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Jan 20, 1960
The chair cover arrived, & I'm still trying to figure out how it will look with the sponge rubber in it. At first fit, it looks okay, but I want to mess around with it before I make up my mind.
Jim has been stealing time, here & there to go over the red Merc. So far he has replaced the u-joints which were ready to go any minute, and has disconnected one side of the double fuel pump, where most of the oil was going. As soon as he can find a good used pump, he'll replace it. Jim gets a lot of good used parts free, because people very often insist on replacing perfectly good parts, either from habit, or for reasons that have no bases in fact. The brakes are good, but the master cylinder will need a hit because it leaks fluid back to the wheels. He fixed the radio with a new vibrator. The tappets
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are way out of adjustment, & the plugs are shot. The latter can easily be replaced with some slightly used ones. With adjusted tappets and good u-joints, the motor should run 100% more quietly, & the fuel pump should solve part of the oil-burning problem. The paint is bad, how bad we won't know until we clean off the oxide & wax it. Too bad Kevin didn't keep it waxed when it stood outside. It needs a little body work in several places. The transmission is A-1, a very important selling point.
The weather has run the gamut between heavy frost, fog & rain over the last couple of weeks. We had some very cold sunshine last weekend. The trouble is that it keeps Pooh indoors too much. She keeps busy enlarging her vocabulary, most of it intelligible. She "plays" potty quite a bit, but seldom uses it for the real thing.
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Plenty of time for that, as long as the dryer holds out.
The hot water heater went out last week. We weren't too surprised, since we bought it used for $15.00 from a wrecker a little over a year ago. Fortunately, we were ahead on the washing, so for a few days, we kept the tea-kettle busy, until we could get out & pick a new one. We made a good deal at a Sears sale, a glass-lined one this time, since the water is so hard around here. Now we can forget about that for the next 10 yrs.
Thank you for the Vitamin C. We're taking it in hopes that we miss this year's round of colds & flu. That flu epidemic isn't supposed to have reached this area yet, but there are several serious cases around.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought
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Sunset's book on mosaics, & have finally decided that's just the right medium for end tables & coffee tables. Jim can weld up the frames out of scrap iron for next to nothing. The want a crazy price for frames in the art stores. I've decided on a medium of glass over clear plastic with fiberglass resin for grout. It's very durable & reflects the light well. Also, glass can be collected. One could spend a fortune on the commercial pot shards they sell for mosaic. So now I'm looking for pastly-colored bottles and pieces of broken glass. There's lots of milk-bottles white, 7-up green & whiskey brown around, but the other colors are a little more difficult to find, We have a gorgeous blue eye-wash bottle, that I plan to swipe. Any piece of glass bigger than a thumbnail is good, but whole, square bottles are best, because they present more flat surfaces & can be cut to the desired size. A good supply
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of several colors wil be necessary before I can get serious about any design. If I can find a place that makes stained glass windows, I've got it made. We're going to make a machine to take off the sharp edges with Daddy's grinder motor & shaft. Do you think you could switch from swiping rocks, to bottles & broken glass?
By the time you get this, that Christmas package should be in the mail. Profound apologies & Happy Easter.
Kevin brought an awfully nice girl down with him when he brought the car. Very different from the condescending, self-centered types he's introduced me to, in the past. Hope this represents a trend.
Mon. Well, for once I didn't fall asleep after dinner. We just finished
