Joelsheimer's Disease...

Okay, way back when I was getting ready to build the kitchen cabinets, I bought a whole bunch of 1X4 and some 1X6, for putting up the loft railing in the Secret Lair. I also bought 1X2s, but not quite enough so I ended up ripping at least 1 1X4. There should still have been enough 1X4 for the railing - I knew where the 1X6 was, it was in the Lair's bathroom. So the remaining 1X4s should have been either in D&L's barn, in the Lair, or they had been expended and were gone. Well, they weren't at D&L's and they weren't at the Lair. Weep, wail, can't finish the railing.

Except this morning I was straightening up some stuff at the entrance of Landlady's barn, where I spend a good deal of time and which I pass several times a day, and there were five perfectly good 1X4s, in very plain sight, right where I'd left them. Right where they'd been for weeks.

I'd worry that I'm losing my mind, but I'd need to have one first - I've always been like this.

So anyway, I got the railing put up today.

Now I'm trying to figure out why M's Cistern is still empty. I ran some water this morning, and the tap ran for just a moment and then trickled to nothing. Couldn't be frozen: It wasn't frozen yesterday and the temps didn't even get below freezing last night. So I went up the hill to check, and found the cistern empty. Vaguely remembered M telling me that he had turned off the pump because of problems we were having with the high-water float switch. So I went into the pump house and attempted to turn the pump back on - got a red LED and no sound of pump. Went off for shit-shoveling, and when I came back the pump wasn't running and the cistern was quite empty. I HOPE it's just not running because it's so overcast the PV panel isn't making enough juice. It's very overcast.

While shit-shoveling, J came out and told me that the local hardware store was having a Going-Out-Of-Business sale. Yes, the one and only hardware store in town, the only one for a good forty miles, where the running joke is "They don't have that," managed to do such an incredibly bad job of being a hardware store that even with its natural advantages it still couldn't keep the doors open. They will not be missed very much, and I reallyreallyreally hope now somebody will open a real hardware store - maybe at that very location. I've said for years, that would be a great place to open one.

J was going to go and hit the sale, and I figured I should go ahead and give them one more chance not to have the drain plumbing parts I need. So I went, and sure enough they didn't have that.

Got a nice Subway sandwich, though, and that's worth the trip right there.