The 2024 Chatty thread

Just arrived in Birmingham AL about an hour ago. Thirty years ago DH and myself went to Talladega Superspeedway for a NASCAR race. It was awesome! Dale Earnhardt won! Well, my boys thought it would be nostalgic if we went again so they gifted a trip to us. I’m curious how it will be in comparison. Nascar is not as popular as in it’s heyday (180,000 were in attendance in 1994) but it should still be fun.

You could ask, "How long have you lived in your house?" and my answer would be, after a little thinking, "Since May 2007, so just about 17 years."
Then you might ask, "When was the last time you washed your windows?"
My answer would be....
I have no memory of doing such a thing. But surely after all this time, it must have happened at least once. But I can't guarantee it.

Spent the afternoon doing half of them...omg filthy. The white cloths are a dark grey.
Newspaper worked great, as they say, but it was getting all torn up by the flaking and chipping paint from our 1957 windows. Oh well.

My arm is sore! hee hee. Six double-hungs left, three need a stepladder and three need the "second story" ladder. They all have storms too so it takes a long time, going inside and out to move the various panes of glass up and down. I could always station my wife inside to move things...hm.

I might be off the hook tomorrow, I heard the word "rain" so it might wait.

I tell myself: Next time I do this, it will be quick and easy. If I do it every year like my mom.
But if I wait another 17 years, well...I'll be 64 or whatever so I won't have to do it maybe.
But my mom still does it and she's 76.

We were in our last house in California for about 23 years and had a huge picture window that I don't ever remember cleaning, we must have done it as some point but I don't remember it. To be fair about 10 years before we moved we replaced all of the window with more energy efficient double pane so I would have to say they were cleaned then. The picture window went floor to ceiling (luckily low ceilings) and was really expensive because code require the bottom portion to be tempered safety glass. The one exception at all of our houses is the slider that opens to the back yard, they get clean from time to time since we are always going through them. In our current house we have one that slides onto itself and out of the way to open to the Lanai, when we have guest over we can just slide it out of the way, much easier than cleaning. As for the rest of the windows here in Florida that is what those 3 inch and hour rains are for.

I finally broke down and bought one of these bad boys today!
Snip snip!
It cuts the branches faster than I could with the loppers. Maybe it's heavier than the Japanese pruners I have but my carpal hands hurt less after an hour. Or five minutes.
I took down most of a giant unruly hedge with it in a couple hours (including hauling down to the woods); I barely made a dent this morning with the manual tools.
Been looking at this one and others for a couple weeks.  I was nervous about the speed at which a finger could be removed but then I thought about the other tools I regularly use that could remove a finger with no trouble at all.

This brand of tools fits my hand well and I already have their batteries. Bam.

I got it locally for $89 without battery. A few places on the web have it for that price, including Home Depot I think.
There's a Craftsman one that comes bundled with battery and charger for kinda that same $100 price point. It's pretty much the same unit as the yellow one I showed, except (presumably) slightly lesser build.
There are other options on Amazon ranging in price from lower to higher. I went with that one because a) I wanted it NOW and I was able to buy it in town, and b) I've been happy with their drills and stuff.
My wife complained it was heavy...but it easily goes through stuff (with one hand) that I would have to get out the big loppers for.
Type "dewalt pruner" on youtube if you want to see it (and others) in action, if you are curious.