Category: Life
xkcd: Collections
Engineer at Work
Tradition
Grandmommy’s Clock
My paternal grandmother stitched this clock from a kit many years ago. It’s spent most of the past decade carefully packed away in a box since it was damaged. It had fallen on the floor when someone brushed against it, shattering the glass and mangling the frame. A few weeks ago I found it as I was making sure I had found all the boxes with photos. Instead of putting it away, I carried it to Jack and asked if he could glue the frame back together. It took him about 20 minutes.
The clock originally had a cord to supply electricity to the workings, but the cord had been cut at some point. Rather than try to repair it, I went to Michaels and bought a battery operated clock kit. The brass hands in the kit didn’t show up very well across the room, so Jack sprayed the hands with Copper Rustoleum. Without the flare of the camera flash, the hands are about the same color as the Roman numerals.
I am very happy to have the clock working again, hung on the wall in a low-traffic area.
Jack and His Mom
Cake Wrecks
Cake Wrecks: the blog title explains all.
Colorado Springs Farmers Markets: 2011 Schedule
Colorado Springs Farmers Markets: 2011 Schedule, courtesy of SpringsBargains: it looks like they moved the Monument market to the other side of I-25.
Bridge Building
Hazmat Spill near Monument Colorado
I don’t know how many of my readers know that I live near Monument Colorado. This morning my mother woke me with a telephone call to tell me there was an evacuation near Monument due to a leak of hydrochloric acid. A train car is leaking and there is a chance of a vapor cloud. I had to look up the cross streets in Google maps to find the evacuation area. I think we are a comfortable distance away but am monitoring the situation via local television. Since I don’t normally watch local television, I am once again amazed at the the commercial to content ratio.
I hope they get the area cleaned up quickly so that 250 families that have been evacuated can return. Trains along that track usually carry coal down from the north, or the empties from the south, but we’ll occasionally see other types of freight. The tracks, to judge from the railroad crossing we use every day, are well maintained. The twitter hash tag is #monumentacidleak.