Holiday Preparation and Electricity

Christmas preparations began early this year ... outdoor lights setup before Thanksgiving ... but most of the work was done during the long Thanksgiving Day weekend.

Neighbors came over to help make cookies and assemble gingerbread houses. Frosting got everywhere ... including on one chef's face.

  

Trimming the Christmas Tree was next.

Electricity and The Light

Pictured below is a light that was either stepped on or otherwise broken. Notice that this is an older incandescent variety bulb.

First Victim: Sara sliced her finger on the glass that was broken around the bulb.

Second Victim: RJ was determined to help by getting the bulb out of the socket. He did this while the lights were plugged in. Turns out that 110V with 15amps was ready to begin flowing through the broken filaments when a circuit was completed. This left two pin hole burn marks on RJ's fingers. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the burn marks because they were healed by the next morning.

Thanksgiving 2019

The BCC was full, so Aunt Rita used the backup plan ... the Annapolis Yacht Club. The backup plan was good because we got to see lots for sale in Sherwood and visit the McDonalds before 'dinner'. The yacht club had many more food options ... delicious!

After dinner we went to Baltimore to hang out with Aunt Debbie and celebrate Granddad's birthday. The next day Sara did some Black Friday shopping while the kids and I got some more dirt for the garden. We were supposed to hang Christmas lights, but we couldn't find them.

Julia Starts Skating

While Mom was out of town, we had a packed schedule:

• 10:10am - 10:40am Swim lesson for Julia
• 11:30am - 1:30pm Bronwyn's Birthday party at Medstar Capitals Iceplex
• 1:40pm - whenever RJ playdate with Bradley
• 2:00pm - 3:30pm Grace's Birthday Party

Julia's first time on skates

Julia took a more cautious approach than RJ ... she fell a lot less and moved a lot slower. After 20 minutes she was skating on her own.

Public Skate

Julia had enough fun that she wanted to go skating again. So a week later, while RJ played hockey, we skated on the other rink. Sara took a video (from far away).

Muffler Gone Bad

The muffler on the new wood chipper has been reduced to a heap of metal, so I decided it was time to replace it.

As luck would have it, the bolt that holds the muffler in place sheered off, so installing a new one was impossible ... unless you took apart the entire chipper and drilled the old bolt out.

So that is what I did ... and it only took 2 hours to get the impeller off the motor shaft. This task involved spraying a lot of WD-40 into the removed screw hole, heating the impeller, and pulling with all my might with 2 pry bars. Finally I read somewhere that the impeller is designed to tighten as the motor spins, so I hammered the impeller in the opposite direction or normal motion while holding the motor in place by putting tension on the starter cord. Luckily it came loose without breaking the starter cord. You would have thought that 1 of the 50 videos/blogs/forums on the internet would have explained this.

I started by purchasing a bolt/screw removal kit from Home Depot. The 'all-in-one' kit didn't do a good job drilling, so I had to use another drill bit for that. But the extractor worked like a charm once I had the hole drilled.

After using every tool in the house (impact wrench, variety of wrenches, pliers, air compressor, etc.), I was able to install a new $70 muffler for the Briggs and Stratton 1450 series engine that I obtained from EBay.