Perpetual Ruminations

Monday

What a day! It started out fine; I slept in since it's my day off, then got up and enjoyed coffee with Rhonda. After, she got ready for work, I got ready to take her to work, since it was so cold out today. I also wanted to pick up a few things and needed to go into town for that anyway.

While in town, I got some power steering fluid then set about trying to research what I would need to work on the power steering. That's when things really started to go bad. Well, when I dropped Rhonda off, they started to go bad. I could hear the power steering pump chattering.

I had a hose blow yesterday, and today it was making terrible noises. So that's when things started to go down hill. But they hit bottom when I tried to do some online research, and discovered that my laptop was acting up. I had installed Weatherbug, didn't like it, and removed it. Somehow, it had messed up everything. I tried doing a system restore to a point right before I put Weatherbug on, but it wouldn't work.

So, I disabled my anti-virus and tried it again. It still did not work, so I had to give up on it and go see what I could do with the blown hose. I thought luck was with me when I found the hose and seen it was a return line. I could work on this easy enough, all I needed was to get the part. So I called, and no one had the parts, but could order them. They may be in by Friday, but not for sure.

That wasn't going to help me in time to go to Rhonda's mom's for Christmas, so I set about removing the damaged part to see if I could get it fixed here in town. He repairs hydraulic lines for tractors, maybe he can fix this line.

Only in the process of removing it, I found it wasn't damaged, it had just blown off. I cleaned it all up, put a new clamp on it, and had it back together in about an hour. By this time, I thought my fingers would be froze, since it was a balmy negative seven degrees out, and I was working outside bare handed, not to mention drenched in cold power steering fluid.

That's when it dawned on me, my hands were not cold. In fact, they felt pretty darn good. That was all I needed to know, they had started to freeze. I couldn't see how badly, since they were covered in oils and grease; black and filthy.

I came in and warmed them up slowly while I washed some of the grease off, then after a cup of coffee and still no luck getting the computer working right, I went back out and finished up. I filled the reservoir up and started the motor. Nothing! The steering still was not right.

I shut it off and opened the hood, then restarted it to see what was going on. The pump itself was leaking now, shot from driving with it empty, I suppose. The oil was leaking out by the pulley, hitting the belts and fan, and I was covered in the stuff.

Looks like we will be staying home for the holiday. It also looks like I'll be taking it in for repairs and hoping it does not cost too damn much to get the pump replaced. I suppose I could work on it myself, but I don't have a garage and working with stuff like this outside in sub-zero weather has already given me frostbite on both hands.

Not severe, but enough to be painful. I hope it's just mild enough to clear up overnight, but I doubt it. I suppose it will take a while to recover, and hopefully I don't freeze them more now, at work. I spent my entire afternoon accomplishing nilch.

I am happy to report that I was able to get my computer working right again this evening. I managed to get a system restore to work and then had to repair my antivirus program, but it's working right and hopefully I won't have to mess with too many things to get it all back again.