The BGF is fine, by the way. I put in three quarts of new Mercon V transmission fluid, just like the owner’s manual said to use, and started the vehicle, backed it up, and drove it down the driveway, and it was fine. It was a little shakey on startup; maybe that was due to …

I think Ford is not terribly excited about consumers working on their (our) vehicles. They hide the oil filter between the front driver’s tire and the bumper, and don’t tell you where it is. (Don’t you think the oil filter belongs, oh, I don’t know, somewhere near the oil pan?) They scramble the engine layout, …

Actually I can’t make weeks at home, so I can’t truthfully advertise homemade weeks. If I could, I would have made about a thousand of them already and quit my job. In the absence of that, however, I’ll document all the homemamde stuff I made this weekend. I’ll also try to document how those homemade …

My daughters Emma and Becca and I were driving home from the Spokane Temple on Saturday evening when a big fat whitetail doe meandered out in front of me. It was raining; the road was wet, I slammed on my brakes, and she just kept coming.
WHAM!-thmp.
I pulled over as quick as I could and left …

A short illustrative story withal: Once upon a time we were tooling up the highway amidst the mountains of British Columbia, on our way to Canada’s beautiful Banff National Park. Just after sunset we stopped the car to let the kids run around and throw rocks in the river. We almost didn’t get going again. …

Remember the flying deer? Let’s see, that was in May, and this being November it was high time to get Dexter The Battered Red Honda in for some surgery. I got a new fender and hood from a wrecking yard a month ago, and they’ve just been leaning on the wood pile awaiting my pleasure; …

I like changing oil; it’s a good dirty job that needs to be done and doesn’t take long, and I can save a bundle doing it myself. Besides, it’s a good time to check other fluid levels in the vehicle, look at the air filter, and generally ensure I know what’s going on under the …

We have a Bushy-Tailed Wood Rat building, and rebuilding, a nest in the engine of the BGF. So technically, I suppose we have a BTWR in the BGF, or ABTWRNDBGF.
How do we know it’s a BTWR? I met him one morning, trapped under the recycle bin on the back porch. The dogs had been sniffing …

Sunday morning I was doing one of my favorite Sunday things: Driving to fulfill a church assignment in a distant town. It was early morning, the mountainsides were green and thick with trees, the jagged peaks bright with snow. I followed the river all the way up the valley, admiring the mountain maples bright with …