(written on the 23rd)
The memory goes so quickly.
Gosh, what did I do yesterday…
Let’s see… Jim told me where he wanted the shed that I donating to Haven Hill. It’s going to go on the north side of the greenhouse. In order to put it there, One of the trees that’s next to the greenhouse needed to be trimmed up a good bit.
Joe I started trimming the tree a bit, and as I was dragging branches back and forth, I managed to walk by a bumblebee nest, which they were not happy about, and they decided to make me not happy about it either. Got attacked by two of them, managing to only get stung by one of the two and fending off the other one as I ran away.
Bees that nest in the ground are… annoying. 🙃
Anyway, so over the next hour or two or so, At first fully dedicated, and then periodically, A took care of the hive.
Don’t like killing things, Pat a hive right next to the greenhouse and where I’m going to have to mow regularly is no bueno.
Last time it was yellow jackets who took issue with me mowing over their nest.
Anyway, so I did that, I cleared out a bunch of Vines from the edge of the woods on the creek side of the greenhouse, cut down a bunch more things, and dragged branches and what not to the burn pile.
I also got the oil pan put back on my truck, and I’m just crossing my fingers that it doesn’t leak. I gave general motors kudos an oil pan gasket that took almost a couple decades to start leaking, but I’m going to take those kudos back because of what kind of ridiculousness it is to change the oil pan gasket.
On the bottom of the oil pan, there’s a message that’s actually part of the casting of the metal that tells you how absolutely important it is to follow the service instructions exactly when changing the oil pan gasket.
So you go look at the service instructions, and it tells you that you need to line up the oil pan and transmission perfectly so that it’s 100% even, flush. And then you’re supposed to get a straight edge to check that, and then you’re supposed to tighten everything down, and then you’re supposed to get a feeler gauge and make sure that nothing larger than 4,000ths of an inch is able to be fit through the joining of the two surfaces.
😶
Are you kidding me? It’s an oil pan gasket!
Good crap.
And guess whose oil pan and transmission wouldn’t line up no matter how you sliced it? Yeah, mine.
If you got it flush on the one side, then it wasn’t on the other. If you got it flush on that side, then it wasn’t on the first side. And if you tightened anything down, it screwed it all up. I don’t know if the transmission is what is screwed up or what, but I’ll tell you what, there was no lining up those two so that they were flush.
So at this point, I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping against Hope that somehow the oil pan gasket won’t leak, and that there are no issues because all of that lining up perfectly is supposed to be for structural rigidity.
😶
Good. Freaking. Crap.
Anyway, did that. I’m going to let everything sit for 24 hours so the gasket maker has its full curing time before I decide to try and put oil in it. I’ll put oil in it and cross my fingers.
Good gravy.
Worked on organizing and thinning out and what not.
I also aired up the tires in the lawn mower and mowed around my little area.
Almost finished cleaning out my white work van. I decided to call him Loaf. I’m nearly finished cleaning out loaf. The only thing left is the huge pile of bolts and screws that I keep in the front.
Spend a whole bunch more time cleaning up and organizing. I started cleaning out ET and getting everything inside organized and stowed away. ET is going to be my rolling storage shed for all my tools. And then when it’s time to take another road trip, if I do one with my mom, then I’ll take all the tools out of ET, and we’ll convert it into our mobile hotel again. 🙂
There’s a non-zero chance that we’ll be doing another trip like we did last year, come late summer/fall. If we do, it’s going to be a much longer and bigger trip, as we’ll do much of the same of what we did last time, but this time we would also be going to New England to hopefully do some boots-on-the-ground genealogy stuff.
Wouldn’t be surprised if that was a 3- or 4-month trip. 😶
Anyway, my angel mom swung by. I don’t remember exactly why she stopped by, but she stopped by and helped me a good bit with the cleaning up and organizing and what not.
Thx, mama. 🙂
After we got everything relatively rainproofed, as there was a decent chance that it was going to rain overnight, and even with 8% and 17% chances last time, we got downpoured on, she helped me rain proof everything and then took me out to dinner.
Thanks, mama. 🙂
x2
The rest of the night was spent in Rover, watching YouTube videos and planning tomorrow.
It was nice to feel like I made real progress today organizing and sorting things.
🥳
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 