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This morning we needed milk, and it was kinda cool when I got up (thanks to a surprise kick in the junk from Duncan), so I figured we’d wind up walking up to the store instead of driving. By the time we got him ready and Sabriena got dressed and whatnot, it was warming up a bit.

By the time we got back… whew. It was like an armpit. We spent probably a good twenty minutes sitting in the driveway under the shade of a nice big tree, and I even tweeted about how nice it’d be to have some outdoor furniture like a picnic table, and then a couple of nice laptops so we could just chill outside most of the day under a tree.

We came inside and I got something to eat, and began the long and arduous process of waiting for the thunderstorms to arrive and cool us off. They’re still not here, but I get the suspicion they’re not far away.

Once again, mid-western weather overcomes the best laid plans.

Friday started moderately well, but everyone knows that most of the people who work (and are therefore not desperately trying to cash-in, and are actually looking to get rid of some of their stuff) are all busy on Friday so Saturday’s the day.

It was a terrible omen that as I went to warm the car up, it poured down raining for about 5 minutes. That basically set the pattern for the entire day – a pretty warm day with patches of torrential downpour, so not surprisingly the whole place was like a giant armpit.

The inclement weather of course meant that the only people out selling stuff were those who were safely in garages and barns, and those people didn’t seem to have too much interesting stuff. One place that we went to, which was way out in the middle of nowhere, allegedly had a ton of baby clothes. Well, it turns out they had nothing but little girl clothes, which isn’t terribly interesting if you just had a little boy. They also had equestrian apparel and other horse paraphernalia (curious for Indiana, but not particularly interesting to me), along with a shitload of panda stuff (I think someone had a fetish to be honest) and not a lot else. We did score a couple of matching ceiling fans though.

My personal haul didn’t really consist of much – the Rock Band crap from friday, a small widescreen LCD I picked up for $2 that to my surprise actually works, and a 2-port KVM switch. Ironic that last year we saw all manner of stuff we’d have liked, and didn’t have any money – this year we actually had some money and didn’t see anything at all.

Aww well, I’m sure there will be more, smaller pockets of sales throughout the summer. I need to find something interesting for Hungry Hacker.

Fuck what the calendar says, spring isn’t really here until I have to mow the lawn… and that day was yesterday. Our lawn mower’s pretty beat up – my brother in law managed to hit a piece of metal pipe with it, couldn’t get it running right again, so did what any responsible teenager would do: He shoved it in the garage, called it “winter” and reasoned to tell me about it next spring.

I dug it out of the shed, put some fresh gas in it and got it running… sort of. The governor’s off quite a bit and it shakes like crazy. I’m going to try and track down a cheap place to buy a new blade for it rather than trying to balance the old one back out, and then once it stops shakin’ I’ll see if I can fix the governor to get it to run at a reasonable, stable speed.

It did the job though – I tampered with the governor spring a little to bring the revs back down to a sane level which stopped most of the shakes. It was good enough to mow the entire half-acre, though some portions were extra thick and still a little moist so it was tough going, and I had to take the recycler off for those parts.

Another year’s probably going to pass where we don’t get to build our deck – I’ve planned the thing out about four or five times now, and something always seems to come up in the way. Summer in our back yard is fantastic – sitting in the shade with a laptop and that almost-ever-present mid-western wind blowing in is much better than being cooped up upstairs in front of a desktop.

So I’m thinking a reasonable sized deck to cover the nasty area behind the laundry, with an awning, some outdoor rugs and some patio furniture would be a fantastic way to work all summer. Alas, it’s probably not to be – I’ll be stuck in this nasty old patio chair under a leaning tree with the laptop sitting on my lap and the bugs jumping out of the grass onto my feet. In fact as soon as the rain goes away I might go spread some bug killer powder out to stop that last bit.

Spring’s officially been here a while, so we started thinking about firewood for next winter. We now have an agreement with a lady to clean up her property’s woods in exchange for the firewood we can scrounge, which should work out pretty good as soon as the ground firms up a bit.

I jumped the gun and decided to go out there early and grab a load or two, and as soon as we stepped out of the Suburban we knew we’d be in trouble if she set foot on the grass. I love my ‘burban to death, but it’s only a 2wd vehicle and despite having a working posi in the rear-end, it’s still like a labrador on linoleum if it loses traction.

So we decided to play it safe and leave the Suburban and the trailer on the gravel… at least that was the plan. The trailer we’re using is some dumbass short thing – the wheelbase between the wheels and the rear wheels of the towing vehicle is ridiculously short. If you take your eyes off it for a second you’re jack-knifed and have to try again – so I did my best not to take my eyes off it.

Naturally, that meant spending far too long with my eyes off the gravel – long enough at least to drop two wheels off it and onto the very, very soft grass which very quickly turned into a muddy soup with the around 4,000 ft/lbs of torque I think the ‘burban can deliver to the wheels.

We looked around for things we could use, but there wasn’t much that was any good… the house on the property was all locked up, there was a couple steel buildings but all were pretty well empty. We scrounged up a pressure treated 4×4, but couldn’t really get it into a position to make any use of it – one side of the vehicle was sitting on it’s guts.

We tried every traction aiding trick in the book to no avail – I finally gave up and called my wife to pick us up. We ended up having a neighbour with a 4×4 pull it out – it didn’t need much help to get out, just enough to get the front tire out and then it came out under it’s own power… but it needed help after all. We grabbed what wood we can, and brought it home, to wait for the ground to firm up before trying again.

I do have a great plan to build the ‘burban out into a 4wd, and I spend probably a couple hours a week doing research to that end – however I lack the funds to buy the 4×4 running gear I’d want to do the swap, and I don’t want to wimp out and use a 10-bolt front diff when everything else is built so heavy.

You really couldn’t complain about the weather here today, considering we were supposed to have a horrendous “winter storm” that’s supposed to last two days. It was in the 20s, but it felt great outside.

I went out to split a few pieces of the thicker wood, because it burns better for longer periods than the thinner logs… and they were all covered in snow. I lost the wedges in the snow a couple of times, and my shoes are wet.

I shoveled the path to the driveway, against my better judgment, because traipsing through the snow left my shoes wet. I was going to shovel the driveway, but we only had about 6″ of snow on the ground, and the only person leaving was my brother in law who has a4WD anyway… I bet we’ll get more snow tonight so I’ll just shovel it tomorrow.

The roads are slick, and as usual there’s the usual batch of idiots who despite having lived here their entire lives, don’t have a damn clue how to drive. They speed down the street, full acceleration – you know their speedo is reporting about 5mph faster than their car is actually travelling.

They speed down the street, effectively panic-braking at the stop sign, only to skate straight through it. Oh well, no harm no foul, no one else was at the intersection so what could go wrong?

There’s the usual tell-tale skidmarks on the ice… weird fish shapes, ellipticals, ovals, dogs-legs, all the kinds of markings to show that folks probably aren’t driving as slow as they probably should in these conditions.

In fact now that I think about it, it’s not the snow that I hate – it’s the way people act in it.

Well I guess realistically it’s not that hot (I have a friend who’s out near Baghdad at the moment, and it’s 121F where he’s stationed at), but I just keep picking stupid things to do.

Hey let’s go running!

Hey let’s go work on an exhaust for the Oldsmobile! Awesome!

In the winter I don’t like having retractable testicles so I try and stretch out as far as possible between showers, but in the summer… wooh. Our bathroom faucets are getting a workout because I know I’m not the only one taking more than one shower a day sometimes.

So my wife found this Earth Hour thing where tonight at 8:30pm (your local time zone) you turn off as many lights as you can, presumably as an exercize in doing without so we can hopefully learn to be a less wasteful society.

I admit it, I don’t do everything I can, despite the fact I’m a bit of an environmentalist at heart. I like the ideas of things like sustainable hunting, sustainable farming, I love animals (to just short of the point of not eating them) and when I remember to I turn off lights that aren’t necessary.

However I also drive a tank of a vehicle (though admittedly we don’t drive it that much), and I frequently leave lights on that should be off just because I don’t think. For convenience’s sake, I don’t use many power-saving features on my computer – I turn my monitor off when I leave my desk purely for the reason that the lamps inside an LCD have a finite lifespan, of which my LCD has exceeded by double.

So this earth hour I think I’m going to take a more proactive approach – I can help save the environment and practice my target shooting with my BB pistol.

Just kidding. I’ll probably turn out some lights though.

The first few warm days of the season are great. It’s nice to just chill out in the sun and think about all the things that bothered you all winter. “When are we going to get this asbestos off the side of our house?” or at least when are we going to get rid of the nasty “Carolina Denim” paint job.

“Will the Suburban in the driveway ever roll again?” I’m pretty sure I’ll get it moving again, I just need the motivation to get out and do it. At the moment we’re enjoying the sunshine and hoofing it everywhere, or riding bikes. Spring is great for things like these, and I’m sure walking or riding a half mile a day isn’t killing me in the slightest.

“where can I find affordable auto insurance“… No, just kidding I rarely sit and ponder something so silly. I am reminded that it’s coming up again, but there’s not much you can do to avoid that.

Later that day I started talking to a friend about Iguana, which led me to go through a bunch of our old pictures of old pets. For those who don’t know, at one point we had around 50 rats, all of whom were just as cute as the other.  We also had two iguana, one of whom grew to about 4′ in length as well as an assortment of hamsters, fish, etc.

Of course remembering the fact they’re no longer with us totally ruins the feeling of sitting in the sun in the morning for the first time of the season, but that’s okay.