Daily Archives: March 22, 2019

Booting Up . . .

Finishing up on yesterday’s fun and folic, our next stop was for some WalMart shopping. And after all that food at Stomp’s Burger Joint we really needed a walk, so I parked at the far end of the parking lot, We could almost see the store from there.

Between football-ravaged ankles, as well as knees and ankles banged up from jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, I’ve usually worn boots most of my adult life, normally what I always called ‘Engineer’ boots, the short ones. Otherwise my ankles get sore very quickly walking any distance.

And I’d been talking about getting some new boots for our Europe trip, so I decided to see what WalMart had, based on my good experience with a pair of their Brahma boots that I bought back in 2014.

For the last umpteen years I’ve usually got my boots at Red Wing Shoes, mainly because that was the only place I could consistently find boots in my size. Which for me is around a 9 EEE or EEEE.

So yes, I have snowshoes for feet. I got these from my father, who said that he never had shoes that fit him until he enlisted in the Navy during WWII.

But Red Wing boots are very expensive, about $200 a pair, and it seems like the soles only lasted a few years before they would start coming apart.

But back in 2014 when we were gate guarding, I suddenly needed a pair of steel-toed boots so I grabbed a pair at WalMart for about $50. And five years later they’re still going strong with little or no wear on the tread.

Brahma Old Boots

But the tops are a little scuffed so I wanted some new ones, And this time I ended up with two pair, one black and one brown.

Brahma Escott Boots

Brahma Bravo Boots

For a total of $55.

So I thought I’d start the break-in by wearing the black ones to work, and out and about. And I discovered that they apparently don’t really need any break-in period. They were just as comfortable as my 5 year old ones. And without the steel toes, much lighter too.

Finishing up at WM, it was on next door to Sam’s for gas. And a big shock. Since I filled up about a week and a half ago, the price jumped from $2.08 to $2.28.

Yikes!

When we got home, I dug out my Porter-Cable air compressor from the truck and started to check the rig’s tire pressures in prep for our test drive on Sunday.

Porter-Cable Air Compressor

And found out it wasn’t needed. The pressures were right where I set  them back last October before we left for Florida.

I’ve really been happy with these Ironman tires that I got back in 2015. I chose them because of all the big rigs in the oil field that were running them. And because these are truck tires, there’s a fast turnover, so these tires that I had install the first part of July 2015 have a date code of 0615.

Now that’s fresh.

Today was a big milestone for me at work. I was finally able to get a clean copy of our in-house Zen Cart shopping cart database transferred over and working on a new installation up on Godaddy. A big step toward my goal of getting our company shopping cart website up into the cloud and off my desk at work.

So to celebrate we went out for dinner tonight at a local fav, Los Ramirez Mexican Restaurant, where Jan got her usual Grilled Chicken Breast stuffed with Shrimp and Broccoli, while I got  the Beef Fajita Taco Salad.

A  delicious way to celebrate.



Thought for the Day:
 

The mark of a wise man is not what he knows, but what he knows he doesn’t know.

fgj