What did you do today?

[highup]

I bought a whole chicken at the grocery store the other day for almost $10. Used to be $3? A lot of restaurants around here have been out of chicken wings. Beef has always been expensive here so at least that hasn’t changed.

Wood is crazy expensive right now. I’ve been waiting for the slow down to hit because of it but so far so good. Luckily I’m working on custom homes on the lake. Those people have a little more money than someone buying a D.R. Horton or a Ryan cookie cutter house.

Our local Fred Meyer Kroger company, always has theirs at 2 for $10. You have to buy two of them. It's kind of funny that you can buy a roasted chicken take it home and pull all the meat off the bones and when you compare the cost per pound for lunch meat like bologna, the price difference is incredible.
......and besides, it tastes like chicken.

 

[highup]

CJ, I love your wall art!

Last night one of my cousin's called-- she's the only female cousin on my dad's side. There are only 2 surviving 1st cousins- the one that called and her older brother. She went through a nasty divorce a few years ago and has been trying to rebuild her life. Guy was such a creep that she couldn't get much out of the divorce. Legally she could have gotten more but her attorney was convinced the ex would literally murder my cousin if she asked for more. He actually tried to leave her with nothing and tried to prevent her from having ANY contact with the kids. Ended up with her getting the house (which she had to sell) and 50/50 custody of the kids--much to the chagrin of the kids because he's a malignant narcissist. She said that she didn't realize how bad it had been until she was free of him. Said taking 20+hours of college classes while working two jobs & being a single mom living paycheck to paycheck was less stressful than sharing a room with him. I really wish I could go kick his a**. He's one of those guys who thinks women are lesser so he treated the daughters horribly. The older one no longer speaks to him and the younger one is suicidal and started harming herself because of him. The boys turned out OK but are not happy with how he treats people. Anyway, she's bringing the oldest to see the paternal grandfather (without the ex knowing bc he will crap a brick) and will be in Louisiana. She wants to meet up with us next weekend. She's a bit nervous because she knows her ex might cause problems if he finds out. Especially since he's racist and the daughter's fiance is Hispanic.

I will probably go to the grocery store today and get potstickers. Maybe pop in to see my friend before going to the store. I'll have to see when my brother wakes up if he wants to go with me. He'll be cranky because he needs to take the trash out in the kitchen again.

Watched some videos on Youtube. This one was linked in a woodworking group:


I immediately thought of Highup and his ingenuity on making and improving stuff.
There's another video on how to make a log lift but I haven't watched it just yet.

That guy has pretty much thought of everything. My first thought was to put a long threaded rod and use a drill instead of using that cable and pulley. Just after I thought of that he said you needed to do the hand crank so you can feel what was going on.
So then I thought if you could hook a tachometer to the chainsaw, you could watch the change speed on the tachometer as you pull the trigger on the drill. It wouldn't be hard to figure out what RPM was too much of a load.
Using his cable system with that crank I would make one modification to make it more comfortable to use. I would Mount the crank at an angle so it was more comfortable to operate. You would of course need one more pulley to redirect the cable.
That guy is pretty sharp. I'll have to check out some of the other videos.

 

[highup]

I keep hearing about this ghost inventory of wood in Canada. You tellin me they’re holding out on you too?

You listen to Coast to Coast Live with George Noory too.

 

[C.J.]

You listen to Coast to Coast Live with George Noory too.

Conspiracy theories aren’t so wacko anymore. Art Bell was The Godfather.

Chicken and pork were dirt cheap here since we have a lot of both kinds of farms. Red meat was at a premium. Right about now Les Schwab would make a killing on sellin tires if they had their free beef sale going on. I miss my West Coast companies and their attention to detail. Don’t miss the prices though. You really do get what you pay for.

 

[Floorist]

Sold my Harbor Freight Hercules 12 inch miter saw and stand for $300. Done with any home improvement that would need it. Wood is too expensive anyway. When you can buy furniture cheaper than you can build it, it’s time to free up space in the garage. I have to say though, I got a lot of good use out of it.

I would hate to part with my wood working shop, but lumber will need to come down a bunch to use it.
I have 2 drill presses, 3 band saws, jointer, planer, 4 scroll saws, miter saw, stand up sander, router table, a $1200. cabinet saw and many, many hand tools. Don't know if it would bring anything as high as wood is or not.

 

[highup]

I remember Art Bell on my camping trips. Camping was for photography purposes so I always picked logging landings for the highest view in the morning and evening. Late at night Art Bell came in pretty good in the hills east of me. His listeners were pretty fun to listen to.

 

[highup]

Well my u-joints, steering and lower ball joints have grease. I wanted to do that before the job I just finished because that probably totaled but 1600 miles back and forth to work in my little beater V6 S10. Didn't seem to have any trouble halling five, 20 foot rolls of heavy carpet even though there's a couple of 1 mile long uphill grades. Even with the tailgate down there was still 5 ft sticking off the back end of the truck.
None of the bearings were dry, so they're ready for a lot more miles.
Need to check brakes next and my upper and lower ball joints. I'm not sure what I'm going to run into there.

 

[Jon]

It's approaching 10:00 a.m. and we're about to hit 70° already. I'm going to take a stab that we hit 80 or maybe a tiny bit higher than that today. I suppose I'd rather have $80 than to have minus anything.
That's why it's not called global warming anymore. It's climate change because that covers all bases.

highup it was actually on our news today that Oregon is going to get very hot today

 

[highup]

highup it was actually on our news today that Oregon is going to get very hot today

Makes me super happy that I live on the coast.
I got up to 83° today. 120 mi away, they're holding Olympic trials in Eugene Oregon. I think they got up to 112 today. Can you imagine running a track and field event at 112°?
Looks like they will have 95 tomorrow.
I crawled under my truck today and greased the u-joints. It was 82° at the time and of course under the truck I'm in the shade. Still was not pleasant but it needed to get done. It's been a long time since I put them in and I just wanted to be sure they weren't dry...... they weren't.

 

[highup]

I haven't been thinking about it much Jon, you must be getting kind of chilly this time of year.

 

[Jon]

I haven't been thinking about it much Jon, you must be getting kind of chilly this time of year.

Yeah the cat wants to hop into bed At least we dont get snow here maybe a frost a couple of times
In the middle of the North Island people who can travel, locals okay but no overseas travelers. Aussie has been shut again for open travel due to the outbreaks they have been having can go skiing along with the South Island ski fields

 

[zannej]

Mark Brown & Highup, that guy's videos are pretty cool. I liked the one with the suction tool used to carry stuff and how he modified it to work as a vacuum for other purposes. I wish I had access to that plastic material he uses but it's not sold in my area.
Highup, if you have a Youtube account, perhaps you can leave some comments about your ideas for improving the rig as it seems the guy actually listens to the suggestions from people.
Internet wasn't cooperating and my computer crashed. It locked up doing nothing for 5min straight so I finally had to do a hard reset (flipped the power switch on and off). I discovered if I flip it on and off quickly it reboots rather than just shutting down. I lost some stuff I hadn't saved but the computer was so frozen up I was going to lose it anyway. I think it's my hard drive getting hot. I need to switch to SSD so it won't overheat like that anymore.

Yesterday I took my brother and we visited our friend. I bought lunch for everyone and we sat around watching Avengers:Endgame and the 2nd episode of Loki. Some mooches (friend's ex's former stepbrothers- their dad was briefly married to her mom but they divorced) dropped by unannounced. The older one stole my friend's bike and broke into his house (the one that burned) years ago and my friend had to get a "stay away" order on him. Friend didn't see either of them for years and then one day he heard noise on the porch and the older one was there using drugs. Friend had to threaten to call the cops to get him to go away. Even though he has no relation to this mooch, the guy keeps coming by. He showed my friend his "new" car that had problems (I suspect he wanted my friend to offer to fix it bc he used to fix cars for people before he had a stroke). Guy finally left so we went back to lunch and watching stuff. Halfway through the movie the dude came back (without his brother) and wanted to "borrow" money. Friend told him he was broke & guy kept promising he would pay him back. Friend said "I don't have anything to give you- I'm broke. My wallet is empty". Then the dude turned to me and asked for $. I'm out of $ bc I gave the last of it to my friend to keep his internet on. I told him I didn't have any. He stood there babbling about how he didn't have enough gas to get where he was going & needed $. We told him. I think he thought we were lying to him. He finally left and we discussed how he had some nerve coming and asking to borrow money from people he stole from. Dude has no reason to be coming around but my friend is too nice to tell him to stay away. Anyway, we enjoyed our movie. Fat baby woke up after the movie so he was fed. My brother had an RX to pick up so we had to leave earlier than we'd wanted. Mom called me but I couldn't get my phone out before she hung up. She said what she wanted from the store -- which was on our list.

On the way to the store my brother started being rude & interrupting me. I told him he was being a b*** and he started arguing. I realized he was getting worked up so I started mocking him. Saying things in a higher pitched voice like "Awww. Baby having little b*** fit? Whiny little baby. WAaaaaaaah" and he started getting angrier and screamed & yelled profanities at me. I pointed out I was doing what he does to me when I try to talk to him. He denied it and kept having a fit. So I just laughed and kept mocking him until he finally cracked a smile and calmed down & we were cool by the time I parked. He went to get the potstickers while I got his RX. We checked out, got out of the store and then Mom called. She was screaming about how she'd been calling but we "refused" to answer. I told her the phones didn't ring & that we had no signal. She then pitched a fit (see where my brother gets it from) about wanting bread. I asked why she hadn't mentioned that she wanted it the first time she called. She said I should have known she wanted bread. So I had to go back in and found they were out of the kind she likes. Got a different kind instead. Surprisingly, she was OK with it. There was a 50/50 chance she would have screamed about me buying something other than what she wanted. I cooked some potstickers for her right then and then took a nap.

Mom's dog woke me up around 4am and I haven't been able to get back to sleep.

 

[Tom Picciani]

highup it was actually on our news today that Oregon is going to get very hot today

Lancaster, Pa is now going through the same thing. 80 by 9:00. High of 95 and humidity way up. But no rain! And I picked this past weekend to put in 2 trees and shovell 3 yards of mulch!

 

[zannej]

Jon, there is a sewist in NZ named Trish Newberry who was just talking about how it's winter there but most of her customers are in the US where it's summer so she's designing summer sewing patterns.

Tom, a longtime family friend of mine lives in Lancaster with his wife and kids. He's the one we visited when we went to the Hershey factory.

Kidney stone is kicking around again. It's always the same kidney. Sky just turned dark so I might lose internet. I was told by an internet tech that Starlink will be launched fully in 2 months. I see my internet just went out. LOL. I will have to post this when I get signal back.

 

[Tom Picciani]

I was born in South Philly so I still feel like that is where I come from. Love a good cheesesteak! But in Lancaster, I like certain things around here. The air is clean although with a certain tang to it during the growing season! And I have great neighbors.

 

[highup]

Lancaster, Pa is now going through the same thing. 80 by 9:00. High of 95 and humidity way up. But no rain! And I picked this past weekend to put in 2 trees and shovell 3 yards of mulch!

This town is northeast of me quite a ways. I take a guess at least 350 mi away. It's in the Columbia River gorge.
https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/USOR0299I think tomorrow is supposed to be 119

 

[zannej]

Watched another video from izzy who does the cool stuff. I need to find his videos on how he made the dinosaurs in the short blips. But this is a log lifter.
I can already spot some improvements it needs. I think if there was a rope that went to the top of the rig that had one of those pulley wheel like things for the rope to pass through it might add a little extra lifting power (but I could be mistaken) and it needed a cap/end on the thicker part like on a thread spindle to keep the rope from slipping off.

 

[Mark Brown]

That log has nothing on a full roll of marmoleum. He just needs some flooring installer buddies

 

[Incognito]

Where I live in SoCal is about 30 miles inland. It get Mf HOT starting roundabout this time of year. 100 degrees is unremarkable, you just learn to time your activities out of the sun, away from asphalt and catch any cool breeze you can find. It's nice to have a swimming pool too.

Anyways, I'm back at the Ventura County Naval Base directly on the coast 10 hours a day and the hotel is 9 miles inland. Best strawberries in the world. Beautiful scenic views and sunsets. The point is you kinda NEED to live by the ocean round here as it gets to be unfit for human habitation very quickly as you drive inland. It's really all Godforsaken desert land. And the funny part is they're selling $850K homes out there where in my estimation no human life will be possible to live on a permanent basis........possibly within my lifetime but almost certainly within my children's lifetimes. (25-50 years hence)

 

[highup]

That log has nothing on a full roll of marmoleum. He just needs some flooring installer buddies

He just needs a forklift. I know that's not any fun at all but.....
..... He needs a forklift.