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Post by Phalon on Apr 19, 2019 4:52:11 GMT -6
BP's car wasn't as expensive to fix as originally thought - only $357 as opposed to the estimate that was more than double that amount. They were able to save the manifold, and a secondary mini-manifold, which Hubs thought when looking at it was the catalytic converter, because WTF is a mini-manifold? - neither of us ever heard of a mini-manifold, and just weld new exhaust pipes (I'm not being technical-sounding because I don't know the real terminology) to those old manifolds. Still is amazing to me that snow build-up could rip apart an entire exhaust like that, but her car is 18 years old - 18 years of Michigan winters, and I'm sure rust played a big part. Maybe not so amazing after all.
I haven't had my car looked at yet. It's just the "skirt" (because I don't know what it's called) that is below the bumper on the front - that 3 inch or so wide hard rubber strip that runs along the length of the bumper that serves I-don't-know-what purpose and that has very little clearance from the ground. Not enough clearance, I found, in six inches of heavy, wet snow - the thing cracked, and after the snow melted, hung to the ground. I just used duct tape to tape it together and keep it from dragging until I can get to the dealer Monday. And sigh - I am positive it's, of course, not covered under warranty.
More on the gander later - this late bird has to get in the shower and get ready for work.
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Post by Mini Mia on Apr 19, 2019 22:12:56 GMT -6
I've had the heat on again since yesterday evening. Looks like I'll switch back to the a/c all next week though. Rain and clouds kept me from seeing the moon last night.
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Post by moonglum on Apr 20, 2019 8:18:27 GMT -6
We are down at the caravan and it is officially summer. Temp outside is 25C and its loungers out and feet up. The sun is burning, they say that we are hotter than spain and it feels like it. Tons of jobs to do, I've scrubbed the decking, repaired a gutter and wired in a socket for the freezer. Ah bliss.
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Post by Phalon on Apr 21, 2019 8:26:14 GMT -6
It rained here the entire day on Thursday, very heavily at times. The skies cleared though just in time for the moon to shine in all its glory. It was one of those nights when it looked like there was a light left on somewhere - it was bright enough to see clearly in the darkened house.
I wish I could say the same. It's been wet, dreary, cold and windy here. High temperatures are still in the 40s, but with the wind chill, it feels like the 30s. Freezing our behinds off at work, but at least it was sunny yesterday! Today it's predicted to rain again, but the temperature is supposed to climb into the mid-60s!!!
Things are starting to wake up too - the red maples are flowering. One of my favorite spring flowers, daffodils, are blooming, and the tiny chionodoxa are a field of blue all throughout the yard. The forsythias too, are starting to open. I don't have forsythia in the yard, but I do have spicebushes with their less conspicuous but in my opinion, just as beautiful tiny yellow flowers all up and down the stems. I think I'll go cut a big early springtime bouquet of spicebush branches and daffodils for the table.
Happy Easter, everyone!
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Post by Mini Mia on Apr 21, 2019 22:56:10 GMT -6
Happy Easter! Although it will be over in five minutes.
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Post by moonglum on Apr 21, 2019 23:24:39 GMT -6
Happy belated Easter everyone. Spent most of yesterday at the hospital. Vox had severe chest pain Saturday night. They did an ECG, lost the first blood samples, kept us waiting five hours while they tried to get another sample through the lab. In the end we have to go back today. Not a happy Easter this end.
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Post by Mini Mia on Apr 21, 2019 23:54:45 GMT -6
Sorry to hear that. I hope it isn't anything serious.
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Post by moonglum on Apr 22, 2019 7:48:00 GMT -6
Thanks Joxie. Another ECG and yet another blood sample later we are home. It's not her heart, it's her hiatus hernia causing the problem they think, and a possible lung infection. Antibiotics and changes to Vox's eating habits, mainly the times of her meals and we'll see how it goes.
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Post by Phalon on Apr 23, 2019 4:42:06 GMT -6
I hope it goes well. Glad to hear it's not her heart, and keeping you both in my thoughts.
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Post by Phalon on Apr 24, 2019 5:01:16 GMT -6
We had a couple of really beautiful, warm and sunny days Sunday and Monday - short sleeve and windows open weather! The rain held off until Monday night, but the temperature didn't drop until yesterday morning - and when it did drop, it dropped dramatically. It was almost 60 degrees when I got up yesterday morning, and by the time I left for work, it was in the mid-40s. With the wind, it was back to winter coats at work.
It got down to just above freezing last night, and there's a covering of frost now. And drats! My magnolia was just starting to bloom! Foiled by Mother Nature again!
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Post by Mini Mia on Apr 25, 2019 3:00:04 GMT -6
Yeah. I've had a couple of those days. Temps dropped in a matter of a few hours, and went from Summer to Winter.
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Post by Phalon on Apr 27, 2019 5:07:38 GMT -6
Just one more day to get through. This has been a "Hell Week" at work - one of those weeks in which the crews are off property busy with landscape jobs, and semi-truck after semi-truck loaded with plants, a lot of them heavy balled-and-burlapped trees with no one to unload them but the three of us working retail in the garden center.
I'm beat and soooo looking forward to having a couple of days off after today. Maybe even work in my gardens a bit, which desperately need it.
Of course, it's predicted we could get half a foot of snow this evening!
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Post by katina2nd on Apr 27, 2019 19:27:55 GMT -6
Great news that it's not Vox's heart MG, and like Phalon I'll also be keeping you both in my thoughts.
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Post by moonglum on Apr 29, 2019 7:45:29 GMT -6
Thanks for those kind words Kat. She seems to be back to her old self now, she's nagging me so she must be. Gotta go, gotta duck!
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Post by Phalon on Apr 30, 2019 5:11:13 GMT -6
Glad Vox is seeming to be back to her good old self, Moonglum.
Dang, I cannot seem to get on this spring clock although it's been weeks since the time changed. Running late again this morning, doing stuff that should have been done yesterday evening along with the typical morning routine stuff.
Later, Taters. Enjoy the day!
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Post by katina2nd on Apr 30, 2019 21:26:18 GMT -6
Thanks for those kind words Kat. She seems to be back to her old self now, she's nagging me so she must be. Gotta go, gotta duck! Well that's surely a good sign mate.
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Post by moonglum on May 1, 2019 1:11:13 GMT -6
Thanks Phalon. The weather here has been glorious. Temp 15C when I woke up this morning and the sun blazing away. Finished a few jobs off in the garden yesterday, then spent the afternoon shopping with Vox and had a meal out. I like this retirement game, wish I'd started it earlier.
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Post by Phalon on May 1, 2019 5:01:48 GMT -6
I'm jealous!!
I'm even more so after reading that!
We had a few inches of snow Saturday night. I took the dog out around midnight, and it was absolutely gorgeous - heavy and wet, the snow lined every branch, twig, and tiny little leaf that somehow manage to emerge in our colder than normal weather. Under the soft orange light of the street lamps, it all had a magical peach-colored glow to it.
The snow melted quickly on Sunday due to the sun, certainly not the temperature. Still cold. Monday, heavy rain all day. Tuesday, rain. Last night and this morning, heavy rain, continuing throughout the day. Tomorrow, predicted rain. Friday, rain. Saturday, rain. And that's as far into the forecast as I've looked.
The farmers have a saying: A dry spring will scare you to death. A wet spring will kill you.
Crops should have already been planted but aren't, first delayed by the winter weather in spring, and now by saturated fields too wet to work.
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Post by moonglum on May 2, 2019 1:57:08 GMT -6
LOL. I was actually sweating, for the first time this year. Actual beads of perspiration running down. None of your fake stuff, oh no, the real McCoy.
It's a bright morning here, clear blue skies and 14C. We are expected to have rain later today and all over the weekend, but it will be warm rain!
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Post by Phalon on May 2, 2019 4:59:39 GMT -6
Pfft! The only sweating I've done this spring is that which was brought on by menopausal hot-flashes! Yesterday, I was dripping wet....not sweat, but from rain.
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Post by Phalon on May 3, 2019 5:11:57 GMT -6
"Not rain, snow, sleet, or hail can stop..."
We've had it all in the last couple of weeks. Mother Nature is like the U.S. Postal Service - all the adverse conditions that's been thrown at her, and still she delivers. Despite the really crappy weather we've been having, it's beginning to look a lot like spring here!
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Post by moonglum on May 3, 2019 8:32:09 GMT -6
After a few weeks of warm dry weather, we have rain. Temps are still in the teens, just, and it is due to get colder again. Work in the garden has had to go on hold for a while, concrete doesn't like rain.
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Post by Phalon on May 4, 2019 4:27:03 GMT -6
Concrete in the garden? It sounds as if you've got a major project in the works.
Any vegetables started in the green house yet?
Our vegetable garden is a mess! I don't even have lettuce seeds planted yet, and it appears my thyme - big gorgeous plants at the edge of the raised beds, weeping over the sides to soften the hard edges - have pretty much died; probably the Polar Vortex temperatures did them in. Question is whether to cut them way back and have them look ugly most of the summer, or start fresh. Even the few spears of asparagus that sprouted about a week ago turned to mush in the snow. The only thing growing out there right now is weeds, and it appears to be a bumper crop of them!
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Post by moonglum on May 5, 2019 3:00:31 GMT -6
Laying a base for yet another shed at the end of the garden. The area there was overgrown with weeds and rubbish accumulated over the years.
Sadly, no. I've used it as an oven! To dry painted fence panels and a gate during the cold weather. They badly needed replacing. We are going to start some seeds off late in there soon. I've also got plans for an enclosed vegetable bed but that won't be ready this year.
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Post by Mini Mia on May 10, 2019 20:35:22 GMT -6
I had planned on digging up the Summer thread and posting to it, but we've had a few days in the low 60s. It isn't supposed to warm back up into the 70s until Tuesday. The 60s is FREEZING! I'm not enjoying it. I wasn't enjoying the 80s either. Thus is life.
I went ahead and bumped the Summer thread to make it easier to find next month.
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Post by Phalon on May 11, 2019 4:55:53 GMT -6
OMG, we are longing for the 60s!!!! After some (finally) nice weather last weekend, this week was back to the same - rain every day, with high temps in the 40s. At least yesterday we had sun all day, but it was brrrr-d@mn cold! Frost warnings for last night and tonight - the frost seems to have missed us, but it's 37 degrees now.
Though everyone is complaining about the wet and cold, the birds don't seem to notice at all. Yesterday evening it was like a bird air-traffic controller was needed in my yard - there were so many birds flying this way and that, I seriously wondered how there aren't mid-air collisions. Cardinals, bluejays, finches, doves, chickadees, crows, downy woodpeckers, robins, and a few seasonal-only visitors were zig-zagging everywhere! The seasonal visitors included a lone hummingbird I watched sipping nectar from flowers on the big maple right outside the back door, and in the same tree, a warbler of some sort was flitting from branch to branch for about fifteen minutes, I'm assuming eating insects on the maple flowers also. The grosbeaks are back also - there were two colorful males, and at least one female. Like the warbler, the grosbeaks usually don't stay long - maybe a just a week, then they'll continue their journey north. Always a pleasure to have them use our yard as a stop-over.
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Post by stepper on May 12, 2019 14:48:31 GMT -6
The weather around here has been iffy for several days. We went down to the 40s a couple mornings but warmed up to the 60s, and people were still talking about how cool it was. I keep thinking of August and hoping some of this comes around when it gets stinky hot here. We've had decent amounts of rain but we've been lucky. We got rain, but the excessive amounts have just barely bypassed us going either north or south of us. Houston wasn't so lucky. A friend was trying to fly home and didn't make it. The first day he didn't even get out of the airport - the incoming flight was delayed 4 hours and that made it too late for the connecting flight. The second day he got to Houston for the connecting flight but the storms ended up grounding most of the outgoing aircraft and he spent the night in the USO lounge. The next day he couldn't get to his destination and he gave up - he ended up flying back to San Antonio.
For some reason that escapes me, after the flock of Egyptian geese had their goslings, they ALL took off - including the ones that have been here for a couple years now. I don't know why the mood to move hit them at the same time but they're gone. I saw on the news that the riverwalk in downtown San Antonio has a flock of them but the city considers them as too messy and they plan to trap and relocated all the ones that have shown up. And the two parakeets that were feeding here didn't survive the winter. I tried to make friends with them but they weren't having it. We've got a flock of doves, sparrows, some cardinals, blue jays, crows, blackbirds, and a banditry of tufted titmice. Still no robins though.
Later: A neighbor called and two of the geese have come back. They were in my front yard eating bird seed.
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Post by Mini Mia on May 15, 2019 4:22:40 GMT -6
Raining right now. It got down to 45F the other night. The house got down to 66F, but I didn't turn the heat on. Hot flashes would have kicked in.
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Post by moonglum on May 16, 2019 0:36:06 GMT -6
The weather has been glorious this last week. Temps reached the low 20'sC a couple of days and the sun has been blazing non-stop. Got my concreting done at the back of the house, just got a bit to do at the front and that will be finished. Vox has an appointment for an endoscopy on Saturday and they have forecast rain over the weekend, so looks like I'm gonna be busy today and tomorrow.
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Post by Phalon on May 19, 2019 8:10:30 GMT -6
It is soggy as heck out there, but I want to get out in the yard and do something - anything - before the rain starts....again.
Oh-my-gosh, we are sooo behind in yardwork this year, and after a pretty mild and pleasant weather week, the 14-day forecast shows rain every day!
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