2021-08-12 — Cory’s Coming!!!

So my friend Cory told me yesterday that he was thinking about coming out for a visit.

And then today he called to tell me he was on the road headed my way. 😁🥳😊

Wahoo!!!

He’s in Cheyenne, WY at the moment, so he’ll probably get in sometime late tomorrow night, I would guess. Let’s see if I can get back in time to be home when he gets there.

That’ll be the plan.

I tell him periodically how I wish he were closer. I don’t really do things with friends here in Arkansas. I just… work. And My friend Matt moved to San Antonio, and Cory and Robyn are in Utah. John is in Virginia. Matt C is in Cambodia. So… yeah… I work and work and work and don’t play… pretty much ever.

All work and no play makes for a dull little boy over here. 🙃

Anyway, I’m excited for Cory to come. He’s heard me talk about how much I love Haven Hill, so it’ll be fun to show him around a bit.

Got up relatively early today, comparatively. I got the fuel pump at the lake job done, which had been hanging over my head for a few days. That one was a bit frustrating at times. My good tongue from yesterday hit a bit of a… profane streak during that job. The fuel pump was a super ridiculous design buried in the tank in such a way that you have to put your arm inside the tank at an angle to get the pump dislodged from it’s bracket thingy and then pull it out the small opening. And… wouldn’t you know it, the metal on the tank opening is razor sharp, so I was mixing blood with whatever else. I have cuts and scrapes and shaved off hair and skin up and down my right hand and arm. Lots of them.

Fun fun fun.

And my hand fuel transfer pump once again bit the dust with me 30 minutes from the nearest parts supplier, so it wasted lots of time and forced me to invent ways of getting the gas out, not to mention I thought I had three five-gallon gas cans with me, which would have been plenty, but no, I only had two, and one was mostly full.

So… that was interesting. I drank my water all down and filled my water bottles with gas and resorted to all sorts of other strategies to get the tank drained and cleaned.

On top of that, it was beastly hot today. Mid 90s with super high humidity. I know there are plenty of places that are worse than that, but for me, it’s bad. Gratefully, I was in a garage for that job, but I was still soaked. Soaked.

After that, I met my Hill Brother in law Mike up at my bulldozer. He took a look at it, and we’re crafting a plan to get it fixed. He looked at everything that needs to be welded, and it seemed to me like he’s pretty confident he can weld it all up nice, so I’m hopeful. Would be nice to finally get that going.

After that, I went out and did just two more jobs. The heat really took it out of me today. The second job was a no start on a 2006 Honda Accord, which, of course is usually the starter on those, and it was again this time. It’s nice to do the same job on the same generation of car. Working on every make and model really has its drawbacks. I’m always learning. Everything is new all the time. Simple things are more complicated because you don’t know exactly how it works on the given car. So it’s nice when things like today happen.

After that, I did something a little different–a pre-sale inspection. That was pretty cool. You know you have an honest seller if they want to know what’s wrong with it before they sell it. Cool.

So I did that, and then, totally beat, drained, exhausted, etc., as I was, I was able to push off one job until Saturday, and I realized that the other job I’d said Thursday or Friday, so that was nice. I did the business I needed to do at AutoZone, and I went home.

Unfortunately, I’d made a nice little mistake earlier today when I was trying to prepare to take the oil to the recycler, I was siphoning the little bit of water out of the bottom of the 5 quart jug, as you can’t dump oil with water into their container. but I think Mike showed up right then, and I didn’t realized it was continuing to siphon the oil out onto the driveway as well until well after I’d left to go to my second job, and my mom called me to ask about it.

Ugh. All five quarts of oil drained onto the driveway gravel. Lovely.

So when I got home, my mom having already shoveled up a ton of oil soaked gravel into the dump cart, I shoveled up a bunch more, poured five ish gallons of old stale gas over it to wash it off, drained out the oil mixed gas, shoveled the gas-covered rock back onto the driveway, and lit it on fire, letting the gas burn off the oil.

Not the best, but I’d rather it burn off that way than pollute the ground water. No good options, really.

Anyway, so that took a little while and was a tiresome end to an exhausting day, but I’m grateful to my mom for shoveling up a ton of gravel before I even got home.

So… there you go.

Cory is coming!!! I should have him share his Google location with me, so I know where he is on his trip. Cory! Want to send me your Google location? 🙃

Oh, one more victory for Mayo. My mom’s friend has been at risk of death with a condition her doctors couldn’t figure out and didn’t seem to be taking very seriously. She finally went over to Mayo.

24 hours. That’s all it took for them to figure out what was wrong, and now she can eat and breathe again, and she’ll be fine the rest of her life as long as she sticks with the meds she needs for the autoimmune issue she has.

Wish every place was run like Mayo runs their places. I was thinking about going for my weird issue, but I’m starting to… dare I say it, get a handle on it? We’ll see.

Three days now, and today’s been the easiest of the three to let go of the TV/movie junk.

Progress. Bits and pieces. Here and there.

And all is good between me and my friend I wasn’t so kind to with my reactive, vindictive choices. As expected, no intent to harm on their end, which makes my reactions all the more… foolish. But… moving on from that. Water under the bridge, across the field, down the canyon, and into the sea.

Lift the World.

~ stephen

p.s. Cory’s coming!!!

p.p.s Happy Friday he 13th. 🤪