I’ve fixed blenders before. Well, there was one that I tried to fix many years ago. It was one of those ones with like 20 buttons on the front. I only used two of the buttons, why did it need so many buttons? So I never put it back together, mainly because the label that goes around the buttons needed to be glued back on, and I couldn’t think of what glue to use. I actually still have that problem since I bought another blender like that a few years ago, and its label is coming off too. I need to find out what kind of glue that is.

Well, anyway, so back when I was tired of buttons, I found out about the Osterizer Beehive, and decided to get one. I ended up buying a new one, which I think was a mistake. It stopped running after only a few uses. I fixed it. What I found was that the brushes on the motor would stick inside the brush guides or whatever, and would stop making contact with the motor. I tried to make some modifications that would prevent them from sticking so easily. It worked for a long time, but I had to do it again sometimes. Eventually it died again and I didn’t feel like messing with the brushes anymore, so since I had more money, I ended up ordering an Osterizer in avocado green from the 70s (with 12 speeds), and I also splurged and got a Vitamix. Haven’t had much trouble with either of those.

Anyway, a friend of mine has an Osterizer that is more like a Vitamix, and she said it had stopped running, so I said I might be able to fix it. I took it home and tested it. Sure enough, it had stopped running. Well a couple of days later, I finally got around to taking a closer look. It turned out there was a reset button on the bottom. I pressed it, plugged the blender back in, and it worked! So that was easy enough. I guess I really can fix blenders.

I helped my friend install a new water heater in his apartment building. It was hard, but we did it. However, it ended up having a lot of problems even though it was brand new, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen to it now.

My friend Barb had me do some yard work at her place to clear up some broken tree branches and other storm debris. I had purchased a small electric chain saw just for this job, but I neglected to bring my pole saw, which would have been handy. Fortunately I at least did bring a hand saw, and Barb had some wooden poles and scraps of wood that I was able to screw together to form a pole saw. First I only used one pole and got a branch from a small oak, but after getting that branch, I saw another broken branch above it. After a moment of disbelief at what I was about to do, I went ahead and added additional length to the makeshift pole saw. With the additional weight, it actually made sawing off this second branch easier, since the weight pulled down on the blade and all I had to do was push it back up. Well, after the second branch was down, a third even higher branch was revealed and I repeated the same process as before. I stared in disbelief, and then added an entire second pole. I really struggled to get it up to the third branch, but I finally did, and it was so much easier after that.

A couple at my church hired me to help them in their backyard garden. They had a variety of containers full of compost that they had been developing over a period of time and it was now ready to use. They had me move it around to parts of the yard where it could be used, and also move some of it from one container to another for continued development. They also had a heavy infestation of spring onions that they try to remove from the yard every year or so, but they still come back, so they had me work on that, as well as pulling up other weeds.