Finagler 6853 Life

Miss Allie, my prayers are kind of feeble but I will give them up for you. All my best.

I'm in. Prayers up.

I know a guy that is into fireworks. They actually have a convention where you learn to make different types of fireworks. Talking with him, they pretty much use BP exclusively. He sent me a chart that showed the differences in sizes of the powder(s) and their designations. Some of what they use is the size of pea gravel. I though FG was big. Not so much. If this puts a crimp in our style, it is going to put a real hurt on the fourth of July celebrations.

Couple years ago, wife ordered something for a birthday present. This was January I think as it was winter time here in the land of cheese curds. So she is faithfully tracking this package so she can get it to the intended party. Our normal delivery guy is on the spot. We know him, he knows us. It's a smaller world out here. Everyone knows me. But this other delivery guy "delivered" it and closed out the order. The tracking shows that the package was delivered and we looked all over the place for this package. It wasn't on the front porch, it wasn't in one of the vehicles parked by the house, it wasn't inside the walk in door of the garage, it wasn't in the shed. So she calls the local UPS depot to file a lost package. She gets a call back the next day saying the package was indeed delivered. The driver tied the package to one of the rails of our fence because he didn't want to drive down the driveway for fear he would get stuck. Our driveway is about 250 yards long and I plow it well. It had snowed about an inch, maybe two but it was easily passable with a big circle by the house to turn around and get back out. This dude walked through 3 feet high of plowed snow and another foot of fallen snow to tie the package to the fence instead of driving it up to the house. The Queen was PO'ed. Here this expensive gift was tied to the fence for two days where anyone driving by could have picked it off. Neither of us saw it there as the goof put it in a white plastic bag to tie it to the fence. White bag on a snow covered background. We didn't notice it and there was no indication in the delivery of it. It all ended ok but she was not happy for a while. This still gets her wound up if you bring it up.

And that's how the fight started. Never ask a question you don't really want the answer to.

We have those resin chairs, you know the plastic ones the sun deteriorates so you have to buy new every two years? One of the arms broke right where it attaches to the seat/leg area. I have some old aluminum panel from the old race car so I cut myself a "band aid" and proceed to attach it with pop rivets. My oldest daughter, who is one of the smartest women I know, asks her mother who both are watching my efforts, why is he doing that? Meaning why is he investing his time and effort into fixing a cheap piece of plastic. I refer to it a CPS. I know a lot about CPS. Her mother just looks at her and knowingly says, "because he can". I used that chair for three more years before I finally pitched it out. I'm kind of like my daddy. Spend a dollar to save 50 cents. I'm getting over that though. I'm on medication.

Ummm, Let's see if this works.

I have an old, 1987 model I think, 2 cycle golf car that we use to bomb around the property. Well the muffler blew a big hole out of it. Sounds like an angry, large chainsaw. Really loud. You can hear it in the next county. I looked up what a new one would cost and durn near choked at how much they want for one. Near to $250 as I recall. So, I took the muffler off and examined the damage. It had a good sized hole blown out/rusted out that also had some of the sound proofing (fiberglass) sticking out. This area also had the mounting bracket welded to it which had cracked 3/4 of the way around it. The other end of the muffler had two places that were rusting out and would blow out relatively soon. I considered welding some new iron onto the muffler but there wasn't much good metal to attach it to. Hmmm, I says to myself. What would Fred Finagler do? Well with the magic of 2 coffee cans and 10 hose clamps we now have a functioning muffler. The cans were pre rolled so I wouldn't have to try to make them shape to the muffler. I cut the cans so I could wrap the muffler with them, trimmed them strategically to fit around the mounting brackets, placed the hose clamps (they were small. I had to use 2 per wrap) so they would add support to the weakened mount and would hold the can in place over the rusted/blown out areas. It runs nice and quiet now like it did when it was new. I'll keep an eye out for a replacement muffler, maybe even fabricate a custom muffler but in the meantime, I'll replace the coffee cans as needed until the muffler will no longer stay attached to the frame. Challenge accepted, challenge completed. Have a better than average day.