28 July 2022

The Chinese Communist Party, hereinafter referred top aa the CCP, owns much of our farm and ranch land. They own a vast number of food processing plants in America AND they own most of our politicians. ”We the people” are screwed. The CCP has been at war with America since the 1940s. They have not surrendered or taken a step back. The have moved forward at a snail’s pace and consolidating each minor victory as they’ve moved. UNTIL NOW! The CCP controls most of the computer chip business, all of the solar panel business, much of the America food industry, 100s of thousands of acres of farm and ranch lands, untold 1000s of homes and apartments. While this war has been being waged politicians like Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Swalwell and a bunch of both Democrat and Republican politicians have either just stood by and watched or actively aided in the conquering of America. The entire Federal government has been co-opted by the CCP. There are two things left to the American citizens. 1. You can stop buying Chinese manufactured merchandise that would include computers, cell phones and a bunch of other crap you don’t need. You don’t need a new computer or cell phone every year or two. Do we have to satisfy our every retail fantasy at the expense of losing our nation and our freedom? 2. Call for and force your State Legislature to pass a resolution calling for a US Constitution, Article 5 ’Convention of States’. At said Convention the US Constitution may be amended by 34 States and ratified by 38 States. Changes to the Constitution should include term limits for the Congress and the repeal of the 17th Amendment The 17th federalized the US Senate. Before the 17th, the State legislatures appointed the Senators. This appointment process was the insurance that there would be no lifetime serving Senators and that the Senators represented their state and not the federal government. The 17th Amendment was the beginning of the slippery slope on which we are racing into the 3rd World abyss.

The next 2 cords of wood are here. I picked them up last Thursday and have made very little progress in processing them. For the last several days, I have been feeling exhausted. Last night I went to bed and hour early (11:00) and got up this morning 45 minutes late (8:45). I was feeling very tired when I arose but as the day wore on I felt much like my usual ‘busy bee’ self. I think that sometimes the enormity and sheer volume of things that need to be (must be) done just overwhelms my little pea brain. I, sort of, go into survival mode. Kind of a tip toeing past the grave yard scenario. If I just creep along the boogey man might not pay attention. The main problem with this behavior is that nothing gets done and more things pile up that must be done. Summer has continued to work 6 days a week delivering the mail on her 62 mile rural route. Most of her ‘Get up and Go’ has got up and went. She’s been coming home and stacking wood for an hour or so. This has led to the wood piling up outside the tents. Some of it is kind of green so the lying out in the rain has not helped it dry. I had hoped to be able to have all of the wood in split and in the tents by the end of August. It doesn’t appear that this is going to be the case. Jeff, my wood guy, has been slow in getting the 12 cords of wood that I agreed to purchase. With his failure to call and tell me he has the next two cords, I am not taking care of business like I should. Therefore, it is Jeff’s fault and not mine that I haven’t fully processed this last load of wood

The Dangerous Dan house leveling project is proceeding along swimmingly. He works all week at his regular job then spends Saturday and most of Sunday working to keep our house from falling off the pilings. I can tell that all of this work is grinding him down. Because I am not an expert at construction, I spent two summers trying to do what he has done in 3-4 weeks. By last summer I had given up on the project. However, this spring the house slid forward about 12 inches and Dan jumped in to save the house from becoming kindling. I’ve told you this before but it bears repeating. He is the only thing between us and homelessness.

I’m driving a 22 year old car. A 2000 Subaru Forester that day before yesterday lost a fan belt on the way home. This was not the first time that the same belt had failed. Since I was already changing the missing belt, I decided that it would be prudent to change both belts. This led me to discover that the belt adjustment idler assembly was broken and not adjusting anything. Since my car was not drivable, Summer had to pick up all of the necessary parts. This was a project for ”Stupidman”. I had already disassembled the belt idler when Summer arrived home with the new parts. The closeness the radiator cooling fan assembly to the Idler assembly was too small for my hands. There were two bolts holding this assembly to the engine block. I broke them loose with a socket but there wasn’t enough room to remove the bolts with the socket and ratchet. This left me poking my arthritic fat fingers down into the narrow slot and turn the bolts a quarter turn or less with each movement. It was a major bit of aggravation that took over 15 minutes. Then the idler adjustment screw would not come off the assembly. This led to another 15-20 minutes of aggravation. My fumble fingered efforts, finally, managed to reinstall the assembly back onto the car. All total this little project took two hours. Had there been a single inch of extra space this job would have taken less than 30 minutes. Like my old Grandpa used to say ”If it was easy anybody could do it and everybody would.” BTW the parts alone were $96. I suspect that doing the work myself saved us $200.

When I first started working on cars, back in the 60s, you could very nearly sit under the hood with your feet on the frame to work on the engine. Now under the hood there is barely room to put a tool on the engine. This is an improvement?

With about 90 days until the snow flies. This next few weeks we will be getting ready for the snow by picking up anything and everything that will become a trip hazard or end up in the intake of the snowblower. It’s that time of the year again. While we try to keep things picked up, we end up dropping one project to take up another or some emergency. This, inevitably, leaves things lying around where they shouldn’t be lying around.

Well, I’m done. I spent an hour chainsawing logs and now i’m through. It’s Vodka-thirty.