05 October 2013

Saturday Morning Tasks: AAR

We performed one of our semi-annual purges of surplus paperwork, receipts, invoices, etc, from the home office. Mrs. Rev looks through everything one last time, and then I work on the "shred" pile.

Today's pile produced three smallish bags of diced chads (well, that's what they look like after the criss-cross shredder gets done). The "before" pile was about 10" high.

I always look through the to-be-shredded pile before it goes into the grinder, removing any leftover paper clips and such. On one letter from the local pet hospital was last year's rabies tag for one of our daughters' cats. Said cats are strictly indoor critters, so they don't wear collars.

I removed the aluminum tag & keyring, and dutifully fed the next handful of letters into the machine, only to have it slow way down ... and then go BANG. Hmm. No smoke, no hot smell ... let's try reverse.

The motor tried to rev itself up, but the papers didn't back out of the slot. Hmm again.

Alrighty, then ... I unplugged the thing, aimed the desk lamp at it, and saw a red tag firmly wedged horizontally across the opening.

Lovely.

A few minutes of screw removal later, I took the housing apart and shook everything into a bag, with a rustle of falling chads, and then a THUNK.

Paper doesn't normally THUNK, so I dug this out of the pile:



The top third of the tag was chewed away. That little shredder might have actually destroyed it, if the ring hadn't been there.

The shredder still works, too. You know what they say: it's better to be lucky than good.

Meanwhile, there was now shredded bits o' paper in a four-foot diameter around the area, so I had to vacuum all that debris out of the carpet after finishing.

Note to self: don't wait so long to shred the pile, next time.

* * * * *

After that, I assisted Older Daughter as she replaced the original Ford radio in her truck (a '96 model) with a modern CD and USB-compatible model. The original unit worked just fine, but it was AM/FM/cassette ... and as she said to me, "I think I still have one cassette tape. Somewhere."

Kudos to Daughter, by the way: she's never been afraid to dive into anything mechanical, and has her own set of tools.  The only thing we did which she'd not done before was splicing wires together. I showed her one, and she was off to the races.

A productive morning, all told; now we'll see what the afternoon holds.

Thanks for stopping by, friends.

6 comments:

Stephen said...

I did the 'ole shredder thing last month. Hate it.
I want a daughter...may I borrow yours, if but for a day. Tell her we'll take her to the zoo. Ice cream included of course.

PioneerPreppy said...

Ah the days when having music in your vehicle was just as important as having gas.

These days I rarely switch mine off of talk radio unless they have some ballgame on.

Rev. Paul said...

Stephen, she's 24, but who knows? She'd probably like the vacation.

Preppy, I hear you. I'm not in my truck long enough to hear more than 2 or 3 songs, most days. It's only 15 minutes to work.

Old NFO said...

That's a pretty good shredder!!! :-)

Chickenmom said...

Shredder = jam. We've all been there!
My Jeepster has am/fm and cassette and poor tapes are getting worn out..

Rev. Paul said...

Apparently so, NFO. I guess they're making 'em more robust these days, with people needing to destroy data CDs.

Chickenmom, it's true; used to only be paper jams, though. :)