November Bullet Points

• Jim, my friend from Rome, NY, showed up unexpectedly yesterday evening. It looks like he will be staying until Friday. He was hoping to find some work with me this week, but I don't really have anything for him to do on the kitchen job we are currently working on. Fortunately for Jim, Dave has been having trouble with the furnace in his house. Jim may be mildly retarded, but he is good with his hands and knows furnace repairs pretty well. He will work on Dave's furnace tomorrow.
  
  
• We had a frost a few days ago which put an end to the tomato plants and the rest of the garden. The weather here has finally turned colder, with some wet snow falling today. The ground is still too warm for any snow to stick, so it melted immediately.
  
  
• Today was planned to be a downtime day. My truck has needed some repairs for a while, (it had the shakes), so I dropped it off at my mechanic's shop this morning. Since 'no truck' meant 'no work' on the kitchen job, Mark and I spent much of the day building 2 more wood-framed storm windows for my house. In spite of the cold, the workshop warmed up quickly with a fire in the wood stove.
  
  
• Early in the afternoon, the mechanic called to say that the truck repairs were done. It turned out to be the front universal joint that had been causing the truck to shake when I drove. He apologized for missing that rather obvious problem when he fixed the transmission tailpiece 2 weeks ago, and only charged me $50 for today's repairs. I was relieved that it was such a cheap repair. As I backed up to pull out of the mechanic's lot, before I had even moved 6 feet, I heard a sickening crunch. The truck was parked next to a heavy steel sign post with the business name at the top. I didn't realize the sign was there, and turned the truck into it, crunching a big dent into the driver's side door. AAARRRRGHHHHHH!!!!
  
  
  
• The sign post was unfazed, but my door was definitely hurting. The door was difficult to open, and if I had tried it, I'm sure the window would not have worked. Jim knows autos well, and for 25 years has worked on a long list of his own marginally-drivable vehicles. He took apart the inner door panel, and using a 2 x 4 and hammer, banged out much of the dent so that the door worked again, ...more or less. Here is the truck door before Jim's repairs:
  
  
  
  
  You can tell that the steel sign post was painted a bright yellow-orange. After Jim's repairs, the truck doesn't look much better, but the door definitely works better.
  
  
• Jim and I watched one of my favorite films tonight: The Haunting (1963 version). I think it is one of the best ghost films ever made, with a fabulous Victorian mansion as the 'haunted house.' The film still makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, ....even after seeing it 8 or 12 times!! Unlike more recent ghost films, we never actually see a ghost in this film. I think that which is unseen is often more terrifying than that which can be seen!!
  
  
• I won't be working on that kitchen job on Friday because the customers will be away for a few days. Now that the truck is in better driving condition, I plan to drive up to my camp on Friday, weather permitting, and finally get the place officially closed up for the winter. I hope the roads at Mountain Lake are still passable. The winter snow starts earlier there because of the higher elevation. I will drop Jim off in Rome when I go.
  
  
• I guess that's all for now.