Let There Be Light

 

Old. There, I said it: I'm getting older. It's harder to get up off a cold concrete floor, tools get louder and heavier, and be darned if I can't see in normal light. I've spent too long trying to work at the bench with just two sixty-watt lightbulbs illuminating the entire garage. My plan was to buy a shop light or two and solve the problem of not having enough light. The problem with that is that I'm cheap. Twenty-five bucks at the home center for a shop light made me uneasy. That's a lot of money to spend on an "un-neccesary" shop accessory. There's always something that's more important to save that money for. Until....

 

I 'found' a shop light fixture down in the basement. I kinda knew it's been there since we bought the house - there's two lights down there in the part of the basement that is rarely used. One day, I was looking around for something (old paint, I think) and noticed a perfectly good flourescent light fixture above my head. All it needed was new bulbs.

 

Levi took the photo 'cause I was taking the light down.

Just under five dollars for two new bulbs, a little rope from the shop, and some ladder time equals one terrific new shop light. Now, I can see!

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

No movement on getting the truck into the garage this week. With six straight days of rain ending with a child's birthday party to attend and Cari running a race, there was no opportunity to get the truck under cover and the fuel tank drained. It sits patiently, waiting....

Baby Steps

With the truck facing big projects, like replacing the fuel tank and getting ready for inspection (both take time and money), there has been a slow down in the work being done. When cross-country season hits and I've gotta pick up the toddler every day and then try to get dinner and chores done, time to work on "extra" projects gets slim. It's easy to get mentally stuck on the big things that need to be done and lose hope of ever having a finished truck. When the hope fades, the work tends to stop. Well, I've still got hope. I have a goal. Couple that with trolling inspirational quotes on Pinterest, and you end up with a plan. I have a long (and growing) list of the things that need to be done, and I've decided to just keep moving forward. If, at the end of every week, I've managed to get just one thing crossed off the list - that's progress. That keeps the hope alive. If I manage to get a few things done in a week, that's even better. The process is to keep moving - baby steps or giant leaps - just keep swimming moving (sorry for the Finding Nemo reference there).

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This is last week's baby step: charging a dead battery. Can't move the truck into the garage if it won't start. It won't start because it was used to jump start the Escape back when we had alternator failure. That, combined with the cooler temperatures recently, meant not enough juice to crank the engine long enough for the fuel pump to pull fuel up into the carb. (Darn leaky fuel system and mechanical fuel pump!) Status: Battery has been charging for three days and now shows a full charge - being maintained by the trickle charger.

 

That's one step closer to my goal of riding my sweetheart around in my cool truck next summer. (No, I don't listen to too much country music. Trucks and cute wives just naturally mix.)