Something Cute

Alex and Bear checking each other out.

Bear Lounging on Andrew's Lap

Adventures at the Junk Yard

Andrew and Craig look like prairie dogs

Here's what I was up to a few weeks ago. Craig is looking for an exhaust system. Andrew and I are looking for new-old bumper brackets for the pickup. The ones it had wouldn't really protect it from anything. No smashy, smashy. Success!

Happy pickup. The volvo has been getting all the attention. Good old trucky has been a little jealous.

Such a patient truck. The bumper bracket are in our possession. Now we just need to find a few hours to install them.

Something is missing.

First Day of School

The first day of school is complete and I am sick. I have a horrible cold. I have no energy and all my joints ache. Also only one side of my nose works. Yes, Mom, I used my netty pot. I also boiled the water prior to putting it up my nose to prevent water born nose diseases (I let it cool to a nice temperature).
I'm not sure I will be able to make it through 3.5 hours of class tomorrow. We shall see though. Ibuprofen can do a lot for aches and who wants to breath through their nose anyway. Mouth breathing is way cooler.

September 14, 2012

Guess what we did?!

That's right! We got married!

Yay!

A view from the garden

Cosmos and Tomatoes in our vegetable garden

What Really Matters

When life's details become overwhelming, it's easy for every waking thought to become school or job or car or wedding planning. Those things matter, but they come second. What really makes life worth living are the people that I love (I'm including cats, dogs, chickens and ferrets as people in the sentence.) I don't have to do a perfect job or even a good job at any of that secondarily important stuff to appreciate them.
Life is fleeting and unpredictable. Losing Julius reminds me of that. I expected him to be with me for many more years. I'm glad that I loved him while I could.
Alex is trying to help me type. He says "purr." 

Eggs!

The Chickens' First Eggs

A few days ago, I went out to give the chickens fresh water and look what I found. It appears that Jesse has started laying eggs.
She was making a ruckus about nothing and I was puzzled. Hen usually get quite excited when they first start laying. However, I wasn't expecting any eggs until November or December.
She has layed four eggs now. The first two were especially tiny. As you can see they are blue. Anna and Jesse will lay blue eggs. Penny and Trouble will lay brown ones, and their eggs will be bigger.

Trouble (left), Anna (back), Jesse (right)

Jesse

Jesse

Penny wondering what I'm doing. Anna in the background.

Wedding, Car, Frazzle

A few days ago, I woke up and stared sleepily at the September calendar hanging on the bedroom wall while the alarm buzzed. That's when it hit me. Holy crap! I'm getting married in less than two weeks. I knew this already of course but for some reason the magnitude of it hit me just then. Let's just say I hadn't actually looked at the place that Andrew and I had reserved for a reception. We'd only seen pictures on the web. There were some rather pressing questions that needed two be answered before the party. For example:
"Where, exactly, is it?" ...  "Are there picnic tables?"
I knew the general location, but ... well I'd never been there. I suddenly realized why some member of my family have been getting stressed about my lackadaisical approach to planning my wedding reception. I guess I've been to preoccupied with car work, getting rid of clutter and figuring out how best to work with the child I've been babysitting to worry that much about a party that was more than a month away.
Honestly, I do not regret my priority setting, but well, the time has come. Head counts and lists must be made. So, I've been busy as has Andrew.
Wedding plans have taken a priority but the car project has not taken a back seat. We both dearly want this car to be running and out of the driveway because if it's still sitting there by the time school starts, it will sit until December.
We've made two trips to Portland in the heat of the day. Yuck. For one of them we picked up Mom and went on into Washington to explore the park where we're having our reception. It's very pretty BTW (that's By The Way), and it does have picnic tables.
The second trip was all car. It took us to the junk yard and the DMV. But I was on the phone a lot figuring out wedding stuff. If I'm not careful, I may end up trying to serve the guests greasy old bolts and putting cake in the car. The heat has made scrambled eggs out of my brain.
Eggs. That reminds me... but I'll tell you about that later. Posting with title of "Eggs" coming soon....

Hand Painted Silk

A few years ago, on a visit to New York, Auntie and I got some silk scarves and beautiful little pillows. My pillow has a giraffe. Auntie's has flowers. In my cleaning spree I ran across the artist's card so I thought that I would share. http://www.elasgallery.com/

This is an example of her work.

The Volvo Project -Putting the Engine Back Together

Andrew Tightening the lower head bolts on a shiny rebuilt head.

The angle gauge.

 Do you look at this picture and think "hmm. Science." Well I do. It's interesting how having things all shiny and adding a gaugy looking thing makes a person think science. 

The bolts that attach the lower part of the head to the engine blocks usually have toque specifications. Tighten to 55 ft lbs for example. However Volvo tells the user to tighten the bolts to 44 ft lbs then turn the bolt an additional 130 degrees. That's what this fancy looking gauge tell us. Just how far has Andrew turned this bolt. This part was nerve racking. Stripping or breaking these bolts would be bad. The last 20 degrees of the turn on nearly every bolt made an ominous creaking sound, but all seems to be well.

Andrew turns the angle gauge.

Few! That's over. Time to pack up for the night.

 The head (the top half of the engine) took so long in being refinished that Andrew and I lost momentum on this project. Now that we finally have the part, we don't have the drive to go and finish it all in a day even though we probably could. Instead, we've been working on in for a few hours each day.

Another day. 

The top half of the head is on. So are the CAM sprokets.

Line up the marks on the cam sprockets.

 To get the timing right you have to line up them marks on the sprockets with the marks on the timing belt cover.
You don't want to get this wrong. With this kind of engine having the timing off results in bent valves. In other words broken head. That's how we got this car in the first place.  Somebody was dumb and didn't change the timing belt. It broke and we got a cheap car to fix up.

Technically there are no gears in this picture.

 Did you know the difference between a gear and a sprocket. Well aparently those things on my bike that I've been calling gears all these years are actually sprockets. Gears hook to other gears. Sprocket connect to belts of chains.

Yeah I don't just take pictures. Sometimes I crawl under the car.

A Trip to the Vet

Alex doesn't mind being at the vet at all

 Today, the cats went to the vet for their vaccines. We took them to Ark Animal Hospital in Philomath. I like them there. Alex purred a lot. Ember was terrified. They were both very glad to be home again afterward. Then they both purred.

Ember minds a lot