Wednesday, February 01, 2023

February 1

 Whee doggies, we've had some rain over these last few days.  I don't know how much, because I never replaced my rain gauge after it cracked a couple of years ago.  I do know this, when I went to fill my bird feeder after work yesterday, I sank into mud up to my boot tops.  The ground was so soft, the pole I had my feeder on was tilting over.  

I straightened it back up and braced it with a few pieces of concrete from my now pulled up fire ring, then just scattered some seed on the ground for the birds, since the rains had made the bottom of the feeder all gunky.  I'll have to clean it out really well before I re-fill it.  That's going to have to wait until after all this rain stops, which should be sometime late tomorrow evening. 

The good news is, it never got below freezing -- and isn't expected to until after the rain moves off -- so we didn't get any ice accumulation, and aren't expected to.  Even so, I highly doubt Big Al will eat tomorrow, which means six more weeks of winter. 

The bad news is, if I want firewood, it looks like I'm going to have to shell out $300 per cord.  I mean, that's about what I was paying before, since the guy bringing my wood -- you know, the one who kept wanting to cut holes in my fence -- was never actually bringing me a full face cord.   It was more like 3/4 of a face cord.  Anyway, there's only one other person selling wood locally, so I don't have much option.  There's lots for sale up by Tupelo and Memphis, but I doubt they'd deliver down to Grenada, and if they did, the fee would be outrageous.  

Speaking of cold weather, winter seems to be the only time in the whole course of the year that the air conditioner works out at the plant.  It's not really that cold -- upper 60s to low 70s-- but since we have to have fans blowing on us all the time, it feels so much colder.  We're all standing there in hats and coats like we're outside in the snow.  Even so, my neck is still cold, so last week, I dug out an old scarf from the closet and started wearing it to work.  This morning, one of my coworkers said she had a scarf she was going to start wearing, but she couldn't find it.   We got to talking about knitting, crocheting, sewing...all those life skills.  I mentioned that I had a drawer full of hats and scarves that I'd made over the years.  When I got home, I got out some Walmart sacks and started putting said hats and scarves into them.  It didn't take long before I was running out of room, so I got out a trash bag and absolutely filled it up.  

I'm going to take them into work in the morning and let my coworkers dig through and take whatever they want.  

Speaking of work, there I was at work, just a working away, when a man I'd never seen before walked up right behind me.  He introduced himself and said he was from Lennox's quality department and thanked me for using the nitrogen purge.  It really makes a difference in our quality and it's very important that we use it and he just wanted to let me know how much he appreciated it. 

It was all I could do not to laugh right in his face, because it doesn't even work.  Me putting the nozzle in into my part is just for show.  There's nothing coming out of it.  Besides, it's not that important, because if it were, they'd make both shifts use the purge.  Not just day shift. They don't even care.  My supervisor has asked maintenance to come out and fix it several times, and they've said they weren't going to.  "That's all the gas you're going to get," said the maintenance man.  So much for it being very important. 

And finally, because many of you won't click on a link without a photo, here is the sunrise from Saturday morning. 


It looked a whole lot better in person, believe me. 

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