Coffee 7-28-12

Good day! It's blueberry season. Marty picked 3 quarts of fresh blueberries yesterday so breakfast wil be blueberry muffins. Mmmmmm.... crunchy brown sugar tops, tender muffin inside with almost too many wild blueberries. They're not the big high bush berries, these are the small, sweet, wild berries from bushes no taller than a foot. The bonus is extra anti-oxidents....these puppies are good for you!

I have an urge to live in Georgia. We found a 2000 Ford Ranger. It's from Georgia and has close to zero rust. The cars & trucks up here from that year a re mostly rusted junk. It blows me away how a truck down south can easily last 20, 30 years. Up here with the best of care they are getting to be junk after a dozen years old. This nephew we got the truck for....he's an odd one. This truck is his dream truck.... 4WD, auto, 6 cyl, extend-a-cab. Brand new tires. I showed it to him & told him one thing though, he has to paint the frame with "Chassis saver". I bought a $122 gallon of the stuff. It will make the truck last much longer. He said "I can do an hour every week or two until it's done". I said "Fine by me, but it will only take 3 or 4 hours, and this truck is not leaving this yard until it's done". He had 6 hours before work that day, but "had to do stuff". Yesterday, didn't see him. Today, who knows. Mind you, he's driving a vehicle with no inspection and bald tires. Man-0-man, if it were up to me I'd have been on my back with a paintbrush so fast! I wouldn't be able to sleep until I had the truck, but him? I dunno... he might not do it until the cops stop him in his car. I HAVE written a tight loan agreement. If he fails to make payments, first he loses the truck, and if it's not available, he loses the 16 acres of land he owns. The bank was not willing to use the land as collateral....well... I will! Ohhhh, I'm rambling....

Everyone.... have a fine summer weekend. Hug your loved ones & smile when you can.

Ohhhh, blueberry muffins and blueberry pancakes with fresh Maine berrys, are my favorite. As a kid, I've picked gallons & gallons of those low-bush berries up North of Bangor. Saw many Black bears doing it to!
Its a nice morning, last night's thunderstorms cooled the air down about 30 degrees. But the sun just poked over the horizon
Freddy, enjoy your new acreage.

Morning all. Just got back from Brule Wisconsin where my wife and I attended our sons wedding. Sure is pretty country up there. It's about 10 minutes from Lake Superior. Folks there are very friendly. Most everyone there including my sons new inlaws are of Finnish descent. I'll post a few pics when I get them down loaded.

Flew out and drove back. Long story. We drove home across the upper penninsula of Michigan. More really pretty country. Easiest 21 hours I ever drove. Good to be back though.

Good morning. My blueberries are over so I had to settle for egg, bacon, & cheese on a bagel. Nothing is like a good old artery clogging, high cholesterol breakfast. Anti-oxidants are for sissies.

Freddy rushes in where angels fear to tread. I hope it all works out for you but what a risky thing to do. I hope it has a good ending. I think your nephew needs a case of Red Bull more than he needs a truck.

A nice morning it is. Maybe T-storms this after. We are fortunate to have missed all the action folks a bit north of us had the last two nights. High winds and tornadoes! We could use a bit more rain though.

I guess it is soon time to fire up the lawnmower. The rains have made the grass grow. If we don’t get any storms this afternoon I want to grill some sweet corn. We will see how that works out.

Have a good weekend.

Good Morning CFMs!

That's Coal Forum Members just in case that had your caffeine starved neurons a bit bewildered I'm on my second vac-pot cup of joe and have been enjoying Jersey blue berries and Jersey peaches nearly every morning for a few weeks now. No comparison to a pork-roll egg and cheese sandwich but changing the sandwich out for a few days of a big bowl of berries, peaches and some vanilla yogurt makes that sandwich special again I've got to get a big basket of peach seconds to put up in freezer bags and simple syrup. Not much beats a treat of sweet peaches in the middle of coal burning season.

We've had a few good storms run thru here too, Gaw. One big one last week and two lesser storm this week. We were away hanging in Maryland on the Delmarva Peninsula a week ago. When we were there, a big one rolled thru here and knocked down a bunch of trees. It also started to finish the pruning job Mother Nature started but didn't finish with last October's 17" snow storm on Halloween weekend. I've now got anther few hours of cleaning up more branches that were hung up in the tree canopy that ended up on the ground after the big winds from last week's storm. Power must have been off for a few days up here on the hill because the ice cream in the refrigerator freezer showed signs of re-leveling it's surface. Not too worried about any food loss at that point, the ice cubes didn't freeze into a huge cube so it couldn't have been too bad.

I had to break out the old MF10 to mow too. It was a nice 5 1/2 week break. Buy this past Wednesday, the lawn had greened up evenly and started to grow again. It was just right to mow and let lay. It was a long dry spell too. Many plants when dormant. Humming birds are going crazy over the feeders, the gray tree frogs are still chirping but those harbingers of the nearing end of summer are sounding off now. Each night the "chorus from the forest" isn't just the frogs but now it's the katydids. Soon the cicadas will add to the refrain. It will be summer for a few more months but it is coming CFMs!

Outstanding breakfast choice. The blueberry fields around here have kicked butt this year after much concern:) My youngest girl, now living here, is the muffin queen & is having a ball w/ rasberry's, blackberry's along the back property line/creek & blueberry's up the road. Sooo anyway Uncle Freddy, I've been thinking about getting a newer truck & am a little short on funds right now but would gladly pay you back on some Thursday or other. What do ya think??? Have a good week-end all

Freddy does your nephew call you Mr. Claus?
One piece of peanut butter toast for me, too muggy to eat much, and so much to do. I'm grateful I have a good job to work but have to treat the customer with kidd gloves. Amazing house but it's been neglected for a very long time. I'm literally cutting corners, the sheathing on this house was rotted away to the insulation, behind the cedar shakes. This is the result of a sloppy re-roofing and gutter job. This house was built in 1965, and has been painted twice! Talk about neglect, ther water damage went from the roof all the way down and wrecked the garage soffits and fascia too. I hope I can restore the whole exterior, we'll see if the lady likes my work when she returns.
Great storm last week, I sat in the garage and watched it all go by, rain came down in sheets, trees whipping around, and tremendous thunder and lightning.
Working on a White brand trimmer/mower today, it's a weed whacker on wheels. It sat around in a shed and took a lot of mouse nest damage.

Blueberries from Maine on my table, too. Was up there last week and HAD to sneak some of the 'harvest' out of the state before Freddy cornered the market.
Man, I could go on a fresh blueberry muffin diet until I die! One of life's little pleasures and a gift from the God's!
No bears, but bambi and her spotted sister...... along with mom. Little wobbly legs bounding through the fields...........

I've got a pile of me own berries ..... although not as sweet as those low bush ones - these are the size of a quarter! Juicy as hell to. High bush is an understatement - haven't pruned them ever, so they're about 7' -10' tall now!

Hey Freddy - can ya do a loan for a '13 ZR1??? I can't pay ya back ... but that's the "new" American way!


Well finally got another nightmare of a project finished. That would be my brother's DR350. I've never done more wiring & electrical troubleshooting on one bike in my LIFE!! Probably $2,500 worth of labor into this thing time-wise .... but I'll be lucky to get .01% of that ... Anyway, that new fangled battery that I thought I'd try took a dump on me not 10 minutes after installing it. Turns out you can't run them dead or they will NOT come back - at all, which sucks. After emailing the guy who sold it to me it sounded like he copped an attitude ...so I copped one right back, naturally. He wisely sent me another one. So now I have the street model charging system all installed & zip-tied in place, and it works MINT! 14.3v at idle with high beams, turnsignals, & brake light on. Good deal! Just have to install a horn and IT'S DONE!!

I also got my buddy's '83 Nighthawk rolling again. It's been here for almost 2 months getting worked on ... & of course, in that time frame the fuel went to *censored*. Wouldn't run without the choke. So thinking back to how I had to use an 8' 2x4 to remove the carbs last time, I figured I'd try running all the fuel screws all the way in, then back out, just to maybe poke whatever crap fuel is jammed in the pilot fuel passageways. Well, whaddya know?? It actually worked!! Bike runs mint now!! Ran her up and down my street 65 mph, sliding on sand and potholes. Dumped the oil and diff.oil for some Amsoil. Ready to rock!

Here's a pic of the new stator - check out how many more windings there are compared to the old one below the pic! Charges MUCH better ... obviously! (this was before I fixed that abortion of a wiring job ...)

Sheesh Freddie, The fields are looking pretty good this season. I had some home made vanilla yogurt stuffed with blueberrys and granola. Not to shabby.

That nephew of your is a strange bird for sure! First off he has to have the 4wd truck. You get him what sounds like a nice ride and he blows it off. Like you I would have been on my back slapping undercoat on that puppy till it was done! Sometimes I think things just come to easy to some kids today. They don't appreciate like we did. Of course my folks said that to me too!

I'm working on a kitchen island this weekend and am just about done with a table I made for the porch. Then, there's the lawn and always painting...........

Have a great weekend everyone.

Yaaa, it looks like a good year for blueberries. Marty went out today & picked another 3 quarts. It's going to be a berry good year!

The nephew called today... "I might come over tomorrow afternoon for a while". Sheeesh!

On other fronts.... swapped engines in the Geo Metro today. The one that came with it took a sudden turn for the worst so my buddy Joe & I slapped the "spare" into it. It fired right up & sounds good! I think it's going to feel like we put a V-8 into it. I'm still waiting for a few parts... an exhaust gasket and I took the alternator in for testing & renewal. There's a local place that this 86 yr old guy runs.... he's good & he's cheap. My kind of guy! It'll be back on the road on Wed I think.

Everyone that needs a loan just stop by during my business hours.... 5 days a week from11:59:59AM to noon sharp!

Olympics!

Nice job Smitty; I would take that bike and also Freddy's nephew's Ranger
You better watch it with those coils you might get The Philadelphia Experiment When I was in high school I had a part time job at RFL Labs, I was a coil winder. That was a fun job. They had a lathe like machine and I would wind the coils with it according to specs, number of turns. They had a gold plating area for circuit boards, they had to secure it because employees were gold plating spoons and all kinds of stuff for themselves. That factory had a metal roof, and they cooled it in the summer by running water out of pipes on the peak. Also ran a solder flow machine which would apply rosin flux, run the circuit board over a wave of molten solder, then rinse it in a refrigerated flourocarbon tank. You could dip your head into the fumes and catch a buzz

Hi everyone,

It's been busy around here. I'm glad to hear you are having a berry good year. Not so much here south of the Mason Dixon Line. A good many of the berry plants have gotten a fungus due to the heat and humidity and growers are losing the harvest. The blackberries I planted a few years back developed lots of big, huge berries but before they ripened they shriveled up and fell off the cane. I had to cut all the fungus (rust) I could see out of the plant and treat it with a fungicide. Hopefully, I saved the plants but I won't know until next spring. If not I have to dig the plants up and not grow berries or tomatoes there for 3 years. Bummer.

The bees are doing very well. I have 3 boxes of brood (new bees) and one box of empty honey comb. That box of empty honey comb means the bees can start filling it with honey with the first hint of the spring pollen/nectar flow; they can just move in. I have replaced that box of empty comb with another box to be drawn out. I should be able to start 2013 with two boxes of empty honey comb which should mean around 80lbs of honey in the fall. I have decided to get a second hive in the spring.

I did receive my Florida Carry Conceal Permit. It came on Tuesday. Unlike my VA permit, it is laminated and has my picture on it. This afternoon I accidentally gave it to the clerk for id when cashing a check and she didn't blink. I think it's kind of funny that I could use my Florida CCP as my "proper picture id" required to accompany my VA CCP. Actually, I hope I never have to show either to anyone.

I hope everyone makes progress on their "to do list." Take care and have a great Sunday. Lisa

Ahhh Heck Freddy.. keep the money, don't want a loan, just call my local New Holland dealer tell them whatever i want you got the tab. I hate borrrowing from someone i don't know. I'll sleep better not owing you anyting.

I'm back...pulled pork came out fabulous, very little remains. The keg still feels pretty heavy, but I don't have any urge for beer right now. The weather was great for a party. I Went to bed at 2 am and back up at 5 am. Time to cleanup and get some coffee.