Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

The difference in making it or not is in assiduousness. No matter what it is. --Charles Dowdell

It is Independence day once again. I am monkeying around with stuff here on the farm. The gates are coming along and I managed to fix a bunch of stuff. It is raining on and off. The llamas got out a week or so ago. It really startled the neighbor to look up from the sink and see Professor looking in the window. The llamas, I guess, were just bored. Here is a picture of my Recirculating Infusion Mash System (Rims) I built a number of years ago. It was quite an innovative device for all grain brewing of beer. I designed the electronics and the compact system. It is now out of my house. I have too may hobbies. I want to concentrate on a few such as the dozen or so I have left. This picture shows Calisto (the white one), Professor, and Artemis chilling on the scene yesterday. Artemis is in the dirt spa. This is where the llamas take turns rolling around in the dust and enjoying their dirt.

I have been mostly doing farm related work. Work on the barn and gates and such. It all takes time. The tractor lost its clutch slave cylinder so I'm rebuilding that, hopefully will have the parts Tuesday. Pete Nystrom is headed down for Tuesday as well for the day. That will be fun. I gave a presentation about Antarctica last Wednesday at the Greene Library. People really seemed to like it. Here is a great slide show in today Chicago Tribune. It has picture and voices of friends of mine. I can easily recognize where each of the photos was taken, as well as who the people are and their voices. Chicago Tribune

It is officially Summer. I am working on the front of the barn. The long ladder is a little un-nerving for me, but it is a lot cheaper than a manlift. The llamas got out one night last week and went to visit the neighbors and we bought 100 bales of hay off another neighbor. It is pretty amazing how few calories you need when the weather is warm. It was kind of fun to be able to eat all that food when I was working outside in Antarctica. I still haven't got back to the pre-ice dietary regimen, close but not quite yet. The red truck is for sale on Ebay. No bids yet. Truck on ebay I am working on a combination Ham radio and Antarctica project. I didn't get on the air for the annual field day contest yesterday. No real reason. I went on a walk Saturday morning though our woods to (and through) the county park. I need to do that more often. It is about a 1/2 mile walk through our fields, then a 1/2 mile through our woods, and then a mile or so through the park to the lake. O...

Here is my Antarctic Fil Festival submission that I just uploaded to Youtube. I hope it works.

It's coming. The pocket car. I don't think one of these would suit us well out here in the country. http://www.smartusa.com/ Bonnie and I went to Den and Julie's McCarthy's house up in Williamson NY. It was a long planned get together to talk about Antarctica and what not. There were maybe 15 people. It was great fun and very relaxing. I finished mowing my hay field this morning. This is the third year bringing the field back. It gets easier and better every year, I still have to get some lime down. My tractor can spread lime while it mows once I get the spreader attached to the back. I just have to finish some bracketry. That is the way to go. I mow for a while then I stop the tractor and drive the jeep back to the house. That saves time for sure.

Probably took a while to climb to the start altitude. Just watch. Most impressive at start. Real living. These guys have some spirit.