First Entry of 2014

             My first entry of 2014. I normally like to do an update on my OD Homepage, but OD was screwing up so as to make much of anything impossible. It seems to be functioning a bit better today so hopefully I’ll be able to get some noting and reading in later on.

It was a quiet New Years Eve for Stump and Me. One of the frequent updates I get is from Steve Hayes who does excellent movie reviews and recommendations on his site, “Tired Old Queen at the Movies”. On New Years Eve he reviewed the 1936 movie
“San Francisco” starring Clark Gable, Jeannette Mc Donald, and Spencer Tracy. I can’t remember the last time I had seen this movie. I was able to find it on the YouTubes. (With Spanish Subtitles!) What a great way to bring in the New Year!

 

 

I was asleep before midnight with my ears plugged with foam earplugs. All too often the New Year is greeted in with noisy fireworks. Not this year….the neighborhood was quiet.

Work on the second floor is progressing. In the kitchen area is where I have my workbench for doing watchwork and the various cabinets for materials. This has been a vey disjointed area for way too long. Where the stove and refrigerator used to be I had two Kraft Maid Cabinets which have a top drawer and a file drawer with a 6 ft counter top bridging the two. This made for a great desktop – worktable. There is a long involved story behind these cabinets I recorded in an entry: http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=A312826&entry=20023

I don’t want to spend much money on this project. I was trying to figure out how to make a base for the counter top to turn it into a smaller table/workbench. Looking for lumber in the workshop I realized I already had a table base from an old ice cream parlor table. DUH!! I’ve had this packed away in the rafters since I moved it here in 1996. The counter was cut down and I’m more than pleased with the results. There is still work to be done for finishing up to make it really pretty, but worst is done.

 

 

The outside temperature was 25° when I started this entry. There is no heat turned up in this upstairs so I’m not sure how much work will get done up there today.

However, the sun is brilliant in a cloudless sky. The humidity is way down so I washed and hung a load of clothes on the line. I never packed away the clothespins stored in my clothespin holder made from an old plastic bleach bottle. A few days back when we got all that rain, rainwater collected in the container and froze the pins solidly together. Always some kind of crisis here in Alabama! This is an easy fix… things are melting out the furnace grate and I got the brainstorm to add a hole to the bottom of the jug so water can drain out, so hopefully this will not happen again.

The New Year brings on traditional, yearly chores. The first is to create new spreadsheets for 2014. I am very anal about keeping track of my expenses and investments. This really is not that hard to do. I love to play with my Excel files! All I have to do is: open a new spread sheet and then copy and paste the previous year’s sheets to this. It is then easy to rename the sheets for the current year and remove the previous years data from the non-formatted cells. I’ve got all kinds of formatting for different totals, yearly averages, fixed expenses, total expenses, etc. Looking back I wish I had taken some kind of bookkeeping class so to have a better grasp on this kind of thing.

When

I was researching on the Youtubes for the movie “San Francisco” the 1967 song “If You’re Going To San Francisco – wear some flowers in your hair” turned up. This song brings tears to my eyes for two reasons. The late 1960’s was such a special time of youth, hope, and optimism which was pretty much wiped out by the energy crisis and Nixon years. This was also the favourite song of my good friend John who was tragically killed in a car accident back in 1974. The melancholy of the loss of innocence of the flower generation and the loss of John comes back to me with each hearing of this song. I’m really feeling old now thinking it will be 40 years in October John has been gone.

 

 

Enough of this wallowing! Life goes on. Billy called yesterday on the big moving job coming up. We should be doing this in the middle of the month. Billy has contracted a mover who handles this kind of instrument to do the transporting while we will be on hand to do the prep work and assist. I’ll be staying with my sister who lives near-by.

At the end of the month I’ll be headed to Orlando, FL for the phonograph show. I missed it last year because of being sick. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone over searching out something to buy. To be honest, there is nothing I need to buy in this field. I just wish the market were a bit stronger to unload some of the stuff I already own.

I’m already making up plans for the trip down to stop at Ann’s for my western omlette, and hopefully stop by my brick contact for 120 or so Agusta pavers. That truck of mine is just about set to turn over to 200,000 miles. I travel now with my camera to hopefully record the event!

         Let me see if I can get this to download and then I need to get to the “Y”. There is another challenge on the Concept 2 site for the virtual teams. There is no way I can duplicate the meters I did in the last challenge with the trips I have scheduled.