August 17, 2008 

  since the weather was cooperating and I had a bit of time I did not have to attend to anything else, I started weeding the garden at 6 am yesterday morning. I determined that the corn experiment was a failure this year (hey, I gotta try!) and used it as a green manure crop and tilled it under. By 10 am, the sun was getting pretty warm and I had to take more frequent breaks. 

I knew better, but humans tend to be lazy, so I did not bother to go get my leather gloves about 8 am when I decided I was indeed going to till. The drive band fell off (which is why you see many rototiller without the drive band cover on as this phenomenon is not unusual) and I used a pair of needle nose pliers as they were handy. Which in hindsight is a bad combination with a lack of gloves... as I take out my left index finger. I believed I did scream.. and then yelled at myself for knowing better. Washing off all the dirt/blood combo, I determined I have seen worse, so used vet wrap and then porus tape to hold it on, as I have deemed over the years that Band-Aids do not hold up to the kind of work I am doing today.

When I took breaks, I was sending the Summer 2005 pdf out left and right. Someone was asking how to build a solar oven on one of my newsgroups and I said to email me and I would send one to anyone who wanted one. There are 4,000 people on that news site, so I had more than a few requests. If you are reading this and want one too, just email me and put Sample in the subject line.

I also tore my house apart and finally got to organizing and tossing stuff from the spare rooms which was the two places which got the brunt of the boxes and other things when my stuff was moved out of the infamous basement during a very rainy day. I can actually have guests stay in a real bed now. I have only been trying to get to that since last January.