My dad passed away some years ago. One of the little mementos I have is his old cigarette lighter, a Ronson. Dad was a Ronson man, he would buy Ronson flints and lighter fluid for it. Any brand flint (i.e. Zippo) and fluid would work, but he always used the Ronson brand. I remember this lighter from when I was a little kid. It is at least 50 years old, but probably is 60 or more years. Some time ago I screwed up the flint spring and in my attempt to repair it totally destroyed the spring. I've been looking for a way to fix it, but alas there are no repair parts for it. Well, this past week I was going through the drawer where I keep it and ran across it again, so I decided to do another internet search. I found that Zippo bought out Ronson about 4 years ago, so I decided to take a look at the Zippo site and see if they have any repair parts. "We don't sell repair parts (why would they, if your Zippo ever needs repair you send it to them and they repair it for free) but if you need a flint spring let us know and we'll give you one". That was music to my ears, so to speak. The flint spring arrived in today's mail. I had to take it off the screw because the Zippo screw is a larger diameter than the Ronson, but I was able to reattach it to the Ronson screw that I still have. Now dad's old Ronson is working again, although I'm sure he'll forgive me for using a Zippo spring, flint and fluid.



A small victory, for sure, but it makes me feel good.

This little guy likes to make a web on my recycle box. That means once a week it gets destroyed and he (she?) has to start over again. I guess it's all about location, location, location. I see he has a couple of victims, so maybe he knows what he's doing.





p.s. Further research, it appears to be a female Spotted Orbweaver, Neoscona crucifera.

About a year ago a house down the street had a fire, just about destroyed the inside. The house has now been all fixed and to celebrate the owners had a party today, an open house affair. They told me about all the trials and tribulations of getting it fixed, dealing with the insurance co., the tax man and the contractors. They had a boatload of finger food, most of the items I don't care for but they had the little cocktail weenies and meatballs, so that was fine. But they didn't serve any alcohol. That's right, no wine (she's a wine drinker), no beer (he's a beer drinker). Just soda pop. Before going there I didn't know what to expect but I figured they would have beer. No such luck. I enjoyed myself anyway and they are nice people.

You may know from a previous blog that I had a new air conditioner put in a couple of years ago. I was told it's important for the high efficiency units to get the condenser coils cleaned once a year. So last year I called them out to clean it. All the guy did was to spray some coil cleaner through the slits in the panels and then spray water through it. I thought, shit I could do that and save the $89 they charged. I told my brother about it and he said that isn't right, you really should remove the panels to fully expose the coils. He said he'd give me a hand with it so we did that the other day. The panels on my unit are interconnected so putting it back together was definitely a 2 person job. Now I know why the "professional" didn't do it that way. But now I have the cleanest condenser coils in the neighborhood. All it cost me was several cans of coil cleaner, several bottles of beer and burger and a brat (yeah, my brother expects to be fed and beered when he does things for me). Well worth the cost.

My tomatoes have come a long way since my June 25 and July 24 blogs. They are starting to come in numbers that I can't keep up with, picture a very happy grin on my face. Not just the small ones, the big ones are coming in too. Home grown tomatoes are what defines Summer. A Summer without fresh home grown tomatoes are like a day without sunshine.

Guess what I'll be having for dinner.....

Juicy was one of the first people on NN to interact with me. We were friends from the start. Today she and 2K became my first in person NN meet. It was great, we talked and laughed, had a few beers (ok, maybe more than a few), I burned some burgers on the grill, it was an all around good time! However, in spite of my best efforts Juicy found the keys to my beer larder, I'm in trouble now!

This is an update of my June 25 blog. It's been a somewhat difficult summer as far as the weather goes. Too much rain, hot, cold, hot and cold again, and more rain. None the less, I harvested my first batch of tomatoes today! These are a small early tomato, some people might mistake them for a large cherry but unlike cherries, these have real tomato flavor (cherry maters are a tad light in acid). Hopefully I will have many more.

This isn't a Hollywood saga, but a saga it was.

Every now and then I get a flying insect of some sort in the house, who doesn't? So a while back I bought a fly light thingy. It has a light that attracts flying insects and a sticky pad behind it so to trap said insect. Simple enough, yes?

Today while preparing dinner I noticed a fly doing what flies will do, which is flying around. Normally there would be nothing wrong with that if it were outside except it was in my kitchen. I can't have that. I recall a couple of years ago I had a glass of beer, good beer, sitting on my kitchen counter and there was a fly sitting on the lip. Well, as far as I was concerned the fly owned that beer at that point. Problem was two fold, (1) I don't buy beer for flys, (2) the fly didn't finish the beer. So that beer had to be poured down the drain and the fly had to be dealt with. Not wanting a repeat of such a tragedy I plugged in the device and set in by the window where the fly was buzzing around.

After several minutes the fly noticed the light and landed on the sticky pad. But being full of energy he managed to become free. I thought, I wonder if it will have a sense of danger about the device and now avoid it. It made me think about us people who do things we know we shouldn't but do it anyway. Well, in another minute the fly walked back on the sticky pad. I looked at it closely and saw this time it was on it's side, one wing on the sticky pad. He won't get free of that, I thought. After several minutes I noticed he was buzzing around the kitchen again, but this time I noticed it had lost some energy, was flying much slower. Again I wondered, will it have a sense of danger and avoid the narcotic allure of the light? But alas, he soon found his way on the sticky pad yet again, just as someone with a bad habit who should know better but does it again. Will he get away again? Will it really matter?

Well the third time was the charm and that's where this saga ends. It ran out of gas and stayed put this time. Out of respect for the victim, no pics will be posted.

I'm doing a little container gardening this year. I have 6 tomato plants and a few herbs. I planted about a month ago. I was looking at them yesterday, they look real good so far, and I noticed there are a few tomatoes on the vine! They're small and green right now, but it's just a matter of time now.

It's been a while since I blogged. Here's what's going on with me, well, at least some of what's going on.

Everything in my house is getting old (including me, lol). Two years ago my 30 year old air cond broke down during a heat wave, so I had to scramble to get a replacement. Last month my 28 year old water heater failed. Again, I found myself scrambling to get it replaced. I'm the kind of person who prefers to get a good value when I make a large purchase but that is hard to do when I am reacting to a break down. So I decided I will start replacing my aging appliances while they still have some life in them. My fridge was 24 years old so that was first on my list. Heck, I don't want to have it fail and then have to drink warm beer while I wait for a replacement to arrive.

So I set out to research fridges. The main criteria was that (1) it be at least as large as my old one, (2) it has to fit through the narrow kitchen door. I found one that is slightly larger than the old one and by my calculations would fit. So I ordered it with the assurance that if it doesn't fit they would take it back with no penalty to me. It fit, with a 1/4 inch to spare! And it's much more energy efficient. A bonus since we are looking a huge increase in electric rates starting next month. Plus I have a clean fridge now (the old one was needing a cleaning). Yeah, that's how a man takes care of a dirty fridge...........

The next thing was my clothes washer and dryer. My old dryer was 24 years old and washer was 20. Plus I've been wanting a front loader for a long time. They are much more efficient. So I did my research and made my selections, they were delivered a week ago. It's hard to get excited about laundry, but those things are nice.

My wallet has taken a bit of a hit, so that's all for a little while. But next on the list is the over the range microwave oven (it's the kind that also serves as the range hood). My current one is 24 years old. I'm going to do that soon. And then my dishwasher is 14 years old, but I think that has a couple of years of life in it yet. That'll be last.

A few pics from my snow encrusted world.