Weather | 3/17, p. cloudy, 26°, 69° | 3/18, cloudy, 51°, 77°
| 3/19, 0.15" rain, hail, sun, clouds, snow, 31°, 68° | 3/20, skiff of snow, sunny, 0.19" moisture, 27°, 47° |
3/21, 0.05" rain, cloudy, 35°, 63° | 3/22, sunny to cloudy, 31°, 57°
| 3/23, 0.14" rain to sunny, 45°, 53° |
- Monday, 3/17: Melting Snow, Reordered Parts & Fly Tying
- The snow that fell Sunday morning is disappearing fast with higher temperatures. We think our little hilltop got the most snow of the region. Facebook friends in Quincy told me that they only received about a half an inch of snow.
- When the last order of auto parts arrived via UPS around 9 a.m. today, I inventoried all parts to make sure I didn't mistakenly overlook the missing dust shield sections. They aren't there.
- Instead of returning the dust shields right now in order to get a replacement order, I changed the request to just getting a refund and spent money to get a newer set of dust shields sent to me. I'll send back the partial dust shields I currently have once I get the pickup in running order.
- I removed the driver's side tire, but decided it was too late in the day to start working on the pickup.
- Instead, I went down to the mailbox and moved gravel in the dead grass alongside the mailbox back into the road. When I shoveled snow down there this winter, my shovel loads of snow included a large amount of gravel from the road. The mail delivery woman in her Jeep with huge tires is wedging a deep rut in front of the mailboxes alongside of the gravel road. That's where this gravel went.
- I attended the last Missouri Department of Conservation fly tying Webex. We tied two flies. They were the Caddis Fly and the Clouser Minnow (see photos, below). My versions of both flies are a whole lot fuzzier than those tied by the instructor. I also crowd the eye of the hook too much. Obviously, I need to tie more flies to get better.
- While I was in the middle of my virtual fly tying session, the neighbor woman who lives in the house across the gravel road from us came looking for their red heifer that has a bad eye. It got loose. Fixing fences must be impossible with those folks. They are always losing animals.
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My Caddis Fly is more of a fuzzball. It needs trimming.
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This Clouser Minnow swims upside down and is weedless.
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- Tuesday, 3/18: Damn the Ladybugs!!!
- I started the day's activities by vacuuming bugs so Mary could make a midday meal of fajita rice bowls. Asian ladybugs were pouring up an interior wall next to the kitchen stove. I'd suck a dozen bugs, leave it for about 15 to 30 seconds, and another half dozen bugs would appear.
- After eating, Mary took over vacuuming. She vacuumed almost non-stop for several hours in the afternoon. As dusk arrived, I took over. We had to finally just quit to eat our evening meal. At the end of it all, our shop vac was a third full with bugs. If our shop vac dies, we'll have to get a new one right away. These bugs are terrible!
- Mary put aluminum sulfate around the blueberry plants and wood ash around the sugar maple tree in the north yard.
- We saw eight wood ducks flying while we walked Plato to Bass Pond for a midday outing. They acted like they were going to drop into Bass Pond, saw us and flew east, then dropped into Wood Duck Pond.
- I pruned high branches of apple trees and applied TreeKote on fresh cuts. I finished pruning the Empire apple tree while using a six-foot step ladder and got halfway around the Granny Smith apple tree with the 10-foot step ladder. Most of the top branches on Granny are dead due to fire blight that hit that tree hard last year.
- Wednesday, 3/19: Wacky Weather
- The day started with partly cloudy skies and then a thunderstorm rolled in from the southwest that eventually dumped pea-sized hail on us. The skies cleared to sun. Clouds built in with eventual rain. By 11 p.m., when we walked Plato for the last time, snow was falling.
- Mom and I talked via a phone call. She's doing better after going through surgery in Billings, MT, to remove arthritis in her lower back. Pain that once prevailed while walking is gone. Karen is helping her. Mom must be careful not to bend over or twist. Mom and Karen are going to reorganize Mom's kitchen to prevent bending over to get items. Karen flies back home to her home in Georgia on Tuesday, 3/28.
- I vacuumed a bunch more bugs. The only thing that slows them down is cold weather.
- Forsythia bushes are starting to bloom.
- We got evening chores done early and enjoyed some hobby activities. Mary worked on a cross stitch item while I sorted chicken feathers that we've collected over the past couple years to use for fly tying. There were a couple areas filled with fluffy feathers. After grouping like feathers in piles, I put them in zippered plastic bags. I labeled three old Book of the Month Club boxes with the words "Feathers," "Hair," and "Yarn." I'm ready for serious fly tying.
- Thursday, 3/20: Red Pearl Amaryllis
- The Red Pearl amaryllis is blooming (see photo, below). It's such a nice flower that didn't bloom last year. Good to see you back, Red Pearl!
- Mary heard a brown thrasher singing from the walnut tree that is growing in the forsythia bush, next to the pickup. It was below freezing, and yet the bird was singing away in the early morning sunlight.
- The pickup dust shield parts came in with a UPS delivery, today. This time, I got all of the parts that are supposed to come with this shipment, unlike the last time it was sent.
- I used the angle grinder that was once Dad's tool, with a wire brush attached, and cleaned the rusty eight bolts that hold the emergency brake assembly onto the axle housing (four on each side). Old, dried up threadlocker is on all of these bolt threads, which the wire brush effectively removed. I also removed the brake hose from the passenger side brake caliper.
- Wind was blowing too hard and it was too cool to effectively work on pickup brakes, so I quit after doing these things on the vise in the machine shed.
- We played around with hobbies after evening chores. Mary did cross stitch work and I reviewed how to make a foam beetle fly, put more fly tying items away in my roll top desk, and tried to identify hook sizes. Fly tying geeks online love to drown everyone in their numbers, making it hard to determine hook sizes. I finally referred to an old Golden book.
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The Red Pearl Amaryllis blossom over Christmas Cactus jungle.
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- Friday, 3/21: Brake Work Progressing
- Mary vacuumed Asian ladybugs and they weren't nearly as bad as in past days. She also dusted the sunroom books and shelving.
- I worked on the pickup brakes. With strong southwest winds, I concentrated on the passenger rear brakes, which is on the north side with the pickup parked facing west.
- It took viewing several YouTube videos and a great deal of jiggering the two-part dust shield to get it into place. Once I got it there, it wouldn't fit on the axle flange correctly. Close inspection revealed I still had a piece of the old shield in the emergency brake assembly. I took the new dust shield off and pried that old piece out, scraped out old rust, then reinstalled the new dust shield. A lot of the anti-rust powder coat paint got scratched off in the process. I'm not impressed with this tinny design. Older pickups were built better. The four emergency brake assembly bolts went in with blue threadlocker applied.
- I cleaned up the emergency brake actuator and installed new parts with liberal amounts of grease. I installed the emergency brake shoes and bolted in the retainer. With rain predicted, I threw on the tire to keep things relatively dry. I quit around 6 p.m.
- I saw a group of about 100 snow geese flying west over the house. I've been wondering if they were all through, yet, but that flock shows we still have a few heading out. I also noticed red-winged blackbirds milling about. We have lots of cardinals on our property and they're really singing.
- At dusk, we had extremely strong winds and a blast of rain. The wind blew the rain gauge off the post, so we're only guessing our rain amount.
- Saturday, 3/22: One Half of Pickup Brakes Finished
- We walked Plato to Bass Pond and back for his a noontime outing. When we arrived at the edge of the pond, some ring-necked ducks took off from the water. This is the first time we've seen them here in Missouri. Mary says the last time she saw them was at the Roseau River Wildlife Management Area, which is along the Canadian border, while we lived in Roseau, MN, in 1995. Ring-necked ducks breed there. They're just flying through Missouri.
- It was backup day for me while working on the pickup's brakes. First, after watching a YouTube video about the emergency brake actuator arm off the end of the emergency brake cable, I realized that I needed to install it prior to putting new parts in the actuator. So, I popped off the emergency brake shoes, unscrewed the new parts, installed the actuator arm and rubber gasket, screwed the parts together, and reinstalled the emergency brake shoes.
- Next, I cleaned the new rotor on both sides with brake cleaning fluid. Then I adjusted the emergency brake mechanism in after several tries at putting the rotor on. At first, I was turning it the wrong way. I grabbed the turning mechanism for the other side of the pickup and figured out which way to turn it to decrease pressure, which worked.
- I greased the caliper pins and rub points on the caliper, installed brake clips, installed the new caliper bracket with new caliper bolts, bolted the rubber brake line bracket in place, installed the new caliper, and installed the rubber brake line to the caliper with new copper washers.
- Then I realized I missed an important step...installing the new brake pads! I removed the caliper and slid in two new brake pads, then reinstalled the caliper and tightened the bolts with a torque wrench. The only thing left to do on the passenger's side rear brakes is to bleed the brakes, which I'll do after I install new parts on the driver's side rear brakes.
- I put tires back on the pickup to help with rain protection, since rain is predicted overnight.
- In the evening, I noticed a lot of muscle aches and pains. I'm not the young buck I once was while bending over and reefing on torque wrenches.
- Katie sent a photo of a beautiful award she received after becoming the non commissioned officer of the year in her squadron for 2024 (see photo, below). She told me, after I asked, that there are 30 non commissioned officers in her squadron, or about half of the squadron.
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Katie's award as non commissioned officer of the year.
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- Sunday, 3/23: A Resting Day
- Rain was pouring down hard when I woke up briefly at 4:20 a.m. We received more rain later in the morning, and a bit of rain just before noon. In the afternoon, high wind gusts over 40 mph blasted us.
- We stayed inside for most of the day, since the weather was bum outside. It also gave my muscles a break from bending over pickup brakes and wrenching on auto parts.
- I put labels on the 14 bottles of the first batch of spiced apple wine and stored them in two coolers in the upstairs north bedroom.
- Mary dusted living room books and I sucked bugs with the vacuum. We thought the bugs were dwindling down, but today proved us wrong.
- Mary and I watched the BBC series, North & South.
- We also drank a bottle of 2022 dandelion wine. It was exquisite. It has a citrus element to it. Mary says it's like drinking an IPA beer with extra hops. You can also taste the dandelion flower flavor. This is an extremely good wine.