In other news, Andy is back at Daton Plumbing :)

I think we are all happy about that.  

In these pics, I was helping him clean out his old truck and get it all into my trailer.  It barely fit, and that only because we played a serous game of Tetris will all his packout!  Afterwards, we celebrated with coneys at Skyline while watching the sunset. 

Andy got reposted by Milwaukee❣️

He called me late at night last weekend when he realized they’d posted the clip he’d made of him using his threader. I went on the Facebook marketplace adventure trip to Indiana with him to get it.  I remember it was one of his first large purchases in this kind of deal and we were both a little nervous.  But it all checked out and has served him well.  Now he’s even “famous” with it 🤪

It’s a sweet setup too with the tripod and everything.  

Andy is wearing off on me…

Somehow this red stuff seems to multiply under the bench in my garage…

I did find out that Home Depot was running a 19% sale on Milwaukee Packout stuff.  I made a little rolly cart/stool thingy (top pic) that doubles as a place to clip in all my wrenches (front left stack in the lower pic).  So now most of my stuff is on wheels and pretty easy to get to under the bench and in front of my car in the garage.

Here we go again…

No need to wonder why I might get frustrated and want to sell the thing, huh…?! Brandon offered to help me get my Jeep back to the shop (of course I had to sneak some cash into his truck for his time and fuel).  

I lost a tooth in the rear end pinion gear this time (was the ring gear last time).  The good points: I had a spare set of gears, I was able to figure out what was wrong with it myself, it’s something simple and fixable, and the current set is under warranty.  The bad points, mo money for the labor to get it down there and get it fixed.  

I found Larry’s time card…!

My dad was the church treasurer for many years when we were kids.  Larry was the Janitor there for his first job out of high school.  At one point I had several boxes full of all the time cards from the church staff, I saved Larry’s just for fun.  While recently purging things, I decided keeping one would be sufficient at this point, in a picture.  

I like seeing the way he tallied the hours and the minutes separately, converted the hours to minutes to add them all up, then back to hours.  For example on Wednesday, 45 mins to get you to 10 o’clock.  Two hours (shown in minutes, 120) to get you to noon, then 39 more mins until he clocked out.  So 3.4 hours for the day.  Funny, that’s the same way he showed me to add time when I was filling out my first time cards as a teenager.

Another method I learned (at Environment Control, the janitorial services company where I first worked) was to round to the nearest 6 minutes.  Each six mins was a tenth of an hour.  So if I worked 3 hrs and 10 mins, it would round to 3.2 hours (3 hours and twelve mins).

It’s fun to think about Larry and Dad having this relationship back before Larry was any more a part of our lives then just a guy in the youth group at church. 🤪 He’s been a great, fun addition to the family in so many ways!

Here’s to the good ole days…

Cool clouds to the South during a rainy sunset a few days back

Andy fixing me up…

I had these orange scales for one of my balisongs, but they needed side jimping to match the handles.  Andy thought we could figure out a way to do it on the drill press.  He ended up doing it free hand and they turned out great.  I liked watching the concentration and attention to detail as he did it.  

Silhouette of a black cat…

All the detail and color in Julie’s snail is amazing❣️

 She took this really cool pic.

Just a cool setting for a pic as I was cleaning it up

The dogs “helping” me wash my jeep

We were all getting choked off by the smoke from the Canadian wildfires… You can see it hanging in the air in the background of this pic. 

The dog seem to really enjoy being out in the yard with me while I’m puttering around. I guess it’s something different for them. They never know quite what to expect, but always seem happy to experience it.

Redneck engine starter…

For some reason, my inherited pressure washer was giving me fits the last time I needed to use it.  It normally starts right up and runs fine. I think it had gotten a little damp in all the humidity in my portable garages. In the process of trying to get it started, the pull rope broke too.  I wanted to see if it would start before i spent a bunch of time fixing the rope.  I noticed a hex nut on the engines shaft, so I thought I would try this approach. It pretty much worked like a champ. I just had to be careful to commit to spinning it fast enough and pull off as it started.  It worked every time except once when the socket stayed on, I quickly cut the engine before it could fly off and hurt something or somebody… I got it all running, got the rope fixed, and proceeded to use it.

A great Bassett pic!

Chloe had the perfect pose and I managed to capture it too❤️

My four generation collection is complete!

I found one of the watches the kids wore when they were young.  Perfect.  Now I have my grandparents on both sides, dad’s on both sides, several of mine, and even the ones my boys wore (this one and one of my dad’s).  Pretty cool :)

Weed eating the pond at camp Jabez again

The summer camps are winding down, but the work still needs done.  It’s nice to be able to serve there, outdoors, and pray for the kids, the counselors, and the workers while I do.