Tuesday, March 17, 2015

No Saints!

I don't believe in saints.  I've never met one. Don't suppose I ever will.

So today's day, St. Patricks' day, is a non event for this non believer.

But..... I love the shamrocks and the green and I watch the Irish drinking and the wannabe Irish drinking in awe.  How can they chug it down like that?

I like the parades and the drama and the drums and the fifes and bagpipes.

And then its' all over and so be it.

I don't believe in saints.   Never met one.  Am confident I never will.

My right shoulder is still problematic and my arm goes numb off and on but it's better.  There are ten bags of wood pellet fuel piled in my car, done so by a clerk at Mega Foods, and I can't get them out until my shoulder de-inflames and no doubt that will re inflame it for another two weeks time.  But I had a coupon and I had to use it, to get $10 off of $50.  That's significant savings for cat litter, which is what I use pellet fuel for.

There's been lots of cat drama lately and I had to bow out as it gets to me quickly.   It's over the Lebanon Safeway cats.  I guess Safeway trapped many of the cats fed behind the store. They claim they took them to the farm of an old woman who shops there and who helps feral cats.

But many area cat people don't believe them and petitions have been circulated and signed and accusations made.  I think I might know who that old woman is who took them and that would settle it if they're out there, that Safeway actually did relocate them and did not kill them.  Who knows.

The trouble is someone is feeding them on Safeway's property and long ago, a Safeway employee got the cats fixed at the FCCO, according to what I was told.  But then more came and were not fixed by the people who feed them and Safeway got fed up is what I understand and banned the feeders from the property.   I got that information from a combination of both sides.  Sounds like all that needs done is the cats trapped and fixed and also at other places where this couple feed other cats, if they are not fixed, including at their residence.  

Sounds like the couple need to buy a trap and learn how to use it.  That would be awesome.   If you feed them, you have to fix them.  Simple as that.

But as my luck would have it, the cat person most upset who forwarded me the information in the beginning, in the end, wanted me to do the work---trap them, transport them to be fixed, and after that, I have no idea where the cats were to go and I got no further response over it.  This led me to go nuts last night.

How could they do that again, I ranted.  How could she raise holy hell over the situation but expect me to do the work?  Don't they know my right arm does not even work right now?

 I could not even sleep until finally I had to NyQuilize to sleep and get over it.  I do not know why it touched off such a nerve in me.  I suppose because this is what happened just over a year ago, when I got asked to help with those 60 cats abandoned over on Olson Lane and was promised I'd not end up with any cats but I did and also with an injury that took months to heal and while it did, I struggled and nobody helped me out here.   So that I get to believe I'm not even thought of as a human being, but rather more like a machine that doesn't really feel all the pain a human can feel, in their minds or their bodies.  And that they laugh at me, when I protest or cry in pain.  I suppose all these thoughts made me nuts last night.

This morning I told both parties, the feeders and the woman who laid it on my lap I would be unable to help.   It was the right call on my part.  The feeders are very nice and they can easily learn to trap and once they do, they will feel liberated because no longer will they be feeding without fixing.  But sometimes it takes a crisis to realize.

I love helping but I can't help much anymore.  My car's got too many miles and so does my body.  I have plenty of cats here now and can't take on more.  And I am no longer psychologically fit to do adoptions.

I have to accept these limitations on myself.  If I came into money, I'd get myself a transport van and a bank account to fund spay neuter efforts, gas, insurance and bait and trap myself happy.  I am working on getting nonprofit status and who knows, maybe one day, I'll have those things.  But I don't have them now.  I got nothing now.

Or maybe if I came into money I'd go somewhere warm for a month and lay on a beach and swim in the ocean and laugh and laugh and dream with the sand warm beneath my feet and the sun flickering off into nothing.

My micro is gone.  But I took it apart first because I wanted to learn the parts and how to fix one if I ever get one again and it breaks and all that.   It's interesting.  I got to learn about cavity magnetrons in the process and how they came to be.  

Read up on them here!

Magnetron on the left, capacitor on the right and the wave dispersing fan.

Microwave cavity magnetron

Three major parts of the microwave, (not counting the turn table motor, function circuit board, wave guide and wave disperser fan)--magnetron, capacitor and high voltage transformer.
Magnetron

High voltage transformer

Apparently you can build an arc welder with microwave transformers! Read how to do it here.

Well, the micro is now gone, but it no longer worked and I enjoyed its necropsy.


6 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:39 PM

    You know more about microwaves than most people. When our first one died many years ago, the repairman quickly told us, it's the magnetron and not worth fixing. I assume it is the same for you, if the lamp fails, the machine has to be dismantled to replace the wired in bulb.

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  2. I am glad that you said no, hard as it was.
    Such a simple word. Often underused.
    I hope that shoulder settles. Quickly.

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  3. Yes, underused word! Me too, on my shoulder.

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  4. Yes, Andrew, the magnetron plus repair, to replace, more costly than a new one. Plus the difficulty of getting into it. I had no star screw head that would fit properly enough into several of the case screws so that I could remove them. The rest of the screws were Phillip heads and easy enough. This was a cheap micro to begin with but the bulb replacement had it burned out would have been a seriously difficult endeavor, due to the difficulty of removing the outer case to get to it.

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  5. Maybe one day you might get to put your feet in the warm sand....nice to dream..

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  6. It's wonderful to dream, whiteangel, keeps me going, my dreams.

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