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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Daylight Savings Time One Day Early

This morning, my body clock said it was time to get up. It was 5:30AM and I was wide awake and the sun was not up. For the last two weeks, I have been getting up at 6:30 sharp. Conveniently that is when the sun rises around here. Tonight is the night we spring forward. Starting tomorrow, that means my body clock will either make an adjustment or I will be getting up when the sun comes up around 7:30. Well, apparently my body clock got a jump on DST. Sunday will be the test. If I get up with the sun, today was a fluke. If I get up at 6:30 DST, I made the adjustment just fine.

Today, Carol had double duty - doggies and cats. I planned on fixing waffles for breakfast so the plan was for me to feed the cats and then get started on the waffles while Carol took care of the doggies and cleaned the cat center. After breakfast, I checked on our propane level and decided we really should get our tanks filled. We filled one tank in Montgomery, AL a few weeks ago but due to the freezing weather here, we had one empty tank and the other was down to about 1/3 left. There is a propane place in Pollocksville but they are not open on weekends. The only place I found open was a dealer on the South West side of Jacksonville. Our GPS took us to the wrong place. That could have been a frustrating thing. However, as we headed back toward the correct location, we came up to Cabin Creek Campground. They sold propane so that is where we stopped to fill the tanks. Looks like a cool place to hang out so I asked if they use workkampers. Of course they do. So while our GPS led us down what appears to be a wrong path, we found a workkamp opportunity for the future. Plus we got propane at the same time. That was pretty cool.

Next stop was a Citgo convenience store that sells Off Road Diesel. That is diesel fuel for off road vehicles like tractors and other agricultural and farming vehicles. I had three 5 gallon containers from the farm to fill. For the folks who use diesel fuel, you will know there are two types of dispensing nozzles - large diameter ones with high flow rate for 18 wheelers and small diameter ones with low flow rate for trucks and cars. This pump just happen to have the large diameter dispensing nozzle which just did not quiet fit into the 5 gallon containers. I carefully placed the large nozzle in the small opening of my container and pulled the trigger. In a matter of a few seconds, my container experienced what I call a diesel fart. There was very little room for air to escape my 5 gallon container so the air pressure grew past equilibrium and the air escaped quickly forcing diesel fuel to spray back toward me. I quickly released the trigger but by then it was too late. Diesel fuel had sprayed on my shirt, pants and shoes. Oh well, I will just smell like diesel for a while.

Since there was a Home Depot next to the Citgo store, I thought I would get them to give me a quote on the 10x16 foot deck we are going to build on the farm next to one of the cabins. What a mistake that was. Earlier this morning, I went to Home Depot on line to search for their Build A Deck Design tool. The software does not run on a Mac. Gee, that's strange. Lowe's Build A Deck Design tool does. I should have taken that as an omen of what I would experience at Home Depot. The service person could not find the application on the store computer he was using. He found it on a different computer. Then he was not familiar with how to use the software. He consulted with three other people before he figured out how to print the material list. That experience alone was sufficient for me to say sorry Home Depot, you just lost a sale. Lowe's will get the order.

We were less then 1/2 mile from Starbucks. Carol and I decided to go after a treat. After the diesel fart and the long painful wait for Home Depot to provide a material list for a small deck, that Caramel Macchiato was well worth it. We enjoyed our drinks and headed back to the farm. What should have only taken a couple of hours took over 5 hours.

Next on our list of things to do today was finish bathing the doggies going to Adop-A-Thon tomorrow. Before we left this morning, I did get the water heater back in service so we would have hot water in the clinic where there was a large tub that would make it easier to bathe the larger dogs. Now I confess that I am not a seasoned dog bather. Cody gets his baths from a garden hose outside. In my manner of helping Carol, I decided to bathe the two larger dog. Somehow I managed to spray more water on me than the dog. I also managed to spray the ceiling. How do you dry a ceiling? With a mop? You get the picture. 

Last task on the to do list was to load the van with dog crates for our trip to Jacksonville tomorrow. Van is loaded, supplies are loaded, tables are loaded. Tomorrow we load the dogs around 8:30AM and head for Jacksonville Petsmart.

Tonight it was time to fire up the grill. We had purchased a couple of rib eyes at Walmart when we first got here. I had one marinating and plopped it on the grill. Carol was baking a sweet potato and making a salad inside while I was tending to the steak. The aroma of the BBQing was filling the air. Apparently this played with the cats' noses. They had to come check me out.
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Maybe it was the Blue Moon instead of the steak. I must have introduced them to a new aroma.

As we get older, we must Spring Forward and Fall Back carefully. Hope you did not hurt yourself. 

Thanks for stopping by.

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