This past weekend was very full but very satisfying as we got a lot accomplished.  It was clean-out-the-garage weekend.  An all-weather car cover for a PT Cruiser is like $200, so a cheaper alternative would simply be to clean the garage and keep the car in there.  We opted for the cheaper route...

I went out at about 10 AM Saturday morning and mowed the lawn.  I hate mowing the lawn, and it shows... the grass tends to get a bit tall before I cut it.  (Note: this special definition of "a bit" means "about a foot".)

By noon the lawn was done and I was ready to call it quits for the day, but there was much left to do.  Patty got a tarp laid out for Neya's new pool, inflated the top ring, and started filling it.

Then began the long process of cleaning out our garage... here's what it looked like before we started:

As you can see... fulla junk.  Our garage is actually a barn with a loft, and much of the junk-we-might-want-to-save ended up going into the loft which was otherwise empty.  In the picture on  the left you can also see the hanging platform which dangles from the ceiling on the ground floor.  It's kind of an elevated shelf in the middle of the room... added storage space.  Some stuff ended up going there.

The theme song from Clean Sweep played in my head throughout the day as we removed stuff from the barn and separated it into a keep pile and a toss pile.  We startled a few mice here and there lugging stuff around, but after a long day's worth of effort, the stuff we were keeping was in the garage, and the stuff we were tossing was covered by a tarp in the corner of the yard to be delivered to the curb over the next few trashdays.  (Too much at once and the trash guys may refuse to take it all.)

My house was built right around 1900 so it is at or over 100 years old now.  It was originally the farmhouse of a large farm from which surrounding land was sold off in lots for development.  Because it is so old, Pat and I often find interesting old things hidden away in the house.  Several years ago we found some yellowed newspaper headlines in the barn's loft.  Headlines from the bombing of Pearl Harbor and so forth.  Pretty neat.

I figured when cleaning the garage I was sure to find something interesting, and I was not disappointed when I found what appeared to be an antique mercury tilt switch in an unmarked box under the stairs to the loft.  The switch consists of a glass tube containing a blob of mercury, and two wires which connect to a pair of electrodes in the tube.  When the tube is tilted, the mercuy rolls down and closes the circuit between the two electrodes.  Such switches were once used in all sorts of devices, thermostats, irons with automatic shutoffs, and so forth.  Anything that needed to function differently when tipped.  Mercury is poisonous of course, and you can't just toss it out, so after marveling at the silvery blob of metal, I put the switch back in the box.

Once the garage was cleared Lynnea chipped in by sweeping up the place, earning some allowance money for her next trip to the toystore.  Then, the moment of truth, I drove Vanessa into the barn.  She fit great and now I can finally stop worrying over what all the rain, pollen, and so forth has been doing to her finish.

All in all a very productive weekend.  By Sunday, I was wasted, so not much got done that day.  I felt little guilt however, I was feeling far too sore from the prior day's backbreaking labor!

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