The Farm
Sunday, March 06, 2005
There's something funny that Barley does that I just adore. She lies in wait for me when I go out to the barn. She waits as I get closer. She waits. How close can I get before she attacks?
Hey, so I had an idea. See, we have an electric lawnmower, an electric what-do-you-call-it leaf blower thing, and an electric weed-eater. Better for the environment than the gassy kind, yay, but not convenient AT ALL. There's that stupid cord trailing behind and getting in the way. "Self," I said, "wouldn't it be swell if I could rig up a battery that could run these things?"
I talked it over with some friends at work, who quickly showed their true colors as NaySayers. You know exactly who you are. Let's see you create someting! For I have created...this. Here it is unassembled. First, comes the weedeating. Next, the mowing. Smooth as a baby's bottom. And here's the trifecta to round it out. Charge it up, and it's ready to go for next time. On the down side, the backpack weighs in at 50 pounds. Just in case the battery runs out before I get done, there's always the old fashioned way.
More work on the shed today. I've worked my way up to walls. Here's what walls look like unassembled. I couldn't do it without help, of course. I managed to get the first wall put together. Hmm, now what? It sure looks heavy. I had this mental picture of starring in one of those Vonage ads, you know, the ones that say, "Woohoo, woohoo hoo" while people do amazingly stupid things? In my ad, the one I'm just about to make, I lift up this wall by one end to stand it up, and it goes right on over and smashes Clifford, the Amazing Red Truck. So, I put these stops in to hopefully prop the wall up until I could scramble around to put in some braces. That was the plan anyway. Hooray, it worked! See how it might have smashed Clifford?
This is how I marked the top and bottom plates of the wall for the studs. OK, this is a good place to quit. I got two walls up and the third put together. I didn't do the fourth wall because that's where the door goes and I don't know (yet) what size to make the door opening. I didn't put up the third wall because I thought it would be easier to assemble the fourth wall on the platform and raise it before the third.
