Scattered Thoughts . . .

Every evening, Kenzie (usually Lukey too) will call Gee on our Alexa devices.  During last night's conversation, she was a bit more animated than usual so I quickly picked up my camera and shot a few photos of her...   I have to say that these Echo Show Amazon devices were a good idea.  These devices make it easy to stay close even though we may not see each other in person for a week or so.  Of course, we also have all sorts of other uses for this Show...  our calendar, recipes, music, news, timers, alarms, notifications, even asking Alexa to add something to our shopping list.   Uncle Adam has an Echo Show also so we keep in contact with him in California as well.  Actually, we had Nan and Pop over for dinner this past weekend and while we were all at the table, we simply looked over at the Echo Show and said, "Alexa, call Adam" , and we had a little virtual visit with him while Nan and Pop were here.   Anyway, it is nice hearing from Lukey and Kenzie and actua

After I did a little bit of work on the telescope pier the other day, the weather was too good to pass up doing some work on our decks.  They were in desperate need of sanding and staining since I had skipped a couple of years due to spending far too much time at the hospital (Sheila's cancer).  The weather was ideal...  sunny and warm but not too warm...  so I pulled out the belt sander and some sanding belts and jumped right into sanding everything that needed to be stained. Everything that needed to be stained was filthy and needed to be cleaned first.  It turns out that using the belt sander was the easiest way of cleaning.  Plus, this allowed me to smooth out the old decks a little bit too.  I grabbed my largest brush, stirred up the stain, and started staining.  The following morning, I added the second coat of stain... After two days of drying under the sun, we had a day of solid rain and some localized flooding.  The deck now has nice beads of water sitting on top ra

I got a little more accomplished on the metal telescope pier adapter.  Today, I drilled holes for 1/2 inch stainless steel bolts (running thread, actually) which will be used to enable fine leveling of the mount.   At this point, I'm running out of oil for keeping the drill bits cool while drilling.  I only have about five more holes to drill...  and two of those holes will require tapping...  maybe I do need some more oil.  We'll see...  The drilling went well.  I was left with two pairs of four holes perfectly aligned with each other.  I will have 1/2" stainless steel threaded rod in these holes.  The running thread will separate the two halves of the adapter...  top and bottom...  about four inches apart...  and stainless steel nuts will allow me to level this adapter.   Here is the top of the telescope pier...  this metal adapter will bolt directly to this wooden top plate through the four holes around the circle scribed into the wood.  The two diagonal l

I've had a couple of busy days.   I started off yesterday by doing some woodworking.  I needed to make the wood top to the telescope pier.  This wood top will then be topped with an all metal universal adapter which still needs some machining.  Yesterday was all woodworking though.  I started working in the kitchen on the kitchen table since the drill press was already inside the house and I didn't want to risk inflaming my spinal injuries by carrying the heavy drill press outside if I didn't need to do so.  The kitchen table is a nice height for working so I placed some newspaper down on the table to protect it and then placed the drill press on top of the table.  This project quickly proved to be too messy to continue in the kitchen so I reluctantly moved everything out to the backyard.   I had a series of holes to drill in two pre-cut pieces of poplar.  In the end, I needed four slots in each board...  larger slots in one, smaller slots in the other.  First, I h