almost two feet long and really cool looking.  I particularly like the “exposed” escapement you can see from the face of the clock.  It’s a porcelain dial that is still in prety good shape.  It doesn’t stay running, but the gongs all still work and sound beautiful.  He made the case for it to keep dust from taking a toll.  It also serves as a fun spot to store some other special memories.  Some of our kid’s favorite stuffies, a little band saw test my grandpa did of my grandma’s name, and a report card from the early 1900s.  I’ve added a few stickers too.  I like the one my grandpa put on from Frankenmuth.  I spend a week or two with them one summer in the mid-eighties and they took me there.  

Timepiece fun…

It turns out that at the same time I’ve been exploring watches, Susan and Larry have been doing the same thing with clocks.  Grandfathers, mantles, and cuckoo clocks.  So I gave them this one that I had to them.  My dad had picked it up at a garage sale somewhere along the way. He wanted it on the mantle downstairs in one of the areas he was using as an office during his church treasurer and income tax prep days.  It runs nicely, sounds nice, and keeps good time.  It looks like it was from the second decade of the twentieth century (early 1900s).  It will be fun to see what Larry and Susan do with it.

Stickers and fun things from when I was a kid

I ran across these little scratchpads we made when I was going to the international science fair my senior year of high school.  My projects was on the differences in efficiency of girder vs. truss designs in bridges.  Everybody tended to bring something along to give out to other students and visitors.  The Dayton Chamber of Commerce also gave me these Wright Place to be stickers to hand out.  I added both of these to my sticker wall along with an “I ❤️ Dayton” and even an OG In-N-Out sticker I found.  I had to put up one of my out of date Windrock maps just to have a place to put more stickers… 🤪 

My little arm day workout buddy…

It’s fun that Zoe is (mostly) willing to lay on the carpet remnant and wait for me to finish my workout if she’s down in the basement “gym” with me.

Fun kendama practice

I’ve manage to get to the point where I can get through my speed ladder trick list for Dama at the Pond. This kitchen vibe was fun with the fruits, vegetables, knives, watches and tea. :)

Fun with Jewels at the farm markets

We hit a couple others this past week. WOW, that BLT looks good, but the food truck was closed when we went by. I liked the old flatbed truck and Farmall tractor too! The tiny eggplants made for a cute pic as well.

Great satire about Ohio 🤪

10 reasons to move to Ohio.  I love living here BECAUSE some of these reasons!

Here’s the real question, what Ohio city is depicted in the lower left skyline shot…?  I’ll give you a hint, lots of them haha. A pretty cool use of AI graphics I guess.