May 21 - a mostly rainy day

... with rainy day activities.

Sandy did a lot of cleaning & organizing.  I did some cleaning and organizing -- in the den. 

This sounds silly but probably my main accomplishment yesterday was replacing four daisy-chained power strips with one 4' power strip with 12 outlets.  I picked this up at Harbor Freight.  The outlets are spaced way apart so that you can easily plug all those transformer adapters in side-by-side.  This took some time as this crap is all buried behind stuff, covered in dust etc. 

The other thing that I did was more take-apart at this point.  I have a Harmon Kardon AV receiver that has a 60 cycle hum.  I removed 50-60 screws to get the main board out and de-solder a bulging capacitor which is probably the issue.  I ordered same online, comes in a package of 2 for $2.99 with shipping of $4.99.   They'll be awaiting my pleasure in Reading PA when we get there on June 3rd or 4th.  If I'm successful in soldering that back into place and if the hum is gone, I can put the receiver back into play.  If the hum is still there, then this thing is garbage.

We said good-bye to Jason mid-morning.  He was scrambling to get packed and rolling before the rain started.  Shortly afterwards it came down in buckets.  I'd been planing on going into town for milk etc. early but waited until the rain abated after lunch.

I talked to Halle Brooks about firewood, ordered 4 cords for later this year and got the name and number of the fellow who does drilling and blasting.   We need a quote for the work on Osprey Road.  Regarding my driveway, Halle said that while he would deliver gravel, he doesn't do any heavy equipment work any more because he doesn't have anyone working for him.  We talked about Dale's business and the son that he'd lost; everything pretty much on hold there.

I called Bruce Fraser, the drill and blast guy, but didn't hear back.

I called Paul Lamb, who had worked on Art's driveway the year before last.  He returned my call after dinner and will come over in the next few days to look things over and give me a quote.

I've got a couple of ducks paddling around in the cove right now.  They are mergansers but the male has colouring that I haven't seen before.  Perhaps it's a mixed marriage ?  Do things like that happen ??

Today -- meeting with Westwind, Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO) and Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) re logging in the area and then doing our annual road tour to plan work with MTO.  That will kill the morning plus.  I'll be bringing my bug jacket.  Hopefully it doesn't rain too much !

Sandy is trying to nail down time with Joyce and will be heading to Toronto either Thursday or Friday.  I'm still deciding on what I'm doing as far as traveling down.  I was hoping to drive down on Saturday a.m. but if Sandy isn't here, I'll have to go down Friday, since Abby will be staying with David and Kim.

Onward ....