Muffins a-coming

October 16, 2007 (5:19am)

46º F, Rain, SE Wind, 8 mph.

Good morning,

The rain continues this morning and looks to be here all day. Looking at the radar, there appears to be some serious rain to the north of us. Lots more to the south and west heading our way, probably for all day. The temperature is a bit warmer. Yesterday was rain off and on all day in Iron River, but some sunny here. Go figure. Guess it has to start and end somewhere.

My getting up late sure messed up the days accomplishments. Since I am preaching on Sunday, I thought the early hour would be a good time to work on the sermon. Didn’t happen. I did get to it later in the morning, only to discover most of the programs I use for research and composition, were not loaded onto this “new” computer yet. When I left, I left a program installing and Margriet finished the installation. Now at least I have one program in. I did email Grace and confirmed the lessons. I used the right list, but will only use two of the three lessons for the day. The cool thing is - they are exactly the message I will bring. Not a coincidence I think. Now I need to get it into my head.

Yesterday morning, I also had a long chat with Brenda and Onno. They were both on ICQ at the same time, so had a Dutch conversation in stereo. Really cool. I really do enjoy the conversations and drop almost everything to chat. Again we solved some of the world’s greatest problems (at least in our corners of our world) and I hope they enjoy as much as I do. Still seems incredible that we are able to do that so easily. Snail mail would take probably a couple of weeks to a month to complete each small bit of conversation.

Most of the afternoon, I spent at Eli’s and worked on Fjord. Got a lot done too. All of the liquids are now out of it, except for the transmission/rear axle. That holds the largest quantity of fluid - 5 gallons. The oil was very unclean to say the least, along with the oil filter. The filter is the old style can type, not the clean and neat screw-ons of today. It has been a long time since changing one like that. I took the entire filter assembly off and cleaned it inside and out. Did the same with the oil breather. Also was rather dirty.

Drained the cooling system and replaced the hoses. There is a thermostat in the upper hose, but different than any I can remember. It is slipped inside of the hose and held in place with a hose clamp externally! Need a hose clamp for it as the old one was a one-time-use clamp. Don’t ever remember one like that before. I have been thinking of adding a block heater eventually too, but have not decided on that yet. Probably will knock out one of the freeze plugs and install it there if I do.

Battery box, battery, air cleaner, and some of the mechanical and electrical wiring also have been reinstalled. I need a new battery box/hold-down eventually too. The old battery box has some cancer and the hold-down is missing entirely. Will wait on that until the 12 volt system is installed, to make sure everything fits. New battery box costs about $75.00, so doubt if I will buy one. Might find a “fits all” style somewhere, or build one from the used sheet-metal I have around.

After the fluids are back in. It will be time to put the hood/gas tank back on. Hopefully, it will then be able to be started and see if it runs. I still need to replace a lift arm on the 3-point hitch and one rear tire too. Oh yes, want to put a new Bendix drive on the starter too. Finally it will be time to put the front-end loader on and get it operating. Am anxious to get it finished and useable - HERE. Have lots of work for the Fjord to do.
When I walked in the door, Margriet was just putting the dumplings onto the homemade chicken soup. It sure smelled good too. Tasted good when we ate it too. It was very hot, but a drink of hot coffee cooled off the inside of my mouth a bit. Not often you use hot coffee to cool things down a bit. Ate too much of it too.

Margriet discovered, or rediscovered, that she doesn’t like to have a house so quiet with no one to talk to her when I was gone. She was very happy to see me come home. I was happy too. She did a lot yesterday, but the silence apparently got to her a bit. I understand. She is making an additional pan of muffins for me to take along this morning for the guys to eat during a coffee break. They normally don’t take one, but bet they do today with some of Margriet’s world famous muffins around!

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><