Coffee 5-24-14

Good Evening everyone.
I'm down in Brooksville Florida, about 45 miles north of Tampa. And yes it's HOT ! 95* last three days. High humidity. So I'm learning to sweat again! i'm helping get a Pierce Arrow car ready for the July 8th show in Rhode Island, and next saturday I'll start the two day drive north to home with my Mom. She spends the summers on my farm in Michigan. Up until two years ago, she drove both ways, but she asked for help, aka: for me to do the driving. So here I am.. it's easier than trying to get her on and off airliners.. sigh..

Sounds like the ethanol contaminated gasoline is doing it's usual mischief with carburetors. I've heard that the ultrasound works well, I'll have to find a used one somewhere and give it a try. I have a gas station nearby that sells ethanol free fuel for boats and yard tools, they sell a lot of it, inspite of the price: it's $0.40 more expensive without the government subsidy for the ethanol crap.. yes, our taxes PAY the gas companies to use ethanol. look it up.

Freddy, and FFred, good to see you posting more. I guess summer has decided to arrive.. now it's grass cutting season. UGH. I think I might just spray roundup..

Greg L

Sounds like the ethanol contaminated gasoline is doing it's usual mischief with carburetors. I've heard that the ultrasound works well, I'll have to find a used one somewhere and give it a try. I have a gas station nearby that sells ethanol free fuel for boats and yard tools, they sell a lot of it, inspite of the price: it's $0.40 more expensive without the government subsidy for the ethanol crap.. yes, our taxes PAY the gas companies to use ethanol. look it up.

Yes, I spent some time in Ocala, Fl this winter. Quite a few Shell and Raceway stations sell ethanol free gas and my car got 1.7 mpg extra. That was kinda interesting but the main extra was it was not gumming up the engine. If I could get it here I would use it in the car, it just ran better. I could talk about my annual clean up of my MAP sensor and other fuel injection things but that is a subject for another thread.

Driving through WY & UT at 90+ mph, I manged to get 18 or 19mpg out of my 6k lb. pickup with a motorcycle in back, and a few hundred pounds of other crap in the cab.

Around MA I get no better than 16 doing half that speed. Most of the time it's 15.

Sure wish that 90° air would blow up this way, dammit!

Dang! Just pulled a deer tick out of the back of my leg. I found it cuz it was itching. Little red swollen bump like a mosquito bite. He must've been there awhile. Guess I'll have to keep an eye on it now

That's how I found the first one I ever got in '09. My dad had just bought a center-console Sea Fox, so we were out fishing on Cape Cod Bay, and the back of my leg was burning & itching the entire time. When I got out of the shower later that night, I had my wife look at it. I THINK IT'S A TICK! she yells. Sure enough, deer tick - could barely see it in the center of the swollen, red mess. Damn those things ...

This stuff works mint though - haven't had one on me since I started using it. Thing is, I have to remember to use it! One got me last year thanks to my forgetfulness. It's sort of a pain in the ass to hang up every pair of pants, socks, and shirts you own to hose them down & let dry for 2 hours .. but it sure beats Lyme disease.

I bought 6 bottles on sale at Cabela's in '12

009to090, If you have the money or insurance coverage go get tested & or treated for Lyme. I only wish I would have been aware of the tick bite that gave me Lyme yrs ago & been treated quickly,instead of the ongoing grief I put up with now.The continual fatigue,muscle & joint pain,headaches,kidney issues,the list goes on & on........................................ Wish you the best with your bite.

windyhill4.2 wrote:009to090, If you have the money or insurance coverage go get tested & or treated for Lyme. I only wish I would have been aware of the tick bite that gave me Lyme yrs ago & been treated quickly,instead of the ongoing grief I put up with now.The continual fatigue,muscle & joint pain,headaches,kidney issues,the list goes on & on........................................ Wish you the best with your bite.

I got bit by a tick a few years back. I went to the hospital and they said I was not in danger of getting Lyme disease but I made them give me the medication anyway.

Man, that medicine really screw's you up, I was puking my brains out for days. But I was glad I took it.

090 etc. do like WH says. NC is tick central these days and swollen is a good sign of problem and annulus is a sure sign but does not always appear. Ticks are really mean down there. If you just watch it may go away and then you may think everything is OK until secondary Lymes appears. Forget titre tests they have become worse than useless. Doxycycline should not have any effect but after day three of treatment start probiotocs from a good manufacturer but don't wait to get titre tested. You should take a month course and avoid alcohol and loose women, well at least avoid alcohol. Death is often preferred to the cure.

Hi everyone,

Beautiful day here in the Mid Atlantic region and our Nation's capital. We don't have a lot going on this weekend. It's just DK and I at home as everyone else has a life. DK and I will just chill out here on the home front.

The square box hive I picked up last weekend is doing well. It's a small hive but growing. I'll take 2 or 3 bars of comb with baby bees ready to hatch out of the Big Blue hive tomorrow and stick in there to help it along.

I got a call from my queen producer and my new queens will arrive via USPS on Wednesday. The post office is pretty good at calling me as soon as they show up. I'll spend tomorrow finding the existing queens and removing them from the hives. The new queen will be accepted more easily if the old one is gone a couple of days before the new one arrives. But I won't dispose of the old queen before the new one gets here or I may find myself queenless. The old queens will take up residence in babyfood jars in my kitchen cabinet until the new ones actually get here. I put them in the cabinet because they don't like the light. The fact that bees in the cabinet always freaks DK out is a good reason, too.

I hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day weekend. I'll be making my annual trip to Arlington in morning well before any official shows up. I'm going to try to go to the area with heroes from our more recent wars this year. I'll try to get some pictures to share. Take care, Lisa

Another beautiful day here today, I think this is three in a row for us.

The section of the lawn that I reseeded last weekend is coming in nicely - Nice enough that I will probably do more sections in the coming weeks since it looks like it is worth the effort. The wild strawberry vine has taken over so much of the supposed to be grass area that I took the nuclear solution in one section and killed everything there, scraped off the dead stuff, tilled in some topsoil and lime and seeded it. I usually don't care too much about the lawn as long as the weeds are green, but there was so much of the vine stuff that when it dies off in the winter there is not much there but mud. I did the worst area to start and figured I'd see how it turned out before taking on the entire back yard in sections. I'll wait another couple weeks for this to grow in thicker before tearing up the next area so we will always have some grassy areas back there.

On a related note, does anyone have any non surgical treatment experience with a herniated disc? This is getting serious since it has been seizing up on me a couple times a day and throws me to the ground until the spasms ease up. This is really getting in the way of progress on the project list as well as cutting into the golf game. I have a couple suggestions from some physical therapists but their ideas are more geared toward recovering from surgery.

I crushed a disc in my lower back in Jan.1988,never had surgery. I went to a very good chiropractor who used electric shock treatments & manipulation,this went several times per week at first & then gradually tapered off to once a month. Lots of discipline needed on your part,no heavy lifting,no running,lose weight if you are carrying too much in your gut area .Do the correct exercises,do repetitious light weight lifting.Sit properly on a good chair,sleep on a very good firm mattress,raking your lawn is probably a no no . I used to carry 300# (grew up on farm & worked on equipment)after crushing my disc I was limited to 10#,i can now lift 75# (CAREFULLY),heavier than that & I will feel pain for a week & I do forget my limitations at times. Good luck with your back,use hot water showers to help keep it limber,use bean bag heat but never use dry heat as that will make it worse.....experience is the best teacher!

Indeed WH. I've got trashed L1,L2,L3,L4,L5,L6--T, I do what WH said minus the chiropractor & things are copasetic:) Take it slow & easy--REMEMBER--ain't none of us 18 anymore Lotsa holistic exercises out there that WORK--GOOGLE it

I been doing that google thing and the most promising looks to be the chiropractor sessions as WH described. I will probably start that this week.

Hey Fred, age 18.... that is when the whole deal started for me. Injured at basketball practice when I got low bridged and landed on my back, been dealing with it semi successfully ever since but it has turned into a once a week thing the last few months and a couple times a day thing the last week or so....worst stretch of time it has ever been. From past experience, I definitely have L4 & maybe L5 herniated and I think I may also have issues in the C# region since after talking to a buddy yesterday diagnosed with a herniated C3 his symptoms are identical to mine with the neck pain & spasms, limited shoulder movement, arm weakness and numbness in my fingers.

I have a sleep number bed set to 100, have a massage chair that along with stretching eases up the spasms pretty good. I do stretching & twisting exercises when it isn't real bad like right now. I have maybe 5 extra lbs on my gut at the moment from the winter insulation I accumulate annually, but otherwise lean and mean and not too far from my 'blue twisted steel' strength days... ..... well ok my weight is only about 7 lbs from those days, but my strength is pretty far from those days..... I love the idea about no raking, but I live in the middle of a state forest with 5,000 acres of trees. I have put off the building power washing projects since the side to side motion is a known killer for my back.

This is definitely small potatoes compared to issues a lot of folks deal with, I just am trying to get back to semi functional around the homestead and if I can get to lifting 50 - 75lbs and playing golf once in a while without having to crawl to the cart to leave the course halfway through like Saturday I'll be happy.

I just blew my back out for the first time a couple months ago. Was in a total rage, because the Blazer broke down ...at 20:30 on a Sunday in the pouring rain ... and my trailer was up on the hill - in between my truck and trailer was 3' of MUD. Spent an hour in the mud trying to get to the trailer .... once I finally got it hitched up, I yanked up on the trailer, and couldn't straighten myself out for 2 days. Still hurts if I lift a certain way. Never went to the docs, so don't know what I did - all I know is it F'in hurt bad!

A personal THANK YOU to all the vets on this board - thanks for your service & God Bless you.

An old,old ESCO chest freezer is what did mine in,that was one extremely heavy freezer ,only 2 idiots to carry it & I was one of the idiots. Fred might remember those ESCO freezers,ridiculous weight.We had to lift it up into a box truck (no lift gate) &of course turn to push it into the truck. That ended my job delivering appliances as they decided they no longer could use me.Much raking will put me in serious pain,pressure washing can be done by shuffling your feet to turn instead of side to side twisting, yes you will have to rethink/relearn a lot of ways to do things,it will pay off with a lower pain level.Swallow your pride,admit your weakness,work with it & life can become almost normal again,good luck.