other dog

No, but it does look slightly better now than it did. No rain tomorrow, just cloudy, but there's a chance all day on Friday. Then nothing Saturday between 10am and 5pm.

Oh, here's a picture from Macungie last year that I forgot to post. Did I mention I can photochop photos again?

that's exactly what my son said!..the "no good deed'' part, not the Miller Lite part.

I was sitting here minding my own binness drinking coffee one morning a week ago. Heard the school bus go by about 7:15, as usual. I let the dogs out for their post meal poops and when I went out on the back porch I heard a backup beeper just down the road. I watched until I could see, and it was the bus backing up the road. It turned around in our biggerized driveway and went back the way it came. So I got in the pickup and rode down the road to see if there was a particular reason that the bus had backed up and turned around. And I saw this- I had already started cutting on it when I remembered that I should take pictures for evidence. I thought sure the school bus driver had radioed the situation in to headquarters, and a crew was rushing to the scene at that moment. But when I was outside around 10 o'clock I saw a car backing up. So I rode down to investigate again, it was only about a quarter of a mile or so down the road. This time I put gas and oil in the chainsaw and took it with me, thinking surely somebody had removed that tree by then, but just in case... and sure enough, the tree was still there, hadn't been touched. So I proceded to cut it up enough to get it out of the road. Unfortunately, it had a big poison oak vine growing up it. All the greenery on the tree you see there is poison oak. And it doesn't even usually bother me unless I pretty much just rub it on myself, but I had to get right up in it to cut the tree. With short pants on, no gloves, like an idiot. So yeah, I broke out in several places. So now it's itching like crazy. I told my sister I was putting calamine lotion on it and said "oh that crap ain't no good, you need some of that $18 a tube stuff called tecnu". So Zina got me a tube of that Tecnu, for $18. It might work if you used it first thing, but I didn't even know the poison oak had gotten me for a couple of days. Anyway, it didn't seem to help much, so I went back to putting calamine lotion on it. But I think that was extra powerful poison oak on that tree too, that vine was as big as your wrist down near the bottom of the tree.

If I drove it i'd go up 15 to Culpeper, 29 to Warrenton, 17 to 50 to Winchester. We used to run that way all the time, back when the speed limit was 55 everywhere, not too much traffic, 17 wasn't restricted, and 29 didn't have a stoplight every mile. But even if we do decide to go i'm not gonna drive the International up there. The only windshield wipers i've got is Rain-X.

I haven't driven it but once since we went to the Walmart store, and that was just "around the loop" to try to get Roman used to it. He did pretty good, and the truck was still running good. Been raining pretty much all week, and it's supposed to rain the rest of the week too. We were going to the antique truck show in Winchester this weekend, but now we're undecided. We had a motel room reserved already and we only have until this evening to cancel, so I don't know what we're gonna do yet. I got a carburetor return spring for the big green International that runs now but I haven't put it on yet. I fixed the driver side spotlight that quit working. I ran another wire to it from where the right side spotlight was connected to the fuse box, and put an inline fuse in both of them. Oh, one more small thing- firefly guy hooked up the high speed interweb that we'd been waiting for since we've been here, so I decided to renew my old photo-chopper program 😁

Hi Bob! I saw this lady on TV the other day. The name caught my attention.

We drove the big green truck that runs now to the Walmart store again today. I saw a big red truck hauling a big green machine too. Then we went to the Home Depot store in Lynchburg to pick up some sheetrock for my sister in law. I did a great job of securing it, eh?

That's what we have, the antenna works pretty good.

I put it right there-

Wow, I haven't done "Pictures of the Week" for almost 2 munts. We went to a little small car show, or cruise-in, or something, in the big green International that doesn't run Sunday afternoon. I was actually surprised at how many people looked at it and commented about how good it looked. Not one person said it was an ugly looking piece of crap. Not that I heard anyway, and most were impressed when I told them the paint was "Rust-oleum spray paint from the Walmart store". They didn't have a lot of vehicles there, but the ones that were there were very nice. This is Roger and Judy Morris' Camaro. He used that car strictly for drag racing for a long time, trailering it to the track. He's got a little age on him now, and most of the local drag strips have closed anyway, so they put a "street" engine in the car, or "streetabilized" the race engine, I don't know. I'm sure it still has more than enough "get up and go" though. Anyway they made it more drivable and completely street legal again. A '68 or '69 Chevelle- I never could tell the difference, I think it's something about the marker lights. A big green International truck- A couple more trucks- ...and a car. And here's a girl in a boat. Great, the Zinahorn came yesterday- i'm gonna go put it on now.

meanwhile, back at the ranch... Later, that same day...

I had a 68 Camaro one time, I was about 20 years old. It had a 250 six cylinder in it with a 3 speed transmission and the rear main bearing seal was bad. So bad oil pretty much just poured out of it. I never fixed it because I bought the car to swap in a 350 and a 4 speed that I already had. But I would run that car out of oil, drove it home many times with the oil light on and it would be clattering and clanking, fill it back up with oil, the racket would stop, and it was fine, until the next time I ran it out of oil. After that I always figured that the 250 6 cylinders had to be one of the toughest engines ever made, because I abused the heck out of that one.

We drove it to the Walmart store in Appomattox with only a minor issue. The adjustable throttle return spring holder slipped on the shaft and it was very slow to come back to idle when I was trying to change gears. I moved it back where it was when we got parked at the Walmart store but I'm still going to get another return spring and put it on it. I remember when every gas station and a lot of country stores had things like carburetor return springs and battery cable ends hanging on the wall.

Not to be changing the subject, but that's one of my issues with the big green truck that doesn't run. (It runs great now, but that name kinda stuck) I do all the work on it outside, in the driveway, with common hand tools, and for the most part by myself. Not so much "fun" in it anymore 🤣

Well, that's it. Think I'm done painting. I painted the top of the hood black while I had it off. Got the hood and bumper back on the other day when Timmy stopped by to help with them. I drove it around the loop the next morning, didn't see any leaks anywhere. Then yesterday morning I went out to move it and there was a big puddle of antifreeze in the floorboard, right underneath the heater. I'm not a mechanic or anything, but I figured it might be the heater core leaking because there was more antifreeze on the bottom of it. So I just disconnected it. I might take it off someday if I feel like working on it and take it to the radiator shop, or I might not.

Yeah, that's a thought🤔! Zina wanted to take the grill guard off from the start, but it's all welded together, so it's one piece. Heavy too- very heavy! I just got back from dropping the radiator off at a shop in Danville. Real nice guy there, said he was 77 years old and has been there since he was 13. Only works until noon, but he said he would have it done this week.