Hotter than Blazes!

Well, it is all relative, for Oregon it is hot.  99 degrees today!  I will be in the pool!  It is hotter everywhere, you know.   This drought is world wide, ask India or our own Midwest.  Corn it seems is in every food and in the gasoline to drive our cars and there won't be much this summer!  How much hotter does it need to get for you to believe in Global Warming?  I wonder how much more coal we need to burn to really screw up the atmosphere?  Seems like a challenge, doesn't it?
   Chic-a-fil seems to think we are challenging God in the bedroom when it is really this small blue orb that we are playing with.  It is not nice to fool with Mother Nature!  It will get hotter, that is for sure, and a lot more weird weather before we will admit...anything!  That is just the way people are.  Stubborn.
   I have a well on my little one third acre, one of the first things I did over 40 years ago.  It is only 20 feet deep and has never run out of water, although I am not so presumptuous as to think this might never happen.  I pray to the well gods every time I turn on the pump.  So far that works.

   So, how hot is it where you are?  and what do you do to cool down?  I don't have air conditioning, would only need it one week a year in Oregon.  I have my little garden pool and that is where I will be.

Industrial Welding...

Is not a fun part of what I do.  I seldom do it; I have to be dragged into it and I don't enjoy it at all.
It is heavy, dirty work, tons of grinding, sparks flying everywhere.  Hot steel and laying down welds
for hours on end.  I have been doing this for three days now and the neighbors are irritated and I am

 Heavy Gates in front of my shop

tired.

   It has been all the more frustrating because these are not even my gates.  I am repairing the work of another fabricator. These are heavy farm gates and not my style at all.  The only "art" now is in just trying to do it right.  Clean up the welds, prevent water from leaking into the tubular steel and replacing the hinges with better ones.

   I am doing this all myself.  My helper is off fighting fires, out somewhere saving a forest from burning down.

   There will be a funny side to this story.  Well it is funny now, it wasn't then.  These gates weigh about 200 pounds and it is a job in itself to leverage them onto the work table.  I have set up a work area next to my little garden pool.  The weather is finally nice and the water is inviting.



 The weight of the gates!



  As I finished one side of a gate I would remove it from the table and set it next to an arbor that is just in front of the pool.

Then I heard the crash and had enough sense to just watch what was happening.  I made no effort to stop it and it was all in slow motion.  It all went tumbling down.  The weight of the gates caused the arbor to fall over.  One potted Wave Petunia and the roof of the arbor went swimming in the pool.

 Sink or Swim!

   No harm to the gates!   So, I went swimming!  It is a private backyard.  I was skinny dipping!

   All's well that ends well.  The roof is out and the gates are done!

What I really do is HERE