Shocked!
3/20/06 7:36 am.
23º F, Sunny, NNE wind 7 mph.
Good morning,
I really got a shock on Friday when I went uptown to get the mail. The price of gasoline had gone up 10¢/gallon over night! What was shocking is the price had risen 6¢/gallon the day before. That was on top of the price rising 17¢/gallon the week before! I am a grumpy consumer to say the least. One disconcerting thing is that the state "average" price of gasoline is about 30¢/gallon LESS than in northeast Wisconsin. Guess the vehicles stay parked as much as possible.
The van is about ready to have new tires, but with the slowdown in the number of miles driven, they are still in better shape than I thought they would be now. It will not take too much warm weather, before they will need replacing though. While at the station I usually gas up at, I noticed the shop was empty and has been very un-busy often in the past couple of months. Chatting with the mechanics a bit ago, they said the only real busy times they have had was during the snowstorms and then they froze their butts off and ate little. I suspect folks are driving less and therefore fewer normal maintenance or repairs necessary. I suspect the supply chain for the repair departments are also affected drastically too.
We also have noticed an increase in food prices, while the amount of each product is less on the store shelves. I know that transportation costs are also rising, so suspect that is having an effect. We are tending to really watch what we are buying and the cost more carefully than normal. Sales are becoming much more important to us, but will not drive out of our way to get them normally. Occasionally we find some things surprising - like the name brand brats we got yesterday for 99¢/# yesterday! We picked up several pounds of the me and they are residing in the freezer at the moment awaiting for the proper time for some great meals.
I was looking online for something last week and stumbled across an article about logging and peeling lots. In the process of seeing what else was on the site, I discovered (learned) I have been using the drawknife wrong! I learned in 1967 helping to build the bunkhouse at deer camp. Phil taught me to peel with the bevel down on the blade. What the website showed was to have the bevel up! It really does work a lot easier! All these years working harder than I had too. Actually there are times and things needing the bevel down, but for general peeling, up is the way. Using it the "right" was, allows the blade to slide more easily parallel to the surface with out digging in. It also allows the small knots to be cut off with less effort - pushes the waste away from the log, rather than the knife into the log. Should also allow for more time between sharpening with more metal in contact with the log.
In snooping around the website, I also came across a couple of interesting sites: (http://diybandmill.com/ and http://www.forestryforum.com/board/). Both deal with building and using portable sawmills. If you are interested in seeing how folks solve problems and most do some pretty good "backyard engineering" there is a lot of both on them. I have gotten a few ideas to use on other things than sawmills.
We celebrated St. Pat’s day in fine style. Margriet made corned beef and cabbage and we had a feast! It really was good. There are some leftovers, so we are enjoying it more than once. This is the first time that she made corned beef this way, so learned something besides how to fill her belly. We had a rather large (for us) piece of meat and it took a long time to cook, just like it is supposed to. I sliced up the leftover potatoes and turnips and fried them with some of the corned beef left from LSM for breakfast the following morning - good. Suspect that Margriet will have a hotdish or some such in mind for the remainder of the corned beef. I sure will not object any!
We went to the Green Bay Home and Garden Show on Saturday morning. Since we are old, we get a discount and like that part of the deal. It was a nice show, but not as big as we expected. What did surprise me some was that there were fewer folks there selling new housing, rather many more selling remodeling and upgrading of existing homes. Not really too much for gardening, except several selling deck systems and/or construction. We did have a good time and stopped at the International House of Pancakes for some pigs-in-a-blanket for a late lunch.
Margriet and I were ushers yesterday for church and I had to give a Temple Talk at both services. I went to the beginning fo the first service, gave the talk, then came home to pick up Margriet so we could both go to the late service. Didn’t have that planned out too well, would have been better if we ushered at the first service, then we could have left right after I did the talk at the start of the second service. Oh well .... Maybe next time, but I doubt it.
Time to get the day a-going.
In Christ My Saviour,
Chris <><
23º F, Sunny, NNE wind 7 mph.
Good morning,
I really got a shock on Friday when I went uptown to get the mail. The price of gasoline had gone up 10¢/gallon over night! What was shocking is the price had risen 6¢/gallon the day before. That was on top of the price rising 17¢/gallon the week before! I am a grumpy consumer to say the least. One disconcerting thing is that the state "average" price of gasoline is about 30¢/gallon LESS than in northeast Wisconsin. Guess the vehicles stay parked as much as possible.
The van is about ready to have new tires, but with the slowdown in the number of miles driven, they are still in better shape than I thought they would be now. It will not take too much warm weather, before they will need replacing though. While at the station I usually gas up at, I noticed the shop was empty and has been very un-busy often in the past couple of months. Chatting with the mechanics a bit ago, they said the only real busy times they have had was during the snowstorms and then they froze their butts off and ate little. I suspect folks are driving less and therefore fewer normal maintenance or repairs necessary. I suspect the supply chain for the repair departments are also affected drastically too.
We also have noticed an increase in food prices, while the amount of each product is less on the store shelves. I know that transportation costs are also rising, so suspect that is having an effect. We are tending to really watch what we are buying and the cost more carefully than normal. Sales are becoming much more important to us, but will not drive out of our way to get them normally. Occasionally we find some things surprising - like the name brand brats we got yesterday for 99¢/# yesterday! We picked up several pounds of the me and they are residing in the freezer at the moment awaiting for the proper time for some great meals.
I was looking online for something last week and stumbled across an article about logging and peeling lots. In the process of seeing what else was on the site, I discovered (learned) I have been using the drawknife wrong! I learned in 1967 helping to build the bunkhouse at deer camp. Phil taught me to peel with the bevel down on the blade. What the website showed was to have the bevel up! It really does work a lot easier! All these years working harder than I had too. Actually there are times and things needing the bevel down, but for general peeling, up is the way. Using it the "right" was, allows the blade to slide more easily parallel to the surface with out digging in. It also allows the small knots to be cut off with less effort - pushes the waste away from the log, rather than the knife into the log. Should also allow for more time between sharpening with more metal in contact with the log.
In snooping around the website, I also came across a couple of interesting sites: (http://diybandmill.com/ and http://www.forestryforum.com/board/). Both deal with building and using portable sawmills. If you are interested in seeing how folks solve problems and most do some pretty good "backyard engineering" there is a lot of both on them. I have gotten a few ideas to use on other things than sawmills.
We celebrated St. Pat’s day in fine style. Margriet made corned beef and cabbage and we had a feast! It really was good. There are some leftovers, so we are enjoying it more than once. This is the first time that she made corned beef this way, so learned something besides how to fill her belly. We had a rather large (for us) piece of meat and it took a long time to cook, just like it is supposed to. I sliced up the leftover potatoes and turnips and fried them with some of the corned beef left from LSM for breakfast the following morning - good. Suspect that Margriet will have a hotdish or some such in mind for the remainder of the corned beef. I sure will not object any!
We went to the Green Bay Home and Garden Show on Saturday morning. Since we are old, we get a discount and like that part of the deal. It was a nice show, but not as big as we expected. What did surprise me some was that there were fewer folks there selling new housing, rather many more selling remodeling and upgrading of existing homes. Not really too much for gardening, except several selling deck systems and/or construction. We did have a good time and stopped at the International House of Pancakes for some pigs-in-a-blanket for a late lunch.
Margriet and I were ushers yesterday for church and I had to give a Temple Talk at both services. I went to the beginning fo the first service, gave the talk, then came home to pick up Margriet so we could both go to the late service. Didn’t have that planned out too well, would have been better if we ushered at the first service, then we could have left right after I did the talk at the start of the second service. Oh well .... Maybe next time, but I doubt it.
Time to get the day a-going.
In Christ My Saviour,
Chris <><
posted by Fisk | 8:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home