Wednesday, October 31, 2012

C'mon Baby Light My Fire...

How's things?  Good?  Better?  Even better than that???

Wow...  you're really having a good month...  I hope you found time for fun and frivolity while you were at it.  If not... well...  we can always blame Tiff.

I made it up to gather the minions and it was a fairly uneventful week except for...  well...  let's back up a bit.  Remember last year when I did the same thing and my heater motor quit working when there was 6 inches of snow on the ground leaving me a chillin'?  Well guess what happened this year...

Yup. Sunday night it was in the mid 60s at night.  Something unheard of in that part of the world during the first week of October.  Monday was more of the same, a little cooler at night, but still very pleasant.  As was Tuesday.

Now Wednesday, that's a different story.  Lots of wind, and the temps started to dip a bit until late afternoon then it dropped to mid 40s and that night it was probably in the single digits.

Heater fan worked fine Sunday night...  Monday night...  Tuesday night...  but on Wednesday night?  When it was really really needed? Bzzzzzzt...

There's nothing like that feeling of waking up at midnight with a frosty nose and thinking...  something's wrong here.  So up I go to reset all the breakers and whee!!!  The fan started working again...  but...  with it came the acrid smell of burning wires...  rot ro...

So for the rest of the night I played the hokey pokey with the heater motor and its breaker until I just gave up and grabbed a few more blankets and went for weight rather than gas heat.

A cold day's ride found me back at camp thinking...  screw it.  And I packed up and came home and caught a ride with a cousin who had been driving up every morning for the next day's ride.

The rest of this month has found me sorting cows, chasing cows, weaning calves, counting calves, wondering where the rest of my calves are, looking for the rest of my calves, and running around gathering some of them up from various and sundry corrals around the valley except for today...

No...  yesterday afternoon and today found me tearing into the heater and trying to replace the motor with a better set up.  I bought an automotive fan that I know puts out buchu air flow and rigged up a way to mount it in the place of the old tired squirrel cage fan and motor.

It worked like a shot.

Except for one little thing that I hadn't even thought of.  It blew air like you can't believe, but the noise was a bit...  extreme.  No way anyone was going to be able to sleep with that much action kicking on at random times during the night.  So I tore the old motor apart and lubed up all the wear parts and have it going right now to see if I really need to buy a new one or if this one was just gummed up...

I'm hoping for gummed up, but betting on new motor...

I blame Tiff for that...

*UPDATE*  Yup...  you guessed it.  Motor failed last night so I had to order a new one.  On the one hand...  it costs money, but on the other...  it fixes the problem so it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm still blaming Tiff for all the trouble though...

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Today's mystery lyric: (Remember the rules folks, no online searching of the lyrics, if you don't know it, you don't have the answer!)

When I collapse will you forget?
When I'm dead and gone will you regret,
All of the constant, mocking, bitter slander,
I imposed when you were so upset?
When you grabbed your keys said you were gone,
I couldn't help myself I passed the gun.
Inform my friends and family,
I lived well it's just my choices they were wrong.
They were wrong,
They were wrong,
They were wrong...

Answer to last lyric: Bound For the Floor by Local H