Friday Wisdom — Airplanes

We’re getting ready for a vacation and soon I’ll be flying on airplanes. Here’s everything I know about them:

Always keep your number of takeoffs equal to your number of landings.

A good landing is anyone you can walk away from.  A great landing is when they can use the plane again.

The only time you have too much fuel is when you’re on fire.

The two most useless things to a pilot: The sky above you and 30 seconds ago.

A pilot’s favorite day is Flyday.

Just remember that the silver lining you see in that cloud, could be another airplane flying right at you.

Two wrongs don’t might a right, but two wings make an airplane.

I wanted to buy an airplane, but they told me I couldn’t keep the hanger.

Don’t expect fancy food on an airline flight — it’s plane food.

The propeller on an airplane is just a big fan to keep the pilot cool. When it stops you can actually see the pilot start to sweat.

Be careful at the airport — you don’t want a terminal illness.

I’ve heard they’re making an invisible airplane. I can’t see it taking off.

What’s the difference between an airplane pilot and God? God doesn’t think he’s a pilot.

Wednesday Working — They Got Wheels

This week I took a short break from digging trenches to make a few of this wheel bases for our wine barrels:

Made four. Should have moved them into the sun for the picture.

The wood is salvage from a shed I tore down last year but the wheels are new:

And here’s what they look like with a barrel on them:

Heather is redoing the planting in all of them and this one is ready for new plants.

I also did manage a little trench digging:

All of this for one new sprinkler head.

And here are the pipes. Just need one more connection.

I’m going to be taking a short break from irrigation and will get back to this in a week or so. When I sat down to write this, I found three emails from the big box store requesting that I fill out a survey about my experience shopping with them. Everytime I go to the drug store I get a survey too. My doctor’s office has started doing this as well. Is it just me or are big corporate organizations getting more and more emotionally needy – they seem to want constant validation that they are doing okay.

That’s it for this week. If you need me, I’ll be here filling out surveys and leaving reviews for PVC fittings.

As The Pizza Cooks — Episode 25

My last “As The Pizza Cooks” episode had very good stats.  107 likes, 158 views and 31 comments. Discounting the fact that half the comments are mine, that’s not bad for one of my posts.  I should add that this is the first time in about five years that I checked the stats on one of my blog posts.  The only reason I really noticed how many likes I have is that I’ve been getting a lot of email about it.  Well, actually, WordPress has been sending me a lot of email about it.  When I started this blog 13 years ago there was a setting that said, “Get email for: Likes, comments, etc” and I just checked everything.  Never changed it.  I’m not even sure where that button is anymore.  It seems like somewhere, the WP folks changed the admin interface and nothing is where it was.  Maybe I’d know more about it if I checked that kind of thing more than once every five years.

Honestly, I don’t blog for stats, but I do get a bit of a thrill when I get that little email that says someone left a comment or clicked the like button.  I know that you’re thinking that’s a lot of email to be looking at, but honestly I just set some filters in gmail and all that stuff goes to a folder I check once in awhile.  Comments are special though, I do read those and reply.  Maybe I don’t say something world shattering in the reply, but I try.

My father always used to say that I was trying.

Anyway, I do have spam filters set on the blog so most of the junk comments never see the light of day and I don’t allow URL links in comments unless I approve them so I have a little control there.  Once in a rare while a spam comment slips through the filters and I have to manually delete it.  It’s actually rare that I end up deleting a comment and even more rare that I have to block a user.  It’s happened, just not very often.

When I started blogging that was one of my fears, that I’d just start getting annoying, rude or hateful comments.  It’s not happened.  Mostly because I think people head towards FaceBook or other social platforms to be disrespectful.

Turns out that I mostly get really nice comments and well, it’s one of the reasons I blog — for the feeling of community.  I’ve followed some blogs for years and regularly comment on them.  Maybe not brilliant comments, and sadly there isn’t enough time for me to comment on all the blogs I follow.  I checked and there are about 600 blogs on my following list.  90 percent don’t post anymore and I haven’t gone back to clean up the list.

Honestly, I’m constantly amazed that people stop by and comment on my posts.  I’m grateful that you do stop by with a comment or two.

I have been wondering why my last pizza post did so well.  Maybe because I was talking about blogging.  Blogging seems to be a hot topic for a blog post.  If I was trying to do blogging “right” I’d learn from this and post more about blogging.

But I only check stats every five years, so even if I did start posting more about blogging, it will be a long time before I figure out if that is getting me more views and comments.

Well, that’s it for this week, likely I’ll post something next week, but you never know what I’ll do.

Friday Wisdom — Plumbing

Well, you saw the irrigation trench. Pipes go into that trench which means I did a bit of plumbing too. So here’s everything I know about plumbing:

What kind of vegetables do plumber refuse to buy? Leeks.

What happens when a plumber falls asleep? They have pipe dreams.

What do you get when you cross a jeweler with a plumber? A ring around the bathtub.

What is a great give for a plumber? A pipe cleaner.

The police reported that someone stole the toilet from the station. They have nothing to go on.

Did you hear about the depressed plumber? He thought his career was going down the toilet.

What two words make a plumber simile? Overtime pay.

Why are plumbers always tired? Their job is draining.

What one bad habit do plumbers not have? Biting their nails.

What did the plumber say at the poker table? A royal flush is better than a full house.