Daily Life Continues......

Had a wonderful Thanksgiving with all the in-laws and babies up at 7200'.

The homestead is "only" 9 miles away, but it takes about 40~45 minutes to get there, and if you don't know where "there" is, you probably won't get "there".

Very cool place, all hand-built, and a spectacular view at night.

Met my new Doctor today, and she seems pretty cool. I'm down to 225 Lbs, and all my "punch edema" is gone. BP was 124/65, pulse was sixty-something, and O2 uptake was 94%.

Be real interesting to see what my lab results are after 4 months of pretty constant physical activity.

Yes, I get tired easily, and probably will continue to do so for another 4 months, give or take a month.

Then I wrestled with replacing the garbage disposal by myself, always a fun thing. I took my time, and made sure all the plumbing was aligned before things got the final torque down. I wound up using my bottle jack and a piece of 4x4 from the fence project to jack the new disposer unit in place. The old one came out easily, and was pretty light duty, while this new one is a 10 year newer model in the same series, and the next size motor up. Just a wee bit too much for me to hold 12" off the ground while I try and align all the bits-and-pieces and get the locking ring started. So, I cheated and used the little bottle jack I have, and slowly raised the disposer into place while guiding in all the alignment stuff on the drain and rubber collar and the locking ring so they went together smoothly.

Took me three hours, but it was a quiet day, I was in no hurry, and did other things in between doing all the steps to install the thing.

And it works, as expected. The other one was locked solid and had a tripped breaker, so it was toast. The home inspector guy who was sooooo picky on some things never even flipped the switch to try the disposer, or he would have spotted it. Oh, well......

Then I unloaded the one rack I've been filling up with stuff so I could move it 3' to the left in preparation of the delivery of another rack. Since I will no longer have equipment "stored" in the garage, I need to maximize the storage space in the Radio Room so I can have all that "stored" equipment either on display, in use, or both. The new rack is only 36" wide, but it's 24" deep. My existing rack is 48" wide, but only 18" deep, so some of my test equipment hung over the front edge by 2"~4", very unsightly and unprofessional! I like racking my equipment in these "pie rack" or "cake rack" wire racks.

I get some cheep 3/16" plywood and trim it to fit on top of the rack, giving me a smooth surface to slide gear into and out of, making it easier to repair, replace, or upgrade.

I'll post some more pix when the new rack gets here and I install it. These will be used in addition to the work bench on that side, and the operating desk on the opposite wall. My carpenter buddy who did the fence has quoted me a fair price on a killer work bench for the garage, and we've been discussing options for the Radio Room. He'll build it once we figure out what I want and what the dimensions are. Not looking for anything fancy, but it has to be serviceable for what I want, and that part of it is still gelling.

In the meantime I now have a serious excuse to hammer away on the garage and get it cleaned up and organized enough to get the wife's little car in on "her side", and the Supra on "my side", and the new workbench up at the front!