Daily Archives: October 29, 2015
A Tale of Two Laces . . .
Or A Day Too Far.
Well, we did have a few more vehicles in today than yesterday. 59 today vs. 56 yesterday. Still not bad, not bad at all. I was outside at 5:15am this morning, thinking the workers would start coming in about the same time as yesterday, but apparently they slept in today because no one showed up until almost 6:45.
We had hoped that today would be a repeat of yesterday, with everyone leaving about 5:15, so we could make one last try at dinner in town. But apparently we went a day too far, as we still had 10 vehicles on site at 5:30, and the last guy in about 4:30pm said, “See you tomorrow morning”, as he drove in.
Bummer.
The weather’s been just about perfect the last few days, with temps in the high 70’s / low 80’s in the day time, and mid to high 50’s at night, But we are scheduled for more thunderstorms on Saturday, of course, just as things finally dry out around here.
Our landowner came through today, mildly complaining about the fact that all the work crews were still around on both sites, and would be for a while now. He was originally hoping that they all would be gone by next Saturday, the 7th, the start of deer hunting season in this area.
He has a lot of deer feeders and game cameras out, and charges people to hunt on his land. So he’s going to have to cut back on the hunting areas so someone doesn’t bag his limit in Flowback workers. Or gate guards, for that matter.
Back the end of September, when Jan and I had our afternoon Anniversary getaway to Shreveport, I tracked down a Cavender’s to buy some better boot laces, because the cheap Wal-Mart ones I’ve been buying only last a couple of months.
I normally wear boots, the short boots, or engineer boots, all the time for the ankle support. Both ankles have gotten pretty banged up over the years, mostly due to a few problems encountered when jumping out of perfectly good airplanes a long time ago. So if I try to do much walking in something like Crocs, or other sandals, I’m hobbling pretty quickly.
So I figured a place that sells a lot of boots should also sell the best quality, longest lasting boot laces. And when I asked at the store, I was shown these Ariat brand ones, the ones on the right.
At $6.50 a pair I would expect them to last at least six and a half times longer than the Wal-Mart $1.00 ones on the left. So I bought two pair, secure in the knowledge that I was now set in the boot lace department for the rest of the year, and almost certainly beyond.
TEN DAYS!
That’s how long the first pair lasted.
I had just put a new pair of the Wal-Mart ones on my boots right before I bought the new laces, and being as cheap as I am, I waited to put the new ones on until after the old ones broke. I mean, why throw away a perfectly good pair of laces, right?
So early last week the old ones snapped and it was finally time to installed my new long-wearing, maybe even lifetime, shoe laces.
TEN DAYS!
I mean these are quality laces, solid leather,
and made in . . . India?
INDIA?
INDIA?
WTH!
They supposedly worship cows, but they’ll chop ‘em up and make poor-quality, third world shoe laces out or them? What would Raj say about this?
And now I just figured out that for the $13 I paid for these ‘laces’, I could have bought two years of cheap laces from Wal-Mart.
Just damn!
____________________________________________________
Thought for the Day:
If leather shrinks when it gets wet, why don’t cows shrink when it rains.
asdfasdf
