Rick's b.log - entry 2021/09/27

Two years ago today

The shirt says it all.

Reasons Mom was awesome:

• She went to Woodstock (yes, that Woodstock)...
• ...on the back of a Harley.
• She participated in inaugurating a pig, which was clearly a better choice than Nixon.
• She defied convention, a girl wearing jeans in the fifties. It was considered shocking. Think "Scout" in To Kill A Mockingbird.
• She left her family, and country, in protest at what was happening with 'Nam...
• ...turned out she was right.
• Of course, it's pretty much a given that a bra was ritually set on fire.
• She also marched Aldermaston (CND protests)...
• ...turns out she was right about that too.
• Met and chatted with Dylan (yes, that Dylan). As mom tells it, they passed a few hours talking about random stuff because she wasn't starstruck and knew better than to ask "what do your songs mean".
• The lack of being starstruck is also why one of the first guys to seriously hit on her was some sort of Dutch? Belgian? nobility. A Count. He didn't like mentioning it as people got weird. Her reply, "is that all?".
• You might notice that the offbeat sarcasm is an inherited thing. I got all my best biting satire from mom.
• Along the way, something to do with the British national stables. I'm not exactly sure what, but it involved minor ranking Royals and show jumping.
• And she became a nurse, because she liked helping people.
• Specifically a nurse in geriatrics, because it was "a shit position that nobody wanted to do". There's no glory in wiping the backsides of senile old people. So she made that her profession. And was damned good at it.
• And got me into it too, for a short while.

• And this is only a brief résumé of the big points that I remember.
• She had a way of subtly influencing people and events. Not always to go her way, to go that way that they should go.
• And all of this, she did by herself having left her family behind, and with a husband who died young, and a nutjob probably-on-the-spectrum child.

• So as I sit here in this old farmhouse writing this, I am quite aware that she walked away from her life with practically nothing at all, recreated a completely new (and better) life, and was eventually able to buy a farmhouse. Something she had wanted since she was six and spent a few weeks in the summer with.... Auntie Minnie? Delaware? I forget the details.
• Suffice to say, she did it. All by herself.
• And I know she was happy here. A nomadic spirit at heart, she never spent more than about ten years in any one place.
• She had seventeen here (since 2002), and had owned the property since 1992 (1993?), coming over for the summers. Summers which were often "July until it got too cold", which would sometimes mean October.
• And I have no doubt she would have died here, even if she lived another decade.
• A wandering soul, she finally found "home".

To say "I don't measure up" would be a massive understatement. Mom lived an extraordinary and amazing life. So it's really no surprise that reality started to fall apart just a few months after her death...

Sorry for the silence this weekend

Anyway, I went shopping, came home, traumatised the cats, and generally had an okay afternoon (with a lot of intermittant rain). But come the evening I felt wrecked. I was in bed with lights out by ten.

Sunday, I didn't feel like I had any concentration at all. I decided to have an easy day watching Netflix, but my concentration didn't even manage that. So I watched random rubbish on YouTube, like "most amazing moments in sports caught on camera", a lot of which seemed to be extremely improbable basketball wins. Though the bloke that bounced his golf ball across water, up a hill, and down to land right in the hole...that was pretty impressive. I write all of that just to demonstrate that at least a small part of my brain was still functioning.

Anyway, here's the video I threw together on Saturday. Twelve of you have already watched this...

Strimmer motor

When it came to clean the machine at the end, it really looked like it was cooling the motor by sucking air through the top of the motor with a blower attached to the bottom.

Twelve screws later I was able to separate the two halves of the shell around the motor to see, yeah, it does exactly that. The motor, actually, was quite clean inside, but there were a fair amount of weed bits around the motor.

Inside the strimmer.

By undoing the springs on the brushes, the middle (windings) of the motor can be slid completely out in order to clean around the magnetic outer part. I noticed a fair amount of black dust, most likely from the brushes. Couple this with sucking bits of grass and such through the motor, I'm not exactly convinced that this device is built for longevity. Would it have added that much to the cost to have some sort of filter to keep most of the crap out?

Cleaned, reassembled, and tested.

Your comments:

Please note that while I check this page every so often, I am not able to control what users write; therefore I disclaim all liability for unpleasant and/or infringing and/or defamatory material. Undesired content will be removed as soon as it is noticed. By leaving a comment, you agree not to post material that is illegal or in bad taste, and you should be aware that the time and your IP address are both recorded, should it be necessary to find out who you are. Oh, and don't bother trying to inline HTML. I'm not that stupid! ☺ ADDING COMMENTS DOES NOT WORK IF READING TRANSLATED VERSIONS.
 
You can now follow comment additions with the comment RSS feed. This is distinct from the b.log RSS feed, so you can subscribe to one or both as you wish.

No comments yet...

Add a comment (v0.11) [help?] . . . try the comment feed!
		Your name
		Your email	(optional)
		Validation	Are you real? Please type 74739 backwards.
		Your comment