Slower Day

Slower Day was Originally Posted on December 16, 2012 by lavarock

I kinda took part of the day off. Last night I brought the puppy inside and she and the older dogs played all night and I hardly slept.

I am trying to let Mom and pup play some more because I believe I have buyers coming on Wednesday to take her. She is about 6 months old and a black female lab, which seems not to be in high demand. Still, she is cute and energetic and should make a very nice and faithful member of their family. If I had kept her for breeding, her possible matings would be limited on this island because she is part of two popular breeding lines already and we have limited breeders here.

I found a couple of small leaks in the irrigation system and fixed them. The rollinias are about ripe, turning from green to yellow. The tips are starting to darken which is another good sign. One variety of tangerine seems to be quite juicy and I have some oranges coming in too. Next season should be great and I’ll be at farmers markets I suppose, selling LavaRock farm fruit.

I have been limiting my trips in the truck because I had a bad brake on the passenger side. The more I drove the worse it got. I needed to know how bad it was, but could open it up until I got those orders out on Saturday. If I was to take the brakes apart and have something happen, I have no other behicle to go get parts. Also, I would ahve had problems getting a ride to the post office to ship things.

The passenger side was horrible and the pad all gone. The surface that the pad presses on (the rotor) looked like Saturns rings. Normally I would take the rotor off and have it turned (they mechanically scrape the surface to smooth it), but then remembered that I had replaced these rotors many years ago. I still had the old ones. I had kept them because they could be repaired. I had replaces both, even though only one was bad. Thus I had a good rotor and a brand new pair of shoes to for with it! HOW LUCKY WAS I!

The cost to turn old rotors is not much less than to replace them. So in this case I probably won’t have the old ones repaired.

By the way, including hauling the pneumatic jack out of the garage with the tractor, finding a level place to jack up the car and so on, the inspection of both sides and the search for and replacement of the passenger side parts too all of about 2 hours. It is almost like I’ve done this before, isn’t it? I also found a busted hose coupling and fixed that too. The 4-wheel drive should work a bit better now too.

Years ago, actually decades ago, I used to work at a service station and would do oil changes, tire mounting and some repairs. The boss taught me well. Then the next year I worked as a dishwasher and then as a wall to wall carpet installer and electrician helper. The place where I washed dishes was on the Garden State Parkway and was mentioned in the book and movie “Blind Faith”.