Hotspur.us

So last Sunday in a spurt of motivation I had glass cut to repair the two windows in our garage. I managed to get one in last weekend. But then I ran out of steam. Mostly because I had to pull the window sash apart and do some repair work. And that never goes fast.

Well today, despite the evil heat and humidity, I managed to get it in gear and replace the window. Not that it was easy. And not that it ended entirely well.

First I had to scrape the window a bit because the 24″ x 24″ piece of glass would not fit in the slightly larger than 24″ x 24″ window.

Sure, I do all my home repair work in a sun dress, don’t you? Seriously though, I’d been out and about (and trying not to die from the heat – 90+ degrees) and in my typical form decided once I got home that  I’d work on some projects that needed finishing. Well why in the world would I change clothes? I was, after all, ONLY going to pop that glass in the window and secure it, right?  Oh and maybe paint an ammo can and perhaps paint the Wheel of Morality (the 5th Great MEAT-n-Greet at Coopers Rocks is coming up soon.)

Well after all that scraping, which turned into me sanding and scraping and then getting out my wood chisel. Which of course I could not find. But after digging it up I was not surprised to find that it needed sharpened. Which mean I had to find something with which to sharpen the chisel before I could make any progress. I was trying to not lose my patience since this was becoming quite a large pain. (The first window – predictably – went in without any drama, scraping or fuss.)

I think I must have put that piece of glass in the window about 20 times and it still did not fit. Of course it wasn’t me working non-stop. I had a few respites thanks to intermittent thunderstorms which were rolling through. But once they stopped coming and going and I no longer had to run for cover I finally (thought) I won! Yes the glass went in. The glass was secured. And then….the glass cracked. But you know what? By that stage I really did not care. And it was only a tiny crack. And the window is in the back of the garage.

Oh, did I mention I also had to tie on the weights for the bottom window? Well I did. And I had to free the windows from many years of paint. At the very least I know that the trim on the house used to be blue before the current mauve.

And so you are probably wondering why the heck anyone should care about me putting in a new window in the back of my garage. Well it’s a valid point to ponder. And so I’ll come clean. That particular piece of glass that I just installed is a particularly evil piece of glass.

Because yesterday while I was out geocaching with 89SC at The Jug WMA that evil piece of glass had a devious plan which it managed to bring to fruition. What was the evil plan you may ask? Well it just so happens that since glass is fragile I had placed this evil piece of glass on top of a small cart in the garage. And there it sat in wait, concocting a plan. Waiting…waiting for someone oblivious.

And since Chad lives here too, it didn’t have to wait very long. Sometime around 2:00 pm Saturday that evil piece of glass lured Chad in and sliced him up. Oh yes. It did.

And how did I find out? (Because remember I was out in The Jug where there was no cell service.) I found out via a short text message that Chad was at MedExpress. And that was IT. No more information. And why did this freak me out? Because Chad and Dad were at home with an industrial wet saw cutting flagstone.

Nicely played Mr. Evil Piece of Glass. Nicely Played.

WARNING! GRAPHIC PHOTO of Chad’s Injury coming up next. Not as gnarly as my summer destroying injury of June 2009, but still slightly unpleasant.

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It’s that time of the year again. Time to give Villain a really good scrubbing.

So, Villian + Hose = Extremely Wet Villian & Extremely Wet Me.

You will notice in the photo below that Villain does look quite nice and shiny. And he smelled good too thanks to the awesomely expensive shampoo that I happen to have stashed in my tack trunk. Honestly, that horse has more product than I have had in my entire life.

His bath went like this….he protested by dancing about the wash stall, putting his head up as far as he possible could in order to avoid getting his face washed. He does not like having any tiny bit of water (or perceived water) getting near his ears. So when I start to get his neck wet he tosses his head WAY up in the air. What he has failed to factor in is that if he kept his gi-nor-mous noggin DOWN I wouldn’t have to spray to get the top of his neck wet.  And if he would do that….there would be no (perceived) water in his ears and I’d be a damn lot dryer.

And so after both of us getting a bath, and me ending up dirtier than when I started, I took him out and let him graze so he could dry off. And then he went back to his nicely cleaned stall to have a snack.

And so…Nice, shiny, happy Villain.

And in contrast….Tired, soaked, smelly (and on my 3rd set of clothes for the day) me.

It’s great to know that the day after I gave the mighty beast that scrubbing, it poured. He’s probably covered in mud already. Figures.

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So we had a long weekend before us and I had a plan. I’m sure you will all be surprised stunned shocked into a coma to find out that it involved geocaching. In fact it involved several facets of geocaching – and they were all related to those nasty challenge caches.  I was going to finish up the Coal Heritage GeoTrail, nab Monroe & Summers counties for the West Virginia County Challenge, a state park or two for the West Virginia State Park Challenge (god Russell how I hate you)  and grab page 56A for the West Virginia DeLorme Challenge.  Yes, yes I was.

And so first thing Friday morning I got online and booked us the last room at the General Lewis Inn for Saturday night. Our plan was to get up EARLY Saturday morning and head south, grabbing the GeoTrail caches, nicking down to Mullens to avenge a DNF, then head over to Lewisburg where we’d spend the night (oh yes, taking in the New River Gorge on the way). Then we’d get up on Sunday, have a leisurely breakfast and take a tour of the Smooth Ambler Spirits before heading northward to grab that pesky page 56A. And THEN stop off in Elkins to make The Wheel of Morality.

Yeah, we I had an awful lot of stuff planned

And then I was out caching Friday around 1:00 p.m. standing on the gawd-awful side of a hill at some lake on a ‘trail’ when I got an email that said my hotel reservation had been canceled per my request. What? WHAT? WHAT??? Since I had cell service I immediately called and said, “WHAT? WHAT THE HELL?” “I did not request my room to be cancelled. Please to be explaining yourself.”  Oh, said the folks at the General Lewis Inn, the room you booked wasn’t really available. The internet site had not updated. What? WHAT? WHAT???? So this later turned out to work out for the best since I made (after returning from the FTF hunt from hell) reservations in Beckley, which was as far as we got on Saturday before giving in to hunger and exhaustion.

Anyway, short recap of trip.  Knocked off a Hawk’s Nest State Park and did an awesome hike to do so.  Found necessary caches on Coal Heritage GeoTrail until we get to Fayette Station. Where we FAIL to find the cache there. Even though it is so simple a blind cacher could spot it from his/her car. That FAIL meant there was no reason to go to the bowels of WV Mullens to avenge that GeoTrail DNF since I would still be missing one cache. We did, however, have a lovely drive down to Fayette Station and took in the scenery.

Calling it a day we crashed for the night in Beckley.

The next morning my still elaborate day 2 plan was still in tact until I looked up Smooth Ambler Spirits and found they were closed on Sunday. STRIKE ONE.  Fine. We still had additional things to do, such as find a cache in Monroe County and then one in Summers County and grab a few state parks for both the WV State Park Challenge and our VIPP stamps. Which worked out pretty well until we got to Cass and I was so distracted by getting stuck in computer cords that I forgot my VIPP cards in the car and consequently totally forgot to get them stamped.

We then also realized that the Earthcache at Organ Caves would have to be passed on since Organ Caves weren’t open on Sundays. Come ON people. It’s Memorial Day Weekend. How about a little flexibility. But no, denied booze & earth caches. Geez.  We did manage to score page 56A which was a load off my mind.

And then we went to Elkins and had delicious Mexican food with Bob & Keith which is where THIS post picks up.

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We have three four cats. And they have three dishes: two standard cat food dishes and one of the salad plates from our dishes. I’m not sure why we have four cats and three dishes, but we do. Cats, or at least our cats, are very neat eaters. They hunker down near the food dishes and NOM. That’s it. No picking food up and moving it to a better dining spot, no digging in the dish. So here’s the conundrum –  WHY is there always cat food kibble on the floor.

It was a constant source of annoyance. And confusion.

And then we walked into the kitchen and saw Orlando standing IN the salad plate eating the cats’ food.

Well, it may not be the biggest mystery in our house, but now it’s solved. Which means we can now spend our extra time concentrating on Orlando’s little “problem”.

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