Merry Christmas!

Yes, I know it isn't Christmas day yet, but it is the Christmas season.

Now then.  The boy did well.  He brought up and old, rusted, home made box blade his family has probably had for - a long time.  I didn't care, as long as it works, rusted or not it's just a chunk of metal. However, this thing  is far heavier than that new one he brought several weeks ago.  

Yes, I got on the tractor today, that driveway was a nightmare.  The heavier weight of the box blade helped keep it down on the ground more than the previous one bouncing every time it hit a little bump.  It helped that it has been raining recently and the soil was still damp.  

It took about 3-1/2 hours and I was done.  I was asked to take one of the kids to their guitar practice and i was ready to be done anyway.  It's very nice.  I mean, until the next rain of course but still, it's in great condition.  This is why I wanted to get a tractor in the first place: to keep the driveway maintained until another answer to the problem can be done.  

Well, I can't do anything until I replace the culvert pipe at the front of the driveway and that is going to entail hundreds of dollars worth of pipe, a $400 plus mini ex rental and probably a truckload of some kind of material for the entrance.

Anyway, that's done for now. There seems no good reason to spend any more time on it for it's going to rain next week I think it is and the driveway will just look like it did all over again and then I'll just have to do the job on it again.  

I'm at 80 pushups for the day, just 20 more and that's done. I'm only saying that because it's getting late and I should probably go ahead and knock those out.  I also did 3 sets of curls on the curl bar, probably going to add some weight to it next time.  That's the second time this week, the minimum I have assigned myself to do, tho I'd like to do it every other day.  

It's day - 14 - of this 100 day pushup challenge and no, it's not getting any easier. In fact, from what I've read, week 2 and 3 are harder and then...well we'll just see. I'm undeterred at the moment.  My arms are getting noticeably bigger. I'm looking to get toned, not huge.  I'm also hoping it will burn off some fat.

I forgot to say in previous post that yesterday, when we went downtown to do the ice skating and such, we also toured the burned down church.  This church is on the National Register of Historic Places and also given a Texas Historical Commission marker.  This church is gigantic, taking up an entire version of this town's city block.  The sanctuary is not only destroyed, the roof caved in and you can see door on the top floor the open into nothing.  It is an amazing tragedy and one that will be repeated, this county is filled with old structures (the church was built in 1861) and they don't have modern day fire suppressing systems - auto sprinklers to be precise. 

They can add such things but it's very costly.  There was a child care center - a very large one and additions that had been added to it over the years.  Sad to see such an historic landmark go down in flames.  

Well, it's almost 10 pm.  I was reading about this revised bill that didn't pass.  Basically, if this stuff continues, we will have a repeat of Trump's first term with Republicans arguing and bickering with each other to the point nothing will get done. Trump will be left with Executive Orders as his only real piece of ammo to use.  I was just slightly hoping for a better outcome, but I know how Republicans acted out last time they had control of everything and get basically nothing of great importance done. 

And, of course, democrats are back to accusing republicans of wanting to dismantle SS again.  In my mind, that would be great, but only if it were structured in such a way that people that have been paying into it for 40 years don't get screwed.  In other words, a replacement system for it. If you're going to force people to save, put it into personal savings account that they can't access at all.  There would be a lot more millionaires walking around at retirement age.  

I'm no millionaire and I sort of put all my eggs into one basket hoping it will pay off.  I was far from enough money to retire on anyway, seemed the logical thing to do at the time. I'm not fretting it, I just need to be able to expand the operation enough that I won't need SS payments at all. That's my goal, whether I see that happen or not remains to be seen.  

25 more spots would either do the trick or come close to it.  

But, I'm not going to go into all of that again tonight. It's almost Christmas. There is no point in stressing over things I don't have a lot of control over.