Nothing Happens At Ten

We had The Beast running again this weekend. It is a bit tricky to get it running. The first time we started it, (a few weeks ago), we forgot to turn on the fuel. That didn’t work very well. The second time, (last week) we forgot to turn on the ignition switch. Duh. The third time (yesterday) we forgot to choke it first.

That’s about all the mistakes that one can make I suppose, which is pretty frustrating…. especially after you realize that the instructions for starting it are displayed right on the front panel:

… in pictures…. right where we were standing when we tried to start it.

Oops.

But we are learning as we go, and we did get it started and checked out end to end all the way from the pull cord to a light bulb.

This may seem like a trivial test to do, but we do not want to wait until the blizzard to find out that something doesn’t work right… and we did have to return one $70 cable to the store because it did not work properly.

Nice rat’s nest, huh? I had to procure the triangular converter box in order to do this test. That is the black box on the left in the photo below.

It converts the large cable with the 240 Volt L14-30P Twist Lock outlet to a set of 4 standard 120 Volt 5-20 outlets so that I can test it with the lamp ( aren’t you glad you asked? ) .

The converter box was difficult to find, and I finally had to order one through a local hardware store. It cost me $39.95, and really is just a box with some wires and outlets in it. It is rugged and well built, but still, it is just a box with some wires and outlets in it for $39.95.

I was somewhat disturbed by the cost of the converter until last night when we got take-out food at the local eatery and the bill for some subs came to $29.61. Yikes.

I feel a little better about the cost of the converter box now, but not so good about the cost of subs.

The next test will require shutting down the entire house and trying to run some of it from the generator. That ought to be interesting!

Slow blog day. Are you still there?

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

To test out my new shop in the basement I made a shelf to use in our T.V. stand. I plan to use it for arranging the Audio Visual equipment a bit better. But after I put the stain on it and stood it on end to take a look, it appears to be more deranged, don’t you think?

Maybe it is the old house come back to haunt us. That is very shelfish of it.

The landlord only gave us one key to the Fallapartment. He was supposed to make us another key last Summer, but he never got around to it. Too busy, I guess.

Now that we are out and he wants to show the place to possible renter$, he wanted us to hand over our key. We told him that he could not have our key because we are still paying rent on the place, and that he should use his spare key.

Guess what? He has no idea where his key is. All this time, the landlord’s “Emergency” key has been missing. Go figure.

So he finally came and took our key and had a copy made, and after he returned it, the key ring looked like this:

How can you screw up a split ring? What a talent! With a touch like that, is there any mystery that the Fallapartment is falling apart?

We have the generator.

Finally.

But therein lies a tale.

We picked it up on Friday morning and managed to get it home, borrowing some ramps to put it in and out of the car. It weighs 248 pounds. Then we put in the oil and hooked up the battery and spark plug. Then one pull on the starter cord….. and…….

and the cord came out but would not rewind.

Broken.

On the first pull.

I said a few works like, “Darn” and “Shucks” and “Rats” and things like that. One good thing about a generator is that you can’t really throw it across the room like you can some appliances that break just as you get them out of the box. I tried, but I am 5′ 6″ tall and weigh 150 pounds soaking wet…. 100 pounds shy of The Beast.

So we called up Sears, and the kid on the other end of the phone said that it should still be under warranty. I said, “Ya think? I just picked it up this morning!”

The kid on the other end of the phone said we needed to bring it back for warranty work, so we borrowed their ramps again and we took it back and left it for the store manager to look at on Saturday.

Saturday, we went back to see what was up, and the manager told us that the recoil starter had obviously been damaged, repainted, and then installed in the generator again at the factory. We both wondered out loud why Briggs & Stratton would even consider doing something that stupid.

But I guess stupid things get done sometimes.

The manager swapped the broken recoil starter for the one on the floor sample of the same generator and sent us home. With the new starter, we had the generator running after a few pulls on the cord. Here is the The Beast:

I think it was running when I took that photo. Listen. Pretty quiet, huh?

(Actually it is fairly loud, but if we ever really need it, that noise will alert the neighborhood to how brilliant we were way back in ’11 when we picked up a generator on a bright, sunny day.)

Question: When is the best time to shop for a backup generator for the new house?…. when it looks like photo A,

or when it looks like photo B ?

Answer: Photo B

There is less traffic at the backup generator store.

So that is what we did yesterday. I can’t show you a photo of it because we haven’t picked it up yet. But I can tell you that it weighs 248 pounds, so when we “pick it up”, we won’t be “picking it up” if you get my drift.

Glad we went yesterday, because today looked more like photo A than it did like photo B. Figure that one out.

I have BLUMOTION sickness.

BLUMOTION is the soft close system on our new kitchen drawers. When you close the drawer, the BLUMOTION grabs it just before it closes and pulls the drawer in slowly.

Click here for BLUMOTION web page.

The feature is a bit of fluff that we were not sure we wanted until we had it. Now, we just sort of fling the drawers closed and the BLUMOTION takes care of finishing the job. I have been known to hip-check a few drawers closed during the day.

So, what is BLUMOTION sickness? Well, not all drawers in this world have BLUMOTION on them. I find myself flinging desk drawers and filing cabinets closed at work causing a ruckus. Car doors get slammed. Our poor refrigerator door has been slammed a few times as well.

It is a terrible affliction. People think that I am just being rude, but it is an illness. Really, it is.

But I think I can live with it.

Spring has sprung. The grass is riz.

So, that’s where that old Christmas tree is!

Hmmm. It seems a bit flat. But then, it spent most of the Winter under mountains of snow.

Speaking of mountains of snow, we discovered an interesting phenomenon back in the woods.

On a bunch of the trees, just about where the top of the snow pack was located, the bark seems to have been gnawed off. Here is a closeup.

We suspect that it was hungry squirrels who could not dig down through the ice to find all those hidden acorns. I wonder if they got little, squirrel tummy aches.

And here is another new aspect of Spring for us. Look what is coming out of our sump.

No, not the log! The water. The log is there to keep the pipe from curling back up into it’s fetal position to hide in the bag it came out of.

So far the pump is handling the water, and the basement floor is dry, but you never know what is going to happen.

In spite of all that, inside the plant room we have a bucolic, peaceful jungle.

Got plants?