"God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say 'Thank you'?" - William Arthur Ward

Per last night's post we started at The Grubhouse Cafe. Yes, I ate the whole thing, and that's some seriously good BACON there.






From there up the road apiece to Pape' (I learned that it's French
and pronounced something like pah-PAY) to get a Stihl 271 with a 20" bar. Got their high quality helmet/face screen/ear covers, an extra chain, and oils, so I'm ready to go. But any use will wait until we're done with this stretch of rain, sometime next week.

And then to the window place for two 48"w X 36"h windows. I didn't figure you needed a picture to visualize white vinyl windows. I'll paint the frames so they don't stick out when installed in a 60-70 year old cabin with aged cedar shingles on the exterior.

Home for about an hour and then off to the babysitting gig. The girls were great and it all went well. I had their 1-year old on my lap for awhile and set up a little train with the 5-year old who is clearly not ADD. She was happy to watch that thing go around and around long after I thought it was time to move on to something else.

From there to Midgley's Stove Shop where we got educated on all things wood stove related from a very helpful woman who isn't a Midgley's employee. She's an industry rep who happened to be there at the time, seems to know everything, and is very good at communicating it. Some of the key take-aways:

• Our stove is at least pre-1987 because it has a solid door (no glass). That's when this manufacturer changed to glass doors. Based on my description of how it works - or doesn't work - she thinks the venting system has failed.
• Mobile homes require special features on a wood stove, including a fresh air supply source. So we'd have to buy one with those features if we got one now. 
• We would get about a 50% increase in efficiency by getting a current technology stove over one this old one, never mind the fact ours isn't working properly. 
• By the time we bought the appropriate stove, got the req'd new stove pipe (ours isn't transferrable), got the req'd new hearth setup, and got it installed we'd be in for about $3,500. 
• The stove we would get would work fine in our tiny house. Move it right over to the new structure. You can use a mobile home-approved stove in a house, but not visa versa. 
• A pellet stove remains an option. Plusses and minuses we'll have to weigh.

So, will we make the swap now? Dunno. Gotta cogitate this one, esp. it's impact on the budget, short and long term. 

But the day's big news??

My new axles - the correct axles that should have been installed in the first place - shipped out Monday of last week. "But because of the holiday you probably won't get them until Monday or Tuesday of next week." So when they didn't arrive yesterday I decided to call the shop today. 

Five calls, to be precise. In the third call I learned that when she used the UPS tracking number she got a message with some ambiguous wording and ended with, "Call distribution center." Two calls later she told me: "UPS lost the axles." 

WHAT???? 

How. Can. This. Be?

"Jake says we have three more sets out there so he's going to box one up and send it to you Priority tomorrow." 

She's supposed to send me a tracking number so I'll know for sure when they're supposed to arrive. 

I had hopes of driving the truck the first week in December. I'm trying hard to believe I'll drive it this year.

Just finished dinner. Now out in (more) rain to that Bible study. We'll see how it goes.