Murphey Strikes Again....
Only this time, it wasn't at me...
The last 48 hours have been just loads of fun. Yesterday, the temperature dropped into the -20's, and the wind howled at around 40 km/hr, and we got snow. Not much snow, mind you, only about 2cm worth, or less. But combine that with the wind, and you get white-out conditions. Thankfully trixstir got to the bowling alley before the snow started, and by the time she left it had calmed down again and was no longer snowing. She had some worries though, saying that she thought her car was overheating. "It's up to the O in 'Normal'," she told me. Well, that's nothing. That's just barely starting to get warm. On most cars, but not on hers. More on that in a moment...
With the wind screaming outside, there wasn't much else that I could do at the farm other than to help Mom with the painting. The painting itself isn't so bad, it's the prep-work that takes forever. Moving furniture around, putting drop-sheets over things, applying masking-tape, etc... I also had to prepare a couple of the areas where the barn-cats had saturated the carpets so much that it soaked into the subfloor. Thankfully, this B-I-N paint works wonders, and completely seals off any offensive odours. It also reeks pretty badly itself; It smells a lot like Liquid Paper, and I wouldn't be suprised to find that it's a very similar product - both of them are designed to mask and hide things underneath them. At any rate, I painted half of the living-room floor with the stuff (used up one full can) and the fumes were getting pretty heady, enough that they set off the CO detector! That's pretty much how we spent yesterday and today: Painting. Today was more of the regular-type painting. Mom worked on painting the living room while I worked on replacing the toilet in the ensuite. I've removed the old toilet, but now we need to finish stripping off the old linoleum from the floor, and the wallpaper. There was some serious leaking in that ensuite in the past; Whether it was from the toilet or the sink I don't know and can't tell, but that's why we have to replace the linoleum - it was all bubbled and warped. Nothing really exciting for Mom and I today - just painting and rennovating....
Trixstir had the adventure today. As mentioned, on her car the temperature gauge is a little different. On every car I've seen until now, the word "NORMAL" starts from the C, and moves towards the H. On Trixstir's car it goes the other way, so by the time it reaches the "O" it's getting pretty hot. Now, Mom and I had made the trip to Swift Current and back two days ago without a problem, but it turns out we were just lucky. Tonight Trixstir's car overheated, and she had to abandon it in the dark on the highway! Fortunately, she was less than 1/2 a mile from the farm, and one of our neighbours was not far behind her and gave her a ride home.
I didn't want to leave the car sitting out there (even though she had found a safe place to pull into - one of the little side roads off the fields) but my truck wouldn't start. I had no reason to think that I'd need it today, so I hadn't bothered to plug it in, and the temperature has been down below -15c most of the day. This is hard enough on a gasoline-powered vehicle, but the truck is a diesel and they do not like being that cold! So, the only option was to plug the truck in (and hook up the battery-charger) so that it would be ready for tomorrow, and then put on some thermal underwear and trek out to get Trixstir's car. The good thing is that there was no wind tonight. In fact, there hasn't been any wind all day, and that makes a huge difference! It took us about 10 minutes to walk to Trixstir's car, which by this time had cooled down enough that she could start it and drive it back to the house. I had a quick look under the hood while it was out at the highway, but I was more interested in getting the thing back home once I had determined that it still had some coolant, and the hoses seemed intact.
Once we got it home, I had Trixstir idle the engine to see what happened when the thermostat finally opened. What happened is that it started pouring coolant out all over the ground! This is not a small leak that can be fixed with "stop leak" or other such products - there is a definite hole in the radiator, and we're just trying to figure out "WHY?" That radiator is only three or four years old, and we just had the entire cooling system flushed and filled last August, and yes, it was with the proper ratio for a cold-weather climate. Whatever the reason, the end result is that we'll have to have it towed to town, and get it fixed. Good thing we have CAA! (Canadian version of AAA, and an affiliate thereof.)
It was well past 11pm by this time, so Trixstir headed to bed while I caught up on the LJ entries. Oh... as for the painting... Now that Trixstir has seen what it looks like on the entire room instead of the paint swatch, she's not so sure she likes the colour! "We should have gone with a darker shade..." Well, yeah... that's what I told her months ago when she picked that one! Ah well, we'll have to see what it looks like in the proper daylight. In a worst case, this is only the first coat, and we can always darken it for the second coat if we need to. Besides, it gives me a rare chance to say "I toldya so!" ;)
The last 48 hours have been just loads of fun. Yesterday, the temperature dropped into the -20's, and the wind howled at around 40 km/hr, and we got snow. Not much snow, mind you, only about 2cm worth, or less. But combine that with the wind, and you get white-out conditions. Thankfully trixstir got to the bowling alley before the snow started, and by the time she left it had calmed down again and was no longer snowing. She had some worries though, saying that she thought her car was overheating. "It's up to the O in 'Normal'," she told me. Well, that's nothing. That's just barely starting to get warm. On most cars, but not on hers. More on that in a moment...
With the wind screaming outside, there wasn't much else that I could do at the farm other than to help Mom with the painting. The painting itself isn't so bad, it's the prep-work that takes forever. Moving furniture around, putting drop-sheets over things, applying masking-tape, etc... I also had to prepare a couple of the areas where the barn-cats had saturated the carpets so much that it soaked into the subfloor. Thankfully, this B-I-N paint works wonders, and completely seals off any offensive odours. It also reeks pretty badly itself; It smells a lot like Liquid Paper, and I wouldn't be suprised to find that it's a very similar product - both of them are designed to mask and hide things underneath them. At any rate, I painted half of the living-room floor with the stuff (used up one full can) and the fumes were getting pretty heady, enough that they set off the CO detector! That's pretty much how we spent yesterday and today: Painting. Today was more of the regular-type painting. Mom worked on painting the living room while I worked on replacing the toilet in the ensuite. I've removed the old toilet, but now we need to finish stripping off the old linoleum from the floor, and the wallpaper. There was some serious leaking in that ensuite in the past; Whether it was from the toilet or the sink I don't know and can't tell, but that's why we have to replace the linoleum - it was all bubbled and warped. Nothing really exciting for Mom and I today - just painting and rennovating....
Trixstir had the adventure today. As mentioned, on her car the temperature gauge is a little different. On every car I've seen until now, the word "NORMAL" starts from the C, and moves towards the H. On Trixstir's car it goes the other way, so by the time it reaches the "O" it's getting pretty hot. Now, Mom and I had made the trip to Swift Current and back two days ago without a problem, but it turns out we were just lucky. Tonight Trixstir's car overheated, and she had to abandon it in the dark on the highway! Fortunately, she was less than 1/2 a mile from the farm, and one of our neighbours was not far behind her and gave her a ride home.
I didn't want to leave the car sitting out there (even though she had found a safe place to pull into - one of the little side roads off the fields) but my truck wouldn't start. I had no reason to think that I'd need it today, so I hadn't bothered to plug it in, and the temperature has been down below -15c most of the day. This is hard enough on a gasoline-powered vehicle, but the truck is a diesel and they do not like being that cold! So, the only option was to plug the truck in (and hook up the battery-charger) so that it would be ready for tomorrow, and then put on some thermal underwear and trek out to get Trixstir's car. The good thing is that there was no wind tonight. In fact, there hasn't been any wind all day, and that makes a huge difference! It took us about 10 minutes to walk to Trixstir's car, which by this time had cooled down enough that she could start it and drive it back to the house. I had a quick look under the hood while it was out at the highway, but I was more interested in getting the thing back home once I had determined that it still had some coolant, and the hoses seemed intact.
Once we got it home, I had Trixstir idle the engine to see what happened when the thermostat finally opened. What happened is that it started pouring coolant out all over the ground! This is not a small leak that can be fixed with "stop leak" or other such products - there is a definite hole in the radiator, and we're just trying to figure out "WHY?" That radiator is only three or four years old, and we just had the entire cooling system flushed and filled last August, and yes, it was with the proper ratio for a cold-weather climate. Whatever the reason, the end result is that we'll have to have it towed to town, and get it fixed. Good thing we have CAA! (Canadian version of AAA, and an affiliate thereof.)
It was well past 11pm by this time, so Trixstir headed to bed while I caught up on the LJ entries. Oh... as for the painting... Now that Trixstir has seen what it looks like on the entire room instead of the paint swatch, she's not so sure she likes the colour! "We should have gone with a darker shade..." Well, yeah... that's what I told her months ago when she picked that one! Ah well, we'll have to see what it looks like in the proper daylight. In a worst case, this is only the first coat, and we can always darken it for the second coat if we need to. Besides, it gives me a rare chance to say "I toldya so!" ;)