Coffee, 11-6-10

CLANG CLANG CLANG! Come on people, wake up! It's that time of year to get as much done on weekends as we can because before long we'll be spending our time moving snow. Once snow comes we can be lazy, but until then, let's get a wiggle on!
Ahhhh, but before we spend energy we need fuel, so come on in and join us for a good hearty breakfast. The special for the day is the blueberry muffins. Eggs, breakfast meats and home-fries of course, but the muffins make it special. I like the crunchy sugar tops. Yummmm.
Greg and I did a cyber trick and shared one match this year....we both lit our boilers on Nov first. He lit first then emailed me the burning match. It was a beautiful move and now there is a spare match for the first two match mulligan. The spare is in a baggie behind the coffee pot. Whoever needs it can sneak away with it and still be in the one match club. Ohhh, we coal burners are crafty people.
Murphys law still works. After a solid week of mornings in the 20's I lit the Axeman....and of course we haven't had a frost since. Yesterday it hit 60! Even now it's 45. Crazy year!
I'm headed to a friends house this morning to work on his AA130 a bit. He's the one that bought a house around last March that had the AA installed. We played with it a bit but the season ran out before we got it working 100%. He's bought some parts & now it's time to bring the old beast back to life. I think his fan gasket is shot. At the end of last year he was making more dust than heat. We'll get it figured out I'm sure.
Hope you all have a fine weekend!

Morning, another early one.! Coffee is almost done, stoves have been running for a week or so, yup 1 match each. Sorry, missed the email about the virtual match....It's been down in the 20's at night a few times. This week, back up in the 50's, maybe even 60 by weeks end. I think I have only gone thru about 4-5 buckets so far, they are mostly idling to keep the chill off.

Maybe get another ride on the motorcycle?

Not much going on this weekend, probably do a little clean up work in the garage and basement.

Computer running faster now, added some more memory, took it up to 1gB, found some on ebay pretty cheap.

Good grief you are an early riser Freddy. You wouldn't happen to have brown sugar and light cream for the coffee would you?

My wife has to work this morning and needs the car. That means I'm stranded as she gave her car to a friend. Well at least we are saving money on car insurance. Her car was no prize but it got down the road and has almost new snow tires on it. We haven't been a one car family in many years. It takes some adjusting.

This time of year I don't worry about the one match thing. If we have a warm spell I just let it go out. I'm glad you and Greg are saving matches. All the more for me!

Oh...That breakfast sounds great... unfortunatly I will be at work today and Sunday 6-6 so it's cereal and pop tarts...coffee of course!

Freddy,you da muffin man--outstanding cokehead,I ran out of reg. sugar one morning a few yrs back & have been useing brown sugar in my coffee since--right from the cow cream though--I'm not worried about this girlish figure anymore We'll be working on the new sugar house today--got all the board & batton done last week--all new bricks for the evaporator,woods all put up--we'll start putting lines back up right after hunting season is done--I hope the weather is better this year then last---33* here & I coulda sworn I saw a splotch of momentary sun shine--won't that be nice when that comes back--I want snow--I hate this muck --have a good week-end all

The perculator is puffing away! Darn, thats a nice smell.
Morning everyone, frost again, this morning. Seems that once we started seeing frost in the mornings, we now see it every day, no 'warm' nights anymore, I guess. The deer have been playing grab-ass all week in our yard. A couple doe in season, and the buck are relentless at gettin what they want. So relentless, they don't care when I walk outside to take the kids to the bus stop, we walk within 20ft of them and all they do is HUFF at me. Our big 10-pointer got nailed in the road in front of our driveway. Guess he didn't look both ways before crossing the road. That'll teach THAT car to stop speeding on our little country road . The meat went to a nieghbor's freezer before I could get out there.
Finally got a new oil furnace installed in our church's Parish Hall building. Old one had a heat exchanger that was completely burnt thru, and the gun had been under 2ft of water last spring during a flood caused by a sump pump not working.
My first full install of an oil burner. We had our normal maintenance guy check it for proper burn. All was well.
Todays' project: split wood. I need one more cord to last us thru the winter.

Did he just say split wood? Crazy man.

It's a balmy 35°F this morning in beautiful downtown Vermont. Wife just pulled three gluten-free pumpkin breads out of the oven while I sit here with a cup of tea. Have to gather all my mowed leaves and get them into the garden and tilled this weekend. Planted about 100 garlic cloves a couple weeks ago so at least that's done.

Gonna attempt to do something with a truck for StokerScot. It's a futile effort but Scott has deep pockets ya see.

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

freetown fred wrote:Freddy,you da muffin man--outstanding cokehead,I ran out of reg. sugar one morning a few yrs back & have been useing brown sugar in my coffee since--right from the cow cream though--I'm not worried about this girlish figure anymore We'll be working on the new sugar house today--got all the board & batton done last week--all new bricks for the evaporator,woods all put up--we'll start putting lines back up right after hunting season is done--I hope the weather is better this year then last---33* here & I coulda sworn I saw a splotch of momentary sun shine--won't that be nice when that comes back--I want snow--I hate this muck --have a good week-end all

I was introduced to some fancy raw sugar at a B&B in Quebec. When I got home, being cheap, I tried brown sugar and liked it just fine. Now that I've gone to brown sugar, I'll never go back to white. Well any port in a storm.

I got a question for you. Would your maple syrup evaporator work to process sorghum juice?

Wow. A lot of interesting stuff going on! I'll have my coffee with milk only, as always; no sugar decisions for me. Chris, I can relate, a doe came charging past me full speed at the church property with a crazed, wild look. I was actually startled and thought I was gonna get trampled for a second. Then a serious buck appeared, chasing her into the woods. I could have sworn he winked at me as he ran by. I should be so agressive with single gals. Freddy, when you are up that early I think it counts as staying up all night! Fred, sounds like you have been staying busy as usual. My eligibility for one match club has been rescinded. My first coal fire went out last night, oh well. I made a half-fast attempt anyway. It's possible that my I'll conceived chimney and stack modifications have resulted in reduced draft. More than likely it was due to fatigue from working on a roof all day and a stone cold chimney. Gotta go replace some T-111 siding on a shed dormer today. Looks like it was added circa 1983. I'm sealing the bottom of the new panels and back-priming them for longer life. This dormer is for a double anderson casement window, window is pretty much kaput.

I don't know--these farmers around here would shoot somebody they caught in the old sorgham fields

cokehead wrote:

freetown fred wrote:Freddy,you da muffin man--outstanding cokehead,I ran out of reg. sugar one morning a few yrs back & have been useing brown sugar in my coffee since--right from the cow cream though--I'm not worried about this girlish figure anymore We'll be working on the new sugar house today--got all the board & batton done last week--all new bricks for the evaporator,woods all put up--we'll start putting lines back up right after hunting season is done--I hope the weather is better this year then last---33* here & I coulda sworn I saw a splotch of momentary sun shine--won't that be nice when that comes back--I want snow--I hate this muck --have a good week-end all

I was introduced to some fancy raw sugar at a B&B in Quebec. When I got home, being cheap, I tried brown sugar and liked it just fine. Now that I've gone to brown sugar, I'll never go back to white. Well any port in a storm.

I got a question for you. Would your maple syrup evaporator work to process sorghum juice?

Good morning everyone.. Freddy, when you get done with that virtual match, send me back some virtual coal-heated water!! LOL..

I'm home one day early from flying.. I went into work feeling about half.. and the all-night flights with 5-6hours of day-sleeping only made me feel worse.. I think it's brochitis,, I'll get a doc to listen to my lungs on Monday, and see if it's pneumonia.. I'm already on Levaquin.. I keep a 'script' of it with me at all times.. Once you have had pneumonia, your lungs are very suseptable to getting it again.. So with me feeling worse each day, I came home one day early,, glad I did, I got 10 hours of sleep in my own bed last night..

I almost had an out fire in the AA last night.. I got home about 6:30 pm, and about 10pm decided to look in on the boiler. It had a shallow fire and no coal in the auger or deliver tube!! I looked down the auger with a flashlight, and saw something on the end of the auger.. HMM.. I turned on the boiler, and whatever was on the end of the auger turned with it.. Hmm again.. there was about 300# of coal in the hopper, and I didn't want to dig that out..

Then I remembered a forum member mentioning using a long pipe to probe to the end of the auger.. I can't remember WHO that was, but THANKS ! That's a great idea.. I dug up a long piece of steel pipe, and slid it down the inside of the auger.. and whatever it was was pretty solid.. Now I'm REALLY curious.. I push and hammer gently with the pipe and it won't move.. so I remove the pipe and turn on the boiler again, and look down the auger.. And the obstruction is loose and climbing up the flights !! Whoo Hooo!! I watched it work it's way up and then I could see what it was: a piece of concrete from the blocks that make up my coal bin.. the piece was about the size of one of Freddie's Muffin-tops.. it was slowly rolling up the flights, and eventually dropped into my hand at the top of the auger,, followed by plenty of coal to feed the fire..

This just adds punctuation to the need for consistant sized and clean coal for the AA auger. I had cleaned out my hopper, removing a year's worth of fines last Sunday, and was expectiong no problems with coal feed, but that pesky piece of concrete almost caought me.

Well I'm gonna try to get a few thngs done, providing I don't wear myself out.. I need to get healthy quick.

GReg L

I'll skip the coffee this morn .... I've already had 6 cups! Hit the road at 12:50. Was in Baltimore MD by 10 of 7. NY & NJ are beautiful to drive thru at 3 am! Smooth sailin'.

This guy named Tony wants me to haul this package up to Worcester. Says he's got a suitcase full of cash for me. Should be a good week!

I'm on my brothers laptop from a seedy hotel room. We came down here so he could have his Allison tranny built by the best on the east coast. Will be able to handle around 700 HP & over 1000 foot pounds of torque -- we'll be chirpin tires all the way up 95 tomorrow!

The stove is in the hands of my little wifey ...we'll see how it's doing when I return to the not-so-great state of MA ...

Later folks!

No more coffee for me...the dogs woke me up early and I have already polished off a full pot worth. The "fix it list" for today is to install some flush-mount light fixtures in the upstairs of the house. I am tired of taking the lights apart to vacuum the flies out, so it is time for an upgrade. It will also give me a chance to check for any scary electrical connections from the previous installer... After that I'm taking the mower deck off the tractor and getting it ready for the snow.

-Robert

Good morning,

We got an early start to our project this morning but then we finished early, too. Down came the old aluminum shed - it will be replaced for one of those fancy plastic ones they have at the Home Depot. We rented a reciprocating drill and boy was it nice! It cut through the shed like it was butter. All in all it only took two hours and was a lot less painful then I thought it would be.

Speaking of raw sugar, Costco has a 6 pack of the original Coca Cola in 1 liter bottles, made with raw sugar. We got a taste of it when we visited the Coca Cola museum in Atlanta last summer. It was sooo good. Costco is selling it for somewhere around $20.00 which is way outside my budget so I'll just look at it fondly as I walk by.

It looks like the stove will be on idle for another week; they are forecasting 40* nights and 60* days. Sigh... Oh well, I'm reassured that just like the trains in the Paris subway, winter will come along in due time.

Have a great week, Lisa

Good Afternoon,Bretheren and Bretherenettes of the Coal World ! Freddy,you were so busy slingin' muffins and java's that you didn't see me blow in and blow right back out on my way to work by 0600 this a.m. . I gotta tell you,the carry-out was just as good as a sit-down. We had a nice,miserable lake-effect wet snow for most of the day. Twas deluxe to get back home and stay warm and dry. You Folks take care,and have a great weekend !