Hey, Y'all! Thanks for stopping into Rancho Relaxo! We're in a new month and lots of things are happening here at the ranch. Like...we have another pooch! He's a hoot! He looks like a fuzzy carpet so...that's what we called him, FUZZY!
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It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here. Connie the Set Director unboxed the nativity scene and planted it out front and hung the draping swag lights on the porch.
Speaking of Christmas, this is the wreath that Connie the Pastor's Wife hung for our church.
Here's Fuzzy who must be paying attention to some of Abbie's teachings. He's lying in the same place as Abbie and is being a good guard dog. Uh-huh.
Abbie is teaching Fuzzy the secret Rancho Relaxo handshake. She's such a good doggie!
Some folks think the world runs on love but I'm more
inclined to think that it runs on coffee and spuds. The problem is that the
price of spuds has risen dramatically enough to crack your granny's 100 year old Wagner
skillet! Less than a year ago, 50# of Russets cost us about 22 dollars. A year
prior to that, it was 15.00 bucks (on sale/special). Here's the same sack for
35.99. Not sure who to "thank" for that. Not sure that I'm willing to
switch to rice yet, though. Tearing away from those totally tasty taters is
tough to do.
Well, what can I say? We've used up another
perfectly good year. It has zipped by so fast that it makes me yearn for yore.
Can you believe it? I’ve been at Rancho Relaxo for 15 years and pastoring at
His House Fellowship for ten years! It seems like it has only been a couple of
years or so!! So goes life. *SIGH* Moving along….
It’s been a good year. There have been ups and there have been downs but we truly are blessed around here. There is a lot to be thankful for, to be sure. We’ve accomplished a lot but there’s also a lot left to accomplish. You can’t even imagine.
Racking, Pack, and Stack: The upstairs storage area in the barn is a hard hat area and it was really difficult to find things, So, Ol' Ran, the Stacker, went to work racking, packing, and stacking stuff so there would be room to walk through the place and find stuff. It only took about an hour but it was time well spent.
Everyone Loves a Slinky or Ham it up: Another positive consequence of my labor is that I moved a lot of stuff away from my indoor dipole ham antenna. It's been an ongoing project for way too long so I need to finish it so that it can be used. It's fashioned from 14" helically wound heavy gauge wire (no hogs were harmed in the making of this ham antenna) and is called a "Slinky antenna" because it looks like a giant Slinky toy.
If this works the way I think it should, it will have no problems tuning all the way down to the 160 meter band. That band requires a really long antenna (a half wave dipole at that frequency is 253' which takes up a lot of real estate) or a shorter one with a lot of inductance. My barn is 30' in length so that's where the big Slinky antenna comes in. It is a large inductor which is precisely how antenna capacitive reactance is tuned out (i.e. you add serial inductance) thereby allowing a much shorter antenna to be used. If the antenna is properly tuned to resonance, the transceiver doesn't know the difference in length (and I won't tell).
Ham operators actually do construct antennas out of Slinky's but those windings are quite a bit smaller than mine. Mine is made from discarded air conditioning ducting. I'll still use one of my large tuners because it'll need to be fine tuned. And, it should easily tune on the higher frequencies without difficulty, too. I have a really nice MFJ antenna analyzer which should help a lot in the matter.
Fuzzy the Labra-doodle: Our new pooch now has a fitting name. Since he looks like a four-legged rug with a nose, it's Fuzzy Wuzzy. And, he's a papered Labra-doodle. His official name is "Sonny" but, that just doesn't have a pronounced ring to it. This is Rancho Relaxo and things around here have to have a ring to them or they can't hang.
Anyway, he has settled in and is now firmly at home and part of Rancho Relaxo. It didn't take all that long because he's a sharp as a Wilkinson sword! Man, this doggie is smart! And, he's sweeter than your grandma's peach cobbler and can soak up a ton of love and attention better than a pickup load of sponges!
Because he's still a pup, he's as energetic as a room full of kindergarteners and is happy and bouncing all the time. He is easily excited, too, but there's a catch. When he gets all excited, he piddles on Connie the Cleaner's floor. Whoooo, doggies! That won't work! So, we're training him to take his exuberant wetness elsewhere. So far, though, I think he's actually more of a Labra-piddle than anything else.
He and Abbie are great pals, too. Since Fuzzy is on the wireless fence, he can romp and play all around the house. His perimeter is set fairly liberally but not so far that he's in jeopardy of our driveway or the big road out front. He and she can be found in a romp and tussle a couple of times per day. They seem to be having a ton of fun. Abbie's going on 8 years old so she could use a good workout now and again. There'll be no problem with that as long as Fuzzy is on the job!
He's not quite house broke yet so we park him outside in the heated pooch hooch. It's "Maggie's Mansion" into which we placed a small electric conductive oil radiator type heater. Abbie loved the place last year and may move back in. For now she doesn't mind because she found a nice cove at the neighbor's place and just stays warm there. She comes home from breakfast, though (bless her little doggie heart).
A washing we shall go! A washing we shall go!: Just a quick update on the Ol' Maytag washer. You may recall that it had the outer tub shaft bearings go out and the Ol' Wrencher had to pull the bloody thing apart and fix it. The good news is that it's running like a Swiss watch and Connie the Washer Woman is well pleased that her mile-high stack of clothes has vanished away into cleanness.
But, the daunting task of tearing the big LG washer apart still looms on the horizon. There are so many other priorities around here (like one of our backup refers needing a new temp controller) that it's tough to get to it. We'll see.
Chickening update: Things are not all that well at the B-Gaaaak shack. We lost three layers to a bobcat the other day. It may have been a coyote but we have evidence that a big cat was in our back 40. We're down to ten birds but only eight layers. It's not a dire situation but we want to keep our layer count up to a dozen if possible. It just works out well that way. There are enough eggs for us to use and store and enough to give away or maybe sell (though not very often).
All hooked up or Chain, chain, chain: Not long ago (but longer than the other day), when we came out of Wal-Mart, I noticed that one of my two safety chains on "Wooley Pulley" was missing. After examining the hitch and tongue, it was pretty obvious that someone had swiped one my chains and connectors. I use a slip hook and quick connects meaning that they're easy to remove. That also means that only one of the two connectors would have broken off if the chain was bounced around or accidently got hooked onto something in the road. "Lowe's" hardware is on the way home so we stopped and I picked up another set of connectors. I always have chain at home.
Well....there you have it: another short episode of
the long happenings at Rancho Relaxo: home of Rancho Ran, the world's
least-most greatest authority: home of the Yo-Yo twins and home of a retarded duck: home of
Connie the Canner, the world's greatest side-kook and CEE (Chief of Everything
Else): where the air smells and where alliteration reigns supreme: where being
modern is optional and where there are no slaves to fashion: where the eggs are
always mostly fresh: where things can get...interesting: where it's all news to
me and where...you just never know.
Stay tuned, though. I'll try to post updates on this month's blog as I can get to it.
