In My "Spare" Time: Year 18, Week 44, Day One (week 982)

Year 18, Week 44, Day One (week 982)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
11-10-18 Saturday

74 early morning 87 late afternoon, a little tinkle on the grass during the night but dry during the day. Clouds appeared and disappeared from time to time.. A breeze made it nice.

A friend showed up at the Restaurant when we were nearing the end of our breakfast so we invited him to join us and we sat and talked until he was done. It made breakfast really nice. We had seen in the paper (there are two pompano area papers that are about ten pages on average and they cover really local events) that there was a multi family yard sale. We decided to check it out. It was starting at nine and we figured they would be open by the time we got there.
We hit several yard sales. I had my hands on a number of items but talked myself out of getting them. I did end up with a pipe clam kit. It has the jaws. You have to add your own pipe.
I also found a NOOK. This is one of those “white paper” text readers. You download books onto them and read them on it. The older woman said she the text was too small and her husband said that he would change it but never did. She was happy with her phone. When we got back, I plugged it in to charge and when I could turn it on, I found the documentation on it and read about 35 pages before I found the format it uses. I added a couple books on it. It could not address the web site it was designed to get books from. I was able to use my computer to get books from Gutenberg.org and load them.
I later found it was easy to change the size of the text and to change the font it used. None of them did what better than what was already on there, I was really after so I set it to the default again. This is supposed to have a really good battery and get days of reading out of a charge. I dug out my Sony reader tablet and found it uses the same formats and loaded a lot of books on it too. I now have the entire Oz series, some 10 books, on both of them. They were not the books I was really after, but they do for now.
Mom happened to find exactly what she needed for some projects. She was really happy.
Once in a while, you get demented yard sale people. One person stuck a really cute teddy bear in a chair at a condo yard sale. How sick can you get, to show a teddy bear in a natural habitat rather mixed in within a bag with all other kinds of stuffies. It is easy to ignore a bag but it is really hard to ignore a lone teddy bear sitting in a chair begging to go home with you. It took all my will power to avoid showing any interest in it. How can people be that cruel?
It is fun seeing what people have for sale. It is also interesting to hear why they are having a sale. Some are moving either to another part of town or out of state. One family had a flood in their house and had to get rid of a lot of stuff so it could be repaired. I did not ask the details of the flood. I heard them telling someone else. Usually, when someone asks me how I am doing while on yard sales, I say, “I’m here!” they like that. I always say good morning to them when I come up. Sometimes it helps me pick out who is running it. Once I said good morning to someone and he said I was the first person to say that and he would give me a deal if I got anything. Yard sales are hard work. Hauling the stuff out and later putting things back, and then you got those who want to haggle when you have a fixed price and you have idiots and bubbling fools coming by. I try to be pleasant at all times.
It was a nice not to have millions of candidate signs out and about. One could actually see yard sale signs. While political season is entertaining, it does make things a real bother.

I decided to mow the lawn of Mom’s neighbor. The back really needed it. There was a section between the fence line and the hot tub slab that is near the property line. I decided I needed to hit that area. I had to work slowly as the weeds in back were long. I noticed that the back area which I never mowed was as high as the stuff in the rest of the lawn. I would push the mower into the “grass” and then back out then push it in. Some of the flower stalks of the weeds are stiff. I basically hacked at them with the mower, on the first pass then diced them up when I went over them again. Once I had cleared some area, I went back and forth. I had at least half an overlap of what I already mowed in order to get some more of the long stuff that was just knocked down.
When I got to the back strip. I had to stop and move some pieces of wood, a piece of concrete and a brick. I then caught on something and it stopped the mower. It turned out to be a bundle of wire. I have no idea what it was too. I ended up pulling it out of the grass easily. It was like it was laid there and the grass grew over it.
I went in and got an office chair and sat down, unplugged the lawnmower and unwrapped the wire from the lawnmower blade. Other than one thick strand, they were all wrapped around one blade so I was able to slide it off the end of the blade. There was a lot of grass built up beneath the underside so I pulled a lot of that off. Some came in clumps but some I just left stuck to the plate.
I finished that stretch of grass, then took a break. I went back out and finished the rest of the back yard except beneath the tree. The grass did not grow near as much there. I just hit two tall clumps and left it as that. The front yard needs to be mowed again.

I baked one of the lasagna I made last week and we had that for lunch. There was one layer where I got the order of ingredients wrong, but it did not matter. I had used no-boil lasagna noodles and was afraid they would not get enough juice to soften. Other than that one layer separated from the rest, the lasagna came out really good. Mom liked it. The sauce is what makes all the difference in the world. I will not worry about any of the others. They will cook and taste good just as well.

Right after lunch I headed for a mid day nap and really needed it.

Year 18, Week 44, Day two (week 982)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
11-11-18 Sunday

We had some drizzles early morning but things dried out as the day got started. Mom can wait a day or two before she has to water all the potted plants. 74 early morning 87 late afternoon. Clouds appeared and disappeared from time to time.. A breeze made it nice.

I gathered all my dremmel equipment and basically dumped it out. Somehow I accumulated five dremmels. Two are single speed. One of them has a special power cord attachment that allows me to adjust the speed.
After I dumped everything out, I started putting things back together. I actually did it wrong. I basically put it all together, rather than splitting them up between the different dremmel kits. I will have to dump things out again and split things up properly.
I found things I forgot I had and found things I had searched for and figured I never had them. I found I had a lifetime supply of the little drum sanders and sanding sleeves. I have a lot of bits for holding cutting disks. In my search, I found one of the adjustable chucks that dremmel has. I now have four of the dremmels with an adjustable chucks.. One of the dremmels will have to work with the replaceable chuck jaws, where you pick it according to the diameter shaft of the bit.

One of the wooden chairs I got at a yard sale or on the side of the road, I cannot remember which, had weathered so bad that mom removed the back and tossed the arch. She gave me the rungs. The tenons that went into the seat had rotted and would not hold. This chair had sat out in the weather in back all year long and it was not in great condition in the first place. I had repaired the back once. I had intended to do it better but never did.
I sat on it today quite a few times. One time when I sat down, I turned and heard a crack. I changed chairs. The tenon holding the leg in the seat broke. Mom will toss the chair. We can get another some place if the opportunity comes up.
I considered making a chair like that but I am not out back long enough to make it worth the effort.

I have a metal tool box for my main dremmel kit. I found I had half the lower area filled with bamboo and wooden dowels. There was a time I was making crochet hooks and kept the stock with the dremmel since I used the a cutting bit to carve in the hook on the rod. It was also a good place to keep the dowels from getting damaged. A couple months ago, I wished I had known the dowels were in there. I put them in a temporary place.

I was done with the dremmel stuff about the time my brother was heading home.
I wanted to work on ornaments but this felt like dealing with the dremmels needed to be done. I brag about how far I am with my ornaments. That time disappears vaster than you would believe.

My brother made some hold downs for the mini lathe. He also gave me a bunch of different length screws with it so you use just the right size screws that don’t stick way up above the work you are holding onto . Some other week I will have to include pictures of these in use. Mom wants to build a lighthouse for in front of her house. She had one years ago, but it finally rotted and fell apart. My brother is going to make it out of sheet aluminum .
She and he were making a mock-up out of cardboard to see what it would look like. They designed it as a six sided light house, but in playing with it, they overlapped two sides and made it five sided and with their patterns, it developed a better angle/ they could use the pattern and made only five sides, or change the angle of the pattern and make it six sided. They will look at it and think about it over the week.
I will turn a disk that will be the walkway for it. I might try to talk mom into letting me turn the roof also. She has a large jar that will be the light, and will have a light inside, she will put in dowels and run wire or string between them for the rail.

My brother has a problem with his big machining lathe. There is no fine control when using it in the machine position, with the chuck facing down. He took a small hand crank grinder I had and is going to see if he can use it to give him fine gearing for the controls. He might cut it up, or he might disassemble it. He was looking at the crank drill press for this but the grinder seems better for his needs.

I have a turning club meeting this week on Thursday. I will show off my drum sticks since they were turned this month. This will be the last meeting of the year. We will have a party on December first, but won’t have any meetings until January. I have no idea where we will meet.

I will see what happens next weekend.

1846

My five demmels. The two on the left are single speed. the one on the far left has a special cord that has a slide switch to adjust the speeds. the second and third from the right has the chucks that have to have different inserts for different diameter bit shafts. the other three have chucks that go from wide to nothing. I later found another chuck.

A bun