Monday, April 15, 2013

We Never Know



Again we are reminded that we never know.  

We should not live in paranoia, but take reasonable care for safety no matter what we are doing.  We should live prepared to be able to live without guilt or regret.  To know where to turn when what we have to face is too much for mortal strength. 

Sometimes things will happen in life for which there can be no warning and no preparation.  We do not know when our life will end and we will be called before our Maker.  We do not know when loved ones will be torn from our lives.  We do not know when our lives might be seriously disrupted, things we take for granted shattered -  health, wholeness, jobs, peace, - any aspect of our lives - gone.  

We should live in love, kindness, prayer and repentance daily.  We should try to prepare ourselves for emergencies.  We should strengthen our faith to help us bear the unthinkable.  We should prepare our souls.  We should tell people we love them.

We complacently live our lives thinking that we have forever or least a bit more time to work things out, to get ready for emergencies, to put our lives in order.   The Scouts are right, we need to strive to BE PREPARED.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Goldie is gettting a charge out of this - I hope!

Instead of going to help on a friend's Eagle project, we discovered a nearly dead car battery.  I DID not want to call AAA for the 2nd time in a week. Odd!, after giving me a jump Wednesday night, the AAA Knight of the Road, tested my battery and said that it was a good battery and that the alternator was charging it well.  I don't know why the battery ran down now. That's frustrating.

I knew that once when I called AAA over a dead battery a few years ago (I am a semi-regular since getting Goldie who does not warn you if you leave the lights on), I purchased possibly a new battery and definitely a battery charger.  Which was SOMEWHERE in the garage. (the battery charger, not the battery itself which is in the car, strangely enough)  I could not even remember what the thing looked like. So I looked up battery charger images on-line. My! they come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Well, mostly rectangle and mostly red or black. 

We dove into the no-man's-land that is our garage. Which is not easy because of all the stuff and clutter.  Did not find the charger.  Did realize (again) that our garage is in desperate need of major attention.

Andrew and I briefly considered biking to the Eagle project and arriving late, but that would not fix the car problem or the garage problem which was really beginning to vex me.  The need here seemed greater than the need there.  Sorry, JC!

We started working in the garage. What to do with all this crud?! 
  Some we might actually use if we learned how and knew where it was.Keep
  Some we probably won't use but might be valuable and or useful.  We need to set that aside and see if some of our handy friends could use it. Or maybe sell it on-line. That sounds like a job for Joseph. Keep.
  Some stuff is definitely garbage. That would be easy if we had a bigger can.  Some goes in the can, some goes in garbage bags.  If we get to the bigger stuff, it will go in the trailer to await a dump run.
  Electrical garbage - old fans, an old computer monitor.  I don't know WHAT to do with that stuff!  I hate figuring out e-waste.  I never know where it is when charities do their e-waste drives and what I have is usually not what they take.
   Then there's stuff that seems too good for garbage, but....  We are such suckers for that.  "Free" sign by the gate.  Whatever is there when we finally schedule a dump run, it will go, too. Unless we lose our nerve.

Amazingly we did not get very far before we actually found the battery charger!!! Which was way smaller than I expected or remembered.  AAA Battery Tender Jr.   As long as it does the job. : )

We figured out how to hook it up and then realized that it was going to take all day to charge the battery.  Not wanting to trip innocent passers by, we decided to move the car UP into the driveway.  It took considerable effort with all 3 of us pushing (including Joseph who is too sick to have the IP party he planned) BUT WE DID IT.  Goldie is in the driveway hooked up to the charger. 

Now back to the garage.  We will not "clean it out"  - not even close, but we should manage to make some improvement.