Too Cold to Paint But We Got Heat

It’s been a bad week! I have been working hard to get the upstairs remodeling completed. I finished all repairs and got the guest room, hall, and two closets painted. All I need to complete these areas is to put baseboards in the hall and closets and of course, replace the carpet.

Then on Friday morning I discovered that the paint in the guest bedroom was cracking at the wall and ceiling joints. I painted them again. They cracked again. Not as bad, but cracked. After much guessing and head scratching I made a trip to Lowes and hung around the paint section until I found a “real” painter. He advised me that the caulking had not cured properly before I painted. In addition, I had done extensive mud work on the walls and he explained that in this cold weather it takes several days for the mud to dry and several more for the caulk to dry. He went on to say that in the winter he always puts two to three space heaters in the room and waits a week or more before he paints. So no problem, he says, wait until the weather is 65 degrees for a couple of days and then sand the cracks and repaint. Crap! But what can a guy do.

I bought a space heater before leaving Lowes and put it in the room. I thought I would try to help the heat pump get the job done before next May. Late Saturday afternoon I painted one of the corners and waited. Sunday morning there were still a few cracks. So I will now wait for another few days while I do the baseboards and paint the doors. However I don't think the weather is going to cooperate. For the next week we are expecting no higher temps then the mid 40’s with lows in low 20’s. Therefore, it may be a while before I can get the carpet in and the room completed.

The space heater was a big help. Not for curing the caulking but for keeping us from freezing. Early Sunday morning we noticed that the downstairs heat pump was not running. The furnace was blowing air but the outside compressor was not running. We have had some problems with this unit all year. So after kicking it and scratching my head a bit I took a look at the circuit breaker. Yep, it was off. So I turned it on. Heard the compressor kick on and started to go eat breakfast. Bam, the breaker kicks off. Flip it on, Bam it flips off. Okay, I’m learning. I make sure it is turned off. Don’t want to burn down the house. Looks like the compressor is locked up and is overloading the circuit. So….no heat downstairs. Oh yeah. The space heater is doing a fine job.

I’ll call the heating guys tomorrow. Oops! There goes another $5k.

Thunder Road

Boy, what a pleasant feeling. I was setting here scanning the web and listening to Blue Ridge Country 98.1, when a song brought back a flood of good ol’ memories. Remember Thunder Road, by Robert Mitchum. I sure do. Both the song and the movie. In my minds eye I could plainly see the old 1950 and 1957 Fords ripping down the mountain, sliding around the sharp curves and roaring out of sight around the next bend. Dust flying. Then the lonely wail of a siren echoing down the hollers as the night came alive with the presents of the big bad ABC guy (Gene Berry).

I believe it was filmed in Ashville somewhere along Tunnel Road. Robert Mitchum was the hero of every young man with a car. Back then we had real cars. Not some junkie old Honda or Toyota. We had chrome, lots of chrome, and engines, big engines, with two or three carburetors. We had Hollywood pipes or glass packed mufflers, and fender skirts. We keep them polished and waxed like the day they came off the show room floor. Some raced them up and down the public highways while others just cruised the “main drag”. No sissy Boom Boxes for real men. We went for horsepower and rpm.

I miss those old cars. I get a good chuckle when I see some young guy today with a $300-$500 piece of junk in which he has installed a $1,500-$3,000 stereo system. Normally they have removed the back seat to make room for speakers the size of a 1950’s console TV. We used the back seat for other things and would never have done such a dumb thing. They have to face the speakers out the window or into the trunk and play them at full throttle. I guess their thing is making noise. Well, watch Thunder Road, that’s the way real men make noise.

Me, I drove the “Old Man’s” cars. I couldn’t afford a “Hot Rod” of my own. But I dreamed of having a ’57 Chevy like one of our cousins had. Jet black; with red interior. It had more chrome then you could shake a stick at and it would fly. I was stuck with a ’56 Ford but it was always washed and waxed and it would haul the mail when you need to. I have cleaned out a few ditches with that ol’ ford.

My big brother taught me to drive back in ’58. No, that is not right. What he did was teach me how to wreck. You see he was home on leave from the Air Force and he was teaching me to drive the old man’s 1950 Dodge. As I recall it had a new kind of transmission, Fluid Drive, which kicked in about a good 30 seconds after you tromped the gas. We were on Poplar Springs road, in that big hair pen curve. Back in those days it was known as the Church curve because there was a big Baptist church there and everyone liked to talk about how fast they could make the Church curve. Well, Big Brother was teaching me to “glide-in and power-out”. It was all in the technique, he said, as he “glided-in” and then we were upside down and wrapped around a tree.

He taught me well. I learned. And I never did that!

I Wonder How They Know

How do they know? When we moved in to our new home, the end of December 2005, one of the pleasures was to look out the window, at almost any time of the day, and see deer. They just sauntered through the yard as if they own the place. They also seem to like our nicer plants. But that was alright with me. I enjoy watching them better then I enjoy the plants. Then just before Thanksgiving they disappeared. I would still see a track now and then but I never saw them. They slipped through the yard in the still of the night. I then discovered that deer hunting season open around Thanksgiving week and ran through 31 December.

Amazingly, this afternoon, 2 Jan 2007, two days after the end of the hunting season, at 4:45 p.m., five deer walk out of the woods behind our house and proceed to have a feast on the new $500 yellowtail grass I planted in the fall.

That’s okay with me. The deer are back.

Gooooood Morningggggg!

Happy New Year - 2007

What a great time to start a new life. I decided to make a couple of Resolutions I can keep. 1- Gain 30 pounds before the 4th of July. 2- Do less work. Well that should do it. I have made resolutions for years and never kept a one. This year will be much different. I think I can handle these without any trouble.