Nilknarf Journal

Well, I did get off my ass and get some stuff done today, finally. I worked on the lawn mower for about two hours, and took the carb apart, cleaned it and put it back together. Still no go. It has a primer bulb on it, and I can get it to run for a minute by pumping up the primer, but then it stops. So the gas from the main tank isn't getting there through the regular route, I figgered. I think that's what's going on, but I don't know how to fix it. I cleaned everything in sight and a bunch of stuff that wasn't... little needle valves and the like. Any suggestions? Aside from taking it to someone who knows what they're doing, I mean...

While I was doing that, Karen was working on the back yard, and I still haven't been out to inspect her work... she said that she fixed up a smoking area for me, and I'm not really sure what she means by that. It could be good or bad.

Which reminds me of a story that makes me look like a fool. One time, before I started this journal, I decided to quit smoking. Or I told everyone that I was or something. Anyway, I was sneaking cigars... I had them hidden in the shed.

Well, this is no big deal, I guess... but one day it bacame a big deal. There was an apple tree right outside the shed, and it was in pretty bad shape, part of the trunk rotting near the ground. I guess this must've been a dry time of the year, or a dry year, because I flipped my cigar at the base of the tree before I came back inside.

About a half-hour later, I happened to look out the window... and the fucking tree was on fire! I got out the hose and put it out with no problem, of course, but what little life that tree had left in it was gone. And I felt very foolish, to boot.

After the mower fiasco, I decided to refinish the slats in the porch swing. They were in pretty bad shape, and needed sanding, which meant that I needed to take them off of the frame. No big deal, normally, but they'd been there for umpteen years... and every fucking bolt was rusted tight. And these were carriage bolts... a smooth rounded head that fit snug into a square hole on the the wooden slat. 51 of them. So I turned to swing over and applied a liberal amount of WD40 to each nut. Then I got out my vice-grips and went to work. In order to get the vice-grips to get ahold of the bolt head, I needed to force the jaws just a little bit below the surface of the wood. It would take me, on the average, ten tries for each bolt... then I had to hold the head whilst I turned the nut on the other end. And I had to do this on an unstable swing... retrospectively, I should've taken the swing clear down... why did I think of that now and not before?

After I removed each bolt, I sprayed it and the nut with WD40 again, and then worked the nut onto the bolt and off again. Soon, of course, my hands were too slick to hold the tools anymore. All in all, a very frustrating experience.

After the slats were out (I forgot to mention... this is an old swing, with full-thickness oak slats) I went to work with the belt sander. I drove a nail partway into the deck railing and slipped the center hole of the slats over it so the sander wouldn't throw the slats through the front window as I was working on them.

After they were sanded six sides, I stained them... well, Karen did the first four, and I finished up. I had to put some finished ones back in before they were dry so that I could take out the rest and the thing wouldn't fall apart.

I've got three or four other projects to do tomorrow after I get done with the swing. Today was a beautiful day, and tomorrow is supposed to be the same only windy. This would've been a perfect fishing day, dammit... O'well, maybe Monday. It's supposed to rain Sat night and Sunday.