Weekend

A whole lot has happened since I last wrote on Tuesday.  We are so busy getting ready for the General Election and when I come home I am too tired to write, or it is already too late.

We were paid on Thursday.  I paid the water/sewer/electric/trash bill, my Lowe's bill, my car insurance, Bank of America card bill, and had some money left over.

I ordered some Christmas presents from Amazon.com with the leftover money.

Bob stands next to our address marker.

As it turns out, our house number will not be 134 as we were told earlier.  No, the actual number posted is 160.  160 Brushland Drive, Clark, WY  82435.

Right after work on Friday we stopped at the supermarket to get a six pack of Angry Orchard Hard Cider and a little bit to eat.  Then we went home, ate, walked Buddy, and then headed over to Jerri and Leonard's.

We visited at Jerri and Leonard's for about six hours.  Mike and Dominique were there with their two boys, but they managed to leave around 9:00 PM.  It was 2:00 AM when we finally left!

On Saturday morning we slept in until 9:00 AM.  The dog didn't even complain that we were not getting up!

We had talked about going to Billings this weekend, but we were just too tired to go.  We went to Ace Hardware and bought some weatherstripping to line the top bar hive winter floor, and I got a 5-gallong crock for making kraut.

Today I melted down more scrap.  All of the brass that I had collected in a pillow case was melted down - plumbing caps, brass candle sticks, valve bodies, etc.  I used the small crucible for this melt and everything fit inside it when it was melted.  There was a little dross that I scraped off, and then I poured it into a cast iron muffin pan.  That's all it made - six small sized muffins of brass.

I also melted down a large crucible of aluminum and poured twelve more ingots of cast aluminum.  When all of if cooled off I wrote "Al" and "Br" on the ingots to identify the metal.  I am going to write "Al X" on the ingots made from extruded materials.

We drove out to Clark to see the address marker this afternoon.  The winds were fairly calm and it was comfortable out there.

This evening Bob made salmon patties for dinner.  He baked them and then steamed some broccoli to go with it.  They turned out very tasty.

Here comes another hectic week - the last week before the election.  We are planning on having to work next weekend to get the equipment and materials ready.

Powell, WY

Yesterday was a crazy busy day at the counter in Elections.  It was the last day new registrations were open.  We registered 99 new voters and processed a large number of absentee ballots.

Today was a little calmer, but still fairly busy.

Temps have started to plunge.  We are going to see lows in the teens this week.  It rained yesterday, but we will see snow and ice before the end of the week.  It's a good thing I put the storm windows back up this past weekend.

A home inspector and prospective buyer came through the house today.  The inspector found a very long list of things that need to be fixed.  The wide-eyed buyer was completely unconcerned about the repairs and just loves the house.  Let's see if her bank is so blindly optimistic.

Just two more weeks until Election Day!

Weekend

Sunrise in Powell, WY.  10-19-12.

On Saturday morning I made a breakfast of scrambled eggs with Canadian bacon, tomatoes, and coffee.

After doing three loads of laundry, we got into the truck, filled the gas  tank, and drove to the courthouse.  Here I began working on assigning the election judges to their polling places.  Also, I had to let Todd Case, the technician dispatched by ES&S in to the jail to work on the 4-1 precinct ballot scanner.

We were in Cody for about two hours, then we got sandwiches at Burger King and came back to Powell the long way - via US Hwy 14-16-20.  We went into Big Horn County and almost all the way to Greybull.

We passed south of the McCollough Peaks Wild Horse Preserve and we even saw a big black horse from the road!  We also saw a large number of antelope in there.

In the afternoon we folded up our laundry and put it away. 

Bob broiled steaks for dinner and we enjoyed these with steamed brussels sprouts.

Later I worked with the Arduino microcontroller for a little while.  I got it to successfully read distances using the ultrasonic transducer.  This morning I got it to work with the SCP1000 barometric pressure sensor.

Today we had cereal with apple turnovers for breakfast with coffee.

After breakfast Bob ran the vacuum cleaner and rinsed out the coffee pot, while I went out and put the rear axle of the truck on jackstands and adjusted the parking brake.  After that I took the truck to the car wash where I cleaned the caked on bug carcasses off of the windshield, the wipers, fronts of the side mirrors, and the entire grille/front bumper.  I used bug and tar removed and hot, high-pressure water for this effort.

I applied a couple of coats of spar varnish to the winter floor we are making for the top bar hive.  Next weekend we will go to the hardware store and get weather stripping to staple inside the floor.

Now we are about to enjoy white bean chicken chili for dinner and get ready for another week of tumult in Park County Elections.

Concrete Workers

Decker, the supervisor, compliments his workers for doing such a fine job on the concrete slab that will form the foundation of our new house.  This was on Monday, October 15.

160 Brushland Drive

Bob inspects the finished slab.

Wow.  What a crazy week!

Everyday has been extremely busy at the counter.  We process absentee ballot requests all day long.  We are sending out over 100 per day.  So far we've sent over over 3200 ballots, and only 42% have come back.

I drove to Clark on Wednesday after work to check out the finished slab before temps dropped that night.  When I got there the wind was really blowing hard out of the north.  So hard that when I opened the truck door the wind caught it and almost tore it off of its hinges!

The slab looked good, but I could tell that the concrete contractor came back on Tuesday and pulled the forms off and took all of his stuff out of there.  I could tell because all of the tire tracks and footprints had rain drop spots on them.

As it turns out, temps did not drop below freezing even once this week.  The slab is now five days old and we have a few more days of mild temperatures ahead.  This slab will cure nice and slowly in the cool temperatures and it will end up very strong.

Our septic permit has been issued, and our building permit has been issued.  The address marker should be set next to the road next week.  Our address at the new house will be 160 Brushland Drive, Clark, WY  82435.

I have to go to the office tomorrow at noon to let a factory repair person repair one of our ballot scanner machines.  Then I have to schedule election judges for Election Day and maybe Bob will help me inventory some supply bins.

Working everyday and working late is starting to get old.  I hope I don't end up burned out.  Just a few more weeks until the election.

Concrete Pour

Bob supervises the concrete men.

 It was nice being able to sleep in a couple of extra hours this morning!  We got up around 7:00 AM.  I took the dog for his walk, we ate breakfast, and then we drove to Clark.

As we came down the hill on WY 120 and I caught the first glimpse of our property, I noticed a couple of large white objects up on our lot.  Those were the cement trucks.

The pour had already started.  This slab required three (3) deliveries.  The entire volume of concrete is 27 cubic yards.  This is 6,000 PSI mix with chopped fiberglass reinforcement.

Working up a fine finish.

It was a little breezy this morning and the big mixer trucks were really stirring up the fine clay and sand dust!  So much dust was blowing that it got into my camera and jammed up the lens operating mechanism.  I managed to coax a few more pictures and videos out of the camera, but I think it is finally finished.

We were with the concrete men until 1:15 PM.  They progressively worked the surface to ensure that it was flat with no holes and then they worked it smoother and smooth with the float and a motorized trowel.

They were still working when we left at 1:15.  We went to Powell to shower, eat some soup for lunch, and then dress for work.  I arrived at the courthouse at 2:15 PM.

The afternoon at work was quite hectic.  We are still processing a large number of absentee ballots.  We are sending bunches out and a large number are coming back in.  We still have three more weeks until the election.

This evening we had filet-o-fish sandwiches from McDonald's.  After dinner I cleaned the rings and threads on the six quarts of canned soup and put those up on the shelf.  Now we are getting ready for another day at the office.

Weekend

I know it's been awhile since I posted.  I am tired.  Very tired.  Our office is crazy busy with walk-ups asking for their ballot.  We have distributed over 3000 ballots now.

On Wednesday evening we conducted a training session for election judges.  We did this in the Cody Library with a large group - almost 50 people!  Mike and I left with the equipment at 4:15 PM.  We hurried to set up the equipment, tables and chairs, and judges started to arrive at 4:45.  Teecee and Bob closed down the office, then went to Albertsons to get the croissant sandwiches and bottled water.  They had the refreshments set up by 5:30 PM.

Our training session was very successful.  Some of the judges said they had never attended one as good.

I am tired of having to work  weekends.  Last weekend we had to go in and get over 200 replacement ballots ready to mail because three precincts did not have the School Board race on them.  I blame this one on Mike.  But Mike was in Colorado on vacation!

As it turns out, I would have to work this weekend too.  There were four people who missed the training session, but still wanted to participate, and I needed to call some of the people who worked during the primary but did not respond to my letter.

When I went out at 8:00 AM to start the truck up, nothing happened.  I put the battery charger on it, and all we got was chattering from the solenoid.   I did not know if the battery was bad, or if the starter was bad.  They are both still under warranty.  The battery was drawing about one to two amps.  I gave up on it and called Teecee.

Teecee came and got me and we were at the courthouse at 11:10 AM.  We called some of the old judges before the students began arriving.  Then I got my training materials set up and spent two hours training three people - two student election judges, and an experienced judge who needed refresher training.

We also put all of the voting equipment in the storage room into precinct order and plugged all of the M100's in so that their batteries will charge up.  We will be conducting a public test of the voting machines on Wednesday, October 17.

We were on our way home by 2:00 PM.

In the afternoon I kept messing with the truck.  Something didn't seem right.  Sometimes I would get in and the bell would be loud and the dash lights bright.  Other times there would be nothing.  No sound, and no lights.  I picked up the phone and called Dad.  He immediately said, "Yeaap, sounds like you've got dirty connections.  Take the cable off of the battery and off of the starter.  Clean them both up, and put them back together and see if that doesn't help.  You might want to check and see if your battery has enough water in it too."

I filled a milk bottle with warm water and poured about half of it into the battery cells through a funnel.  I guess it was thirsty!  Then I got my battery terminal brush and cleaned the terminals really good.  When I finished with this the positive terminal would not screw down tightly.  So, I went into the garage and got a piece of aluminum pie pan.  I cut a shim out, wrapped it around the post, and then put the cable terminal over that.  It worked and the truck started right up! 

That was a huge relief.  It would have been expensive to have the truck towed just to find out that it was something so simple.

I made a great big pot of vegetable beef soup in the afternoon.  It was probably two gallons.

Almost ready for the pour!

This morning we drove to Clark to check out our house foundation.  We found the plumbing roughed in and backfilled.  The entire area under the pad has been leveled.  We noted that there were no concrete bricks to hold the rebar up in the trench, and there was no vapor barrier or welded wire mesh for the middle of the slab.  I hope this is something the concrete contractor provides.

The pour is scheduled for 10:30 AM tomorrow morning.  We intend to be there to observe and photograph it.

We came back home, stopped at the grocer on the way to get some French bread and crackers, and then at the auto parts store to get a new battery cable terminal.  We had vegetable soup for lunch.

After lunch I worked on the truck for a while and then went inside the garage, applied a coat of spar varnish to the beehive winter floor, and finished tearing a lawn mower engine apart.

This evening, after walking the dog, I canned six quarts of the vegetable soup in the pressure canner.  There is probably two quarts left over and we will just take that to work tomorrow to eat for lunch or dinner tomorrow evening.

We have our concrete pour  tomorrow, and Elections has a public test of the voting machines on Wednesday this week.

Powell, WY

Plumbing is in place.  Concrete forms are up.

This morning we left the house around 6:30 and headed out to Clark to check and see if anything happened at the house site yesterday.

It was still very dark when we turned on to Brushland Drive.  We passed about 9 or 10 jackrabbits as we headed back to our property.

I drove in and shined the truck headlights into the house.  We could see that all of the plumbing rough-in had been placed, the plumbing was partially back filled, the concrete forms were set in place, and there was steel rebar in the bottom of the slab edge trenches.  I guess quite a bit got done yesterday!

Now the contractor tells me that the concrete pour is scheduled for Monday, October 15.  I hope we have a week or two of nice Indian Summer for this slab to cure.

From Clark we headed straight to Cody.  It took about 35 minutes to go 36 miles.  We popped into Grannie's and got some breakfast and then headed into the courthouse with about 5 minutes to spare.

Work today was continuously busy.  We processed 110 absentee ballot requests and handled registrations and changes for 34 voters.

There was a Park County Chili Cookoff today and we brought in the crackers we signed up for, but I was too damned busy to stop and taste chili.  During lunch we had to take carpet samples back to Haskell's Furniture.

We ate lunch at Wyoming Rib & Chop House.  We had the Yak Meatloaf Sandwich Special.  This was a meatloaf made of yak meat, on an open-faced hoagie bun with two scoops of mashed potatoes and gravy on top with grilled asparagus.  This was very tasty and very filling!

Back at work we continued working at the absentee ballots and started planning our training session for election judges tomorrow evening.  We were hard at work until about 8 PM this evening.

It was dark when we left Cody.  I hate driving at night because there are so many animals out here that like to run out in front of cars, but we made it back to Powell just fine.

Buddy spent the day in the garage with his bed and a bowl of water because the realtor wanted to show the house this afternoon and we were both at work in Cody.  Boy, he was happy and excited to see us when we got back!

This will be a short week, but it is promising to be very busy.  I am glad I get paid this week.

Productive

We went to Clark on Sunday morning and I spent three hours inside the Bobcat front-end loader moving bucket after bucket of fine clay and sand soil from the front of the house to the back of the house.  It took me a little while to get the hang of the controls, and then it took even longer to figure out how to control the depth of cut.   I moved a lot of dirt to the downhill side of the house and even though there are some hollows in my amateur grades, it will save the excavator about three hours of work.

After this we headed up to Belfry and had hamburgers for lunch at the Silvertip Diner and Casino.

On the way back through Clark I looked up at our land and saw the dark shape of a truck clear back there on my property, so we turned onto Brushland Drive again and headed back there.  It was Cameron, the excavator.  He finally came back in the evening to do what he said he would do in the morning - excavate the trenches for the footing and plumbing.

He cut the turned down slab on the east side of the house and cut all of the plumbing trenches, but then the sun was down and he said he "ran out of light" and would return on Monday to finish it.

The drainage plumbing should have been installed today.

We headed back to Powell, walked Buddy, and enjoyed some Angry Orchard hard apple cider.

This morning I got up around 6:30, made a breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese, cottage cheese, and fried apples with tea.  After breakfast I took Buddy for his morning walk.

Our 2012 potato harvest.

I pulled the dead tomato plants up and carried them to the trash.  Then I pulled up the dead potato plants and shook the earth out of the bag into the tomato containers.  I picked our meager potato harvest out of the dirt.  I think we got 3 or 4 pounds of potatoes.  This isn't enough to bother with canning.

With that out of the way I pulled the shower doors out and took them outside to scrub and hose down.  While I did this, Bob was running the vacuum cleaner inside.

Later we went to Quality Propane and purchased 15 pounds of propane in my brand-new steel tank.  I would need the propane to fire my new melting furnace.  We stopped at Linton's Big R Store to check out magnetic block heaters.  I might get one for the truck soon.  We actually purchased some fruit drying trays for our dehydrator and a canning jar ring wrench.

On the way home we stopped at Subway and got two meatball subs for our lunch. 

We devoured our lunch sandwiches, and then I went to the garage to set up my sand casting operation.  I put the furnace and tank out in the alley behind the garage and set up a tarp on the floor of the garage to make my sand mold.  I molded a small aluminum figure that came with the furnace.  The green sand was fairly fine and my mold captured a lot of fine detail from the original.

Pouring my first sand mold.

Of course Johnny had to come over and poke his nose into what we were doing.  He correctly guessed what I was up to.  This is better than the other neighbor who suspected we were cooking a turkey.

We fired up the furnace and let it heat up.  Then we began feeding aluminum soda can pull tabs, aluminum foil, and aluminum pie plates into the fire clay crucible.   These melted somewhat, but we never got a shiny liquid surface inside.  When I poked the mass with a steel rod, it felt soft and crunchy like slush.  This material never melted, but it oxidized like crazy.

I decided to shut the furnace off and pour this mess out.  It was almost all dross.

My aluminum copy vs the original part.

I replaced the crucible on the plinth in the furnace and loaded it with some nice cast pieces of lawn mower engine and other cast parts.  This time the material melted right down in just a few minutes.  I skimmed off the dross and then picked the crucible up and carried it to my mold.  I poured the mold and then poured the extra melt into a muffin pan to create round ingots.

Because the mold overflowed, I was sure I did not fill the mold up.  After a couple of minutes I lifted the cope up off of my mold and I saw the bottom cavity in the drag, but then I gasped when I saw the perfect matching face in shiny aluminum metal on the bottom of the cope!  Success!

Learning experience there.  The thin stuff cannot be melted down on its own.  You have to melt some larger pieces of cast material first, then push the pull  tabs and foil pans under the surface of the melt to prevent severe oxidation. 

I took a shower and  took some pain reliever because I had a splitting headache after this.  I wanted to just relax and read all afternoon, but things seldom work out as I plan.

The door bell rang at 4:30 pm.  It was our neighbor, Mary, and she was inviting us over to Mickey Waddell's house to roast marshmallows and drink apple cider at 5:30.  Bob was finishing up a cake, his first cake in the fancy bundt pan he got for his birthday, but we said yes, that we would come over.

We spent four hours visiting at Mickey's house, then we walked home.  I took Buddy for a walk while Bob heated up a can of beef stew for a late dinner.

Tomorrow we head back to work and we have the Park County Chili Cook-Off  tomorrow.  I am taking a box of crackers for this event.

Weekend

We are so busy getting ready for the General Election.  Mike was out this week for a check-up on Wednesday, and then his wife had her gall bladder removed on Thursday.

He came back on Friday.  A voter phoned in to report that his Precinct 4-1 ballot did not have the School Board 6 race on it.  Turns out three precincts did not have this race.  We started to get a lot of angry voters calling in.

We made new ballots and got them ready to send, but there were a lot of absentee voters affected - 218 in 4-1 alone.

As it turns out, we would have to work on the weekend to get this fixed.  This was really Teecee's idea.  We were at the courthouse at 10:00 AM as we agreed, but Teecee was not there.  She was busy making a cake.  We did not get started until 11:30 AM.

We worked all afternoon stuffing ballots and letters into envelopes.  Bob bound our election judge training manuals and later helped with preparing the replacement absentee ballots.

At one point we ran out of envelopes.  Teecee called Mike, who was vacationing in Colorado, to get the combination to the vault so that we could get the keys to our storage cage in the basement.  She got the combo, but she could not open the vault.

I thought about it, and realized that the cage does not go to the ceiling down in the basement, so I walked down there, turned on the light, opened the door to the section where our stuff is stored, turned on the light in there, opened the basement vault door,  turned on the light in there, got a ladder and climbed to the top.  I pulled the ladder up after me and set it down the other side inside our cage.  Then I climbed down into the cage.

I got the boxes of envelopes we needed, and climbed back up.  Then I put everything back where it belongs.

We worked on our stuff until 6:30 PM.  It was still daylight as we drove north out of Cody toward Clark.

Bob points to the water line.

The sun was setting behind the Beartooth's when we arrived at our property.  The excavator was still on site asleep in his truck!  When I jumped up on his trailer to take Bob's picture in the house, it shook and woke him up.  He came out and talked to us about the septic drain field, and the little bit of excavation he needs to do on the house tomorrow morning.

While we were there it grew dark and Bob began to shudder from the cold.  It was cold, but the wind was calm and it was sooo quiet and peaceful!

The excavator, Cameron, invited me to come back in the morning and use the front end loader to grade the driveway and a swale around the house for water to flow in.  We will head over there tomorrow to do this because if I do it, it is something else we do not have to pay for.

My weekends almost never end up like I plan them.

Killing Cold

My birthday was very quiet and almost routine.

When I returned to the house at 6:00 AM with Buddy from his walk, I found a big gift wrapped box in the living room!  It turns out there was another box just as big and a smaller box too!

I got what I wanted for my birthday - a propane-fired shop furnace for metal casting.  This furnace includes two different sizes of fire clay crucibles, tongs for lifting the crucibles, and the gas pressure regulator and hose.  Included with this furnace was a sand casting kit with flask, sieve, parting dust, sprue cutter, and 20 pounds of tempered sand.

I can't wait to get a tank of propane and start melting.  I have been collecting aluminum scrap for the past two years, and I have Dave Gingery's series of books.  Another cool thing, my woodworking tools and skills dovetail with the metal working because the patterns for parts are usually made from wood.

It was chilly and windy this morning when I took Buddy out for his walk.  As we drove to Cody the sky grew darker and darker.  It snowed this morning for about three hours in Cody.

Bob went to work with me yesterday and today.  He's almost  got the clerk side caught up again.

Chris Gunn appeared at my counter this morning.  He happily reported that our soil passed the perc test.  The rate was one inch in 40 minutes.  He said there was tight clay on the top, but they broke into a sand layer that will percolate.  So, we can have a traditional septic tank and drain field.

All of our permitting is now in the county's hands.  Septic, Building, and Address permits have all been filed.  The address marker should be posted any day.   Slab pouring is supposed to happen on Monday, Oct. 8.  As it turns out, we have Monday off for Columbus Day.

Once we get the slab poured, and the septic and drain field installed, we are going to stop until spring.  I told Chris this and it did not make him happy.  "But, I want to go ahead and build this house now!"  I replied, "I know you do, but we feel that we will get a better house if we wait for warmer weather, plus this wait will allow us to get all of our money together, and identify cost savings in this project."

Chris needs to understand that this isn't about what HE wants.  I think he was dismayed to see us assert control over the timeline like this.

One cost saving measure we have decided on is to go ahead and stain the concrete slab ourselves.  This will save $3,600 from the budget.  We can purchase the supplies and equipment for this task for $400.   Can you believe the contractor wanted $4,000 for this?

Tonight we had baked pork chops with apple sauce and fried green tomatoes for dinner.

Temps are supposed to drop to 28°F tonight with more chances for snow.  I took the window fan down and closed the bedroom window.  It will be time to put the storm windows back up soon.

Ground Breaking

Bob tries on his bee veil.

First of all - Happy Birthday to Bob!  He had some birthday presents to open this morning.  He got a beekeeper's jacket and veil, he got a fancy bundt cake pan, a bundt cake mix, a box of bb's, and a Daisy bb rifle.  This is in addition to the little rototiller attachment he got earlier for his grass whip.

We went to Cody and had breakfast at Granny's.  I was a few minutes late for work.

After dropping me off, Bob headed up to Clark to watch the contractor break ground and get the foundation started on our house.  Later the man from the county came out and they discussed what would be required in the way of a perc test to allow us to install a standard septic system.

Bob then ran back to Powell to pick up a package at the post office, and then back to Cody to get me from work.  He sure drove a lot today!

After work we drove back to Clark so that I could look at the layout work that had been done so far.  They have the corners of the house and garage staked in, and  the area where the house pad will be poured has been leveled.  The contractor has deposited several dump truck loads of rock and gravel in the middle of the pad site.

We marked on the ground where we want the water cistern to be buried.  Then we left and headed back to Powell.

At home we checked the mail and found a birthday card for Bob and a birthday card for me from Becky and Bill!  That was good timing!

After taking Buddy for his evening walk, we fed him and headed out the door for a dinner.  We went to the Tapatio Mexican restaurant for dinner.  Now we have offered the contractor some guidance on placing the garage so that it is far enough out from the house so that the cistern does not block the garage door.

Tomorrow Bob will go to Clark to watch the perc test.  I really hope this land will perc.  If not, we will have to install more costly waste water disposal options.  Strangely, all of our neighbors have illegal waste water systems, but the county man just looks the other way when he comes up to our neighborhood!