Unlike lawyers, most people don’t see things as having several truths. The truth simply ”IS”. The truth now is that Lady Liberty is in a deep pond of male bovine feces and just barely keeping her nose above the stinking mess. Our President is suffering from Elder Abuse. He is so impaired that he no longer knows who he is or where he is much of the time. And yet, the abusers parade him out to say a few garbled sentences and drift off into some fantasy world where he was once a truck driver or a postman or some other imagined skilled labor or profession. Wife Jill has all but disappeared. She was, at first, allowed to be on stage to control and to take him by the elbow and guide him off the stage before he lapsed into one of his fantasies. Now he is often out on the stage alone and lost. Who is, actually, running the American government is a question on the minds of many, including myself. We appear to be living in a country where unelected bureaucrats are calling all of the shots (No COVID pun intended). With all of the inflation, shortages and other impositions of the failing economy, I’m not quite sure what to do next. Here in Alaska ‘next’ probably means hoping for an extra warm summer to grow enough food for next winter and beyond. Things are likely to get a lot worse before they get better. As for you in the Lower 48, I’d say plant a garden, harvest your crops, vacuum seal and freeze them. Groceries may be hard to come by soon.

Yesterday, Sunday, was the last day of Greer Rd Greenhouse. We sold it out almost completely. All that is left are some small, but questionable, purchases made by Summer nearly two years ago, some blow mold plastic pots and trays and a couple of boxes of fertilizer. On one hand, I am happy as a clam that it has closed and on the other hand a little sad. It was Summer’s dream. It could have been very successful this year but the long term outlook was far less lucrative than her new job delivering the US Mail. Summer and I took down all of the road signs yesterday. There is not a trace of the business left except the big tent/greenhouse where it once existed. On Saturday, a lady wrote down her phone number because she wanted to buy the tent/greenhouse. I don’t know why she would want to buy a used tent/greenhouse when you can buy the tent, the extra tent frame and greenhouse vinyl for about $1500. Plus the fact that you’d have to take it down and the reassemble it. It seems like a lot of extra work to me. People are a mystery.

Today was the day I was supposed to get on with the waterproofing of the store tent that is about to become the storage tent. The waterproofing entails ’buttering’ 1×2 strips of wood with roofing cement and screwing them down on the deck and against the 2x8s that the tent is mounted upon. During the construction, I put enough adhesive between the 2x8s and the deck to waterproof and attach the boards down forever. That’s what I thought. In spite of my best efforts the rain water runs under the 2x8s in several places. Today, of course, it is raining. I was, also, going to change from the studded tires to my summer tires and, of course, it’s raining. So this is what I’m doing. Sitting here, pecking away at my iPad and drinking coffee. I’ve got a huge refrigerator stashed in ”Dangerous Dan’s” garage. It has a freon leak somewhere. I’ve now got to buy a nitrogen regulator and a bottle of nitrogen to try and find said leak. I could use an air compressor but that would introduce moisture into the system which as you might guess is not a good thing. So-o-o here I am waiting again. There is, however, a good thing about the rain. Yep, it’s melting the snow. The bad thing is that the ground is thawing and we will be mired in mud for 8-10 days. This is one of those ‘You can’t win for losing’ situations. One good thing is that the chickens now are able to roam freely around the property and harvest the bounty of worms and bugs released from the frozen ground. This free range feeding saves a lot of money on store bought feed. There are always two sides to every coin but when I call ’Heads’ the coin often has two ’Tails’. Hmmm, I think I may be complaining too much. Sorry.

I don’t know what to repair first, the Range Rover or the tractor. We need them both. I’m leaning toward repairing the Rover as it looks like an easier, quicker fix. Also, the tractor may have and most likely has a parts availability problem. Pasquali no longer supports or stocks parts for this tractor and, apparently, neither does anyone else.. The tractor is an antique. As near as I can tell, it was built in the 1970s. You’d think that the manufacturer would still have some parts lying around after 50 years. I’d say that not having parts for a tractor that they purposefully built to last a very long time is pretty damned short sighted. I have a second Pasquali, in pieces, that I might have to reassemble to solve the tractor problem.

The above was written in April and it is now June 10. Pretty much everything described above has not been done. I decided for my own sanity and to make a few bucks to go back into the appliance repair business. I have decades of experience. However, those have seemed like the wrong decades as almost everything now has a computer in it. I was around for the beginning and middle of the computer invasion but am somewhat ill prepared for the full on computer assault on appliances that worked much better without the computers. This is not to say that I can’t repair these pieces of crap. What I am saying is that the old stuff was way more reliable. The old time Maytag washer would likely go 20-25 years before it, at last, needed both belts replaced or, maybe, a pump. A new Maytag washer might go 5 years before some major computer or electronic problem. I worked on a Maytag washer a couple of weeks ago that the wires supplying power to the pump were so small and brittle that they broke. I repaired one by splicing in a bit of more flexible wire. Then was called back a couple weeks later to replace the other wire to the pump. This was a machine that was less than 9 months old and the owner was angry. My advice to all of you is to keep your old machine until it dies or you die.

This is Friday. A week ago, I had an accident that took about a half inch off my left index finger, the one next to my thumb. It felt so good that I considered doing it again. NOT! It cut off some bone and now I’m handicapped with one good hand. The doctor tells me that I’m in for, at least, two months of healing. He told me this while he was using some nippers to cut off the jagged parts of the bone so that he could pull some skin back over the raw meat and exposed bone. The tractor and the Rover will likely go unrepaired until September. Of course, mid-September is when it typically starts to rain almost every day. This incident happened when I was unhitching the trailer. The trailer rolled forward and caught my finger between the ball and the trailer hitch. It didn’t cut the end of my finger off. It mashed it off. YIKES and OUCH!!!

Dangerous Dan, Summer’s significant other, has taken over the house foundation project. He is an construction expert. He, actually, went to school for construction and has over 30 years of experience in home building. He volunteered for this gig because since April the house has moved about 6 inches down hill and I am not competent to solve the problem. Dan has arranged to have a new foundation dug and concrete poured. I would be helping dig or whatever except now I am handicapped. Of course, I will do what I can which will likely be the act of providing money and material transport. My stupid accident could not have come at a worse time.

Well, that brings you up to date, if you cared to be updated. I often think about posting some stuff but then the time gets away from me. My usual posts often take 2-3 hours. With that in mind, I have decided that, in the future, I will attempt to post more often and make the posts much shorter than the ‘books’ I usually post.

HAPPY SUMMER!!! GO TO THE BEACH IF YOU CAN AFFORD THE GAS,