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Revitalized With New Wheels

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  The new solid rubber wheels I ordered for the hose cart came in sooner than expected. I was concerned about the hub length, which none of the venders provided dimensions for but it was exactly the same hub length as the old wheels. My leap of faith paid off and within 10 minutes, I had the old wheels swapped for the new ones. The new ones also came with extra bearings for a larger axle but since the installed bearings fit my axle, they are unneeded. They will go into my parts bin where I will most likely forget about them until someone spots them before my estate sale starts up. If I'm lucky, the right project will come my way and I'll have a handful of bearings to repurpose.  Since as I write this, right before leaving for our vacation, when it was still very cold outside, I didn't get the hoses sorted out and some of them removed. There is plenty of time for that when spring is here in force. Best of all, I won't have to air up the tires on the hose cart when the ti

Family Vacay

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  A.I. Generated Image of Our Family Vacation As an Honor student, our eldest had the opportunity to go to Japan on Spring Break this year through her school. But for some reason not enough Honors students wanted to go and so they opened it up to anyone. Our daughter wasn't enthused with this development which meant a lot more kids and so asked if she could get a full refund and we go somewhere else as a family instead. Sure, we said, you plan it all and we'll go wherever you like. Consider this our graduation gift to you. So here we are in the picture above for the next 10 days. Doing what, I haven't a clue since I didn't plan a thing. But I think it is easily guessable and should you not be able too, I'll fill you in with all the details when we get back.  *********** A late update to this post. Two days before we were to leave, a major airline in a foreign country announced a strike for all their ground crews. Although our flights aren't on their airline, we

Ordering Parts For the Next Project

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Although I won't get this project done before spring break arrives, I did start it. At our old farm garden, the hydrant that we obtained water from was probably 200 yards away and required a fair amount of hose to reach it. My parents used this reel and hose and then when we took it over and expanded it, we also used it. As we were cleaning up our garden things to bring up here, I rescued it to perhaps use for our new garden. It is on the backside of the house but not nearly as far. I'm guessing we probably only need 200 feet to reach our garden. But the old tires on this reel are beyond shot and some don't hold air anymore. Over the years, I've gotten in the habit of replacing these small pneumatic tires with solid rubber ones and have been much happier since.  So I brought the reel into the garage and took off one of the wheels for measurements. It took some searching but I think I found some solid rubber wheels that will work. They are missing the hub length dimensio

The New Wood Rack

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For most things I build out of wood, I start with some sort of rough design. Sometimes I just use a pencil and paper and other times where I will need to estimate quantities to purchase material in, I'll use a free online CAD program to get an idea. Above is an incomplete design using SketchUp but enough that I can get everything I need from it. I could have just built it in place but that would have required lots of trips around the house and up and down the steep ramp to access my lower back yard. It would have required lots of kneeling on uneven concrete to try and get things fastened together. So I designed this to be built in sections where I can comfortably work at waist level on my work bench and just carry the completed sections together and fasten together. Above is the framed out pieces waiting for some siding to be attached to the smaller ones. The back panel was heavier than I wanted to lift without any siding so I just fastened it in place and attached the siding later

Unwanted Anxiety

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  A.I. Generated Image Not long ago, I wrote about my struggle to do taxes this year after sweeping tax changes in our state. I allowed several state tax form updates to roll through and then input my information and compared it to my previous year as best as I could to make sure it was in order. With my confidence high, and owing considerable more taxes than last year due to the changes, I electronically filed my taxes. The very next day they were accepted by the state. A week later by the day, I get an official looking letter from our state's Department of Revenue saying that I severely underpaid them in taxes and now owe more plus am being penalized for owing as much as I do. The letter included the data that they had received in columns with labels across three pages of paper with a balance at the end. I panicked a bit. The next day I pulled out my copy of my state tax form and started comparing values to see if I could decipher where "I had gone wrong." It had to be