Fixed the Snowblower

After a week of exceptionally lousy health, I managed to have a fairly productive day today.  

We went out-of-town last weekend and that took a lot out of me especially since we went out-of-town two weekends prior to that too.  Between the two weekends, my health had had enough and I spent all week in bed and on the couch.  I couldn't think straight...  I couldn't see clearly...  I had great difficulty breathing most of the time... I was often lightheaded...  my bones and joints were more painful than usual... I slept a lot...  and I generally felt exceptionally lousy.  

I was hoping things would be back to normal yesterday but I had significant problems shortly after getting up out of bed so I aborted my plans for the day.  This morning, however, I felt more "normal"...  my new normal, anyway...  so I jumped into setting up a new WiFi system through our house (which was supposed to be yesterday's project).  

This WiFi project involved pulling out our living room fireplace, replacing a power strip/surge protector, and rerouting some cables.  One side of our fireplace houses our entertainment system.  I moved the old WiFi router to the back end of the house and that still controls our home automation.  The new WiFi system is a completely different and far more powerful system with the router and two extenders.  This is a WiFi 6 mesh system and, so far, it has been working flawlessly and it is much faster than the old system.  

Getting this new system set up for operation was a piece of cake.  Physically installing it into our entertainment system shelves was a pain in the butt.  It is done and it is working just fine now.  

Then I had some homemade sloppy Joes for lunch.   That was pretty good.

After lunch, I went outside to collect some rocks that are strewn in our road.  We had a new water main installed this past week so the roadway was dug up.  The rocks that were left at the surface of the roadway would work well in our backyard so I collected what was available.  I could still use more rocks especially in the range of 8-12 inches.  Unfortunately, I only found one rock that size along the side of the road.  All the rest were smaller than 4 inches.  They worked well for our new garden railroad nevetheless. 

While talking with one of our neighbors for a short while this afternoon, I was reminded that winter is fast approaching and that I still needed to fix our snowblower and get it ready for snow.  We could wake up to snow within a matter of a few weeks.  It has been far warmer than usual for the past year so the snow may not fly until late November but snow in October is not all that unusual.  So, I headed to the backyard and pulled out the snowblower and some tools.  

This extremely useful machine broke near the end of last season.  I say "extremely useful" not because it makes snow removal painless for my spinal injuries but because it makes snow removal a little less painful than shoveling.  This heavy machine that constantly vibrates still is quite painful to use for me but it is noticeably less painful than shoveling.  

Late last season, I was out by the road removing a huge pile of slushy snow that the plow had piled down there and the snowblower suddenly started making a god-awful deafening sound.  I shut it down immediately, checked the auger to make sure nothing was stuck in there, and then started it up again.  The horrendous sound was back immediately so I shut it down again.  Now I had to manhandle it through the slushy snow back to our shed in the backyard.  Now, that was painful.  This is a pretty big and heavy machine to manhandle without the help of its self-propelled feature.  

Also painful was the thought that something happened to this very useful piece of machinery that was going to be expensive and very time consuming to fix.  Actually, I was more concerned with the amount of energy I would need to expend in fixing this piece of machinery but the cost of this repair, in time and dollars, was also a concern as with any household repair. 

I need every little bit of energy I can muster.  Even on a good day, I am always short on energy.  I must decide right when I get up out of bed what task gets the little bit of energy I have at the moment.  On some days, I barely have the energy to use the bathroom and then collapse on the couch.  On relatively good days, if we need to do grocery shopping, then that is all that happens that day.  If I need to mow the lawn (and feel well enough to do that) then that is all that happens that day.  If I need to do laundry, then it is nothing but a load or two of laundry for that day.  I can do one thing for a short while before I must spend anywhere from a day to a week or two recovering.  So, as one would expect, I was a bit concerned about the energy I would need to expend in fixing the snowblower.  

Fortunately, within an hour or so, the snowblower was fixed, lubed, and tested.  It seems to be working fine now.  We didn't get to use it at the end of last season because it broke so I'm glad the fix was relatively painless.

I still need to stud the new tires that I put on the snowblower last season.  I'm not doing that today though.  I've been ready for bed since about 3:30pm!