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.
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