Sucky week.

Last weekend I was in NYC at Krass' bachelor party.  I had a really good time, we did a escape room-ish type thing (more game based than puzzle based), which was a lot of fun.  That was the last thing that went right though.  My air mattress developed a few new holes.  The first night I didn't get much of any sleep.  I did get to see a nice sunrise though (I slept out on the balcony).  The second night was better since Matt and I taped up at least one of the big holes.  

The ride home was awful, lots of accidents, and unplowed roads.  And of course when I stopped for dinner there was a tour bus there, and the only restaurant open was Roy Rogers, the others were closed for no discernible reason despite being 7PM.  

Wednesday we got more snow and I got sick. I still don't know what it was, some weird chest cold thing, so I didn't go in Thursday or Friday.  Saturday was of course brutally cold, so the snowblower wouldn't run and it turned out that two storms ago (what I drove home in) was layered snow and ice, and that had completely frozen into the snowblower, so the auger wouldn't have worked anyways, and we got enough that it would would have been a one way trip if I had just tried to drive over it assuming I actually made it.

So instead of clearing snow on Saturday, I tried a few things.  I was thinking of trying a low-carb diet, so I tried to make some bread replacements.  The first was eggplant.  I tried to fry a few pieces, but they never firmed up even after the point of being burnt. 

The ones I ran through the dehydrator came out fine though.  Eggplant is a little odd texture-wise, but could work.  

I had made a zucchini crust in the past that failed because of moisture, so I tried instead putting it in the dehydrator.  That was a terrible awful mistake.

So it turns out that I did still have a pipe freeze, the laundry pipe froze again.  It got down to -12 according to my thermometer, but I also never put a spaceheater in the laundry room like I did last winter.  Something to consider if it gets that cold in the future.  The bathroom did not freeze though, and this thawed just a couple of hours after sun hit the wall, so it is definitely better.  

I also and and cut the toe-kick panels for my cabinets, since they were just kind of sitting on a shelf and didn't require I go outside.

When I went to get the measurements for them, I noticed some water damage on my cabinets.

A quick investigation turned up that my dishwasher apparently leaks now.  This is the underside of the dishwasher.  

I tried Sunday morning to get the snowblower thawed out.  I started with the little propane heater.  Turns out it doesn't work anymore, there is as problem with the plumbing in it, since the cylinder definitely had propane in it, but none was coming out when I tried to light it.

So I brought out the big guns.  This was overkill, but worked, and worked very quickly.  Unfortunately I am now out of kerosene though.  I bought a Kerosene can and then never put any in it.   

Because of the weird layers of ice and whatnot, I didn't break any shear pins today (which is a record for those curious) and it really beat my arms since it wouldn't steer worth a damn and was constantly riding up on the ice.  And the gear selector nearly doesn't work anymore.  But the place is clear.  Kinda.  A lot of the places it wouldn't dig and there is still three or four inches of ice, but the car and truck can get in and out.  I did manage to get a little of the apron asphalt to show, so the sun this week should finish clearing the apron at least.

I wanted to go look at a Massey Ferguson tractor this weekend, but I needed to clear the driveway first.  Oh well, I hope it is still there later in the week, and I will have to take off early, since it is at a used tractor dealer that closes at 5 up by the Canadian border (which is 4 hours away).  They only want 6k for it, though it is a little older than I wanted.  They say that they have a mid-mount mower deck available for it as well.