Tales From the Milk Drinker

I borrowed my titling style from Neil for this post.

Yesterday I phoned my thesis supervisor to schedule a meeting and Andy said why don't you come down right now and go kayaking with me so I did. I took my kayak which was a grad present from my parents and he took his and we launched in the hilsborough harbor just on the other side of the bridge and to the left. We paddled for a couple hours. I'm suprised I'm not sore this morning because I thought I would be.

I like that our working repore is like this. Some other supervisors worry me that they would try to kill their students and eat them.

Hey all. Last week I house sat for my uncle and this week has been busy at home. My dad and I fixed up the deck at the cottage. The railways ties buried in the ground that it sits on were all the wrong heights for some reason so we used a level to determine how too tall each one was and then planed to cut them off with a chainsaw.

Many people have a chainsaw at home in the basement or barn that only sees action every three years or so. This was the case with ours. We screwed with the damb thing for over an hour trying to get the engine started but it refused. We took it to Derrick's dad Kenny and he said that anything with an engine really should be used at least every couple of months - leaving a chainsaw sitting for years is begging for it to not work the next time you try to use it. The gasoline left over in the saw goes through a chemical process that turns it into some bad stuff and plugs the engine all up. He's unplugging it this week.

In the meantime we went out and bought a new saw pictured Hayaw:

It's electric. That means there's no f****** around with it when you need it. Just plug it in and away you go. True it may not be as powerful as a gas saw, but it can cut anything the size of a railway tie or so like a hot knife through butter and that's basically as big of wood as we ever cut. This thing is going to be great for keeping the firewood pile stocked up too. When cutting firewood you usually need to set the saw down between cuts to use both hands to reposition the log. That's when this saw really shines because with a gas saw it most often stalls when you take your finger off the throttle then you have to fight with the thing for two minutes to get it to start again. Not anymore. Now i can set the saw down midcut and it's just a matter of pushing the switch that runs the motor and I'm cutting away again.

In other news I just won my first ebay auction for a pair of new Powerlifting knee wraps. I had priced these from the only guy who sells them in canada and they were going to cost 39 bucks plus 12 dollars for shipping. I got them on ebay for 18buck plus ten for shipping.

I've also got my eye on a teddy ruxpin dvd, the one I can't find in stores that's auctioning off with only a day left and no bids yet. The starting price is like 2 bucks which I would be thrilled to pay, as the shipping to Canada is only five dollars american.

So is anyone planning to come home any time soon? I may be planning to visit Neil and potentially Derrick.