Mother drunk while 3 year old throws potted plants off balcony or a bit of ghetto news

In a nutshell. Happened tonight. Upon hearing and then seeing the three-year-old's antics on the balcony, terrified neighbors called the police, who found everybody present in the apartment drunk, including the 37 year old mother of the girl. The mother was arrested while the little Alexandra was taken to a protective care unit. Now comes the surprise, the mother has already lost custody of how many of her children? Seven. No less. I opened the full text of the article because I thought I was misreading the number. The kind of life some people live, perpetuating misery - unbelievable. As well as that nothing much seems to be done about it.

A tree through the roof has obviously stressed the hell out of poor Alan. An avid gardener that he is, he's just posted pictures of a decorated Christmas tree and called it a pine, while it is certainly a spruce. Unless he meant it as a metaphor. I don't think I've ever seen a pine dressed up as a Christmas tree. Sigh. The spirits are a bit down in more than one blog these winter days..

No winter as of yet

Wow. People are already having a hard winter time. A tree through the roof! Boy am I glad there are no pine trees next to my house. Pine wood appears to be very soft and prone to damage. My sister actually had the entire top of a large pine tree break off during a storm last year at the farm. It must have been at least three yards long. It landed on the roof of a shed but miraculously there was no damage. I only have a large poplar growing close to the house - and I think poplar is very soft wood, too - but since the house has two floors the tree doesn't really tower over it. I'll have to take a close look tomorrow to make sure it doesn't need to be trimmed.

Nothing is left of the snow in my garden and I'd gladly not see it again. We're enjoying dry weather with temperatures around 0 C/in the thirties F. I actually intend to water my potted roses.

Couldn't reassemble chainsaw!

Today I wasted several more hours than I had planned replenishing my wood supply for the coming week. Everyting went fine as fas as cutting was concerned. It took me about three hours to build an impressive stack of wood which should last me up to two weeks. However, as it sometimes happens when I don't listen to an inner voice saying "You've had enough, just finish for today", I got myself in trouble towards the very end. I was about to cut up the last two or three thickest logs when the end of the cord hanging from my anorak accidentally slipped into the engine compartment of the saw, got caught and wound itself around something I couldn't see so many times that it was impossible to simply pull it out. How stupid. There I was, connected to the saw as if by umbilical cord.

I went inside the house and first thing cut the cord off the anorak, disconnecting myself from the saw. Then, in an attempt to feel better about myself, I decided to fix the saw on the spot by removing the cord remaining in the engine compartment. I was lucky to already possess a screwdriver which actually matched the screws (i.e., with a star shaped tip), so I opened the saw by unscrewing five screws on the outside and two final screws found inside underneath the rubber lining of the air filter. Now when I pushed the two halves of the plastic yellow saw cover apart, revealing the metal insides, an innocent looking small plastic part fell out to the floor from somewhere behind the trigger. Ahem, I thought. Could that mean more trouble? But I was immediately distracted by the sight of the cord neastly wound around the nut on the engine, and I happily unwound and removed it. Piece of cake. Would you believe it was over two feet long - as long as my arm. I didn't realize so much got pulled in. I think I should be grateful that the cord didn't get into the engine while the saw was working at full speed because if pulled then it could have probably knocked me off my feet and who knows what would happen. Luckily the saw was stopping when it ate up the cord. That's how accidents happen. There you are, happy as a clown, and all of a sudden bam! and you see one of your limbs chopped off.

Anyway. I scraped off a greasy buildup of woodshavings from the inside of the cover, dusted all accessible parts, and proceeded to put the cover back on when trouble began. There was no way I could figure out how to put the throttle trigger lockout back together. It should be held in place by the little plastic part that had fallen out. The part is shaped like the letter A, hanging from the inside of the saw cover by its head. It is located between the trigger and the trigger lockout. One leg of the A rests on the trigger while its other leg is hooked over the lockout. When you press on the lockout, you raise the hooked "lockout leg" of the A. The "trigger leg" of the A follows, slipping off the trigger and thus making pressing on the trigger possible. It seemed very simple yet I found no way of placing the legs of the A on the two parts in such a manner that they stayed there while I was screwing the saw cover together. I tried blocking them in place but it didn't work. I wasted two hours doing it before I finally gave up.

So ultimately, my pride has suffered. I will have to pay a visit to the repair shop which I thought I'd manage to avoid. It's not going to be costly - the saw is in working order with the exception of the throttle trigger lockout, which "only" makes it dangerous to handle the saw because without the lockout accidental pressing on the trigger is possible. And I am very curious as to what I was doing wrong.