Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Quitchyerbitchin' and some progress

Damn! I've been sanding drywall this morning and it's killin' my shoulders. Flat out sucks! Put it on, take it off. Repeat as needed. Back in the 80's I dislocated my right shoulder in a major fight. Then add in the years running jackhammers, sledgehammers and shovels, weight lifting and miscellaneous drunken sports such as full contact wiffle ball and you get a fucked up body. Well now all I have left to do today is mow 2 yards. I should say I'm only doing two today. Rain is coming in and I have to get my primary yard done and that of the paying customer. I usually have 4 to do on Monday. Any way I'm already beat and I'm not done yet. OK enough of the bitchin.
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I planted a few tomato plants this year and I have been getting 1-3 ripe ones every day. Now I'm waiting on the next round of little ones to grow up and keep me in 'maters for a while longer.
I bought a bunch of habenaro's at the farmers market. I'll use them to make up another batch of my honey habenaro sauce. Pretty good stuff. I even bought those little bottles (they call them woozies) to put it in.

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I dipped into my stash this morning and ordered a 6 speed tranny for the Harley. A buddy of mine has a shop and told me he'd sell it to me at cost. One of his vendors had an Ultima polished 6 speed for 599. It should be in tomorrow. Now I just need to rebuild the motor.

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I got the stock for the Ranger .22 sanded and stained. I'm of two minds as to how it came out. It is birch and birch stocks are notorious for taking stain in some strange patterns. This one came out with some broad tiger stripping on one side. In the light it almost glows around the edges of the dark bands. We'll see what the neighbor thinks. I receive the Oxpho blue from the Brown Truck Of Joy yesterday. So this project is coming together. It ought be pretty nice for a freebie.

Friday, August 27, 2010

I'm back again!

I've had a lot of crap going on lately. My brother came back from Kalifornia and I helped pack up his house for moving. That was most of a week. Then the following week I had a week long sale to get rid of the stuff he left behind. That didn't work out very well. Then the owner of the apartment I am going to manage flew in from Kalifornia and he and I worked on cleaning up the mess that the last pigs, sorry, I mean tenants left behind. Filthy,filthy animals. Based on what I have learned from this particular adventure I will never rent property to anyone. So any way, there are three weeks that I have lost in working on the Juniper property. Add into the mix the 4 properties that I have to mow every week, the p.o.s Caddilac that needed repair every time we turned around, a funeral and the general intrusions of life that affect us all and I have not had much time for anything at all. After having the opportunity to spend a grand on the Caddi in a two week period we chose, instead, to trade it in. Cherry Pie ended up with an '09 Chevrolet HHR. We got a great buy on a low mileage car with the remainder of the factory warranty left. So far it seems like we got the better end of the deal. The HHR has every single thing the Caddi had with the exception of 400+ horsepower, leather interior and some shoulder room.
For relaxation I have been working on the neighbors Ranger .22. I spent 4 hours one evening filing the barrel until it was free of pits and the file marks from a previous attempt at dressing it up. I then spent 3 hours the next night polishing the barrel , by hand, to a 360 grit. I also managed to fit the steel butt plate to the stock and straighten out the lines of the butt. I've ordered a new bottle of Oxpho Blue from Brownells to finish the barreled action and the little bits and pieces.
I even managed to squeeze in a little mudding and sanding over at Juniper or as Cherry calls it, Jupiter.
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A few weeks ago I went to a local estate sale and found, in a pile of crappy knives, a real gem. It is a Cold Steel Voyager X2 folding knife. Talk about a large size pocket knife! Thirteen inches of knife that fits in your pocket. 13! I had to remove the paint someone had applied to the blade and do a general clean up of the knife as well as polish the blade. This is an 80 dollar knife in most places. I got it for the amazing price of 3 dollars. After applying the Lansky to it, it is now razor sharp.
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I have to confess, In addition to all the stuff that's been going on, I have been a little out of sorts. I have realized that November will be 2 years of unemployment. 2 freakin' years. I have applied for everything from custodian to project manager and have gotten nothing. Zip. Nada. The apartment gig is very questionable. I only get paid when there is actual income from the renters and we just gave all of them the boot due to lack of payment of rents. And the owner is also unemployed and can't pay me for the work I just did. He did come up with some bucks to compensate me for past unpaid work. The place needs some work and the owner wants more work done to attract better tenants but I have a hard time working on a credit basis. I think my mom would call that a hope and a prayer. So Cherry and I have been racking our brains to come up with some cash making venture for me to engage in. If we can get the Juniper house done and sell the Kimball house we will have no debt other than the HHR. But those are two large things that have to happen quickly.