Sunday, August 09, 2009

and what did you do this weekend?

Mine was busy.

I spent yesterday morning working on the fence, of course, because it's just SO much fun (no, that's not sarcastic or anything). To the person who said I could do the whole property in a day or two, wrong! Maybe in decent weather. We did have some low 80s last week, it was fabulous. Today it was 100, so there's a limited window of time during the day when it's reasonable to be outdoors.

Anyway, after wrestling with the fence for a few hours, Mom and I canned 12 quarts of peaches. Oh my gosh that's a lot of boiling, it took hours. And there is still soooo much fruit out there. I might do one more batch of jam, I'll freeze some pie fillings, I'm eating tons of them, and giving them away to anyone who will take some.

I spent the evening at an anniversary party for some family friends, and had a really nice time chatting with some of the old 4-H crowd who I had not talked to for a very long time.

And then, despite my intentions (ha ha) to go to bed early, I was up until the wee hours looking at plane tickets, rental cars, etc, and trying to determine if going to Kansas is really feasible next month. I'm leaning that way, but this is not an easy choice and I think I'll feel a little sad no matter what I decide.

I had a hard time prying myself out of bed this morning, but the prospect of visiting a very cute baby was pretty hard to resist, so off I went with my friend A.C. to spend some time with my brother and sis in law and adorable niece. Unfortunately I'm not really good at holding her right now due to the thumb issue, so she didn't find me too entertaining but A.C. was more than willing to compensate for my present lack of baby-picking-up skills. :-)

Had a delicious lunch at Baskin Robbins (no, I don't do this often!) and then headed home. Now, I guess it's a good thing I didn't really have anything specific planned for this afternoon, because I accidentally took a nap. Yeah, pure accident, whoopsie daisy. Sat down on the couch to pet the cat and woke up about two hours later. I felt much better, I must say.

And then of course this evening, more fence time. Bleh. I know you want the official update, so here it is:

2856 total feet will be hot wired
936 feet currently hot wired (but not all turned on yet)
insulators up on an additional 160 feet (not yet wired)

I suspect I will be getting a lowered powered charger. When I finish the front pasture (the 160 feet of insulators) I'll attach everything and put the fence tester on it again, and hopefully not zap myself into the next county. We'll see. I'm not sure who's more scared of it now, me or the horses!

Well, that's all I got. I'm going to try resuming scrimshaw work this week, wish my thumb luck...

2 comments:

  1. I'm probably the one who said you could do it in a couple of days. My bad! In my defense, the original drawings didn't have a scale or measurements, and I didn't realize you had more than half a mile of wire to string. That must be about 270 insulators to nail onto posts. If each one takes a lethargic five minutes, that's more than 20 hours simply in nailing on the insulators. Then, let's see -- one minute per ten feet to string the wire is 4 1/2 hours, and an hour per gate to put on some kind of bypsss adds 5 or 6 hours, and setting up the shock box and pounding in insulators takes, oh, 20 minutes or so. So maybe two and a half days of round-the-clock work. Or not... However, the really impressive thing is that you've taken this on and done it by yourself -- something that many guys in the world would have no idea how to do. That's so cool!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, I'm all I've got, unfortunately. It's definitely a learn as I go thing!

    Oh, and there are 357 insulators. Some posts have to get an insulator on both sides.

    ReplyDelete