People, I am finally warm!!

First the post office, then fed ex and the sliver lining.....
First the happy, happy, then the rant.
I finally have the materials to get my wonderfully patient customers spindolyns completed. Worked on them yesterday in a sunny shop and am glue drying in the rain right now (well, I am not in the rain, the glue is drying under a light, but it is raining outside)
While I wait for the spindolyns to get to the next stage, I would be working on the roof of the buck goat shed that I am building (with help from the buck) but for the rain, so I am posting here to share my happy over what I think is the "alto solution"
Perhaps this evening I can take the new prototype for a spin with some of the extra soft jacob fleece that I am in love with right now...



Now the rant
My local post office has the most wonderful staff. Helpful, cheerful, humorous and good natured folks who give great personal service. The rest of the postal service gets two thumbs down for jumping up and down with both feet on many of the parcels I mail.
My UPS guy is great, too, he is also helpful, cheerful, humorous and good natured and is very accomodating and nice to my quirky dogs.
FED Ex on the other hand, gets a big scolding from me. They sent my correctly labeled materials that I was waiting on to the wrong state, then the delivery guy just "forgot" to deliver them, 3 days in a row!! If they had arrived on thursday like the tracking number indicated, I would have last weeks orders already shipped and this weeks well on their way to going out. But most importantly, I could have gone to West TN to take Mom to her oncologist and give my sister in law a spell.
However, everything surely happens for a reason, because if things had gone the way I expected, I never would have seen the post on Craigslist for the "Better'n Ben's" fireplace stove, and I wouldn't have had the time to go get it, move out my old fireplace insert, rebrick up the broken hearth (I am a mason now, ha! I laid and mortared 6 bricks) fabricate a new stove pipe to fit it, and slid it into place.
Visually, the new wood stove is a downgrade from the fancy fireplace insert with the fan that I am going to put up for sale on craigslist. Heating wise, it is just plain bomb-diggity! This baby is hot! The cabin and me in it are warm for the first time since I moved in 5 years ago. If my fireplace had been normally constructed, the previous stove would have sufficed, but it had been rebuilt by stoner wanna be rock layers and it needs a certain sort of stove to behave correctly. I have found that stove in this little box shaped stove made in the late 70's.
Usually, on an average winter morning, I wake up to 50-52 degrees in the cabin. This morning, with burning no more wood than before, and not having to listen to that durn fan a roaring all night, I woke up to 62 degrees. wow.
You have no idea how happy this makes me.
And the stove is flat on top. Perfect for natural dying.... : )