Good Morning!!!! 41F @ 5:15AM. Rain showers this morning with some sunshine during the afternoon hours. High 48F. S winds shifting to NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
In spite of the forecast, we got only 0.02" of rain yesterday, and only another 0.02" overnight. Lots of wind yesterday and overnight, though.
That wind was blowing briskly yesterday morning when I was up on the 22' extension ladder slipping insulation tubes onto the feed line on the big tank up the hill. It was so cold that the adhesive on the seam wasn't sticking, and some of the zip ties I used instead were breaking while being tightened. The result wasn't an example of my best work, but it'll get the job done. While I was up there, I checked the level of water in the tank, and it was down farther than it should be. I reset the pump controller, and it ran for more than few hours trying to catch up. All the rain we've had over the past month has done wonders for the water table!
When I went to put out some mail, the gate wouldn't open, and on a hunch I brought the battery down for a charge, thinking that all the cloudy weather had hampered the solar charger. But it was back up to full charge in less than an hour, and the gate was back to normal after it was re-installed. Another reset did the job, but I have no idea why.
Then I noticed strange gurgling sounds coming from under the side-by-side, and found it was very low on coolant. It still has a leak somewhere, but I didn't have time to mess with it yesterday morning. So I just topped it up with straight antifreeze to get it through this coming cold spell.
I ran a couple tests on the troubled Ethernet cable and concluded there was a break somewhere. I ran a new cable, this time heavy duty direct burial stuff, and used the old line to pull it up into the attic. Lots of trips up and down the ladder to untangle it, but eventually got it all the way across the house. That's when I found the break in the old line, where it went into the wall through a 1" hole in the 2x4 header in the attic. It looked like it was abraded or chewed through, and from the mouse turds up there, I'm guessing the latter. There was another line using the same hole, and it had enough slack I was able to pull enough up out of the wall and use it to get the new line out the bottom of the wall. For once both connectors worked the first time, and the network on that end of the house was back up.
Drained the sprinkler lines that ran up to the roof, then backed the truck up to the garage and loaded the boxes of firewood in for the trip. Hope we get through it all; those boxes were heavy! Also made reservations for dinner on New Years Eve, bagged up the left over chili stew and got it loaded into the freezer, then gave myself the rest of the night off.
Lethal Weapon 4 was not as entertaining as it could of been, so it's no wonder it was the last of the series.
Still have a little more packing and loading to do today, not sure what else I'll get into, other than reloading the firewood dolly. Wanna start the new year off right.
Hope everyone's week gets off to a good start!