My first task after breakfast was to sand drywall compound and apply the next coat where needed.  I’m down to touch up work in most spots and so I am trying to apply very thin layers with feathered edges that will dry quickly and require minimal sanding.  The old A-C opening in the library, however, is taking many, many overlapping layers.  Fortunately I can finish that at my leisure as Darryll is not working in that location.  Since he just this week installed the two pieces of duct in the lower part of the wall between the garage and the library I am still building up drywall compound to fill the irregular and, in places, large gaps on the garage side.  Unfortunately, the thicker compound takes longer to dry and watching drywall compound dry is worse than watching paint dry as it’s even slower.  The trick is to have something else to do while I wait.  Fortunately, I have lots to do.

I had some e-mail correspondence on Friday with the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, Gary Hall, whose name turns out to actually be Gary Hatt.  He had his reasons for not using his real name when he first took over BCM, which he explained and which made good sense.  BCM is running my article on Suncoast Designers in the August 2014 issue and he sent me a Dropbox link to the draft.  It looks like another really good issue, but is again coming out a month late.  Ever since the editor had a minor heart attack in early May they have been a month behind.  It appears that they will be doing an article on spin-on oil filters in the October issue and will also use my article on the Spinner II centrifugal oil cleaner that Joe and I installed a year and half ago.  I only have one other article ready for them to use, so I guess I need to get busy and write some new ones.

When I am not working on the house, the yard, or the bus, there’s always computer work to be done.  I have multiple projects to work on, but I also like to relax on a pleasant day and catch up on reading the blogs and RV magazines that I follow.  It was very pleasant today so we turned off the air-conditioning, opened up the house, and sat on the back deck reading and watching wildlife.  I addition to our resident American Red Squirrel we were treated to a visit by three Sandhill Cranes.  The squirrel has been busy for most of the month harvesting and stockpiling pine cones in what we presume is a midden under a cluster of very large fir trees northwest of the house.  The cranes spent a long time wandering around the back yard foraging.  We sat quietly and watched them and they came closer to the house than usual so we got a very good look at them.  They are large and magnificent.

I finally decided to continue editing the rough drafts of my blog posts for this month and get them ready to upload.  I still need to select photographs to go with some of the posts, or to put in separate gallery posts, but I finally uploaded the tree photos I took on the 21st to our Dropbox and e-mailed the link to Paul at Detroit Tree Recycling.

I spent some time online searching for sources of supply for an ignition coil for our Aqua-Hot diesel-fired hydronic heating system.  I can get one from Darin, but he quoted me MSRP and it is an expensive part.  I wasn’t having much luck so I called Butch mid-evening to discuss the situation.  He suggested that I hold off on getting a new ignition coil until I got the coach to his place and we were able to look at it more carefully.  He said I should have had white smoke and a definite smell from the atomized but unburned diesel fuel.  I didn’t which made him wonder if the problem might be fuel delivery rather than ignition spark.  Good advice, as always.  I don’t know enough about the control circuitry on the Aqua-Hot (it’s actually a Webasto inside) to know how the operation of the spark and fuel solenoid might be intertwined.  I have the manuals, but I have not had time to dig into them.  Besides, I have enough other things to work on right now that I am willing to let this one go for a few more weeks.