Intamacy with a Englander Pellet Stove

Does everything always have to break down at the same time?

Last week the brakes on my wife car was grinding. I mean GRINDING. So I go to the parts store, buy $66 worth of brake parts, throw them on...perhaps saying quite a few bad words as I did so...but managed to get them on nonetheless,

So I am feeling pretty proud of myself...so I tell the wife, "take that car to drop off the kids today, and you will love how it stops!"

Oh it stops fine, but she tells me after coming back home that it will not go. She says it is bogging right down on the hills, "won't shift" she says, and here in Maine we have plenty of hills...

So I do some deducing, head to the parts store and get a transmission filter, tranny gasket, and oil for $44. Then I come home to change the clogged filter! I start it up to warm the oil up, and the plume of whitish-yellowish smoke belches from that car like an elected official making a political speech. I cannot see from one end of the car to the other from the thick putrid smoke emanating from the tailpipe. I then shut the car off, as obviously "not shifting down", and a head gasket are two different things. The car has 214,000 miles on it, so it needs another engine, and not a head gasket.

Then the temperature outside drops, but you know, so does the left side of my Kubota tractor. It's rear tire is flat as my ex-wife's chest. DRAT because it is not only the rear tire, it is the rear tire in the winter with chains on! Drat, Drat, Drat...

Then the temperature drops down to -10 below zero last night. Just before it hits -10, my pellet stove decides to burn up its auger motor. I got back-up heat, but the boiler system is dry because I am working on plumbing the system. I got to bed thinking about how ironic it is that I am getting my high pressure steam boiler license, and yet on the coldest day of the year, my house is 52 degrees.

I try to snuggle with Mrs. NoSmoke t stay warm, but she has to get up at 4:30 AM so she has no interest in Mr. NoSmoke and snuggling. Now, how are we supposed to have our 6th child with an attitude like that? Then again, maybe that is the exact reason for no snuggle-time??? Or was it because it was 52 degrees in the bedroom? (I will never know I guess).

So finally I pick up a $139 auger motor at the hardware store that is $49 online, because it is 52 degrees in the house, then I get more intimate with a New Englander Pellet Stove than I do Mrs. NoSmoke, and finally have the house up to a whopping 63 degrees now.

But of course I still need a new innertube for my Kubota tractor, and a engine for my Ford Focus...

How's that go?? when it rains it pours!!!!!!!!!!! I'm thinkin it might be a farm thingy! LOL Been there done that & I'm sure it will continue due to that BUTTHEAD Murphy & his stupid law of averages!!!!!

The tractor tire is not too bad. I can pump it up, plow the driveway, and then it will be flat by the next morning, so it is not intolerable. I will probably just pump it up as needed until Spring arrives, take off the chains and then put a new tube in it.

Then again, maybe if I am able, I will throw two new tires on it too. They are kind of bald...

The car, that is another matter. I do not think it is worth keeping the engine. A used engine is only $500-700 so minds well throw that in it, and see how many more miles the ole car will go.

BUTTHEAD MURPHY

Well at least they were not loaded tires...
Now that will make a mess and a big problem...

I used to think having loaded tires were worth the problems that they brought, but I no longer think that.

That understanding is pretty much what other people are coming to as well, now that the internet is here and debunking some of the long-held beliefs that just because, "Grampa did it, it should be done". With loaded tires, it is not complicated, and with the laws of physics, it is hard to make a case for loaded tires.

But it is not just theory; I dug 700 cubic yards out of my gravel pit last summer using my little Kubota Tractor, and it did not need loaded tires to do it.

Yowza! That's that's the beginning of a real bad week! I hope things calm down.