Month: June 2007

Wanda and I went to my dad’s house to finish installing the windows. There was a F5 Tornado in Elie today, it has been the strongest tornado ever in Manitoba.  I took these pictures of clouds today. First one is from the roof of the house while installing windows, the second is from the Winnipeg airport.

We took the old windows out of my dad’s house and replaced them with new ones. It went a lot easier than I thought it would.  To remove the window we took the trim off from the inside, then went to the outside and removed the brick molding (the brown part surrounding the window shown in the upper left picture). After this was done the window could be pushed out of the wall. The new window is shimmed at the with a few slices of wood cut from a scrap piece then placed into the hole. Two holes are drilled on each side and two at the top. Screws are put through the holes drilled through the inside of the window to fasten the window to the studs in the wall. Plastic caps were provided to fill the holed drilled to install the screws. We had only minor problems with the opening on the outside not being large enough to accept the brick molding of the new window, one front opening had to be cut larger, and the kitchen window opening was too small (or the window was too big) and the stucco had to be cut. We got four front windows done on the front of the house, and the kitchen window done on the back. The only one left is the second story window on the back of the house, we are going to do that one tomorrow. The old windows will be donated to habitat for humanity.

Wanda and I made a late father’s day cake for Ken and went over to his house for a visit. Tre and him went for a ride on the quad.

Theo is exceptionally classic. Last week he told me that he was going to Las Vegas and California for holidays. Today I thought I would call him before he left. As usual I’m too late, he didn’t answer, but he text messaged me back saying something to the effect of, “what’s up? and I’m in Las Vegas.” I could check the phone to get the wording that he used, but that’s the just of it. Well I replied with, “I thought I’d call you before you left, I guess I’m too late, have a good holiday.” Theo replies with, “You should take Wanda here, the drive is excellent, five stars!” I just assumed he would take an airplane to Las Vegas, he didn’t. Who drives to Las Vegas, that is excellent. Good job Theo, you get top marks for that one. Have a good trip, and take some pictures.

We went to Jonesy’s for breakfast with my dad today to celebrate fathers day. After that we went to check out our garden, it was very wet. I got a few pictures of the garden, and a few of the Case Model L. It is more complete than the one in the museum but needs more cleaning up. Later today we went to my dad’s house for supper, Wanda cooked meatballs in cream sauce with mushrooms, brussel sprouts, noodles with sauce, and mashed potatoes. It was a good meal. I baked a cake for my dad, it was chocolate with vanilla icing. The cake was all good until we decided to make dome decorative letters on it, we were out of food coloring. Rather than not have letters Wanda suggested to mix some lemon extract with the icing to make it yellow, it didn’t make much difference. I decided to mix some kool-aide powder with the icing, it turned it pink. All was good until we ate the icing, it was very flavorful and tasted like strong lemonade.

Today I learned how to re-groove tires. There were no spare tires for Mike to teach me with so he volunteered his shoe. The tire groover has a sharp blade that gets hot enough to melt/cut through the rubber. It goes a lot faster than I expected. To use the groover you push the blade into the rubber, as pressure is applied it makes the electrical contact to heat the blade. The blade glides smoothly through the rubber, then it’s done. Simple, now to try it on a tire.  Thanks for the quick lesson Mike. I should note that this is used for solid rubber tires, not the ones with air in them.

It is flipping hot today in Winnipeg. We have air conditioning in our apartment but it can’t keep up with the heat. All our windows face south, and even with the blinds closed, the air conditioning can’t keep up. Plus we have the worst layout for air movement. The bedroom is down a long hallway, at the opposite end of the hall is the living room with the air conditioner. You don’t get much cooling in the bedroom. In an attempt to remedy this I bought a blower.

The blower does work, but not as well as I would like. It blows 300 cubic feet per minute (says the box), but for a squirrel cage style blower it is rather noisy. I think this is because it has safety grills on the air entrances and exits. I may one day cut them off, but for now I want to see if we like it better than our current fan. It does move more air and is quieter than our current fan which makes it good for blowing cool hall air into the bedroom. One other thing that we don’t like about it is that it is yellow, it would be fine for the shop but it’s not so good for the home. Wanda had to hold back a laugh when I showed it to her.

Went to Caddy lake with Wanda, Dave, and Olivia. We caught 5 Northern Pike, 4 Perch, and 1 Black Crappie.  Sorry for not posting all weekend it’s been busy. We got sunburned today. After We got home Olivia and Wanda cooked the fish and some chips, then we all ate. It was really good. Dave and I filleted the Northern Pike and removed all the bones. It took a while to learn how to do it, but now I can fillet them practically bone free. All these fish plus 4 Walleye that Dave and Olivia caught the day previous were eaten, only one bone was found.

The black crappie is a interesting fish, it reminds me of a piranha, and the way that it played dead while it was in the boat makes me think that it is an intelligent fish. Sorry fish, we ate you anyways. The perch had worms in them, we found them after we filleted all of them. We didn’t eat them, it was somewhat disgusting.