| Last Sunday they finished filling the Bishopric in the San Manuel First Ward with the call of Verne Fisher as the Second Councilor. That should make an interesting (and undoubtedly efficient) mix. There are still changes pending, as Will Ramsay (called as First Councilor) has yet to be released as the Elders Quorum President. Maybe if AJ were to hurried home... Nah... On his first Sunday as Bishop, Kent McRae was absent, attending a previously scheduled family activity. What an interesting portent. Prior to him being called, I often have an inkling as to who the new leader will be, but this change caught me totally by surprise. I was not even aware there was a change coming. And in any event, I would not have picked Kent for that role. Fortunately, "The Lord looketh not on the countenance of a man, but on his heart..." Working in Tucson and not arriving home until 6 p.m. (or later) may cause some problems, but Kent is a good man (with a supportive wife), and with the Mantle of a Bishop resting on him, I am confident he will work it out. |
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Friday night Nathen et al showed up at my house, and Saturday they helped me pour the cement pad on which our AC/heating unit will repose. We spent an hour or so the next morning playing with the drive pulley system, but finally got it to a point where it turns the mixing bucket at the right speed, and seems to work quite well. The belts jumped the pulleys a half dozen times before we arrive at that point, but designing a drive system is a process, not an event. |
| You can imagine how much help Ethan and Kyle were... |
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We gave them a hose with a sprayer nozzle (that cut off water flow) and the responsibility of keeping a five-gallon bucket full of water (so that we could dip out of it with a smaller bucket to supply water to the cement mixer). As a result, the cement pad contains more weeds and other organic debris than is desirable, but I suspect that was a small price to pay for their help. |
| I am not much of a cement worker, and we may have gotten the mixture too wet as, after it was poured, it was difficult to work the surface and took almost 48 hours to set up. |
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At this point the pad looks okay, with the possible exception of a slightly roughened surface (at least it has no cracks yet). |
| I bought a trowel, but lacked the knowledge of what one is supposed to achieve using it, and how it is used to achieve those desired results (as well as the appearance of intermediate steps in the process). I don't have a cement tamp (used to move rocks and larger gravel down from the surface) and that may have contributed to the final result. Then again, all this chunk needs to do is to keep the AC unit out of the mud. Surely it can't be that difficult... Life is hard when you are a perfectionist... (and guess whose genes some of you have...). |
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Pouring the cement took only a couple of hours, so Barbara suggested we go kite flying. We, (Nathen and I) returned to design work, and modified the kite string reel (model O2) to accept a bicycle odometer. That took some work (for your information, bicycle spokes are made of an alloy that burns when exposed to the heat of an arc welder), but we were finally successful with the design and installation. |
| One problem we faced was that the odometer uses the diameter of the wheel to calculate the distance, and that value varies significantly as you add string to the reel and the roll gets larger. After several calculations, we arrived at an average diameter, and used that to program the odometer. It seemed to work reasonable well, at least when we remembered to reset it before launching the kite. I think that it's a good addition to our equipment. |
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One thing we have to remember is that the odometer cannot tell which direction the wheel is moving, and counts all revolutions (both letting string out and taking it up) in its distance calculations. Wind velocity that day was too high to fly the more efficient of our kites (the aircraft kite bent backward to where the wings almost touched)... |
| so we ended up flying the dragon kite with the long heavy tail (that AJ and I designed). |
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It flew well most of the time, but occasionally the head would duck and get caught under a line and then the kite would spin. A couple of times it went out of sight behind a hill in the foreground, only to reappear in five to ten seconds. It finally crashed on about 0.13 miles of line (that is the most we deployed), and we had to rescue it. We were able to launch it again from that position (and after three or four more crashes) finally recovered the kite along with all the string. Barbara attempted to run the reel, but the dragon began bucking just above the ground, and she ended up running afoul of the handle and while recovering from that blow, stepped on a cactus wearing only moccasins and acquired an array of thorns in her foot. Those, and a couple of string burns, were the only causalities of the day. |
| Another milestone was passed this week when the Geo Metro rolled past 290,000 miles. That is exceptional, especially considering that the only work it has had was when we replaced the water pump, the radiator was replaced due to hitting a good sized rock in Salt River Canyon, incidentally the timing belt. As it turned out, besides the radiator, neither of the other repairs were necessary, so it has traveled that far with almost no work. |
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I have changed the oil every three months (in fact it needs it now), and that is about all the maintenance it has had. The really disappointing thing is that the vehicle is no longer manufactured. In fact, I am aware of no other vehicle that has as good a highway mileage rating (42 mpg) in any that are currently available (assuming you discount the "hybrid vehicles" that will assuredly consume any saving in gasoline costs when their battery requires replacement [circa $5000]). (Note: Does anyone else remember all the moaning and groaning about "What a piece of junk this thing is" and, "I hope I didn't make a mistake buying this piece of junk" talk that was said when he purchased this car?) |
| Actually, Volkswagen has diesel models (the new Beetle and the Golf) that are rated at 55-60 mpg, but Dave Elliott had one of those, whose engine went belly up at only 150,000 miles, and that just doesn't do it for me. The Metro is still going strong, but I have no idea what I will replace it with went the time finally comes. It was fun having the grandkids around. Barbara and Terre, particularly enjoyed taking photos (and it is a good thing we went digital, as wholesale film distributor-ships are hard to come by). |
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I had forgotten just how kinetic children can be. We drove with them to the hardware store, and since it was a short distance, I elected to not tie them down. As a result, they bounced all over the back seat area and ended up hanging out the windows. In the store, they "tested" about 25% of the tools (and, given that we were only there three minutes, that is a significant number). On the return trip (after our discussion about window configurations) they conducted an in-depth examination of the seat cover integrity using the edge of the trowel. Perhaps someday we will give up fossil fuels and harness the energy of a four-year-old. |
| Earlier this year, Barbara acquired a "cotton candy" machine, and we tested it out while they were here. It wasn't an "industrial strength" machine, but we were able to generate a sticky, gooey mess (much to the delight of Ethan and Kyle). |
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Parting Thought: If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is probably not for you... |
| If you have someone who has decided he wants to be your enemy, it behooves you to understand what he thinks and how he believes. With this thought in mind, I began reading the Koran (the Muslim Scripture), and have completed about a quarter of it at this point. Many of its teachings and stories are similar to what you find in the Christian Scriptures, but there are also some sharp differences. Perhaps when I finish I will post a summary. |