The oil change, changes, constants

Nate and I had decided the other day that we would help each other change the oil in our respective vehicles. We set out to do that this morning. His went without a hitch. For the Sequoia we had to resort to Google twice. It was not what you would call a direct application of anything either of us had done before. It involved pulling off the skid plate to expose the filter housing and once we were there and had the filter housing pulled off of the engine we could not disassemble the housing to replace an inner gasket. We tried a couple ways and were met with failure. 

After about an hour of attempting to refit the innards of the filter housing we put in the new filter and it’s gasket and put everything back together. It was not at all what we had thought it was and I have a feeling it was not the first time the filter housing was not fully rebuilt. Of the five bolts that should have been holding the skid plate in place, only three had been replaced the last time the oil had been changed.

Grandma came over pretty early to visit for an hour or so (this evening was supposed to be our birthday celebration for September birthdays) and then went back to Bowie. She is not feeling well and Grandpa was not feeling up to a visit at all. I am not completely sure what is wrong exactly but we need to continue to pray for them. Norman is talking seriously about moving down to the farm the two of them are leasing at the moment, so they are trying to gear up for him and Seth to take up residence there with them. All that should happen in a few months.

Nate and Cori are planning on putting their house on the market next month and whether or not it sells they are going to spend November and December here with us as they set meetings in churches of North Texas and Oklahoma. So far they have filled October with meetings. They will be leaving tomorrow afternoon to participate in a Mission’s Conference at a church in Ft. Worth. They will finish out the week there and come back Monday morning to spend that day and Tuesday with us then head back to Florida. While they have the house there it is still home - as it should be. We have had a great time with them being here but there is always the longing for more time together.

I got a call from one of my friends at ConocoPhillips this afternoon. He was alerting me to some of the changes at the company. They just went through another round of layoffs and lost a good many individuals in my old devision. Some of the best ones made it through but several others were let go. I do not know if the company was a generous with this batch of severed workers as they were with my group, but I certainly hope so. I have to admit that I miss my old job. That has not changed.

While everyone napped this afternoon I drove to Muenster, TX to buy feed. We were almost out of feed for the goats and pigs and I did not want to wait until tomorrow to make the trip. It is about a two hour round trip but still saves us enough money on the feed to make it worthwhile and we get a much higher quality feed to boot. I have a feeling that trip will be a regular monthly excursion for us as long as we own the farm. I don’t mind. It is a good time alone to pray. Since I do not have a regular drive like I used to have for work, it is nice to have somewhere to go so I can get the time alone for a drive.

There are still no job prospects on the horizon but that will change in good time.