Wednesday, June 7, 2017

"A corpse is meat gone bad. What's cheese? Corpse of milk." - James Joyce


I bought a used pitman arm on eBay for the Mustang because nobody is making a reproduction. On pre-rack and pinion steering systems that's the ~8" arm that arcs left and right as you turn the steering wheel. It attaches to the "center link" which then moves side-to-side to move the front wheels for steering.
The seller shipped it Priority Mail and the USPS tracking site said it was in Eugene yesterday. It was supposed to arrive here and when I called the Elmira P.O. she didn't have an explanation. "It will probably show up tomorrow, but I can't promise that."
Good thing she didn't because that tracking site shows that this morning my pitman arm is in Sandston, VA. Yep, they put it back on a plane and sent it back to its state of origin.
So, does my pitman arm get frequent flyer miles? And are they transferrable?
Grrr.

A colleague responded to an article I wrote and that started an exchange that today included this poem he emailed me. I like it!
You are coming to a King,
Large petitions with you bring.
For his grace and power are such,
None can every ask too much.
   - John Newton

USPS seems to be much better at sending my pitman arm to the wrong place than getting it back to the west coast. It's still sitting in Virginia. Hasn't budged since arriving there early yesterday.
I'll contact the eBay seller tomorrow to see what he (a business, actually) has to say about it. The other parts arrived via UPS today, so that pitman arm is the only thing standing in the way of getting Sally in strong driving shape.
I did get the driver's door done today and it looks good. I'm likin' this girl.

We had a good day on Baker Rd. I moved wood from the rows against the goat pen into the wood shed so it's convenient for next winter. That involved some extra work because I goofed.
I thought all wood stoves took 18" pieces and it turns out that's too long for ours. Plus, I sometimes did a bad job of eyeing 18" and some of mine are closer to 20". The good news is that some of them are shorter and fit just fine.
Note: we're looking at getting a new wood stove, but that's a story for another time.
I sorted out the too long pieces as I stacked wood and piled them on the deck. This afternoon Pam set them one at a time on my Workmate (fancy saw horse) and I cut them down to an appropriate length. So now I've got a bunch of 3-4" pieces and a new pile of shorter pieces to stack.
I think we now have enough split and dried wood to get us through next winter and then some. I've got more stacking to do, but that's good exercise.

So was the run I went on this afternoon, though it felt more like torture.

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