Oh...What a week!

 Well, Campers, it has been quite a "Special" week down here. Special being the Swahili word for "Tough".  But, Mrs J and I managed to make it through and in spite of the "Challenges", there were some good outcomes.  So being the "look at the bright side" kind of guy that Beans has taught me to be, I'll start with those episodes first.

As most of you are aware, Summer isn't over until September 22 this year.  Now, I know, some of you are already breaking out your parkas and snow boots.  Down here in the great state of Texas, we start thinking about doing that when the temps get down in the 60's.  We had a 100+ degree last week, but at least it was a humid 100.  

Which wouldn't have been so bad if the AC in my woodshop hadn't decided that I didn't need any cool air anymore, but that I needed a sauna.  Silly machine!  So we called the repairman.  This was mid-afternoon, I was kinda expecting a visit in a few days. 

Surprisingly, he said he could be there at 5PM if that was OK.

Not surprisingly, I said "YES, Bless you!"

He showed up right on time and got to work.  Now, I am pretty religious about cleaning sawdust out of the filters regularly and they were only slightly dirty when he opened up the AC.   He blew them out again, just to make sure, but no bueno.

He said he'd have to go deeper into the machine, something I had no idea how to do, so hadn't.  Sure enough some tubular fan or something was pretty well covered in sawdust.  He said it shouldn't be a hard thing to get it working, but he'd have to take it apart.  Was I ok with that?

Why, yes...yes I am!

He got to work.  Since it was late afternoon and hot and the AC wasn't working, we were both pretty sweaty quite quickly.  I asked him if he'd like some cold water.  He said "Please".

So, I went into the house and got a couple of bottles.  On my way back, I ran into a slight problem.  Which brings us to the second topic of this post.

 

See that loop of yellow grass going across the middle of the picture. Well... That's when things last week started going south.

 

There I was...walking back to the Woodshop carrying 2 bottles of water.  Strolling along when I felt a tug on my right foot. No big deal, except about a nanosecond later I'm looking down at the rapidly approaching ground.

 

I realize I'm not going to stop the impact, so parachute landing fall training from Undergraduate Pilot Training sprang into my mind. I rolled to my left.  It was somewhat like I'd been trained in that the first thing to hit was my calf, then my thigh, then my hip, shoulder. Unfortunately, I must have forgotten the part about protecting the head as my forehead hit the ground.  I was stunned for a short while, more concerned about my head than anything else.  Took a look in the mirror I have in the shop to look under things.  Slight bleeding from my forehead, but not effusive.  Very sore, but alright.

 

Or so I thought.

 

The next morning I wake up sore (I wonder why) and go take a shower.  I'm soaping up and realize I've got a tennis ball sized bump on my hip.  A little sore and a little bruise colored.  No big deal.

 

Things get worse as the day goes on, finally that afternoon, I surrender and ask Mrs J to take me to the ER. I was the only patient there.   I explain my gymnastic episode to the Doc.  She sends me to the XRay/Cat Scan Tech who does his business.  Says nothing's broken.  Thanks, good news finally.

 

Now I'm still in a pretty high level of pain, so they give me some pain medicine.  Meanwhile, the ER has apparently gotten really busy and I don't see the Doc again for about 4 hours when I send Mrs. J out to see if they haven't left for the day or something.

 

They hadn't, they just got swamped.

 

We finally get released about 10PM, by the time we get home the pain and bruising has gone down from my hip past my thigh and knee and starting into my calf. The next morning there hasn't been a lot of improvement so I call my regular Doc and explain the situation and ask for an appointment.  I get one fairly quickly.  He takes a look and says it's not life threatening, nothing's broken, just painful. He also says I'm showing signs of Sciatica. So he bumps up the pain medicine and schedules me for a return visit this week.  I still have difficulty walking, my hip still hurts, so it's been a heckuva week

 

So...That piece of Texas grass was strong enough to bring a 195 LB 6' Guy to the ground.  But...There is a upside to that piece of grass.   We have 4 acres of lawn around our house.  My workshop is not in them.  Our two riding lawn mowers had broken down for the count a while ago. Mrs J had, unsuccessfully, been doing a bit of research on Lawn Mower repair guys in the area.  All we had found to this point required you to bring your mower to them.   We do not have a trailer to bring them to the repair shop and pushing a lawn mower through a couple of more acres is no longer on my "wanna do" list.  (Which can be and often is overridden by Mrs J's "gonna do" list.) Fortunately, after this whole "Flying Wallenza" episode went by, she found a guy who would make house calls.  He came by the next day, spent a few hours, and voila' we now have two working riding lawn mowers. That would be the upside of this adventure.

 

And that bastige hunk of grass is mulch now.

 

Oh, and the AC in my shop works perfectly now.  So...I'm back to woodworking.

 

Given all the "not so fun" we'd had last week, Mrs J. and I did manage to have a bit of fun Saturday.  We went to a wine tasting at our long time friends, the winemakers, at Texas Hills Vinyard winery in Johnson City.  The husband passed away a couple of years ago and the wife has since sold the winery.  The new owners kept the name and kept her on as an advisor.  She is retiring now and this was her Sawadee.  A tasting of 7 of their best wines going back several years.  They were phenomenal!

 

Given that most of the tasters were connoisseurs of Texas Hills wine and we all knew each other, the story (ok lie) tellings that went on, assisted by the wine. were phenomenal also.  Many of them are going on the upcoming river cruise Mrs J has set up.  It's in November on the Douro River in Portugal.  Looking forward to having a lot of fun with "the gang" again. 

 

One final bit of possible good news,  We had a couple come by a while back and look at our house and property a couple of times.  A few days ago, Mrs J got a call from our realtor who said that the couple had just called him.  He told us that they were in the final stages of signing a contract for the sale of their house, expecting that signed document within a week or so.  Once that was done, he said the couple would start the process of putting together an offer for us.  Mrs J had talked to the couple on their two viewings of the property and said they were very nice and upfront about liking the property.  

 

Still a long way from closing, but closest we've been so far.

 

We shall see what we shall see.

 

Peace out, y'All!