January chores without a jacket....

I've come to the realization that I'm old.  Yes, it's happened,  I've crossed that invisible line where everything changes.  It's the only explanation of why I, as  life-long winter aficionado, lover of snow and cold, nick-named "Nanook of the North" by my family, must confess that I have been enjoying the freakishly warm weather and have been happy to not have snow on the ground.  It's given me a chance to catch up on the outside chores, all the picking up, putting away, clearing out and so on.

Today's effort was the most rewarding so far, not only did I accomplish some clearing up, but I got paid to do it!  My secret?  Scrap metal!  As the family does projects or finishes odd jobs, we toss all the old metal parts into a pile.  Being busy with work, I had pretty much ignored the pile as it slowly accumulated.  Now with the unemployment coinciding with the warm weather I had the perfect opportunity to start cleaning it up and hauling it up to the scrapyard.  It didn't take long to load up, and it was a beautiful day to saunter along the back roads, checking out the scenery as I rattled along.  I hadn't been up there in a year or two and was really surprised when the woman at the scales remembered my name.  The place was very busy and it was interesting maneuvering my truck and trailer through the traffic and around the massive piles of metal. But no hits or errors, thanks to the...ah, let's call it emphatic and intense training I had backing up gravity boxes when my Dad plopped me on the tractor seat at an early age. Many times the man with the giant sky magnet will delicately drop it over the trailer and unload everything, but today I had to unload it by hand.  I was really happy with the payout on this load, and now I'm thinking that with three or four more loads, I might earn enough to replace the old tires on my truck.

Yep, I backed it in there.

The weatherman, or "weather guesser" as a friend puts it, says we'll be getting back to normal in the next few days, so we put a second load on the trailer to get as much picked up as we could before it gets covered in snow.  Hopefully I'll have time to get it hauled tomorrow or Friday.

Until next time, God bless and take care, my friends.  (And pick up any stray pieces of metal you might find!)