Boring

Alene and Bailey are out of town at a funeral. Caiden is with his mom. I'm bored.

I got a ton done today, most notably something I thought was pretty much impossible without a torch. I moved our old gas fire stove from the basement to the garage, into the back of the truck. My guess is the thing weighs a good 600-800 lbs (I'm not kidding). Russ came over to help. We accomplished it by me building a "sled" of sorts for it to fit into and slide on. We attached a couple of tow ropes to both my truck and around the stove. We then proceeded to move the truck 12" at a time as we dragged the sled up the stairs, allowing time to get the front lip of the sled up over the next step. It was tedious, but we finally got it up to the garage.

Then we had to figure out how to get it into the back of the truck. We thought about borrowing my brother's friends engine hoist, but we would have had to buy additional chain and it would have taken a long time. I thought I'd hit up my neighbor, who owns a 4 wheeler, to see if he had any ramps. We lucked out. He brought over his two ramps and we slid the thing up into the back of the truck. Mission FRIGGIN' accomplished. I've been wanting to get that thing out of my basement for SO LONG.

Now I have to deliver it to Castle Dale, where the buyer has offered to pay me an extra $100 to deliver it. However, I'm getting a little nervous as I've called him for two days and he has not returned my calls. I'd be pissed if he backed out (after completely committing to buy it) and ignored me. Then I'd have a giant metal stove in the back of my truck.

BUT, I did just (finally) finish fixing the water pump issue on the Chevy. I ended up needing to get a new water pump, which was fairly cheap ($50). The issue though was that I could not get the fan clutch off the old water pump. It was on there VERY tight and it was an awkward thing to even grip in order to give it enough force to remove it. I finally went into Auto Zone and asked the dude behind the counter if he had any advice. He toyed with it for a bit, thinking it would be easy, then he started to get pissed (just like I had the past 3 nights, throwing tools and yelling at Alene and Caiden). After 20+ minutes, he finally get it to break free. I could not thank him enough at how gracious he was. I'm going to call the store and just let his manager know how much I appreciated him and I will always go to Auto Zone for my car needs.

I have a few small regrets, but I'm not sure I could have done anything about it. The wall got scuffed up a bit on the stairway up. Nothing that a small amount of drywall mud patch and some paint will fix. I also damaged the door frame going into the garage as the tow rope rubbed against it on the way out. No big deal really, I can fix that too. In fact, nobody will likely notice it.

Here are some pictures of us moving the stove:

This is the base I made for it. It was really heavy, with 2x10 boards along the bottom, 2x4 frames, and some melamine (slippery) boards along the bottom to help it slide.




Pulling it up the stairs with a tow rope


More of the rope going to the truck. I used some climbers webbing doubled up at the very end. That stuff is STRONG.


In the back of the truck. I covered it with a tarp and used some straps to tie it down.




I've completely gotten off topic. Boredom. Most men would probably relish this time, and there is a bit of me that has, but in the end, my life feels empty when I don't have my wife or children near me. It has made me dwell on my belief that families are eternal and I want to be with my family beyond this life. I cannot imagine a life without some sort of hope that we can be together beyond this life. Why even try to stay together if you cannot imagine the possibility? I mean, I understand the "seize the day" attitude, but can't you have both?

I've been really mean to Alene lately. Just short with her, mostly stupidity on my part because of my frustration over a simple fix that I could not "simply" fix. It was eating at me every day and I could not sit until it was fixed. I really miss her and bailey and caiden.

I'm killing my time by watching movies and Season 1/2 of the office on netflix via my xbox 360. It's kind of nice to watch something without interruption, but I'll trade the interruption of my crying daughter, or my son talking about pokemon, or my wife needing me to listen to her ANY DAY now. A day alone is long enough. Come back Alene (I know, I'll see you Sunday).