[AT] List member check in Please Read (and other stuff)

[Francis Robinson]

    Here me is...   :-)

I just have too much on my plate right now. Many of you know that among 
other things I owned and operated a shoe repair shop for over 20 years. I 
retired from that about 11 years ago. I sort of missed it. I am now setting 
up a (part time) western boot rebuilding shop here on the farm. It and my 
woodshop will be in a building together that is 24' x 48'. Those of you that 
have been here know it as the lower level of my former house. I just brought 
back around 3,000 pounds of used shoe repair equipment from the west coast 
of IL in Rock Island IL. It is still on the trailer since the building it is 
destined for is full of "stuff"...
    I'm still working on horse stalls but the weather stopped being 
friendly.
    We had a couple of other interesting events recently. First my new 
laptop was turned into a $1,200 paperweight by a fluke bolt of lightning 
after a storm was long over. That was while it was sitting on my lap... It 
didn't zap me but it is a wonder that a change of shorts was not required. 
;-)    I'm slowly learning my new one (Acer Aspire 9410-2597) and Windows 
Vista Home Premium. Vista is not too bad but they sure hid a lot of stuff.
    Next one of our son-in-laws was working on the gutters on a church in 
Indianapolis and fell from a ladder. His co-worker said he turned around and 
saw him "pretzeled" in the remains of the ladder. By the time he climbed 
down to get to him he was already purple, not breathing and no pulse. The 
co-worker and an Indinapolis police officer gave him mouth to mouth and CPR 
and got him ticking again. The medics transported him to Methodist Hospital 
Trauma Center and finally sorted it all down to a crack in his skull and a 
bruised brain. He just has one bruise on his body but that covers about half 
of his body.  :-)   They ran a couple of CAT scans and put a row of staples 
in the back of his scalp. He weighs around 325 pounds and in spite of what 
they show on the cartoons us big guys don't bounce worth a damn. He is home 
and doing well but still has a little dizzyness. He remembers nothing of the 
event and as far as the mouth to mouth he doesn't want to....   ;-)

    Gene: put me down for camping at the Portland show... Always...

    I'm sorry but on a slow dial-up connection "forum boards" really suck. 
:-(   I have all but abandonded the farmall.com board. I hate that since 
that is a great bunch of guys but it takes foorreevveeerr to load a page and 
that is all you do on a forum board, load pages. On an email list I can 
process and read messages very fast. If we get DSL this summer (they are 
dangling a carrot) then it might be different. I read the messages on this 
list but sporadically. I have been here since about 1996 but if it was a 
board I would probably have to drop it altogether. I think that Spencer is 
doing just fine as it is.

    Our general situation is slowly improving and I even hope to be able to 
claim that I am reasonably sane again by early summer.   ;-)   I've had a 
lot better decades than this one...

    I was really glad to see so many familiar names popping up on this 
thread that we had not heard from lately. I've been so busy that I hadn't 
even missed myself.   ;-)

    Old tractors... Old tractors... Hey, I have a few of those...   ;-)   I 
hope to work them in a bit too this month as things warm up. Just might help 
my brain.


--
"farmer"

Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA


robinson at svs.net