LOL, maybe one day when you have time, go and set up your options in your profile so you get the notifications you want :)
That is the first thing I do is ramble thru the options menu and set up my profile and notifications, it is a learning experience for me too, I think for everyone seeing every forum or service has a different menu layout, and the funny part is with my TBI mess, is I forget it all after a few days anyway lol, the only things I can really retain are those I keep rolling in my thoughts 24/7 or I do very day, which either is not possible most of the time, so if I have to answer a question, I go back and find the answer again and then give the answer ROFLOL, but it is all good, it keeps me busy lol, summer time is hard for me because so much yard work, fishing when it is not 200 degrees and cutting grass twice a week :( ...................not to mention helping my friends, neighbors, mom and some other family functions aka b-days, anniversaries etc, winter I have much more time and can play on the computer a lot more, that is why I am not here for a couple of days and then in here like gangbusters other days, I over did it on that bathroom restoration I was helping with, trying to act 20 yrs old again, so we put the rest of it off till monday this week, about 2 more days and that should be done, then I have my own bathroom to get finished, move the wall over and doubled the size, have to move vent, sink drain and sink water supply and then get the sub floor finished on the side I moved the wall, not to mention a few runs of insulation down under the house, going to have to find something better than the wire to hold it up, but not sure that was the issue, I think it was critters, we had a tree we took down right next to the house about 20 years ago, it was a huge maple, the trunk was over 4 feet in diameter, well the roots finally finished decomping and we had pre made tunnels all over, so I think some critters got in under the house and were bedding in the insulation..................anyway, put a bunch of poison down, all critters gone and then got dirt, tilled near the house and destroyed all the tunnels and then put dirt down after hosing all the dirt existing down so it filled all the recesses / tunnels, after spraying it and having fun in all the mud, the dirt level was down about 6 inches, so them critters had quite the network of tunnels from all those roots, and now they are cut off muhahahahahahahahaha
So now no critters but alas so many weeds, having to kill the weeds every week, such a pain, cannot plant grass in this heat, I would have to camp in the backyard and water every 3 hours to make grass grow in this heat, and if I missed one day, poof it would all be dead, so will battle weeds till fall and wait till spring to plant new grass, it is Zoysia so it has to mature to live thru a winter so cannot do it in the fall, it would not be mature enough to live through its dormant stage .....................
For some reason this year weeds are off the hook bad, everywhere, coming up like someone is spreading seeds in my yard, I usually treat for them once a year, I have had to treat for them over 5 times already this year and we still got 2 more months to go ..........................I am think astro turf ROFLOL
What's TBI?
I admire your ability to do all that physical labor and going fishing to boot. That kind of stuff is long gone from my life. I got my new MES controller yesterday but not feeling up to installing it or smoking anything today. Got a screwed up lower back that also affects my legs a bit. Some days it's more of a challenge to walk around or do any physical stuff than others.
I live in the Puget Sound region. We had a wet winter and spring. Summer's been cooler than had bee forecasted but we've had two straight weeks of some really hot days. But right now, on my property, we haven't gotten the abundance of tall grasses and weeds we usually get. There are an abundance of bunnies and birds though. Maybe the bunnies are eating a lot of grass and that's why I'm not seeing the heavy growth. We have some problems with tunneling critters but we don't do much if anything about them. Too much trouble and I've read poison doesn't always work.
I say you should camp out in the backyard to grow grass and water it every 3 hours. But make it doubly productive: light up the smoker and cook up a brisket flat or a chucky. You'll need to monitor that smoke over the same amount of time anyway. At the end of the day you'll have a backyard full of grass and either brisket or chucky for dinner!
Too bad that maple had to be cut down. Four feet across? Did you at least repurpose the wood to make a coffee table or wood sculpture? How about a chest of drawers or an armoire? A wooden bed frame? Tell you what, I'll buy it off you. I always wanted to learn how to build stuff out of wood besides balsa wood airplane gliders.
I mainly do computer repairs--both software and hardware--on our home desktop computer, occasionally for my favorite bro-in-law. I was never trained nor attained any experience on working with laptops so I need to pay someone to service those things.
Rick,
TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury
20 years ago I had a accident on a dirt bike racing, I do not remember a thing except going to the race...............but I was supposed to be paralysed from the neck down and blind in my right eye, a jump went wrong and I came down from about 30 ft airborne to land on the right side of my face then crumpling onto my right collar bone, hemorrhaged my right eye and had 5 or more fractures in my cheek and above my eye and my collar bone as well, the TBI had me completely committable to a sanitarium for 5 years, if it had not been for my wife, I would have been put away somewhere and might still be there for all I know, anyway after 5 years I was able to function and after 15 years of learning to manage with all the issues I do pretty good, you would never know looking at me, but it is constant management and allot of ignoring things or working thru them and just realizing I could be dead and or paralysed as they were so sure I would be, it is none the less a Miracle and a Blessing I can do what I do, but I attribute that to God and a naturally strong will and a refusal to give up, then 10 years ago I had a rare vascular cancer that ran from neck up halfway to the top of my head and from my neck down into my back about half way down my collar bone in the back, and this cancer had to be removed not only removed, but all flesh within 1 1/2 inches removed, so they had to remove my scalp and a ton of meat and muscle along it path from my neck up and my neck down..................it could not be grafted but had to naturally heal, that took over a year of re-bandaging and cleaning and treating with ointment, and it was on the back of me so again my wife saved me as she had to help me with all that, I could not see it nor reach some of it, this stuff was so wicked I had been given a expectancy of 5-7 years of living, in the high 90 percentile, all patients would have a reoccurrence of the cancer and die within that time frame but that was 10 years ago, another Blessing and Miracle in my opinion, then ROFLOL, that operation gave me Fibromyalgia .......................so now every thing I do, even walking as simple as it is, causing me pain that is, well, very very painful, so add that to the TBI issues and my life gets even more interesting.
I could easily give up and be a couch potato and just let the issues have their way but I refuse, I still do what I can, I am disabled of course and cannot work, as if I work for 3 days its takes over a week for me to recover, but I do what I can when I can and sometimes I do what I know I should not because it has to be done and we cannot afford to have someone else do it with me being on a fixed income, all in all it is a real struggle but I just keep pushing and do what I can and sometimes what I want to like fishing even if I do not feel good, it is pretty easy to ignore the bad now after doing it for so many years, and when I get out fishing with my son and enjoying that regardless it helps me to ignore it, of course when I get home the party is over and I pay for it for a few days, but still it is worth it, I refuse to give up !
Even Smoking meat is a issue, all the walking back and forth, the sad part is I am in great health LOL, its just the use of any muscles causes pain and any exercise causing recovery issues, it is very hard sometimes to manage as I would rather just scream and give up sometimes, but I just pack that away, as it is just part of the equation I live with and move on.
I am just happy that I can still function even though it gets very complicated and painful sometimes, I do have pain meds but do not use them unless I have to, because I am not going to become dependent on that either !
As for that Maple tree, it was more than 4 feet in diameter, 4 1/2 maybe closer to 5 ft, the trunk was very short before it branched out into smaller, still very large trunks, it had 3 that led from the main trunk, the main trunk that was so huge was maybe 10 ft long, we cut that down over 10 years ago, it was so close to the house that the main trunk was only about 1 ft off the side of the house, we have lived here for almost 30 years so it had consistently gotten larger, the house was built in '46 so it had been around for a long long time, and it had a root that went through the foundation and was about to go thru the other side on the front of the house ! So the tree had to go, and then I got the root out of the foundation and replaced the brick and block and re-mortared all of it while I had the house jacked up about an inch off the foundation so I could get the height just right so when I set it back down after the mortar cured it would be supported as it was before, then even though I had the stump ground, the roots took over 10 years to decomposed, must have been hard rock maple hehehe, so as of this year all of a sudden the ground around what was the base of that tree dropped more than 6 inches LOL, so I broke out the tiller and tilled the daylights out of it, it was so soft and full of decomposed matter it was funny, and then flooded the area with water to cause it to fill any other voids from roots I could not see, and after drying and 2 rain storms the dirt level was down about 10 inches !!!!!
So then I got a cubic yard of fill dirt on my truck and filled it in and then wet it all to mush to speed the settling, and now I have a grand bare spot but it is holding and solid after many rains it has not sunk any more, so I tink mission is finally accomplished, Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy LOL
I have Zoysia grass in the back yard so it will creep in and fill it, and if not fast enough for my taste I will just plant some more come spring and fix that problem real fast :)
Now my next project with the help of my son or possibly a trencher I need to run this 8 ga 4 con UF B Wire to my shed and then to the Barn, I am going to have my brining fridge (modified chest freezer) in the barn, also going to set up the smoker in the barn with a small exhaust fan to remove the smoke, this way wind will not be such a issue which it would seem it has become regarding stable temps, I have seen the effect it has had on the different calm and windy days and it is a problem, so it is either build a shack for it or move it in the barn, the barn is easier and cheaper, I will fabricate a little smoke hood for it and use a very small exhaust fan, maybe one of these old 6 inch rf amplifier fans, just enough to create a small draft as the smoker does not make all that much smoke and to be honest would not really need a fan as the heat from cooking would provide adequate draft but doing Jerky it would not be enough in my opinion.
So got about 70 ft of trench to dig 18" deep, then conduit and the wire.
Not looking forward to that but will somehow get it done with or without a trencher, my budget is wrecked from getting this smoking venture going so will most likely have to dig it by hand, the wire was a bit pricey but will be so nice having power out in the buildings and it is something me and the wife have been planning on doing, the Barn is going to be my man cave !!!! I will have A/C, Fridge and Smoker, just need a Out house and good to go LOL
And I am in process of digging a shallow well for water for the barn also, there was a well near it in the '40's so i know I have plenty of water in the ground, this way I will have water to wash and disinfect stuff with since my whole smoking operation will be there some time in the near future, one piece at a time :)
Well we got another 100 degree day here with humidity above 60% and it is just not pretty out there, even my cats have all come inside for the day ROFLOL
So going to hang out in the A/C and watch the heat.
