Daily Archives: September 16, 2015
Christmas in September . . .
Well, Mister continues to improve every day. He’s less restless and his hunger is more controlled. The vet said to bring him back in 10 days, which will be next Thursday so I guess we’ll know more then.
I do want to thank everyone who left comments about their experiences with their cat’s similar problems, especially those who’re using the cheaper human insulin on their cats. I’m definitely going to check this out.
When I came out at 11 this morning with our coffee, I found Christmas had come early this year. There were 3 big Amazon boxes waiting for me. I’d given up trying to find a local place to send my orders to, so I ask our landowner’s son and he said he’d be glad to. I offered to pick them up from him, but he said he came out here almost every day, so it was no problem.
First off, I got a bunch of repair parts, the new thermostat for our water heater,
the new LED bulb for our shower,
the new connector for our sewer,
and a new ball and shaft for our toilet.
I’ve already installed the LED light and the sewer connector, and I’ll do the thermostat tomorrow morning, but unfortunately the toilet repair will probably have to wait.
A couple of weeks ago the foot flush lever on our Sealand toilet went limp and stopped flushing. At first I thought it was the spring cartridge had broken so I got a new one (for $30!) and quickly found that it wasn’t the problem.
I finally figured what the problem was after looking at replacement parts online. I noticed that the online parts had a square brass shaft, but my shaft was plastic. It looks like that over time, the sharp corners on the square shaft had rounded off until it was just turning inside the spring cartridge and not moving the ball. So for the last few weeks we’ve been flushing the toilet with a pair of Vice Grip pliers on the plastic shaft.
But right now I’m not sure I will be able to change things out while we’re on the gate. The toilet will need to come completely apart, since I want to also clean the entire thing, and the replace the seals as well as the ball and shaft assembly. Which is all going to take several hours or more, and that’s hard to find while we’re on the gate.
So we’ll see how long the pliers work. Hopefully until we’re off the gate.
I also ordered one of these.
It’s a Mighty Mule Driveway Alarm. We had another brand for a couple of years, but it was kind of finicky, and finally died. We didn’t use one last year due to where we were located on a road with private homes, but this year it would be nice.
A number of other gate guards have recommended this one, so I thought I’d give it a try. It also didn’t hurt, that at $60, it’s half the price of the other one.
I quickly got it set up and took it down the road and place it where the trucks first come into view around the curve. It’s at least 400 feet, and it works great. I’ll probably order a second one to monitor the trucks leaving the pad and coming our way.
But the best thing in the boxes, and my new favorite toy ever, is an Amazon Echo.
But more about it tomorrow.
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Thought for the Day:
This is called Irony.
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