EWWWWWW!

Rainy weekend with moderate to severe T-Storms around. That put a damper (so to speak) on progress on the outside tasks of Mrs J's honeydoo list. Right now, the priority in those tasks is rearranging the horse corral. I've been told by the Vet that I'm taking too good care of these rescues and they (and I) need to "Lose Weight".

I tell him, that I'm not feeding them any grain, they're just grazing.  Well, seems we've had a pretty good spring and the grass is making them fat.  Asking the obvious question, "How do you get a horse to stop grazing?"  He replies, "Put them in the round pen".

OK, we use that for training and not keeping.  No Water, No Shade, No protection from the weather.

Red Circle-Current Pen position, Middle Blue Circle-Proposed Pen Position, Right Blue Circle- current water trough, Black Circles- Horses

So, I am rearranging the corral, moving the Round Pen, which is actually just several panels that hook together to form a pen, just to the east side of the tree, thus moving it closer to the water line and alleviating my need to carry water to them....frequently. As in 10 gallons/horse/day or, using a more personal measure, 167Lbs of water for me to fetch and carry each day.  Once the pen is moved, I'll trench from the existing water trough to the new area and put in a water line. 

The other advantage of moving it to the east side of the tree, is shade in the afternoon.

So that was the plan for this weekend because one of the neighbor boys (we share a fence line) was going to be available to help.  But Rain and T-Storms put paid to that plan, Saturday a complete loss, rescheduled for Sunday.  Severe Thunderstorms as we left for Church. 

Update: Got home from town Sunday afternoon, went to wash my hands and no water.  Thought Verdammt fire ants had gotten into the pump switch again.  (They like electricity, even if it kills them.)  Went down to the well, opened the door, got stung by a red wasp, exterminated the rest of the nest, got to the switch, cleaned it off, put it all back together and turned the breakers back on. 

Nada.
 
Check the voltage coming out of the Meter.

Nada.

Looked at the transformer.  No connection to the incoming line.  The fuse is blown.  Must have been the lightning, but AHHH!  No es mi problema.  Call the Electric Co-op.  They come by and replace the fuse.  

And notice an electrified squirrel. (Living in the country has its pluses and minuses.)

Anyhoo, back to the story.  While I was doing the anti-rain dance Saturday (another Dance that obviously, I am unable to perform having failed at Mongolian Mambo yesterday), I was perusing the internet for something to write about.

You know...the Internet is a wonderful place to gain knowledge of the most useful kind, and Google makes sure that you get to see exactly what you want to see, by recommending just exactly what you were thinking about.

Or something like that.

But, between crashes of thunder, I am on my Firefox home page and one of my recommendations is a YouTube video from the History Guy that talks about a sunken U-Boat that had been discovered a few years ago.

So, I watched it,  very interesting.  It contained a lot of things that I had never considered, or even thought about considering, that are critical to the operations on a submarine.

Given my sophomoric sense of humor, I got quite a few chuckles from the film as the History Guy deftly avoids the so obvious direction the story is going to go.

You see, on its first operational mission, U-1206 was lost when its head was improperly flushed.

Source

If you Google "U-1206", the return titles resemble conversations in a  7th grade Boys Gym anywhere in the world.  Go ahead, see what I'm talking about.  Heck, even DuckDuckGo isn't any better.

The U-Boat's Skipper, Karl-Adolf Schlitt, had the boat positioned about 12 NM off Peterhead Scotland, when one of the officers needed to use the facility. (The two proper nouns in that sentence could not be more perfect for this tale. I know, I know, sophomoric!)  After having done his business, he activates the flushing mechanism.   (Apparently, they had a sailor on board who was expressly trained and his sole responsibility was to flush the toilet.  "What is this medal for, Daddy"?  "Flushing Toilets!")

In any case, the officer, not the trained sailor, unfortunately activates the flushing system in the wrong sequence and instead of things going out, things came in. 

With water coming into the boat, the crew has to surface as the sea water has caused the sub's batteries to produce chlorine gas (a very bad thing to be around especially when you're in an enclosed tube).  Being very close to Scotland's coast, they are soon spotted, attacked and the sub damaged.  They scuttle the ship and take to life rafts where they are captured and spend the rest of the war (about 3 weeks) as POW's.

Source

Aside from my juvenile chuckles, the History Guy's video does a pretty good job of explaining the physics of waste disposal from a submarine.

C'Mon, you know you want to know that, right?

I will never look at Submariners the same again.