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Sunday, July 27, 2014

I drove upriver Friday evening and returned today.  The Hairless Hunk had said I'd lost four trees in a recent windstorm.  You know, when he said "lost", I was thinking like previous tree losses, when the trees broke someway up the trunk.  Most of the trees at the country house are black locust, and they tend to be brittle.  I was not expecting major uprooting!  The kind with the roots in the air and a huge hole in the lawn.  Sigh.  I wish I had taken my camera (no, my phone isn't that smart, or maybe it is but I'm not).

The Hunk has a watchmacallit, you know, with a front loader scoop on one end, and a steam shovel-looking thingy on the other.  That, a chain saw, and a few hundred dollars will take care of it I guess.

I'm getting tired of losing trees up there.  In 18 years we've lost more than 35 trees to wind.  I guess that's a disadvantage of living on a ridge with a wonderful view.  The hunk has been transplanting young maples and oaks he finds hither and yon, and most of them have been doing well, so there's that.

Heh heh, another topic, the Hunk likes to trim tree branches high enough that people can walk under them without meeting branches. (I had a husband that used to do that, too.  Him, I divorced.)  I noticed yesterday that he'd trimmed my huge old mulberry tree so high that I'll never be able to pick berries. 

The Hunk also trims tree branches near the house that drop too low, too close to the house roof.  I laughed at him one time for that, pointing out that the branches above the ones he cut would simply drop down as they grow, because now without competition from lower branches they can go lower to get more sun.  It's a no-win situation.  You either have to remove almost all the branches on that side of the tree, or remove the tree.  He looked confused.  "They drop down?"

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I was listening to Sirius Classic radio on the drive up.  One show was The Great Gildersleeve.  Gildersleeve and a neighbor were shoveling coal into a basement when another neighbor came along and told Gildersleeve his face was dirty and he needed to wash it, adding, "I didn't know you could get that dirty on radio!"

I cracked up.

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It's usually a 2.5 hour drive between the two houses, about 135 miles, plus any potty breaks.  I left at about 11:30 this morning, figuring I'd avoid most of the "returning to the city" traffic and be home about 2-ish.  I got home at a little after 4.  Multiple multi-mile sections of 0-20 mph, with no apparent explanation.  So I guess I have reaffirmed that Sunday travel at any time of day is no good.

I don't understand.

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Coming home today, I got the "something horribly wrong" check engine light on Hal, the BMW.   Poor old Fred, the van, is having battery troubles.  And I'm supposed to meet the furnace man at the country house next Thursday, and I was going to call some A/C people for quotes Thursday and Friday.  Another sigh.  I hope BMW can take Hal tomorrow, I hope it's a quick fix, I hope I don't have to put 275 miles on a rental car.

Sometimes I hate the world.

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You know something?  No matter how many pieces of track you have for a train set, unless all you want to make is a plain circle or oval, you won't have enough of the right shapes and sizes to do what you want.  There will always be one critical piece missing.

Must be some kind of natural law.

Thomas and Friends' wooden track pieces are even reversible, track on both sides so the curved pieces can go either way, and it still doesn't help.

Sigh.

I'll probably go to bed early tonight.
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