Year 13, Week 13, Day 0ne (week 689)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
04-20-13 Saturday
   
    85 degrees, high humidity in the morning, mostly cloudy with high plates, good weather most of the day. A line of thunder bumpers, part of a front passing over us, came from the Everglades and rushed to the coast in the afternoon. dropping enough liquid sunshine for water to be flowing off the walkways. This weather report is brought to you by the City of Pompano Department of Tourism.
   
We hit several yard sales right after breakfast    and I picked up a soup mug cup. Later, we heard that a friend was having a yard sale so we went to her house and I picked up a kitchen knife sharpener. I really did not need it but for a friend and it was cheap enough, it was worth bringing home. I do have some knives that are not as sharp as I would like them to be.
I used the knife sharpener in the evening but did not quite get the knife right. It is sharper but not with the edge I am after.

 
 My soup bowl mug. It says "Pick me  up." I use these all the time both at home and at work.

 
My knife sharpener. 


 Mom found a gas station that had gas for $2.39 a gallon when other stations had $2.45 a gallon. I went there and gassed up also. I have a habit of thanking shops for being open. The guy admitted that they were shutting down this weekend, and will be closed for three months for a complete remodeling. My guess is that they were selling their gas cheep to empty their tanks as much as possible.
I then went to a restaurant supply store. I was kind of hoping for the equipment, but what is was was the food in commercial quantities. I drooled all the way through the place. Most of the stuff would take me a couple years to use up, but they did have stuff I use at good prices. I did pick up a few items. I do not know how the one pound bags of chips appeared in my basket at check-out but it was too far to walk to return them to the shelves and I don’t like having them put it back on the shelf so I purchased them.  When I need stuff that I know they have in my sizes and prices, I will go back there.

Mom had a project she wanted to do. I ended up laying down for about an hour, she laid down for a couple hours.
She will have plenty of sand left over from the sewer project and needed a new  bin to contain the sand. She will use the sand for her plants. She uses the sand in her pots and zaps it up fairly quickly.
She had a bag that she rescued from the back of my truck when I purchased it and put it over a four by six plywood sheet with a frame on the underside that was once a model railroad. We fitted the bag, just barely fit, over the plywood and stapled it in place. Mom checked after the heavy downpours we got in the afternoon and she said there was five gallons of water in the folds of the bag. She wants the plywood to last a while
We were getting drips as we were finishing up the bag over the plywood.
That ended our day outside.

Saturdays tend not to be good for woodworking. Too many things going on.
Tomorrow, I figure Mom will have me help her with the bin, but I do want to do some wood working. I have somewhere in my house some plastic sheeting. If I can find it, I will bring it to Mom's for her to use.

I will see what actually happens tomorrow.




Year 13, Week 13, Day Two (week 689)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
04-21-13 Sunday
   
    87 degrees most of the day, good breeze cut the heat, some humidity. Mostly blue sky that became solid in the afternoon as thunder bumpers formed over the Everglades. At that time, the temps dropped to 83.
   
    I stopped at HOME DEPOT on the way to Mom's house. I have an old gift card burning my pocket. I also could not find what Mom did with the roll of plastic sheeting I had when she cleaned my house while I was in the hospital. I could not find it. She moved everything so it was not in any of the three likely places or eight other possible sites. That gave me the excuse to go to Home Depot.
I walked three quarters of the store. I found the sheeting I needed, six mils, and then found feet real cheep for my quad cane, the cane has four feet at the bottom so it stands on its own. In the tool area, I then found some bits for my dremmel and for my drill. I REALLY don't need more but you know how it is. One was a pair of bits.





 feet for my cane, dremmel cutting bits, drill grinding bits.


I gave the pair of cutting bits a test in my dremmel, carving a few moments on my dragon carving. It cuts pretty good. I lost one for a while but as I was packing things up, I found that it rolled under the handle of the plastic case of one of my dremmels.
the bits do eat wood, but being square bottom, requires some handling to avoid leaving a straight line in the surface as you work.

I had to diginto the shed. Mom needed a staple gun and I knew exactly where it was. I have a tool box in there that is covered with tools, wood and junk. I pulled everything off of it. It has a small box locked on top and I unlocked and removed that, no the staple gun was not in there.
I then unlocked the lid of the larger box, which required prying some folded up Nagahide sheeting back to get to the latch itself on the back side. I found the staple gun on the top shelf. I did look below the shelf to see what was in there that might be of use. Nothing. I then had to reverse the process and put everything back.
Of the wood that was on top of the pile, I checked for bugs having fun in them and only one was bad. The rest was all right. We have some sheeting up in the "rafters" and I can see signs that the bugs are having fun up there. I really need to take all that down and toss the sheets that the bugs are loving and put the rest back.

My brother was up and was filling the septic tank with

Mom and I took the sheeting and the staple gun and added another layer of plastic over the framed plywood. that I think, will last a while in the weather. The plastic will degrade and come apart, but the plywood will last quite a few years before it starts showing signs of rot. The longer, the better.
I helped mom get the plywood back to where the bin is, at the back fence. We positioned it where she wanted it, then I took the post hole digger and started digging a hole for a post. She had me move it and I had to cut some plants to get to the dirt. then she had me move it again. I dug down a ways and she decided to pound her stakes into the hole I dug rather than have me dig farther. She packed dirt back into the hole around the post .We positioned another smaller sheet of plywood for the side and by then my leg was starting to complain and I was puffing.
I am not used to any kind of work and am completely out of shape.
I rested a bit, then laid down and napped for about half an hour.

When I got up, My brother and mom were done with their projects. There are still several tons of sand in front of Mom's house. My brother finished filling the septic tank. More sand will be used for grading and whatever is left will go to mom's dirt bin.

I did not do the woodworking I planned on doing. I did grind just a tiny bit on my dragon carving, but accomplished nothing as I was just testing a grinding bit.

Next weekend, I have a children's birthday party to go to. That will cut the day short. I will be less apt to make a mess on Saturday. Sunday, though, I do hope to send sawdust flying, either on the lathe or on the dragon.

I will see what I actually do next weekend.