Michelob was 75 cents in the barracks at NORIS when I was there in '85, but those machines have gone away...

 

So I imagine most of us had a long weekend this weekend. How did you guys spend it? I helped out a fellow Active Vet by fixing his 04 Cavalier. That car bit me more than any vehicle previous! I also sourced a free sound system for my old Ford. And this up coming weekend, I'll be teaching a kid about cars as we tear apart his wrecked Nissan.

 

I gave a local kid an old motorcycle leather of mine that is way too small for me now, and I've been hacking and wacking at the treeline, as pre-mentioned.

Rolled up thirty or forty feet of four-stranded barbed wire fencing so far, and today am about to drop two major trees topping forty foot and hack the damned grape vine that has been making the whole business a tangled mess. Main stem of that vine is almost a foot thick where it comes out of the ground... (pics later)

There is some cleaning up to do before and after, before I add more lumber to the yard, what is already down needs cutting up and relocating.

And I sent my taxes in thirty minutes after midnight last night.

A website that may be of interest to us is at the below link, it has an article that contains a chart for estimating how soon you can expect your return to be posted in a DD account:

The Military Wallet - Veterans Benefits, Discounts, VA Loans, GI Bill


Parts of my refund are "PRE-SPENT" in terms of project priorities determining where that money will go. One item will be an electric lawn mower, since I have had such terrible luck with local gas station fuels ruining my equipment. The Suzuki Swift project will be completed ASAP, and part of the cash will be shot into registering the car.

By tying the registration date (for renewal purposes) of the car to tax refund time, it should make it less of a burden when it comes up.

And if I have to have a local "Arborist" cut down two of my trees - $250 will be thrown on the ground for that too.

 

Check out this brobdingnagian grape vine....



Tomorrow I'm going to effectively stop it in its tracks, and domesticate it.

 

That is some nasty weeds you got there.

On the weekend I watched some football and worked. My days off though went to a Korean bbq buffet and saw American Sniper.

Tommorow I will be tearing into my 98 Civic's head gasket.

 

You have my sympathy. FWD sucks to work on.

 

Its not too bad. I have been putting it off for a while. Just not liking the idea of working in 40 something degree weather. Side note: Hondas are kind of my passion. I have two project cars. The one I am working on is a daily driver that the FIL gave to me. Had some issues that I trouble shooted through and seems to be pretty good with 240k on the clock.

 

I'm still haunting the IRS Refund Status check page, refund still not approved yet, but they got it first thing - it's just a matter of time.

Two major projects moved ahead today, one is the relocation of some large plant containers and the other was the DOCKING of that crazy grape vine...





I have said before that it makes little sense to try to tame an entire garden plot all at once, when you can have incredible growing soil in the right containers -

These are now lined up along a south facing wall, next to a window of a room I spend a lot of time in. The siding has issues, yeah. But that will be okay until the major items on my plate are in control. I left enough room behind the planters to fix the bad planks.

Grand Rapids Leaf lettuce in the big tire, I found seven good sprouts and these all have dynamite diggable soil in them (or will soon) ...

The damage to the siding was equal parts dog chewing and weed damage. This strip will be protected by pine nugget mulch, so that's an end to that!
* I dug it out deep enough to keep everything away from the wood.

 

Just want to apologize for not being too active lately. I've been swamped at work. Picked up two more shops then immediately got slammed with directives for the new shops! Lost in the sauce for a minute, and got a new 1SG in the middle of it all. Within 48 hours, I did get a compliment from both the new 1SG and the CO. Busy week in the army.

 

Supervising shops is always a challenge. The biggest part of the challenge for me was always NOT wrapping my hands around somebodies throat and throttling them...

It took me all the way to my last tour in the NAV to start thinking creatively:
If these young troublemakers I rode herd on were going to amount to anything, I needed to slide them as much of the shop operation responsibilities as I could so they would learn them (1) put them on their evals (2) and take all that crap off of MY back (3).

Since I was looking right at retiring in a few months I did this to a greater extent than ever, and what happened was the best shop ever (!). E5's running the show, with an E6 (me) accountable.

It was bitchen... Not only did it serve as a teaching tool, but because I spread a lot of responsibilities around the juniors became manic about making sure their areas of interest were top of the class!

It needed doing anyway - I knew I wasn't going to be around for the cruise, and their last E6 left them all in the dark.

I gave the incoming super a turn-key operation, but he decided to turn it into a boot camp. Oh well. To each their own...

Weather has cleared and warmed here, so my own personal IMA is going back into production onboard USS Barton Road (CVNR-138)
AKA: 138 Barton Road, Drummonds TN

I think I'll survey how things look first.

End of the day - two more main target trees down. Tomorrow they will be cut up, and one or two more taken down. The project is over the halfway mark now, and a lot of little stuff is going to be rounded up and burned.





This project has been on my books for a long time, ten years. Last summer I planned for a full on charge into this mess, as soon as the leaves dropped and provided the weather allowed. So far it has gone well and I can see the end results shaping up as I imagined. I have had to kick myself in the butt a few times to get up and moving, but guess where I learned how to do that?

 

Today I fought with a good sized sapling that was hung up on the vines in the tree tops.
I had to use a puller to drag it DOWNWARD and section it off. The puller was anchored to an eye-bolt in one of the stumps to the right.

Just for fun, I made this re-touch of the above pic:




*The National Enquirer has GOT to be the stupidest Magazine/Newspaper ever printed. I can't believe people actually buy it.

 

They probably just get it for a laugh. I think magazines like People and In Touch are far more moronic. Why do people care so much about celebrity relationships?

 

I'm temporarily down - for the first time in my life I have a bad reaction to poison ivy, no doubt because I got exposed to so much of it.

I'm going to have to ride it out until it all wears off.

Sucks, but nothing to take chances with.

 

Technu should become your new best friend!

 

3 - 4 days until I have cash again, in the meantime I have calamine, aloe vera, baking soda, rubbing alcohol, and some other helpful stuff, including hydrocortizone cream.

I just got back in from doing some more, and may only go another twenty feet with it this year, but that will be a total distance of more than a hundred feet I think.

After my shower I'm going to measure what I have done with a tape, and then to hell with it for today!

My saw chain needs some intense TLC at this point also, I think I'm going to send off for a new chain on the first.