Pellet heads!! What's up today?

This is more like it

 

A very lovely 55 F day or two here...

Great time to clean the stoves.

Got both units spiffy and the little stove lit off to keep the chill off the shack...

Weather is looking nice for tomorrow, so we shall go get more shells.

We have a saying around here "Never waste a day when you can go get shells"

 

Sn*w, rain, sn*w back and forth on a cold surface past 3 days. Keeping ahead of the icing was a lot of work.

This morning had heavy squalls come through on the still little bit moist driveway and temps dropped completing the iced over driveway that likely wont go away any time soon. Had the squalls not come through, I had the driveway scraped last night to being manageable.

 

We warmed up,also.Did some work on plow truck.And installed a windshield washer heater.Located intermittent bearing noise,water pump,so back to town and pick up more parts.A few more days of nice,will slam it tomorrow.Sucks not having a garage.

 

Finished up my first week at the new job. Yep, 4 day week. Next week will be 5 days as they work a 9/80. First week was w-a-y different from any job I've started. Usually I get a real quick orientation then here's your desk now do something with all the cr*p piled there. This job was training all week - and very little was for my job. A lot of it was orientation, legal, safety, QMS, policies etc. I also have at least 15 hours of training set up for the next 5 weeks that will be company run classroom training for different computer modules.

On another note, my car is 20 days old and I still haven't put gas in it. Didn't go anywhere during shut down, drove it twice to my old job last week, and none this week. Although there was no Nor'easter, it did snow every morning so I drove the truck instead. Looks like next week will be clear, so the car should get some breaking in time. I don't think I have 300 miles on it yet so if I get to drive it 3 days next week the mileage will more than double.

 

I loved 9/80 when I worked at Texaco. 3 days off every other week and certain holiday situations and you could take a few vacation days and end up with several days off.

 

Good news Bogie sounds like an interesting work schedule. Sounds exactly like the first week at my ex-employer with all the training , orientation and more training then off to your sink or swim job. After that you were lucky to know where you were going a few days in advance if at all, here are the drawings you start next week !

In contrast this is my last day of R&R and back to work Monday , have to go grab my laptop and some company shirts today but am hoping to grab some pellets at some point as seems like we have a few weeks of winter coming and the Harman's are munching away . Left the house for an hour yesterday to take the divine Ms. Murphy to the vets$ cha-ching and sure enough Fedex showed up and left a door sticker on my door instead of leaving a package.... Was a complete LED conversion kit for my new truck Low beam High Beam and fog lights as my night vision sucks at best. So will try to get to that today or this weekend.

Dang wind has been roaring all night and temps in the teens it feels like winter. We have adopted a feral cat cute little bugger but won't let you get near him but is happy to eat and getting healthier every day. Poor thing was skin and bones when we discovered him but seems to be getting healthier with eating . Not sure if he made it up here from the farm down the road which is possible I guess as it's only 4 miles down the road and there use to be 50-60 of them but with the collapse of the barn not sure if they are feeding them anymore.
We abut probably 150 acres of wetlands out behind the house along with woods so we have every possible predator around I am surprised he or she has survived. Must have had a near incident as he went missing for 4 days and I thought something got him but on the fifth day the Mrs. said she had found him. I asked where and she looked up to about 40' up in the pine on the side of the house.He came down to about 30' but would not let me grab him so I leaned the ladder on less of a pitch as both my cats use to surprise me when I worked on a ladder sometimes scare the chit out of me but they would walk up and down the extension ladder. Sure enough sometime during the night he figured it out and came down but this was after spending 5 days in the tree !
He is a tough little bugger as its been cold and windy but tonight we start the single digits for a few nights hopefully the wind will die down, he has been hunkering down under the back porch at night but that comes with danger between the coons , fisher cats, skunks, and bobcats he better keep one eye open. At least he has three sides he can exit and must have done so with whatever ran him up that old pine.

 

Feral cats are tough little sh*ts. My Fuzzy was feral for at least 6 years before he consented to be an indoor/outdoor cat. He showed up as a full grown cat and would not let anyone near him for 5 years. He would disappear from time to time, figure he was finding females. One time he was gone for 4 months and I thought the fisher that had terrorized the local cat and chicken population had gotten him.

Then one winter day I saw him wobbling in from the woods. I ran and got him some food (I quit leaving it outside when he disappeared) and he was literally starving - he could hardly walk because he was so weak and was missing half his normally long hair (hair loss, not from fighting it seemed). That was the first time anyone had gotten within 10 feet of him - he rushed in as I was putting the bowl down. Took another couple of months before we could actually touch him, but after the first pet he was all in as a people cat (loved everyone after that). As soon as I could I got him fixed so he wouldn't pull the disappearing act again.



Picture of Fuzzy in 2008, before he would let us touch him - we had a cat house on the deck but he didn't seem to mind just sitting on the deck/stairs - especially if he could watch us doing snow removal (I had bee shoveling the path to the dog pen when I saw the Yeti kitty sitting there).

Hope your feral cat figures out that you guys are safe and consents to being your master for a long time!

 

Happy birthday Ssyko
-22*F this morning, more to come the following days
Furnace is on #4 of 5 with Logik-ê hwd /some corn and it's keeping up

 

You should charge the rich folks a winter season road cleaning price instead of the spur of the moment amount and maybe you would have a heated garage to work injust saying....
You're not getting younger by the day so the comfort will be really needed and appreciated

 

-4*F here just south of you. It finally stopped snowing with bright sunshine. I ran the beast all night on low and kicked it up this AM. I also fired up the woodstove and it’s a balmy 86* in the kitchen.

 

The new car is now legal until 2020

 

5* here right now and the wind is howling. Wind chill is -15. Not looking forward to crawling out of bed in the AM.

 

11* here but the ramp to the back porch is popping and groaning. The trees don't sound happy either.

 

Started tapping into the Douglas Fir pellets this week. Do notice more heat output vs the Vermonts and even less ash.

Sam

 

I just checked it’s 1*F here already and the Puppies run out squat, spin and sprint back in, the wifey doesn’t sound happy either.

 

Thermo says 14 here so no complaints, funny stuff Ambient as my dog does the same thing as in minimal sniffing around does her business and sprints for the door !

Thanks for the info Bogie just wish the poor thing would find better shelter and the wife came to me with DIY shelters for feral cats but it would just be a trap as its only one way in and one way out . With the porch he/she can bolt if need to be to avoid getting caught .

 

I tried them last year and also noticed less ash but also “less Cash” in my pocket. La Crete will be my target with any of the softwoods I trialed last season as back up.

We’re located between two dairy farms, feral cats are a persistent problem here. We average three visiting every day. Occasionally one will show up in my barn and have a litter. One year I caught the kittens one by one and over many weeks tamed them. The problem is the local animal shelter wants $60 each to take them. Lucky one of my children took them and the local shelter where they lived gave an exam, shots and fixed all three for $25 each. Funny the shyest wildest one that took the longest to bring around is the nicest one now. A happier ending than the dairy barn cats, we find them in the road every so often.

 

7* here this morning. I'm guessing that means we got some cloud cover as that is very little drop from the 11*. The P43 has been firing up on a much more regular basis and has used at least a bag over night. The P61a used a bag since I filled it yesterday morning. So the main floor stove is currently using more pellets than the basement stove. Makes sense because the ground is now warmer than the air. Give it a run of this cold weather and the basement stove will far outstrip the P43 in pellet usage.

Since the high today is supposed to be 14*, it depends on how windy it is today as to when the stoves get to the Matras. Could get to them as early as tonight, or as late as tomorrow afternoon. I would be good with no wind and lots of sun, slowing down the pellet eating.