(12/20/2020) .Sunday Anyone here good with a yo-yo? Last night I came so close to ordering a yo-yo from Amazon. This childish behavior has got to stop. It all started when I looked up recommendations on how often one should dust. Conclusion: .Martha Stewart can be really annoying at times. The shiny objects kept appearing in the corners of webpages---videos of people under the influence of LSD (1950's), then model trains, toys, toys of prehistoric children, toys in space. I could never operate a simple yo-yo. The string would always get tangled after 3 or 4 throws. Found out that is normal and you have to compensate. I wanted to prove I could do it now. The only thing that stopped me from ordering one was I had to decide whether the yo-yo should be Responsive/Nonresponsive, have a clutch, or just bearings. Clutch? I didn't even know they could have bearings. Where is @Frank Sanoica ? The clutch looks like just something to break and is only for beginners. Videos guarantee Nonresponsive yo-yos are a piece of cake. There is a plain old wood yo-yo packed away in a box somewhere in the house. If I knew where to look I might talk myself out of a new one. So I started looking in the attic and got distracted by boxes of other stuff. Reduced the contents of two large boxes to a shoebox, so the day wasn't a total waste. Never did get around to dusting. I wonder if Martha Stewart can operate a yo-yo.
(12/23/2020) Wednesday The power company has been back mowing. They cut this strip through the middle of a little pasture up near the road inside the fence. It was getting out of hand with trees. This will make it much easier to get around in there. I could start clearing the trees from this path outward, maybe even do some mowing on the flat parts. Will think about it.
(12/24/2020) Thursday The driveway project is out of the question until the temperatures rise a little, so I'm back to truck shopping. Pictures are finally available. The only hold up now is to clean out my old truck, because they will insist on looking at it so they can fudge some numbers. You have to pick a model within a model. Some models don't have what you want. But when you choose a model that does, you get things you don't want. Some models are cheaper, but a spare tire may be extra. I wonder if this is written in stone, or can you mix models if you hold out? I think I've posted most of this before, but it's more or less final now (yeah, right): Lariat model, 4x2 (no upgrades) Extended cab, 6 1/2' bed 5.5L V8 3.31 Electronic rear axle locking differential Fold down center front seat (no console) Bed liner---spray on, drop in, or just a rubber mat? Can you opt out of the halogen headlights? Just change the bulbs later? Finally, the most important thing....the color. The red color Ford offers is so bright. I feel self-conscious just wearing a red sweater. Two tone, strip at the bottom, helps. Narrowed down to the 3 below. I would like to see the brown and blue, because they may both just look like black in real life. Antimatter Blue is a new color, so I'll probably never get the chance. The red is $400 extra because it has an extra tinted clear coat. Maybe when it's covered with dust it won't look so bright. I think the 2021 is a tiny bit bigger, and I've never quite gotten used to the large size of the one I have. That's why I'd still like to at least sit inside one first. But what other options are there? The Ranger isn't even listed for 2021 at the Ford website yet. Apparently it will still come only with a 4 cylinder engine, and the price is so high it gets up close to an F-150 anyway. I'll probably end up back at the drawing boards after the first visit to the dealer.
(12/27/2020) Sunday Only one productive thing all day. Removed everything from the truck, including floor mats, and vacuumed it, a little. Put back only jumper cables and a bottle of motor oil. There must have been 100 pounds worth of junk in there. The good news is, about half had to do with fence repair, and a third with goats. Most of it won't need to ever go back. Found a water leak on the floor in the back seat under the floor mat. A new puzzle. As suspected, members of F-150 forums are complaining that the Ford Antimatter Blue color looks almost black unless the sun hits it just right. Same with the Kodiak Brown. So I guess I go with Rapid Red. It's not just that you pay a little extra for two tone paint, but you have to upgrade from a standard, to a mid level, "package" to get two tone paint. That adds a lot more to the cost. I've read the specs a dozen times and this is all that I can see that's extra with the upgraded "package": Onboard 110 volt electrical power outlets Universal Garage Door Opener B&O Sound System by Bang & Olufsen with HD Radio™ (incl. 8 speakers and subwoofer) I'm going to argue with them if this it true. It makes no sense that anything in that "package" would have to do with painting a strip along the bottom, unless they use the power outlets for their paint spray gun, and play music while painting.
(12/28/2020) Monday Ford dealer (in town): Nothing is normal this year. No one there seemed interested in selling anything. Customers wandering around outside alone. Four salesmen inside in a group talking. One reluctantly stepped forward, as if he had drawn the short straw. .. I kinda liked it. Salesman asked manager if there was any flexibility with the Lariat model upgrade required for 2-tone paint. Manager said No. Salesman went with the price I found online, which, if such a vehicle existed, would be the sticker price, I assume. Told him I would go back home and study the less expensive model (XLT). Took a ride (not drive) in a large 2021 Supercrew cab 4x4 model with the same engine. It rode way higher off the ground and took a big step up to get in the thing. There are grab handles for help. Good for developing upper body strength. Back home: With the XLT you are stuck with cloth seats. There is no scooting on cloth seats in the South in the summer. You have to hover over the spot you want and drop down. Maybe the newer cloth is less clingy? I'd rather have vinyl. They don't offer vinyl. I found out online my F-150 is a mid year changeover model with some specs from 1996 (the last year you could get 15" wheels) with the 1997 first flair side body style. I remember my father saying everywhere they stopped, people came outside to look at it. He loved that. lol Online specs say a 2021 4x2 Extended cab Lariat would have a step up of about 4 more inches and is almost a foot longer. So, I've almost decided a new F-150 is too big. Will give it one more try, when someone gets a smaller F-150 on the lot, before giving up. I keep reminding myself, the money will be forgotten eventually. Some things about a vehicle will annoy you only once a year, some maybe once a month, but some little things can annoy you every single day for as long as you keep it. Writing all this down allows me to read it like it was written by another person. It's easier to sort out what's important and what is stupid thinking that way. I tried to delete some of the stupid stuff before posting. More on this later ...
First wave of Boomers Our 2nd grade class photo shows a student/teacher ratio of at least 43:1. . They had to set up 2 additional classrooms in the gym at our elementary school in 1954-5. Two temporary walls divided the basketball court into 3 parts. Our 3rd grade class met under the left hoop; another, under the right. The middle was for coat racks. We had our own outside door and were right next to the cafeteria. It doesn't get any better than that in 3rd grade. How many people can find a photo of their 3rd grade classroom taken 60 years later?.. 2014 By 5th grade they had constructed a wing on the building with 8 additional classrooms, but it still wasn't enough. In 6th grade we ended up in the wood frame bus garages at the high school, miles away. (Wish I could find a picture of that.) In high school, all the Seniors met in one big home room in the cafeteria. Study halls were in the cafeteria. Lunch was held in 3 shifts. What a scheduling mess it must have been. No one complained. We assumed it was normal.
Akron, Ohio. . I think the boom was probably bigger there because of all the factories in town. Memory? . Makeshift arrangements like these are the things one tends to remember. Normal classrooms all looked alike to me. Boring. . .
There was a big push to build more brick and mortar schools about the time I entered high school, but by the time they actually got built, the rust belt had started to rust, and the boom was over there. That elementary school closed in the 80's because it wasn't needed. It was renovated and made into a private school in 2014. The picture is from their website. I should have stopped reading, but didn't. Took a look at their handbook and application for admission form. Don't care much for the questions. Too personal. They only admit you if you score in the upper half of an SAT10 test for your age group. No wonder a lot of private schools show better results nationally. The rest was mostly about application fees, tuition, lunch fees, uniforms, transportation, and creative ways to come up with the money to pay. I'm glad I got to go through the public school system.
One of the old schools here in Millinocket, Maine was turned into an assisted living center. It's a three-story brick building. At one time, it was a K-12th-grade school, then I think it became an elementary school for several years before they closed it. I visited a woman from the church who was living there, while I was a deacon, and she told me she was living in her 2nd-grade classroom. Other than adding a bathroom and a closet, and furniture, it didn't look like they had changed much. Since everyone there, I think, had grown up in Millinocket, I suppose everyone was living in one of their childhood classrooms.