Well, here it is, another Monday evening and I still haven't written anything. I guess I should be concerned about my obvious lack of productivity, but I should say that I was off on Friday to work on the lawnmower race stuff and then came back in to the usual hustle and bustle. Adding to my problems, this Monday was a holiday and most local offices and banks were closed.

Given that a good deal of our work involves local offices and banks, it is rather difficult to get anything important done.

But I'm not complaining.

It's been a beautiful day and I have been able to get a few things done that really needed to be done, like writing this column.

Tomorrow's worries are sufficient unto that day. Right now, I'm just thinking about the present. But I think I need to go into the past. I recently received a school bus from a friend of mine who was in the mood to get rid of it.

It had eight broken windows, was in bad need of a cleaning and a cleaning out and it needed some mechanical work. It sounded like a perfect fit in my collection.

I went to pick it up and discovered that a bird had built a nest on top of the sun visor and that mud dobbers had made a home in the heater box. Bees weren't too big of a problem, which was an amazing thing to me. Usually old cars are bee havens.

I worked on it one evening for about five hours and finally got it running. I tuned on it, cleaned and oiled it and added tons of fluids to it before I was even able to move it. After that, it ran like a top. Invariably, the question I am asked most is, "What do you want with a school bus?"

I think I will make it into a camper, if I don't trade it off first. I already had someone offer me $300 for it. I had to decline, given that I already spent almost that just in a battery, alternator and fluids. Not counting the title fees and all that.

I guess I will have to decide later what to do with the thing. Right now, it is something nice for me to piddle with. I have enjoyed working on it.

I also almost finished my porch on my land in Virginia.

I went down there the other day to check on things and found a surprise. A friend of mine and I were in the kitchen when he asked me, "Do you hear something?"

After I listened for a few minutes, I could hear puppies whining under the house.

The next day, I went back and saw a large black dog, looking like a german shepherd or a lab, run into the woods.

I saw it again later, lurking around, and called it. After some coaxing and the promise of food, it came up to me. I watched it later go under the house to tend to the pups and decided that it is the one that has moved in under there. It is really pathetic looking, with its ribs sticking out and even the bones of its pelvis showing.

Someone obviously wanted rid of the dog and pups, deciding to drop it off somewhere. That somewhere ended up being my house.

I fed it a large can of Chef Boyardee ravioli and a little bit of dry dog food I had in the truck and then went back later and put a bunch of food under the house.

I don't really know what I want to do, but I do know I can't let any animal starve.

There are several buckets of water around the house that I keep around to douse campfires and such, so I figured it has plenty to drink. There is also a spring just down the hill.

The new dog, which I creatively named, ‘strange black dog,' or blackie for short, now thinks of me as its best friend. It is a little too friendly in some ways, often trying to follow me into the house or the building when I go to fetch something. It even tried to help me work on the porch. I had to run it off several times so that it wouldn't get hit by an errant board or even the hammer. Sometimes you inherit things you never asked for, but I figure it must have been meant to be.

As for the porch, I am putting down a floor of 2x6 boards and I plan to add a roof later on down the road. I have the big poles already standing there for that purpose, but I don't know when I will be able to afford the rest of the wood that I am going to need. Lumber isn't cheap. If you try to buy something treated so that it will last, the price will eat you up. Otherwise, you end up rebuilding every few years. This time, I am trying to put something together that will last for a good while. It measures about 8x8 and will have about a seven-foot-high roof with a light in the middle.

Last year, snow piled up so high on the other porch that the door wouldn't open several times. The roof will help prevent that from happening again. I also had problems with not having a place to put shoes when it was muddy outside. The porch that was there was a small affair, only measuring about four feet wide by six feet long. That made it hard to carry big things, like furniture, in and out.

But I wouldn't have replaced it if my foot hadn't gone through a soft spot while I was painting late last fall. Evidently, the indoor-outdoor carpet caused the floor to rot. I can't complain, it was given to me when I bought the place. Maybe this time I got what I paid for.

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