you do what you have to,

Zoey and my Doughnut Bag

 i see mc donalds is encouraging you to grow your own, never noticed this till i enlarged the pic. this might account for the dog's need to satisfy a few munchies. 

      Zoey was a German shepherd dog I had that I was able to get off my brother Jim. Zoey had a bit of a tough life and was a handful to begin with, and at different times she had bit me not once, but twice. Once when she thought I was threatening her pup and one other time because it was her nature at the time. Lacking any type of interaction with humans and penned in a small fenced in enclosure, Zoey would run the fences and was very intimidating at times. I have seen her climb the side of a six foot high wood fence trying to get at me at times.

      At some point though, Zoey and I reached more than an understanding and she became one of the crowd of dogs , mainly her pups I let inside my house on a particularly cold winter as well as my regular dog Bud. Soon Zoey settled down and was one of the best dogs I ever had as she showed me a devotion I could never let go of. In fact although she was my brother’s dog I asked him if I could take her when I moved away from the farm for a while and I kept her with me as well as Bud my other German shepherd, who I had since he was a puppy and who died a few years ago and he along with Zoey are buried at the top of the hill overlooking the farm. 

 

zoey on left , babe , and bud 

      Zoey, Bud, and Babe and any other dog I ever had just love the wind in their face or maybe it’s the thought of driving down the road and with a dog’s keen sense of smell be able to scent the butts of all those dogs  my truck would pass and revile in the thought that they knew they were free, unlike those dogs confined to chains and dog boxes along the way. They would lean over against the passenger door and just let their head drift out the window smelling and occasionally glance at me with, the home chauffeur look.

      After all that is what we are. We are slaves to our animals. We feed them, open the door so they can go outside. , clean the crap up in the yard , water them then run to the door again to let them out again, as well as in the middle of the night or if the neighbor’s dog barks. To occasionally be able to have a dinner we eat without feeling guilty, or slipping them the last bite , even though it was really good. As in the case of the doughnuts I happened to pick up at Mineral City at Steineck’s bakery where the owner Mary makes some of the best doughnuts around. As much as I like Mary I have had to reduce the frequency I stop there for obvious reasons I could easily have shown you had you had watched me try and button my pants. The doughnuts were good and the company was friendly and for some reason I felt compelled to make a daily sojourn to Miserable City to partake of the doughnuts she offered there. 

 

zoey playing with her sticks. this is how babe learned all her bad habits

 

    Zoey happened to be with me and for some reason I didn’t really touch my doughnuts right away instead left the neatly folded bag in clear sight of Zoey as I stopped at Cross Roads gas station to get me some gas whereupon I jumped out of the truck and ran into the gas station to pay for the gas. I came out and pumped the gas and noticed Zoey sitting in the passenger seat looking out the passenger window, not really paying attention to me which was unusual for her. I jumped into the truck and it was then I noticed my doughnut bag tightly stuck around her muzzle where she had tried to get the doughnuts in the bag but instead had stuck the bag on her nose and couldn’t get it off. Instead of trying to paw it off as  I am sure she had tried till I came out to pump the gas , she instead sat nonchalantly in the passenger seat hoping I wouldn’t notice the bright white bag stuck on her nose. I looked at her and started in laughing and then I asked her what happened to my doughnuts she just looked at me with those sorrowful, but not really that much eyes and I laughed some more. Assuming the doughnuts was history or would be after I got the bag off. I instead savored the moment and started the truck and headed home. Still she never tried taking the bag off, but before I exited the parking lot I pulled over out of the road and helped her get the bag off laughing all the time. I fed her what was left of the doughnuts and she seemed real happy that I didn’t go berserk on her. But how could I . 

 

the original camera hog, she was always jumping in the shots, and now i know why , so i would never forget her and even without pictures doubt i would have

     Seeing the dog with Mc Donald’s bag flooded back memories of Zoey and her doughnut bag, she was something else and if nothing else a touching reminder of how precious life is.  How easily it can be gone, and there you are, still left behind holding the bag.

in hot water again finally.

I’m-m-m-m-mmmmmm Back-k-k-k-kkkkk

this is a picture of the 13 kw unit and is identical in appearance to the newest 9 kw unit i bought. 

      Again taking a break while life provides me with new material to entertain you with.  Isn’t life grand? My latest problem and your newest source of entertainment as you laugh at my misfortunes have to deal with an earlier problem I had with the natural gas or lack of it as the case may be. When your house and heat and all other appliances are dependent on natural gas for such things as heating water to cooking to drying clothes to just taking a shower or washing your clothes. Such necessities of life are much easier when the primary fuel source is working, when it isn’t, it can get you into hot water, or lack of it real quick.

       My first transition was the cooking part of my life and that involved my sister getting me one of those induction cooktop burners that work off of regular household current and are efficient as well as a good source of heat for cooking. I still have the natural gas supply but at one point I was forced to cook on the wood stove prior to sherry providing me with the cooktop. It has been a lifesaver for me so to speak. For the most part it provides me with all the heat I need to cook anything, and is responsive to the variability needed to cook whatever I need , the only limitation is the type of pan that needs to be used like stainless steel , but I believe for my health’s sake that going to stainless steel and cast iron is good for me since Teflon and aluminum pans have been linked to cancer and early onset Alzheimer’s , though some of you feel I may be a poster child for both , I have yet to be diagnosed and really don’t care if I ever am . I have become creative in creating one pan dinners and really think that I by myself could easily get by with it. I do miss the oven though and some day may look for an induction stove with a regular oven to bake with. It is not a real priority now for me though. 

this is a pic of the water line that burst the first time. you are looking at the point it is stamped at 200 psi.. normal water line pressure is rated at 40 -60 pounds per square inch and this line would have easily been adequate in pressure, but still burst due to the faulty unit. 

      My next problem was hot water, by limiting my gas usage with the stove I figured that this would help extend the gas supply and would allow me to use the hot water heater, but this was not to happen, instead it meant daily planning as the gas supply dwindled and I would have to plan my usage to the point I was stuck at times with no gas to heat water to bathe, wash clothes, dry clothes, do dishes, or to heat the house. Nothing, nada, this sucked the big one on occasion. As far as heating the house I had wood, but this required me to install not one but two heaters as the first one wasn’t adequate to heat much. Also I had to rebuild the chimney and just recently after having a problem with the draft had to make some more modifications to the chimney to improve the draft, and now I am getting good heat. I should have plenty of wood to heat the house as my nephew and myself are cutting wood to sell as well for me to use. Yesterday I managed to pull 3 good logs out for my cabin. This wood thing Is forcing me out in the woods and cleaning up treetops from where mom had some trees removed. So the wood burner has been a good thing. 

 

the picture above represents the second the damage the second bursting caused blowing one fitting completely out and swelling and bursting another pipe simultaneously. this is all schedule 40 pipe rated at 600 pounds per square inch.

 

this is a sideways shot at the pressure relief valve designed to alleviate these problems but it never went off as i had installed it on the hot water side of the heater as i was supposed to. there was no damage on the hot water side and all the pressure was on the cold water side for some inexplicable reason as if there was some kind of blockage that existed between the two sides when the water flow was shut off. i have no clue what happened.

 

   just a sideways shot showing the wet floor as  result of the water bursting as it did. luckily it was in the back \room and caused no other damage. 

     I even went to the extent of putting a loop of copper pipe around the top of the wood burner to heat the water I need or at least reduce some of my energy needs by preheating the water before it goes into the water heater. This worked ok but needs to be reworked and with better pipe also there needs to be some kind of water holding device where a quantity can be stored before entering the lines. This needs to be done with copper pipes and use a steel holding tank of at least a six gallon holding capacity sitting directly on top of the wood heater. This needs protected by a pressure relief valve to prevent overheating and bursting of pipes.

    To overcome my water heating problem on a short term basis till I can get the wood heater water heating apparatus going, I needed to get busy and buy some kind of a water heater. I would have needed this regardless of whether I could heat water on wood stove or not. I took to eBay and was looking at first at conventional electric water heaters and then I started looking at on demand water heaters and then I found one I thought would be perfect and later on down the road could be used with my passive water heater that I plan on installing on the wood stove. Making kind of a hybrid water heater that would combine solar and wood and then to bring the final water temperature up to the level I need.  I would use the on demand water heater. This could be used in conjunction with whatever electric power I provide down the road that would provide the electric I need to bring the final temperature up to my desired temperature. This would be the last step in the water heating process and would be used as a last resort as try to limit my use of electric , they are 99.9 percent efficient and only heat water when it is needed. I am putting it in line with my regular water hear and using it as a storage device to overcome surges in hot water produced by the unit. I plan on super insulating the old water heater , so that my heat losses are minimal at best.

     The first water I bought after looking at the passive water heaters was a Rheem 13 kw water heater that produced 5.0 gallons of hot water per minute, which is more than you need to take a shower or do whatever. This I bought at an online auction for 109 dollars and thought I had received a great deal and although I was the only one bidding on it and I won the auction. This required a major modification of my plumbing system on the advice my plumber friend and this cost me about 150 to date doing all the work myself. I had to install an electric line to handle the increased amperage and this represented a major portion of the cost associated to safely handle the increased amperage needed to heat the water. I felt that this was the answer to my heating problems and in the end it is, but not until I had my fair share of problems with my bargain water heater.,

    I installed the water heater after receiving it and followed all directions on startup procedures making sure I chased all of the air out of the lines by opening a spigot and running the water till all traces of air had cleared the lines. I tried to start the water heater and couldn’t get anything, I took the cover off the unit and pressed the reset button for the thermostat and it took off but still wasn’t right, and I had a leak in my plumbing so I decided to shut everything down and fix the leak and that is when it happened the first time. As soon as I shut it off the running water the water heater was supposed to quit heating water instead it went into turbo charge and heated the water on the cold water side of the unit to boiling and I could hear the gurgling in the lines and it just seemed like all the lines were swelling leading up to the heater , and at that instant I knew it was going to blow when I lunged for the electric box. It burst a line rated at 200 pounds per square inch and rained hot water all over my head. I shut off the water and the mess slowly subsided but I could still hear the water gurgling and I was cautious as I looked in bewilderment at the unit.

     I was disappointed and pissed at the work I had done to get to this point as it required about 7 hours of steady on my feet work and in an instant my work was shattered by this unit leaving me frustrated and not knowing what I could have done in error to make this happen. I looked and looked, going over every inch of the unit checking electrical connections studying it in my brain looking for answers as to why it happened and how I could prevent it from happening again. Also here I was at 8 o’clock in the evening and too late to go to hardware to pick up more plumbing parts, so I  did inventory and looked at isolating the unit and had enough parts to make it happen again, and I did, around 11 that night after eating supper and checking everything out I fixed the area where it had burst before and tried the water heater , and again everything was fine till I turned off the water at the spigot, and by the time I reached the electric box it again swelled another pipe and burst it with a loud earth shattering explosion of hot water and force enough to send plumbing parts across the room.

     Again I didn’t understand what was going on and had decided that there was a defect in the heater and took to eBay and bought another model that night that was smaller and was a new unit as opposed to the unit I originally bought that was supposed to be as good as new with the owner claiming it was in new condition but was returned for some reason undisclosed. It was because the damn thing was dangerous is why. I paid more for the newer unit but installed it 2 nights ago and it is world different from the other despite being almost identical in size and capacity to heat. And never has it indicated any of the problems associated with the other one.

      In fact I had to do some more plumbing last night but was able to take a shower in my house for the first time in a couple of weeks. Before I would have to heat water on the wood stove or hope there was enough gas to heat the water to take a bath. For me a bath when my muscles are sore is about the only reason I want to take a bath anytime. Well I am still waiting for anything from eBay after requesting a refund for the first unit and have found out the seller is no longer connected with eBay and I hope that eBay resolves all that, and I can get my money back through their guarantee. We will see.

thanksgiving yockey style

Our Early Thanksgiving

 back row : jr , faw , myself , brother jim

middle row: jasper, sherry, cousin brenda

front row: aunt fran, mom, and sister charly. 

 same place a different time ? about 32 years ago at best guess.

back row: myself, jr., jim , and brother faw

sherry, charly , and brother mike(passed)

mom , dad(passed) , and grandma(passed) 

sister jeanie not present in either pic.

      Mom wanted a Thanksgiving like we used to have at the town hall in Sandyville only we have it the weekend before thanksgiving as we did last Sunday and that way the family could all participate, at least those that didn’t have to work, and still some didn’t show up , but for the most part we had a turnout better than we expected. I will share some pictures of this thanksgiving of ours with you , and one of the past ones when we had our immediate family altogether in this same venue to celebrate an earlier thanksgiving when some of our family members who are in the picture are no longer with us. 

 this i what it looks like in a group pic when you have to be one of the crowd. 

 

damn , not a one is smiling. 

 

get my picture taken or eat some more. oh , the decisions. 

 

 the women of the family

 

those pesky neighbors of mine

 

willy and amy with mom

 

 

mom in her moment of honor

 

      Grandma and Dad, as well as my brother mike are no longer with us. All have passed on as well my grandpa which I doubt if he had ever made it to a Thanksgiving at Sandyville as we started having them at Sandyville years after grandpa passed on. My Uncle Wayne also is missing as he too has passed on , although him and Aunt Fran are not in the picture. All those who have passed on are deeply missed and their presence could be felt in the smiles and laughter of those present as you can see a little of all those missing in the faces of those young folks.

      Running and playing were the grandchildren and great grandchildren and mom’s face had to be sore from smiling and laughing, as well as her butt as she sat for picture after picture. I won’t share anything in terms of a family portrait as for the most part I was part of the family getting my picture taken, instead I will submit to you pics I took as we prepared to have a group portrait done from my perspective. As well some of our original family including my Aunt Fran and my cousin Brenda whom have always been an important part of our family as we grew up together, maybe not under the same roof but always just a phone call away.

       I would like to say something deep and thoughtful about family besides we put the dis in functional, but instead looking at how it all came down and how tasks were accomplished by all those there and a lot of it without anyone telling the other what to do, is why we are a functional family, looking at those coming up and seeing in those faces the wonder of a large family will hopefully keep them coming back to this place for a long time to come. Thanks Willy and Amy for being there and helping also.

talk is cheap lives aren't. be careful of what you wish for, you may get it.

Recent Facebook Posts of Note

 

This is by Billy Graham's son, evangelistic Christian preacher 

     This coming from a preacher whose father roamed at will despite his religion and whose family silver spooned this son of his to fame as a result of their religion. How hypocritical of him to condemn another religion in general. 

Another from democratic front runner for president Sen. Bernie Sanders

In my view, now is the time for developing a serious and effective approach to destroy ISIS. Now is not the time for taking cheap political advantage of this tragedy. Now is the time – as President Obama is trying to do – to unite the world in an organized campaign against ISIS that will eliminate the stain of ISIS from this world.       But let me also say that now is not the time for demagoguery and fear mongering. What terrorism is about is trying to instill terror and fear into the hearts of people. And we will not let that happen. We will not be terrorized or live in fear. During these difficult times, we will not succumb to Islamophobia. We will not turn our backs on the refugees who are fleeing Syria and Afghanistan. We will do what we do best and that is be Americans – fighting racism, fighting xenophobia, fighting fear.     And a post i made earlier in Facebook I feel is worth repeating:    All this talk about immigration and rejecting refugees avoiding the conflict in Syria , mainly because they are Muslim when here in the united states it is well known we have a substantial Muslim population that contribute as much or more than most and have to remain silent for fear of retaliation from others in society who take a dim view of their religion. One of the things that makes this nation great is our freedoms. One of which you will defend to all ends, is the second amendment , and the right to bear arms while our school children die at the hands of idiots with guns both legal and illegal to the point our schools look like prisons, and their is talk of including bullet proof glass in them, Another is freedom of religion, and at this I guess we need to add another amendment which states, it is free as long as you re not Muslim. Our ability to accept refugees and their contribution to our government is well documented and i will include a few examples:      Albert Einstein was a refugee, Henry Kissinger was also a refugee fleeing German persecution. , Donald Trump's grandfather was also a German immigrant, Charles Lindbergh's father immigrated from Sweden, Werner Von Braun credited with the development of the v-2 rocket used against Britain in World War 2 , and built with slave labor , who later became a prominent physicist and one of the early developers of modern space rocketry was a naturalized citizen, and the list is long and varied as to their contribution      The point is which immigrant are we going to leave behind and how might he contribute to our great country? With the exception of Frederich Trump who by the way was an immigrant from Germany building housing for the war effort against Germany for the United States government at no doubt a profit. By what basis are you going to say who should stay , and are you becoming a racist also, i doubt you have much native Indian blood in you. Not all immigrants are bad for the country, most are so thankful to be out of that hell hole and are willing to do anything to get a start. We created this mess by sticking our nose in places we didn't belong, and now we are going to stick that same nose in the air, and deny these people we helped displace, the same rights you enjoy.       Yes we have to help our own first, and take care of our veterans and the aged . these too are being denied benefits or having them stripped away by our own elected officials. This is an internal problem and created by the elected populace that represents us. The same ones who want to start a war against radical army who will run and hide under their own citizens like scared rabbits when confronted. We need to look long and hard at our politicians and ask them is this necessary and how many more lives need to be lost , both innocent civilians and servicemen to prove what? There is profit in conflict. We already knew that. Get out and vote and change what you can. 35 percent of the population isn't a good voter turnout. If you don't vote except at a presidential election , you have a limited right to bitch, and less if you don't vote at all.       And finally summation i have to say:         It is tragic what happened in France but as one post i read says; If you sow seeds to the wind of change, then you need to also be able to weather storm it might create. A little history of the French and what happened in Algeria where 45000 Muslims were slaughtered after World War 2 . If this happened today there would surely be talk of war crimes,  back then nothing was said or very little.this is much more tragic then what happened to France lately.      Karma sucks only in this case, because it happened to humans on a personal level , not only French citizens but to all who were there the night of the terrorism. The french are pissed and rightly so, but some of it was brought on by their indifference to the people who dont believe the way they do,and who could care less if one American was in the crowd. They wanted to make a statement and in efffect created a war on Muslims in general . Many who did not participate that night , but are being lumped together due to their religion or because of their nationality.      It is a black mark on Islam, and due to the social media blowing it up as it is now the the next thing to hate behind the rebel flag. It is a lot harder to understand, than to hate and let our gut reaction at what happened reflect on all of Islam, and the peoples of war torn syria seeking an escape from the war and poverty. what would you do in the same situation, would you stay in a place that continues to escalate the war talk or would you move your family somewhere else to escape the terror of losing your family to an errant French bomb? You too would would want to go somewhere else.      But where would you go . Like Mexico faces a a fence, these people are at the mercy of other nations with radicals much worse than Donald Trump ever could be and hell of a lot less understanding. they need our help now more than ever.       I am not supporting ISIS , instead i am saying we need to think this situation out carefully before we alienate a mass of people who are already embedded in our society and not let hate dictate our will to war against them. finally i will leave with you pictures of how the past treated Muslims before and in an effort to make sure these people are treated fairly consider what France did to them before. all the pictures of France's terrorism pales in comparison to these atrocities.      Pic of war crime atrocities of 45000 slaughtered Muslims in 1945      i would like to say it is not America's problem but it is as we share the same air, we are just on opposite sides of the same pond. we ned to face our problems with Muslims with understanding and not condemnation as a group together. ISIS is only a small faction. lets not whip up the frenzy of war talk as it may be your son or daughter fighting there.