Life has its little ups and downs. Consider what I went through this past week. I have been trying to get my corn planted (a whole 2 acres) for a few weeks now. Every time the ground is just about dry there will come a rainy spell and set me back a few more days. Also this past week I had to repair a guy’s Kawasaki head that he sent me from Virginia. Basically what had happened is that he ran the engine out of oil and the camshaft got scored which in turn wrecked the head. I told him I could do the job but when the head actually arrived I discovered that A) My welding tank of argon gas was empty. B) It was Memorial Day weekend and the welding shop would be closed til Tuesday. C) I needed a special sized 23.00mm reamer to complete the job after I welded up the head.
So I got the tank of Argon this week but it was the wrong stuff so when I started welding it just popped and splattered with no actual welding taking place. Bummer! So back to the welding shop I went to exchange tanks, again. Lesson learned: Only use pure Argon when welding aluminum. OK, so then I finally ordered the reamer from the tool company. They boned me an extra fifteen bucks for shipping, handling and something called a “fuel surcharge” due to the spike in gas prices recently. Whatever. Buying the reamer was bad enough, seeing as how I will probably, rarely ever use it again. In the meantime, the guy from Virginia emailed and wondered how his head work was coming and could I let him know when it was done? Perfect. Just when I have all this other field work to do, this guy starts pestering. On top of that, my wife wanted me to replace the boards on the west entrance because they were starting to rot. We call it the “dock” because it looks like a dock but is actually a sort of bridge that was made temporary to get in the west side of the barn. (Long story). So a trip to Menards was scheduled for Friday, sometime. The weatherman was forcasting two days of non-rain for Friday and Saturday and so I was hoping to plant corn on Saturday morning, before any more rain could fall and set me back some more. On top of all this there was that whole full-time-job thing to deal with as well, and the lawn has been in dire need of mowing.
Anyway, I finished the head on Friday. It actually turned out quite well and the guy paid me as well the same day. The weather held and I was able to get the corn planted Saturday morning and I was able to get some lumber from Menards and start working on the dock just today. It looks like I should be able to finish it up in the next day or two. Then it’s on to other projects. Everything works out in its own time I guess, but it can be a bit stressfull until it does.