So nobody has anything to say?
 

Okay, I'll start.

So my sister and brother in-law bought a travel trailer last year. Site on seen because their son said it was really nice and good deal. Of course the fresh water tank was removed so they can't carry fresh water. It weighs over 7,000 lbs, they have a Mini Cooper and an 02 Explorer, yes the ones that rolled over. No problem, their 'guy' that works on their vehicles says the Explorer will tow that no problem. The Explorer will move it but I and others finally convinced her that it's like the 'tail wagging the dog' towing that trailer with an Explorer. It's over 7,000 lbs before she loads it with all her stuff. Short trips, ok, cross country, not me.

The other day she tells Lynda that she saw a Ford F650 and maybe they would look for one of those? I told her good idea, she already has an extension ladder so she can get in it and they could just set the trailer on the back and not have to tow it, thing has a 26,000 lbs GVWR.

Then her son tells her to get a '99 Suburban because he can work on it, it still has the older style engines. A 14 year old truck, guaranteed he has to work on it, a lot and frequently. He only works 7 days a week and is just making it so he should have plenty of time to work on their 14 year old truck. Oh, they live in FL, he lives in TN.

She just bought a new Samsung S4 or whatever, the latest. Her old phone, same as mine but few months newer was just painfully slow. It wouldn't do anything without waiting and waiting and waiting. Mine works fine. So she tells me about her new phone and how slow the old one is and the fact that she has over TWO THOUSAND text messages saved on her phone and has never cleared the call log. She doesn't want to delete the text messages because there's lot's of pictures in there she wants to save. I told it was time to empty the garbage can and maybe it would run a little better.

I don't know where she came from, sometimes I think she was adopted.

Im here Hank ,not much going on here lately ,Im trying to get the yard and garden under controll from all the rain we have been getting lately .I hate to go on vacation and leave my chores unfinished so I finally got done .We are heading to Maryland on Thursday after Joan gets off work ,I will be cleaning the Chevelle next.

Hank, I have had my hands full lately, sorry.

Anyway, I think that every family has someone who thinks they know everything. My younger sister says that is me because I tell her when she is making a bad decision, and I am right probably 95% of the time.

I think that your sister wants to "trust" that her son will take care of her. But the 1st purchase of a travel trailer should have been an eye opener. It is so hard watching people making "mistake purchases" and they don't listen to the people who are really trying to help them and know what they are talking about. I hope that she does, soon, listen to you.

I've been cutting up all the trees that were blown over last Monday. Burned up my Poulan chain saw. Kathy bought me a new Stihl farm boss for my birthday. Man, what a difference. This thing cuts! Today I start on the 7' tall wood fence that got beat up. 40' of board and 6 posts broken. I have to dig out all the concrete that holds the posts in the ground, then replace them. Been fighting with the insurance company. Tree company gave me a 3600 dollar estimate. Insurance will only cover 1000. Minus 250 deductible. I rented a Cat back-hoe to get the bigger limbs that were stuck in the tree tops down. A little scary.

Hank, I think we all have relatives like that. A couple of my brothers are constantly asking for my advice. They do the exact opposite of what I recommend, with bad results.

Brian, sounds like a good vacation. We visited Utah and several other western states a few years ago. The Grand Canyon is definitely impressive but Utah, wow! That whole state could be a national park, Bryce Canyon was my favorite.

Tony, sorry to hear about the damage, didn't realize you got hit hard by the storm.

I've been kind of busy too. We had the beam replaced on the 2nd story deck. It was 2 2x12s, 22' 9" long married together. The ends were rotting and a previous owner had replaced the 4x4 posts with steel posts. The numbskull sat the posts on top of the concrete patio below which wasn't designed to hold that much wait. End result of the rot and concrete slab sinking was the outside corners of the deck sagging.

Had a steel i-beam installed to replace the wood. By going to steel we could get by with 2 posts instead of 4. I removed all the screens on the deck because I didn't want the frames buckling when they lifted the corners up. It was also an opportunity to paint the posts holding the roof. It's all painted now and I have some of the screens back in, should finish that up today.

It's a lot cleaner look with only 2 posts and the i-beam is 8"x8". That's only 3.5" smaller, in height, than the 2x12 but it opened up the view a lot. It was sure interesting watching them lift the i-beam up. An 8"x8" i-beam weighs 31 lbs/ft. So at 22'9" it weighs a little over 700lbs.

Glad everyone is doing well, sorry about the storm damage Tony.

We visited the Grand Canyon last year when we were in Arizona. I did the "Sky Walk". The view was breath taking! Carol wouldn't do it because she's afraid of heights. Utah is definitely an awesome state! We went to the Dinosaur National Monument (altot of dinosaur bones) Bryce Canyon and saw the "Hoodoos" and then we went as far west as Nevada and then Bonneville Salt Flats.
We put over 1600 miles on the rental car. Had an awesome time!

Sorry to hear about all the damage Tony. I remember seeing that storm front coming through there and thought... Oh oh, that's not good.

We didn't do the sky walk, we started in Colorado, Pikes Peak and a few other sites. Then Mesa Verda, Monument Valley, Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, in the park on the south rim. Then Zion, Bryce, Arches and Capital Riff in Utah. We were going to go to Rocky Mountain National park but we were worn out by then and headed home. We drove the whole trip, around 5,000 miles.

It's tough to decide, the Caribbean, Hawaii, the western trip. They're all beautiful but different. Next we want to do the northern central part of the country. Glacier National Park, Old Faithful, etc.

Glad you enjoyed it, this is a beautiful country.

Brian distracted me with his post about his trip and I forgot, or maybe I have ADD.

Anyway, I was working on the back wall of the house inside the 2nd story screened in deck Today. It was about 5:00 and I was done, hot and muggy again today. Sat down with a beer on the patio under the deck to relax. I look out and near a tree, I'm guessing about 75' away, I see this cloud, close to 20' up At first I thought flying ants. We have them and every year or so they just rise up out of the grass, millions of them. They hang around for 30-45 minutes then they're gone.

So I kept looking at this cloud but it's not dark like flying ants, it's yellow, and I can see individual whatever's flying around. So I keep looking and listening and I can hear a buzz from them. Bees, thousands or them. Now there is a lawn service cutting the lawn across the street next to our house, we're on a corner. He's using a commercial zero turn and they're loud and I can still here the buzz.

Went and grabbed the camera but the battery was dead, thought about using my phone but it was too far away for that. No way I was going out there to get a picture. Lynda was upstairs in our bathroom and I told her to take a look. She didn't have her glasses on, she was looking through the window and the screens on the upstairs deck and she could see the cloud of bees and she can't see shit without her glasses.

The tree is about 50' tall, has several knot holes where small animals go in. Don't know if I need tyo have something done about it but I know I'm staying away from it.

I've been working adding to the GDP so all of you can enjoy your lives. Your welcome

Good luck with the clean up Tony. We were lucky, we only had some hard downpours.

Tony, how did the weather treat you yesterday? Looked like there was a lot of lightening up your way. Everybody got dumped on with rain but the lightening up your way looked bad. Hope all is well.

We got some lightning strikes, heavy rain, and some high winds. Not much damage here, but my brothers house, a couple of miles away, had some trees come down. They lost power for most of the afternoon. raining here now. Looks like a pretty good storm rolling in from the NW.

Just looked at the weather map, looks like a big cell over Flint right now, stay safe.

I have something to say!!!!!
Hurry up 4th of July and a long 4 dayer.......

We got some high winds in Fenton and lost a tree that was pushed over...time to get the chain saw sharpened and get to work.

Got a funny story for you that I bet has not happened to anyone else.

I was down in Fort Wayne for work this week and on Wed morning I went to leave my room at the Hampton Inn and I was locked in.

At first I was thinking I was doing something wrong and after a couple of minutes I was sure I was doing it right and I had the dead bolt undone. I then had to call the front desk and the girl came up with the master electronic key and still could not get it open. They then had to call the maintenance guy which is not on site...so a half hour later he showed up and tried again with the master key and nothing. He then went and got a crow bar and saw zaw and proceeded to pry the door open enough to get the saw zaw in to cut the bolt action off...so 45 minutes later I'm out. They said it has never happened before and he has been a building maintenance guy for the hotel owner who has 15 hotels in the area for 30 years.

I stay there a least 2 times a month and all they gave me is room for free for that night and it did not benefit me in one bit because TRW pays for it anyway. Oh well its funny now.

Sounds like you're a very patient person. I would have been a little upset, specially if i were goin home.

I was, but I knew it was not anyone's fault and it was just one of those things and I was going into the office so I was just a little late..oh yeah I got a call that the rental car I was driving had to brought to the closest Enterprise location for a exchange because of a saftey recall....

Sounds like you're on a roll Ric. Tree down, locked in a hotel room, driving a car that has a safety recall. You're right though, you weren't hurt just little inconvenience, nothing to get all worked up about.

I got a fun one. just had my home appraised for a VA refinance. it came in 70,000 less than my last appraisal in 2009. good times

Oh man. So what are you going to do ?

for now, not sure. the results of the appraisal definitely has me confused and uncertain

This is not my week, got home from Fort Wayne and a letter from the IRS stating I screwed up on my 2011 taxes and I owe them $2500 because of a medical account I have set up at work, I know I don't, but now have to get it fixed and back to IRS before July 24. Got to love our government.

That sucks, don't want to mess with them guys. And no you don't love our government, country yes, government no.

I totally agree with you Hank.

When we had our taxes done this year, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for 31,726 dollars. We sold some Harley stock to build the place in Florida. Had to pay all the taxes on that. The couple that had their taxes done just before us are getting a refund of 9500 dollars, due to "earned income tax credit". The accounting firm has had a big number of people from the City of Flint move to their area, due to the government saying our County was too "segregated", so they, in their infinite wisdom, have moved the hood rats to the suburbs, on our tax dollar. The are both part time workers, on food stamps, section 8 housing, and who knows what other government stuff they get. Now I'm mad again this morning. Oh yeah, the accountant said to make the check out to UST because the gov thinks that using IRS on the check is too harsh of wording.

Melonhead, I would be looking for a different appraisal company. After all, I just heard BHO say the other day how much the housing market has improved, thanks to him and his policies. He wouldn't be telling us a lie, would he?

Wow, you must have sold a shit load of stock Tony, couldn't you have spread the sale out over a couple years. I don't know your tax situation so maybe it wouldn't have helped.

EDIT: Never mind, that would be capitol gains, long term I assume, not earned income. It's still early, haven't even finished my first cup of coffee.

I always liked that earned income credit, "You didn't earn shit last year so here's some of Tony's money." Kind of a Robin Hood thing they got going on.

Almost one third of the sale had to pay Fed and State capital gains taxes. It would have been more if we waited until this year, as the capital gains taxes are going up to support the stinkin Affordable Health Care Act. Also know as "give more free shit away".