Author: peterb51

26th January 2025

It was still above freezing again, there was blue skies and sunny periods, so a little snow melted, not much. Most of the stuff pushed into mounds by the ploughs will still be around in June.

We didn’t want to do much furniture work mainly because we had breakfast late, but we did get to one of Kelli’s favourite places, the UPS store to return things to Amazon.

We were due up to Kelli’s mum’s for the weekly ice cream party. Matt was engulfed in a football match that I still don’t understand, but every now and then he would jump up from his chair shouting something, I’m never sure if it’s good or bad. 

He wanted me to look at a roaster he had found in the basement. It was a fifties style piece with all rounded corners and Bakelite knobs, it’s the sort of appliance that would cause many houses to be burnt down, and not the kind I would want to be down wind of.

Anyway he wanted a small dent removed from the facia panel. With the aid of a piece of hard plastic and the handle of a screwdriver I managed to knock it out, much to his excitement.

Once all that excitement was over, and the ice cream stored back in the freezer, we headed home intending to take the dogs around the block, tackling the still snow covered pavement.

Finally after freezing to death we returned home.

Kelli usually has a fireside scene on the tv, the flames licking the never burning logs.

I miss not having a real fire, the house is warm, but nothing beats the atmosphere of real flames.

At this time of year, the dry heat of the blown air dries out my skin making me scratch all the time. Even the dogs look at me as if to say, “Give it a rest man”.

25th January 2025

Larry had been in hospital for a month, that is a serious bill his insurance will be charged. He talked with Kelli the other day and told her that he will be released next week. I guess that is when the insurance coverage stops.

Other local news, mister loud Jeep has not been leaving for work at five thirty in the morning because he got fired. Sources close to the story say he was dismissed for laziness and lateness.

Now unless he finds another job with early starts we should be saved from being awoken by his throbbing beast.

There was no snow today, in fact the temperature rose to just above freezing, a slight bit of relief, but I’m sure it won’t last.

We finished a tall dresser, took pictures and posted it, there are another couple moving down the line.

I had to send a sensitive email to a friend who is very ill. He is hoping for a miracle, he has a scan booked for next month, but it’s a last chance saloon scenario. My beliefs have changed as I got older. I used to think it was “lights out” and you’re gone, but now I have softer thoughts and it was those I shared with my friend.

I told him that I have another friend, one that I’ve known since my schooldays. He follows Indian teachings and he knows when he will pass over, and is looking forward to it. He was the one I joked with when I said I will check if it happened a month later, and if he was still around, tell him it was all bollocks.

I ended my letter with a reference to a Peter Gabriel song “ Don’t give up” it is a song of hope, some of us need a bit of it now and then.

24th January 2025

I did a solo run to Caledonia which was about thirty five miles away to deliver a dresser.

I did it on my own because Kelli had a bad night with very little sleep. I had never been to the place before so I quite enjoyed myself, it was an adventure. 

The roads were pretty good, although my windscreen wipers had frozen to the screen, it soon got dirty. Trying to find a place to stop was annoying, apparently you can’t pull over to the side of the road in this country. Eventually I found a driveway to block while I chipped away the ice, then everything started to work perfectly.

The house was surprisingly easy to find. I pulled up at the rear of the property, then the man of the house gestured me to reverse up to a barn.

Inside the barn were many other pieces of furniture, I asked him if he was opening a shop?

He chuckled and said that they refurbish them, much the same as we do. This one however was going to his daughter who saw the posting and wanted it.

As I was heading back, I knew I would be passing the workshop of the guy who made the counter top for our kitchen, I thought I would stop and say hi to him.

I parked the truck outside and gave a heavy knock on the door before opening it and calling out.

I didn’t recognise the man that came up the stairs to meet me. He had a bushy white beard and didn’t look like the man I had met before.

I asked him if John was about. He looked at me strangely, and muttered that he wasn’t here.

It appeared to me that he didn’t know who I was talking about. I mentioned John several times and received the same vague response. So I delved a bit deeper, only to come to the realisation that this was John, the guy who did the work for me. Bloody hell that was hard work.

We talked for a while, he was making stair treads out of hickory, but the shop was clean as a whistle, and warm, oh I wish I could work in a place like that.

I took the opportunity to ask if he had any walnut offcuts, I had a drawer front on a desk that I bought a couple of years back. He led me down some stairs, and as I reached the bottom I could see the basement was packed with planks of lumber of every species, a treasure house of wood.

He fumbled around and pulled out an eight foot long plank, I explained that I only needed a short piece. We continued to look around and found a few pieces that he gave me, so now I can finally finish that job.

As I left, I was smiling, John is happy in his own little world, he may not know who he is, but he’s surrounded by the material that he loves to work with, you can’t have things better than that.

23rd January 2025

I have been having issues with our printer for the past week. I have a monthly subscription with HP that monitors the ink usage and send me a replacement when either the black or coloured cartridges are empty. Now don’t asked me how it works, there must be a circuit that connects with each cartridge that sends the information back. 

I had noticed that the prints using black ink was very blotchy, and as Kelli prints a lot of return labels with bar codes, that colour is used a lot.

I tried cleaning the nozzles but that made no difference. I then checked the app on my phone when I check the ink levels and noticed that there was a warning note that said that the black cartridge could not be read. That made sense because the last refill was back in June 2023. 

To keep the printer going I had to buy one from Staples, at sixty dollars a pop. When I inserted it into the printer, everything worked wonderfully, the prints were crisp and sharp.

However on my app the message had changed to say that the cartridge was not monitored as it was a store bought item.

I went on the HP website to try to get back to my monthly plan, but as with most things it’s impossible to find a human being. Eventually I used Messenger as my method of communication. At times it was long winded, I explained my problem and it went back and forth many times.

Finally they sent me a link to reapply for my plan which I followed, it led me though the procedure right up to the point of connecting the printer into the monitor process, then it came up with “ Printer already. Connected “ and it would take me any further.

By now I was ready to cancel the whole thing, and I wrote it in my reply, then I had a reply back to say that they were sending me a replacement black cartridge. Hopefully once I install that, it will then connect into the system, and I will automatically get my replacements when required.

Now is that progress? It’s bloody frustrating that’s what it is to me, my lack of patience in these matters test me to the core, and I don’t like it.

22nd January 2025

More snow is falling, I’m getting fed up with it now, the roads are still white, but it look pretty.

However there will be a time when it becomes dirty and makes everything ugly, I wish that part would come and go quickly so that things get back to normal.

I managed a couple of hours in the garage continuing the work on the oak unit. The carcass is now assembled with a new floor panel, and starting to resemble a piece of furniture.

Once again the snow blower did its bit to keep the driveway clear. I should buy a plough and bolt it on to the truck and earn a few buck clearing people’s driveway.

The news continues to cover all the executive orders that Trump has signed. It looks like things are happening on the southern border and the first of the criminal gangs are being rounded up ready for deportation.

We haven’t been bothered by the loud Jeep man recently. His vehicle is still parked outside his home, he is often playing with his radio controlled toy, so we’re not sure if he is still working.

When there is bad weather most of the building sites are empty, I believe that the workers don’t get paid for snow days, but then most are self employed contractors, I guess they have to factor these events into their hourly rate.

I certainly wouldn’t want to do framing with the wind whistling around my foundations.

21st January 2025

Oh it’s cold, it’s the coldest day so far, it’s down to single digits and the windchill makes it worse.

My finger tips were numb, my nose was freezing, and I didn’t like it. It was snowing again, the fine stuff that quietly lays over every surface, and hangs in the air like a fog. The warnings appear on the phones telling us that these conditions will continue till Thursday.

I limited my time in the garage to an hour, finish sanding a dresser top and reassembling the oak dresser carcass.

This is day one of the Trump presidency and more executive orders signed. These immediately get cheers for his supporters and groans from the Democrats. 

News broke that Biden pardoned his whole family, brothers, sister, sister in law and niece. That was an interesting event, as they have not been charged with any crime.

Reports have circulated that “allegedly” Biden distributed the money he got from Ukraine and China. This was being investigated through his son, Hunter,who was “working” for a Ukrainian energy company from 2014. A number of companies and shadow companies were set up and run by the Biden family to hide these payments. There were many millions of dollars involved, for which they can’t be charged, what a bunch of crooks.

I sit in the evening reading the latest chatter, and honestly there are a section of Americans that are so dumb, they believe everything they hear on the network news, they don’t question, or are not prepared to research other aspects of the stories,  to test the authenticity of what is being pumped out. They are as thick as shite.

20th January 2025

Well some guy called Trump was crowned President today, if you hadn’t heard.

Kelli had a doctors appointment at the same time as the ceremony, but that didn’t stop her. Her phone was showing the proceedings all the way there, and she even took it into the treatment room. Well everyone in the surgery were Trump followers, so it was like a mini rally.

When we got back the TV went on for the rest of the day. I retreated into the garage to occupy my mind with something more absorbing, maybe sanding, or glueing, anything.

There had been more snow overnight, there must have been two inches, and it continued snowing all day. The roads were white, almost whiteout conditions. The city were late sending out the gritters, and it was too cold for the salt to be effective. Getting to Zeeland was tricky, there was ice on the highway, and Kelli was not happy to drive on that, it meant turning around and taking an alternative route.

We had planned to meet up with Lloyd and Nancy for dinner, but as the weather was bad and the house was warm we decided to put it off.

Instead we ordered a takeout to be delivered, choosing a burrito and a salad. This was the first time I had one of these, and it will probably be a long time before I have another. It was large, even cutting it in half was filling, but I managed to choke it done, it felt like eating an alien, I just hope it doesn’t burst back out during the night.

So America sleeps with a new guy with his finger on the button. If he can do half of what he has promised, he will go down as a great president, unlike the disastrous one that has just left.

19th January 2025

More snow returned, topping up what might have thawed during the week. The snow blower is having a field day because it was the right consistency for the blade to deal with. There is satisfaction in blasting the stuff ten feet to the side, but often it just blowed back.

There wasn’t much energy to do work in the garage. I glued in more bits of oak into the front leg of the dresser that has been occupying a lot of my time, but that was it.

There was a lot of preamble for the Presidential inaugural ceremony tomorrow. The whole thing must be a logistical nightmare for the secret service, with so many potential internal enemies that Trump has targeted, I would not like that job. But it’s not just him, all of his cabinet picks have ambitious tasks ahead.

If you just take Robert Kennedy Jr, his plans to stop drug companies advertising on the mainstream and online media. This will inflame big pharma and most of the news networks, and any other businesses that receive drug company sponsorship, that is a big deal.

I believe that common sense will prevail, something that a lot of Americans don’t have much of. We have to get back to knowing what is true and what is bullshit, that will change the world.

18th January 2025

The newspaper headline could have read, “ Furniture removal guy killed by renegade dresser”. It may be a bit dramatic, but when we had to get the piece down two flights of stairs, the threat was there.

It’s not that it was heavy, just awkward. The best way to get it down the stairs was to lay it on its back and let it slide down with me at the bottom controlling its progress. It started out okay, as I was going down backwards I missed a step.

Suddenly the dresser gained momentum and carried me down to the first landing. The second set of stairs was met with far more caution, and far less risk. The only issue left was getting it to the truck without slipping on the ice.

Now that was the first of the days tasks. Kelli had found another two dressers, one in  Hudsonville and another in Allendale . The stairs drama was the first, an apartment block in Hudsonville. Of course it had to be the top floor, but it was part of the job. The person was moving out of the place, and the dresser was the last piece. Generally the owner of the furniture is not concerned about how you remove it, they are just glad to get rid of it, so at least we didn’t have an audience.

The next stop was a mobile home site in Allendale, there is alway apprehension about what we expect to find, most of the time, we sigh at the sight of the piece. We almost did at seeing this one, but we were committed. For its size it was bloody heavy, it took a lot of effort to carry, and to load it into the truck.

we have now three furniture pieces to work on, as well as the wreck that I’m repairing. I have used so much epoxy to glue parts together it will have doubled in weight.

No doubt. These new pieces will be quick and dirty, there are no redeeming features that will make them stand out, just a good clean, and maybe a few new drawer guides and that’s it, and with the weather next week dropping to single digits, it’s going to be hard work.

17th January 2025

We took a risk and drove to the range, it had been a few weeks, so we needed the practice.

One of the ranges was occupied, but the best end one was free, so we jumped on it.

There was still about four inches of snow on the ground, but I cleared a space with a broom from where we would shoot from.

We fired off two hundred rounds between us, I was better than I expected, but Kelli was a bit off. It’s easy to get despondent, but that what practice is all about. It’s all about analysis and adjustment, but what do I know? I just point and shoot, sometimes I hit what I want and other times I’m lucky to hit the target at all.

We were determined to finish the large dresser today. Kelli had given it a final coat of paint before we went to the range, so once we got back I peeled off the masking tape from the top and set about applying the oil. That brought out the fabulous cherry colouring, it looked like it was on fire. On the drawers there was an octagon detail that we covered up before painting. When those were finished I peeled off the tape and oiled that detail, it really set off the piece, I really hope it goes quickly, as we have the big oak monster still in the car.