Tuesday a.m.

It's gonna be a bright, bright sun-shiny day! THIS is why October is my favorite month -- start out in the 50s and end in the 70s, with crystal clear blue skies! I love running in this weather. Yesterday I took off for a hilly 6 miler, around 8 a.m. There was a little frost around Spice Valley, the sun was warm, and life was good. You know it's good running weather when you seek the sun's warm instead of hiding from it. I'm making the monster hills from Spice Valley to Bryantsville and back a regular thing now. It's amazing how much easier hills become if you run them a lot.

After my run I got busy with work. I had a couple of meetings, went to the Store to see how things were going, and went to see some people. What I'm about to say will probably get me in trouble. Probably not as much trouble as Hank Williams Jr.is in. He got yanked from singing the intro to Monday Night Football because he said something bad about the President. Oh well, what I'm about to say is not like that. Here goes: I'm not that crazy about dogs. There, I said it! I like them OK, but I do not like them licking me or placing their slime on me. That happened to me yesterday, but, for the sake of the Lord, I endured it. What a selfless servant I am!

Yesterday I was driving the Bronco around. That always gets me a lot of (unwanted) attention! Why was I driving the Bronco? Because my 1994 Ford Ranger, with nearly 250,000 miles, would not start. The starter was bad. I came home a little early to deal with that. Here's another confession, and some will want to pull my man card for this: I do not like mechanical work. AT ALL. I've done it and can still do it, but I do not like it. But motivated by saving money, I crawled under my Ranger and removed the starter. I know that it is a fairly simple repair, but sometimes the simple things turn difficult for me. I was blessed! The thing came off fairly easily, and I did not lose any skin or get anything in my eyes.

I took the starter to a parts store to get it tested. During the test, everyone is the store stopped and looked at what was going on. Some came over to get a closer look. Why? Because my starter made a noise that caused the employee to exclaim, "I've never heard anything like that!" The weird part was that it passed the test--the machine said so, but everyone knew, and by this point a crowd had gathered, the starter was bad. So I got a new one. Some of the wiring on the new did not match the old one. Great! More challenges.  Hey, it was a beautiful day, so I was up for it.

Long story short: I got all the wiring lined up, hooked up, and got the starter back on. It works! And I still have all the skin on my knuckles and I didn't get any rust/dirt in my eyes. It was a rare mechanical success for me. I was on a roll, so I decided to cut, split and stack wood. This activity I really like, and it went well.