Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Stinking Dogs

Stinking Dogs

I finished Chapter 2 of the serial. It is posted in my port under the file Duke Francisco of Castile. I also have the first cut of an outline for the Novella.

Yesterday I split a trailer load of wood. I have an old farm conveyor that was used in days of old to send bales of hay to the upper parts of a barn. I only use the bottom two sections for the purpose of taking the split blocks and putting them in a trailer. As the firewood goes up the conveyer it drops into the trailer and a pile begins to form. As the pile nears the tip of the conveyer it is necessary to redistribute the mound across the entirety of the trailer. The conveyor is powered by an old Briggs and Stranton 10 horse power motor with a six to one reduction drive. That means that the moter turns at about 3600 rpm but the power take off spline turns at only 600. This give it a lot of torque and I don't need a tranmission. Just wind the rope, give it a jerk and off goes the conveyor. I pour my waste oil from the year on the drive chain and bearings to keep it well lubricated and the excess oil gets soaked up by the wood making it a bit more flamable when it dries.

Anyway I was in the process of doing this when my wife was continuing to put wood on the conveyer…to make a long story short I got hit in the head with a piece of wood and it sure did smart. Linda felt bad and put the blame on me for not explaining the process and safety considerations better. Fortunately I have a hard head and aside from a sharp exchange of words all is well. I was really tired and haven’t felt much like doing anything today.

So we went to Stevens Point, Best Buy and I bought a new laptop computer. The one I am using is about five years old and has begun to flicker when it comes on….I had one a while back that did that just before it crashed. Also the keyboard letters have worn off on many of the keys and the touch pad has a big hole worn on the laminating surface. This new laptop has twice the capability of my current one for about half the price. After buying the computer we parked at Wall-Mart and Linda went in to get groceries while I walked Chloe and Honey. There is a huge old agrricultural field adjacent to the parking lot and I decided to let them off the leash….bad move. They ran across the field and found a dead creature to roll in. I took them over to a pond and tried to get some of the stench off and succeeded a bit. Linda took it pretty well…she is a nurse and used to noxious smells. It was still pretty ripe and we had to endure a 45 minute drive home with the windows down. Once home I stripped down and gave them a hot shower with some expensive shampoo. It did a world of good but occasionally a honey coated whiff rises off their bodies and my brain does a flash back....noxious.


This was another of those minor crisis days we so often encounter…I suppose most people find themselves in the same sorts of situations