Haggis at the quick lube

Haggis and I had a lot of little jobs to do today. First up was to get an oil change in the Nissan pick-em-up truck.

As I mentioned last weekend, he doesn't mind going to the car repair shop at all. He just sits there while I read the paper and drink coffee in the waiting room.

Here he is, sticking his tongue out. Silly pooch.

The oil change mechanic commented on what a good dog he is. He doesn't even flinch when the mechanic sits in to write down the mileage and stick the oil change reminder sticker up on the windshield.

This is the time of year we spend money at these places. Oil changes and tires, mostly. I don't change my own oil in vehicles because I can't easily dispose of the waste oil and messy filters, while these places get it collected for bulk recycling, much better for the environment. I try to do pretty much everything else myself, hopefully in the summer season when the weather is good for that kind of thing, but even if not, we can get a car or truck in my shop. It's not the biggest workshop in the world, but it's the size of a two car garage with only one overhead door, and I try to leave the space in front of this door clear.

When we got back from the oil change we busied ourselves with clearing out said shop, getting the wood furnace ready to use, and test firing it. There was a good breeze today which made it draw well and we soon had a roaring blaze. This annual event is always a good excuse to burn off a bunch of cardboard and gash wood.

Then we went to do the banking on the east side of the house. There's a spot there where the crawl space under the kitchen is open to the weather. I leave it so all summer to air it out and keep the underside of the kitchen, a separately built building from the main house, dry and free of carpenter ants. I spray pyrethrin for the latter, which works well. I'm always terrified a skunk will set up home in there but none ever has.

Anyhoo, we finished up noticing a plumbing leak under there so my plans were shot and I got busy with PVC cement, joining pipe sections back together. A couple months ago I re-routed the drain from the bath-tub because it wasn't draining well, and I must have accidentally torqued on the attached system that goes to the kitchen sink and broke open a connector. I had an odd feeling something like this might have happened which is why I bothered to look before covering it all up for the winter. That and making sure there wasn't a stray cat or chicken under there.

So I spent the early afternoon on my back in an 18-inch crawl space with PVC cement and a screw gun, re-gluing and re-routing pipe to get the tension out of the system. In the end a 10 inch extension was needed so everything would just hang there nicely with no bowing or tension. It's a dirt floor so no harm was done, just a damp spot smelling of stale laundry. If it were a black water pipe instead of a gray water pipe that would have been nasty, but this wasn't so bad and I'm even still wearing the same set of bib overalls as I write this.

After that I was up for a nap and now I'm cooking mashed potatoes and lamb chops. Aimee's grinding away on her elliptical machine like a fiend. Haggis is zonked out, so is Mary.

All is peaceful and what passes for normal in Womerlippi-land and the kitchen sink gray water now makes it to the septic tank. Yea!

Oh, and there was a big clutch of light blue-green Americuna eggs in the barn yesterday.

Middle-class security, or our simulated version of it.

I guess tomorrow we'll do the banking.

Then we'll fix Aimee's greenhouse and get it ready for the winter.

Don't feel nearly so rushed these days now the Bale House is finished.