According to this book:  Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (published 1961). by Michel Foucault, prior to 1650  there was little or no help for the mentally ill, perhaps the idea of sending these people to the New World appealed to Europeans, as I am certain that too many nut-cases in a dungeon would ruin the mood for everyone.

Yep, good one Brian. Thinking of joining their ranks? No, I deal with my issues. Anywho, Nell is home, safe and sound, after our own bumpy journey up a snow drifted driveway she is now cozy and warm, although still in quite a lot of pain.  She is able to get up and move around and was encouraged to do so by her doctor. Our trailer sits two feet higher than the addition and we have solid, but tall steps made of large blocks of wood. As we get older, we really need to start thinking about building something lower and safer.

Thanks Dave and Phylis for the flowers, they are beautiful and comforting for Nell. Mom and I picked Nell up from Alta Vista Hospital at around eleven AM using mom's Blazer, which traversed the snow drifts in the driveway with less jostling than our old Blazer might have, so that was great and thanks mom.  When we arrived back here Jackson had driven up and down the driveway a few more times to break the drifts more, making the trip up the hill I hope a little better for Nell.

James was down at Jack's house and he had a snow blower. Not long after I had Nell situated and fed a bowl of fresh beef stew, we heard the little snow machine coming up the driveway.  I had stopped mom's car by the shop and then helped Nell walk down the path I had shoveled leading to the house through the eighteen inch deep snowdrifts. No. that's not a lot of snow, and indeed we've had way more, but even that little bit blown over large sections of the great distance our driveway stretches made it easy to get stuck in any of a number of places. The best defense is to not need to get out which is easier than getting back in.

So, cool, here comes James pushing a snow blower up the driveway, nice, very nice. I was worrying about how I was going to get to work today. Indeed when James came by I had just got setup in the shop with a fire built in the stove, figuring out what I could do to put the Trooper back together. Yesterday it was becoming clearer that the parts I had ordered either weren't going to be delivered in time and even if they were, how would UPS get up the driveway?

Nell just told me UPS  delivered the parts to Dr. Green's office yesterday, damn I wish I knew that then, while we were right next door picking up prescriptions at Del Norte Pharmacy. We're still operating without a cell phone, what a hassle, but things could certainly be worse. No cell phone makes me feel more isolated, Nell didn't use it so she doesn't notice.

I hustled and got the Isuzu plumbing modified to accept the flat plate heat exchanger – fuel heater. Fortune favors the prepared, and it seems everything went smoothly for the kid, even when I learned that one of the coolant hoses which I planned to cut into and tap for a heat source was thoroughly rotten.

It worked out because I had a new piece of rubber hose which was long enough to reach, and it didn't need a pipe splice. It was a bit difficult to reach the point of origin of the pipe I was going to plug into, but it worked out and for a change I managed to accomplish the task without giving myself any skinned knuckles.

Once the coolant lines were connected, I began to work on the fuel lines, one issue I had to deal with is the new fuel filter wasn't here to install, so I took the old plugged filter off and cleaned it for probably the third time. I know my luck is bound to run out with the filters and probably sooner than later, so it is comforting to know the parts are at least in town, and in a pinch I can swap out the filter on the road.

Last but not least for my flimsy plan to get myself to work today, I had to try and start the diesel engine with the glow plugs disconnected. Yeah, never mind on that one, the engine didn't even try to fire, even with the vehicle having been in the warm shop all afternoon. Glow plugs in case you don't know, are sort of like spark plugs in a gasoline engine, except in a diesel they are only used when the engine is cold. After that the engine fires solely on the much greater compression of fuel found in diesel engines. Hence a diesel engine is called a "compression ignition" system.

One last problem to deal with today. I know I seem to have a lot of problems, huh? First the Trooper turbo goes out three times, then I lose my cell phone because Qwest sells their wireless business to Verison who says I'll need to fork over $400 to get a cell phone, all because our credit was mainly ruined because we didn't have health insurance for years. Of course that's not the only reason my credit was ruined, I helped too, nothing like not paying bills though, much more sinister, and conspiracy theory sort of stuff.

Remember how I was struggling all Summer with laptop troubles? Then I finally convinced Desertgate to help me buy a new one. Also recall that I reported a possible twenty seven below zero the other morning.
Wait . . .  Wait for it . . .
I had wanted one of the netbooks with no hard drive just flash memory, but then we couldn't find one without a hard drive, well guess what happened to the hard drive in the netbook while it was out in my truck during the cold snap? You guessed it, I should have known better, but honestly I didn't know it was going to get that cold, and didn't even think about my brand new laptop sitting under the seat.