A day off?

 "Will any man despise me?  Let him see to it.  But I will see to it that I may not be found doing or saying anything that deserves to be despised." - Marcus Aurelius

 Got the big Sunday off!  My supervisor asked what day I'd like to have off over the weekend, and I chose Sunday.  Not that it was much of a day of rest...

 It started out nicely, with the first energy drink of the day and the dogs on the back deck.  The chickadees were calling out their "cheeseburger" sound.  Lovely and relaxing.

After a short bit, it was time to get going - much to do, and not a lot of time to get it done.  First up, a little personal care.  I gave my self a beard trim and a haircut, and the wife followed up with a final inspection and clean-up. 

Then it was out to the shop to set up wasp traps, but first I had to make space on the work bench.  For most of the winter, stuff just piles up, and half-forgotten projects clutter up the place.  It took a couple of hours to clear off, sweep up and vacuum up dead insects.  Also the big diesel truck has an oil leak, and I wanted to clean that mess up before the next project began.   So I cleaned the shop, got the wasp traps baited and hung around the property, and then it was time for the Subie.

The studded snow tires had to come off the Subaru.  April 30 is the last day they are allowed to be on the road.  Right before the outage, it was consistently storming on and off.  It's not that I really needed the snow tires, but I really didn't want to deal with replacing them while the weather was being so awful.  This time I decided to use the cordless impact gun, instead of the air gun.  It made short work of all the tires, no need to replace the battery at any point, and with none of the air compressor racket that always starts after rattling down each wheel.  I'm sold on the cordless for that!

While it was in there, I finally located a nasty rattle underneath that's been bothering me for a while.  It's one of the sheet metal heat shields that protects the exhaust pipe and catalytic converter from setting fire to weeds - if you happen to park on top of them.  The sheet metal is bent and rattling up against the exhaust pipe.  I also reset the engine trouble code - again.  It's the evaporative emissions code.  Haven't been looking, so I still haven't found the air leak...

After the Subaru was done, I moved the mower outside and put it on the jack.  I removed the blades, sharpened them on the bench grinder, refueled it, checked the oil, and mowed the grass for the first time this season.  While that was going on, the wife had decided to see if an old stump in the yard had decayed enough that maybe we could knock it down below ground level.  I spent 30 minutes breaking it up with the wood maul and a big pry bar.  That was some pretty sweaty and out-of-breath activity.

I refilled the wife's bird seed bucket out on the deck, and then blew concrete chips off the garage entry slab.  That must have been a really porous batch of concrete.  Water seeps into it during the winter, freezes, and expands, breaking little chunks off the surface.  I just blow the loose chips off every spring.  At some point it will have to be repaired or replaced.

After all that work, I got cleaned up, I made a run to the store and grabbed what was needed to grill some hamburgers.  I got quite a bit accomplished for a single day off.  Even though it wasn't a restful day, I can return to work with a calm mind, knowing that the most pressing needs of the household have been dealt with.