Another Dead Car

I made a quick trip into town yesterday to deposit some checks. My last stop was at the mall. When I came out and tried to start the police cruiser, however, I got nothing. It wouldn’t start. That car has been known to have issues with the starter in the past, but I was pretty sure that had been fixed. I called the husband. He and two of our employees were at home working on the shop. He said they needed to finish setting the last truss and then he would head into town to see what the problem was.

I went to Starbucks and had a sandwich for lunch and walked around downtown a bit. When the husband arrived, he determined the problem was a dead battery. That battery was original to the car, and the car is 12 years old. He got the car started for me. I drove home and he went to get a new battery.

I am starting to develop a complex about cars (and machinery in general), but he pointed out that the car had done me a big favor by breaking down in town and not halfway to Spokane in an area with no cell service.

Okay.

The good news is that they got the trusses set on the other side of the new shop. Now it doesn’t look so lopsided:

The plan is to get the roof sheathed and the metal roofing put on by the middle of the summer and then reassess. It would be lovely to get the floor poured, a couple of doors installed, and some siding put on, too, but we’ll have to see how things play out. Just getting the roof on is going to be huge because it will let him store equipment and concrete forms out of the weather.

The left side of the shop roof is a full south-facing area, and the husband was musing the other day about putting solar panels up there. We’d have to do a serious cost-benefit analysis on that idea. Solar panels work great in California, but this is Montana. Some things just don’t make sense. (I am imagining them buried under three feet of snow in February.)

I am going to try to knock out a couple of small zipper bags today. One of them is a design idea that has been knocking around inside my head for a few weeks. I also need one for the Redwood Tote. And I need to cut out another batch of grocery bags.