I had another "I'm Officially Old" event today. I got my shingles shot...
I had been thinking of it for a few years, but I figured I would have it when I visited my regular Dr for an annual physical. Only I keep not doing that. The Dr I last visited left the area and I just keep not finding another.
Part of the problem is that I am, as my friends say, "disgustingly healthy". I haven't had a cold or flu since I was 12. And even then, while my brother lay sounding like he was dying of flu, I was only mildly annoyed. I even had to heat the thermometer over the heat vent to get it high enough to stay out of school an extra day.
I only got my first flu shot when Dad was living here in 2012 because I read that you can be infected but not show signs of it yourself, but can infect other, and I didn'r want to kill Dad inadvertantly, so I got a flu shot.
I got it at the local grocery store. The shot was so good I couldn't even tell he had done it without looking. The same in Dec 2013. Dad had moved to an assisted-living facility by then, but I decided I should probably get the annual flu shot for the safety of others.
So I got the flu shot again this year and probably will each year for the rest of my life. Not so much for me, but in case I can carry it without symptoms, getting the shot seems socially responsible.
No pain, $30, no big deal and I get a 10% off coupon for the days shopping.
This year, I got the shingles shot. Its not covered by my (or darn near any)insurance, but it seems to be something that attacks 1 of 3 people my age who had chicken pox as a child (and I did). Mom had it and it drove her crazy for weeks several times. So I sure didn't want to go through that.
I actually felt the shot! The previous flu shots were nearly undetectable, but I felt the shingles one. The Pharmacist said it the larger amount of injection. Well, 1 second of mild "ouch" isn't much to complain about. It was just that I was surprized.
The Pharmacist insisted on putting bandages over the injection sites "because they bleed. I told him not to bother because I heal oddly fast. But he had to according to "the rules". I took them of as soon as I got home and there wasn't the least drop of blood on them.
They never believe me about not bleeding, but I don't fight about it. If it makes them happy to put a bandage on, fine.
I probably don't need the flu or shingles shots for myself. They are both viruses and I seem to be immune to viral infections and colds. Maybe I should contact a testing experiment. I suspect that because I spent 30 years in carpools with young mothers who both had sick kids AND went to work when they were sick themselves.
If I can't get sick around sick carpool members an hour each way in an enclosed car while the sneeze (and sometimes did worse), I probably can't get sick.
Not to say something new coming along wouldn't kill me next month...
I think it is genetics. Ancestors from all over Europe, into North America (Canada and US and likely some Native American). Wish I had a bit of Asian ancestry too. Viruses aren't going to kill me; smoking will...
Bet I catch something awful just because I've mentioned all this...
Friday, December 5, 2014
Friday, November 28, 2014
A Ghost In The Machine
Well, not a ghost of course, but there is a weird harmonic in my heating ducts that is making a disturbing noise...
There's a pattern to it. The heating comes on about 22 minutes each hour when it is below freezing outside. A function of the insulation of the house. About 10 minutes into the heating cycle, this odd sound starts and stops. Imagine a 1-note C on a wind instrument...
Not that I can tell notes, so imagine any moderate note on a wind...
Its obviously a harmonic in the ducts. I can feel the vibrations if I stand on a ladder long enough and touch the ducts, but I can't pin down the source. This isn't the first time either. Previous years I've wrapped bungee cords around some pipes and ducts and it has stopped for the season.
But it keeps coming back year after year. I can't call it "spooky" because I haven't the least sense of superstition, ghosts, etc. Its just a noise caused by a vibration I can't seem to stop.
It seldom happens in daytime. And I would notice it if it did. You live in a house 28 years and you know every creak and squeak. But at night (when it is coldest), it starts.
Slowly, a tiny vibration at first. Then a little louder. And longer. After a few minutes, it is going on for 15-20 seconds. And a minute later it starts again. Stronger and Stronger until it sounds like a trash truck driving by, but its not, and then the demon in the ducts stops suddenly.
I was up 3 times last night trying to figure out the cause. It eludes me. I can feel the vibrations anywhere I tough, but that stops it. For a few minutes.
I'm making light of this, but it really is driving me nuts and waking me up at night. And I sleep poorly enough as it is. It even got into my dreams...
Anyone had this problem, have any ideas on how to stop it? I'm thinking of removing all the existing rubber straps that have "solved" the problem before. Maybe if it gets worse, it will be easier to identify the real source...
And, BTW, I'm "pretty sure" I'm not insane...
There's a pattern to it. The heating comes on about 22 minutes each hour when it is below freezing outside. A function of the insulation of the house. About 10 minutes into the heating cycle, this odd sound starts and stops. Imagine a 1-note C on a wind instrument...
Not that I can tell notes, so imagine any moderate note on a wind...
Its obviously a harmonic in the ducts. I can feel the vibrations if I stand on a ladder long enough and touch the ducts, but I can't pin down the source. This isn't the first time either. Previous years I've wrapped bungee cords around some pipes and ducts and it has stopped for the season.
But it keeps coming back year after year. I can't call it "spooky" because I haven't the least sense of superstition, ghosts, etc. Its just a noise caused by a vibration I can't seem to stop.
It seldom happens in daytime. And I would notice it if it did. You live in a house 28 years and you know every creak and squeak. But at night (when it is coldest), it starts.
Slowly, a tiny vibration at first. Then a little louder. And longer. After a few minutes, it is going on for 15-20 seconds. And a minute later it starts again. Stronger and Stronger until it sounds like a trash truck driving by, but its not, and then the demon in the ducts stops suddenly.
I was up 3 times last night trying to figure out the cause. It eludes me. I can feel the vibrations anywhere I tough, but that stops it. For a few minutes.
I'm making light of this, but it really is driving me nuts and waking me up at night. And I sleep poorly enough as it is. It even got into my dreams...
Anyone had this problem, have any ideas on how to stop it? I'm thinking of removing all the existing rubber straps that have "solved" the problem before. Maybe if it gets worse, it will be easier to identify the real source...
And, BTW, I'm "pretty sure" I'm not insane...
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Thanksgiving Day 2014
I'm thankful for a lot of stuff, but I mention those things as they happen. Today was TURKEY DAY! I often don't bother cooking a turkey, for several reasons:
1. I assume a standing invitation to visit my sister for Thanksgiving day. Sometimes I visit, but 2 hours driving each way is a lot for me (I hate driving at all) and I especially hate holiday traffic on crowded interstate highways like we have here.
2. I used to cook Thanksgiving Dinner for all my single friends, but over the years, they have gotten married, left the area, or gradually faded away. It was a habit from when I had apartment roommates for whom a TV dinner was a challenge.
3. The smallest whole turkey is about 10-11 lbs and that's too much for 1 person (even with 3 cats)
4. A turkey breast is smaller, but white meat is not my favorite.
5. I prefer the dark meat, but turkey thighs cost $5 a pound this year and chicken thighs (my most regular meat) is only $1.29 and turkey isn't much different from chicken.
But I decided to go for a turkey this year. Partly, I wanted to hickory-smoke a whole turkey, just because I hadn't for years, and partly just to fully participate in a holiday for a change. So I had the frozen turkey all thawed in the fridge for 4 days, brined it overnight; and injected it with a mixture of apple juice, cinnamon and spices.
Most of the smoke gets in meat during the first couple hours so I did 2 hours and then let the briquets die down til it was 200F in the smoker and transferred the turkey to the pre-heated 250F oven. It was slow... But I wasn't on a schedule, so "whenever done, its done".
I did it a bit fancy for just me after that. Baked brussel sprouts with grated nutmeg, asparagus with grated cheese and melted butter, small potatoes, a nice tossed salad, gravy, and a can of "sweet potatoes in syrup". Zinfandel wine.
Well, one bite of the canned sweet potatoes in syrup and that went straight to the compost bin. YUCK! The rest was good. Well, the packaged gravy was salty. I had it sitting around for years so decided to use it. I make it better myself. The brussels sprouts were good, the new potatoes (home-grown) were good, and I always love a tossed salad with italian dressing.
The turkey was PERFECT! Probably the best I've done. The smokiness was just right, the brine kept even the breast meat moist, and the injected flavors were just right. I am convinced that 2-3 hours of smoking outdoors and finishing up in the oven at 250 is the way to go. And I do that thing of cooking it breast side up half way and turning it breast down the remaining half. It makes a difference. "Breast side down" the last half of cooking keeps the breast moistened by thigh meat fats dripping down the sides.
To be fair, the 450F oven cooking for 30 minutes and then lowering the temp to 350 works pretty good too and I've usually done that for faster cooking (and more reliable timing), but the slow-cooking is best.
I don't set out a whole table display (its just me), so there isn't much to show, but the turkey had a beautiful mahogany skin, so I have a picture of that.
I hope all of you who went the turkey path today had great dinners too.
1. I assume a standing invitation to visit my sister for Thanksgiving day. Sometimes I visit, but 2 hours driving each way is a lot for me (I hate driving at all) and I especially hate holiday traffic on crowded interstate highways like we have here.
2. I used to cook Thanksgiving Dinner for all my single friends, but over the years, they have gotten married, left the area, or gradually faded away. It was a habit from when I had apartment roommates for whom a TV dinner was a challenge.
3. The smallest whole turkey is about 10-11 lbs and that's too much for 1 person (even with 3 cats)
4. A turkey breast is smaller, but white meat is not my favorite.
5. I prefer the dark meat, but turkey thighs cost $5 a pound this year and chicken thighs (my most regular meat) is only $1.29 and turkey isn't much different from chicken.
But I decided to go for a turkey this year. Partly, I wanted to hickory-smoke a whole turkey, just because I hadn't for years, and partly just to fully participate in a holiday for a change. So I had the frozen turkey all thawed in the fridge for 4 days, brined it overnight; and injected it with a mixture of apple juice, cinnamon and spices.
Most of the smoke gets in meat during the first couple hours so I did 2 hours and then let the briquets die down til it was 200F in the smoker and transferred the turkey to the pre-heated 250F oven. It was slow... But I wasn't on a schedule, so "whenever done, its done".
I did it a bit fancy for just me after that. Baked brussel sprouts with grated nutmeg, asparagus with grated cheese and melted butter, small potatoes, a nice tossed salad, gravy, and a can of "sweet potatoes in syrup". Zinfandel wine.
Well, one bite of the canned sweet potatoes in syrup and that went straight to the compost bin. YUCK! The rest was good. Well, the packaged gravy was salty. I had it sitting around for years so decided to use it. I make it better myself. The brussels sprouts were good, the new potatoes (home-grown) were good, and I always love a tossed salad with italian dressing.
The turkey was PERFECT! Probably the best I've done. The smokiness was just right, the brine kept even the breast meat moist, and the injected flavors were just right. I am convinced that 2-3 hours of smoking outdoors and finishing up in the oven at 250 is the way to go. And I do that thing of cooking it breast side up half way and turning it breast down the remaining half. It makes a difference. "Breast side down" the last half of cooking keeps the breast moistened by thigh meat fats dripping down the sides.
To be fair, the 450F oven cooking for 30 minutes and then lowering the temp to 350 works pretty good too and I've usually done that for faster cooking (and more reliable timing), but the slow-cooking is best.
I don't set out a whole table display (its just me), so there isn't much to show, but the turkey had a beautiful mahogany skin, so I have a picture of that.
Monday, November 24, 2014
A Little Computer And Some Garden Problems
COMPUTER: Well, first, I KNEW everything wouldn't be perfect on the new old laptop. The thrill of connectivity deceived me. Oh, it's not terrible news, but the "M" key came loose right away, and my feedly.com reader list keeps disappearing from the sidebar. It sticks on the desktop but not the laptop. I'm sure I'll find out how to stick it permanently, but haven't so far.
And there are other annoying problems. I'm sure most can be fixed, but some may just be part of using a laptop. I was expecting that since I was only using the laptop for reading blogs (at the moment), what did I care about security? There's nothing ON the laptop. But then I started getting unending, nearly constant ads. It was like "Whack-A-Mole"! Close one, another pops up. I went 15 minutes doing nothing but closing ads at one point, and even closing some of them seems to have generated some email responses to the ads even though I don't have any email set up tat I know about. Probably some basic gmail embedded in the computer.
I went into the system preferences and made some adjustments which reduced the ads but haven't eliminated them. I was hoping not to have to buy MacKeeper for the laptop (it can prevent pop-up ads among other things. I may find free software that does that. Apparently, I'm going to have to compare files on my desktop to the laptop, see what I can copy over, and maybe buy some simple versions of other software.
If anyone has Mac desktop and laptop equipment and some of those things sound familiar, please drop me an email with any useful advise, please! Reattaching the "M" key is actually a priority, but the other long term stuff is more vital.
GARDEN: We had an unusual 70+ day today, so I set about constructing the 5th of 6 framed beds. I thought it would go fast, but NOOOOO....
I mostly have to laugh at all the surprises a project can offer. Well, it doesn't help to complain. Not that I don't both laugh AND swear sometimes.
I got out in the garden at 1:30. First, I had to carry the precut boards (by me, not the Home Depot guy after the first bad experience). I carried one out to the garden, then decided to try using the dolly to carry 2 at a time. Didn't work, they were too tall and awkward. So I carried them all out one at a time. 2"x8"x7' preservative-treated boards are heavy, but on my shoulder one-at-a-time worked. That part was fairly expected.
So the 5th frame was to go 2' from the last and since there had been old beds there before (full of good soil), I only shoveled soil enough to lay down the new boards (different sizes from the old and 90 degrees in rotation).
Dragged out all the usual tools from the shed, connected the 150' of electrical cord, set up the radio on Classical, and started to dig some trenches where the new frame would set level. There are invading vines from a neighbor, and I have been digging them out as I go. Dig, pull, toss, dig, pull, toss... Only one looked odd out of the corner of my eye, so I looked at it. A poison ivy plant! Sure, why not? I haven't seen a poison ivy plant in the garden for several years and I was holding it in my bare hands. Might as well find one now.
So I dropped it in a remote corner where it could die peacefully and went into the house at once to wash my hand. Holding the hand up so that I wouldn't touch anything in the house with it, I got safely to the bathroom and washed with soap for 5 minutes (hurray for pump soap). Then I washed again with rubbing alcohol. If I'm not complaining of poison ivy in 5 days, you'll know it worked.
So I was back out at the garden and set out the corners for the 5th bed. Which meant clamping a long straight board to the end on the previous bed so that they all stay even with each other. Naturally, I had brought the small clamps back to the house for a different project, so back to the house I went. That 150' of walking back and forth adds up! So I clamped the "straight-edge board" and set some corner bricks to support the lower lever of the frame. Yes, I've developed a routine after the first 4 beds. Experience accumulates.
The distance to the far end of the 5th bed was farther than I eyeballed it, so I had to rip out more of the old frame boards and dig off more old garden soil into the existing beds than I had expected. More time gone. And then I hit a 3" tree root from my neighbor's junk trees. And I mean "junk". He just let whatever grew, grow. None of them are good trees, just invasive ones that grow thickly and unhealthfully. Someday, I may ask him if we can just cut them down and plant nicer smaller ones like dogwoods and crabapples or whatever he likes.
But it meant I had to find my ax to cut the invasive root, which was back in the house, of course (for a perfectly good reason). Then I remembered that the ax was a bit dull, so I had to sharpen it. And the bench grinder on a stand was behind a bunch of stuff moved when the insulation guys worked in the basement, and by the time I got access to it and sharpened the ax to "OK" that was another quarter hour gone. And of course, the root was loose in the ground so chopping it with the ax took some time.
An hour and a half and I still hadn't gotten the first board in place for the 5th bed... I used some bad words.
But I was finally able to start with the frame. Previous frames, I leveled first and constructed later. I tried constructing first this time. If you place bricks angled at all the corners, you can get all the board corners to match. That worked pretty well. I got the lower layer of the frame attached in only 30 minutes. That sounds long, but I am obsessed with getting all the corners matching as perfectly as possible. These beds should last 20 years and I'll be looking at them a lot, so why not go for the best appearance?
To construct each layer of the framed bed, I set the long boards on a brick at the corners. The brick also holds the short end boards at the same level. After that, I can use long clamps to loosely hold the 4 boards together. After that, I tap the boards until the square ends match up. Sometimes the boards are not exactly the same width, so I wedge one up to match the next. I used little twigs on the first few beds but realized the axe blade was very good for that.
I have 2 drills for the project. One is a standard electric drill for drilling pilot holes for the long screws that go though both boards at the corner. The second drill is a cordless drill with a screw setting (has a slower speed and a torque control to not overdrive the screws in). But most importantly, it means I don't have to keep changing the drill bit for the screwdriver bit. And I'm using lubricated star-drive screws designed for preservative-treated boards. Those resist the P-T board chemicals AND go in easier. They are worth the very slight extra cost.
I got the lowever level of the framed bed finished and saw bad news. The sun was on the horizon! It was only 4:15! But my horizon is not flat horizon. The land slopes up radically on my west side. But I had all the tools out, the 2nd level of boards ready, and I wanted to finish the 2nd level today. It supposed to rain tomorrow and get colder.
And wouldn't you know it, my box of screws was empty. Back to the house... I thought, and correctly, that I had another box of them "somewhere". Took only 15 minutes to find them. Yes, they were in an obvious place, but not obvious to ME today... LOL!
So back outside in the fading light. Fortunately, the 2nd level of boards is WAY easier than the first. And I found a few quick tips to make that easier. I had used a square piece of 4"x4" to establish square corners on the first couple of 4' wide framed beds. I found that using 4" bar clamps on the 3' wide 3rd and 4th beds was easier. I tightened them loosely, tapped all the corners flush, then tightened the claps more and drilled the holes. Worked great.
Except the 5th and 6th beds (like the 1st and 2nd beds) are actually 4'3" wide and the 4" clamps are JUST too short. Well, guess what, you can hook 2 clamps together! So I attached a 4' clamp and a 12" clamp across the beds at both ends and locked all the corners tight after making them flush in all directions*.
After that, and with the sun over the local elevated horizon, I got the last of the screws in! The framed bed isn't complete. The 2 levels are not attached to each other. I uses a 1"x6"x6' P-T board for THAT. I attach it on the inside of the long boards. Half the width above the seam between the frame boards and screw it on. Then attaching screws in that 1" board below, draws the 2 levels together beautifully!
Tomorrow isn't going to be as nice as today. 50 degrees vs 75. But 50 is OK I might get the last LAST, LAST LAST framed built finished tomorrow. If it doesn't rain...
So close to the end, and chasing the decent weather to the finish, LOL!
But you know, if there weren't surprises all the time in a project, it probably wouldn't be worth writing about it. Seriously, how exciting would it be to just write "I built 6 framed beds this year"?
* I still had to tap boards around in all the corners until the matched up evenly horizontally AND vertically. THEN I tightened the clamps hard and drilled pilot holes for the screws.
Pictures in a few days when I finish...
And there are other annoying problems. I'm sure most can be fixed, but some may just be part of using a laptop. I was expecting that since I was only using the laptop for reading blogs (at the moment), what did I care about security? There's nothing ON the laptop. But then I started getting unending, nearly constant ads. It was like "Whack-A-Mole"! Close one, another pops up. I went 15 minutes doing nothing but closing ads at one point, and even closing some of them seems to have generated some email responses to the ads even though I don't have any email set up tat I know about. Probably some basic gmail embedded in the computer.
I went into the system preferences and made some adjustments which reduced the ads but haven't eliminated them. I was hoping not to have to buy MacKeeper for the laptop (it can prevent pop-up ads among other things. I may find free software that does that. Apparently, I'm going to have to compare files on my desktop to the laptop, see what I can copy over, and maybe buy some simple versions of other software.
If anyone has Mac desktop and laptop equipment and some of those things sound familiar, please drop me an email with any useful advise, please! Reattaching the "M" key is actually a priority, but the other long term stuff is more vital.
GARDEN: We had an unusual 70+ day today, so I set about constructing the 5th of 6 framed beds. I thought it would go fast, but NOOOOO....
I mostly have to laugh at all the surprises a project can offer. Well, it doesn't help to complain. Not that I don't both laugh AND swear sometimes.
I got out in the garden at 1:30. First, I had to carry the precut boards (by me, not the Home Depot guy after the first bad experience). I carried one out to the garden, then decided to try using the dolly to carry 2 at a time. Didn't work, they were too tall and awkward. So I carried them all out one at a time. 2"x8"x7' preservative-treated boards are heavy, but on my shoulder one-at-a-time worked. That part was fairly expected.
So the 5th frame was to go 2' from the last and since there had been old beds there before (full of good soil), I only shoveled soil enough to lay down the new boards (different sizes from the old and 90 degrees in rotation).
Dragged out all the usual tools from the shed, connected the 150' of electrical cord, set up the radio on Classical, and started to dig some trenches where the new frame would set level. There are invading vines from a neighbor, and I have been digging them out as I go. Dig, pull, toss, dig, pull, toss... Only one looked odd out of the corner of my eye, so I looked at it. A poison ivy plant! Sure, why not? I haven't seen a poison ivy plant in the garden for several years and I was holding it in my bare hands. Might as well find one now.
So I dropped it in a remote corner where it could die peacefully and went into the house at once to wash my hand. Holding the hand up so that I wouldn't touch anything in the house with it, I got safely to the bathroom and washed with soap for 5 minutes (hurray for pump soap). Then I washed again with rubbing alcohol. If I'm not complaining of poison ivy in 5 days, you'll know it worked.
So I was back out at the garden and set out the corners for the 5th bed. Which meant clamping a long straight board to the end on the previous bed so that they all stay even with each other. Naturally, I had brought the small clamps back to the house for a different project, so back to the house I went. That 150' of walking back and forth adds up! So I clamped the "straight-edge board" and set some corner bricks to support the lower lever of the frame. Yes, I've developed a routine after the first 4 beds. Experience accumulates.
The distance to the far end of the 5th bed was farther than I eyeballed it, so I had to rip out more of the old frame boards and dig off more old garden soil into the existing beds than I had expected. More time gone. And then I hit a 3" tree root from my neighbor's junk trees. And I mean "junk". He just let whatever grew, grow. None of them are good trees, just invasive ones that grow thickly and unhealthfully. Someday, I may ask him if we can just cut them down and plant nicer smaller ones like dogwoods and crabapples or whatever he likes.
But it meant I had to find my ax to cut the invasive root, which was back in the house, of course (for a perfectly good reason). Then I remembered that the ax was a bit dull, so I had to sharpen it. And the bench grinder on a stand was behind a bunch of stuff moved when the insulation guys worked in the basement, and by the time I got access to it and sharpened the ax to "OK" that was another quarter hour gone. And of course, the root was loose in the ground so chopping it with the ax took some time.
An hour and a half and I still hadn't gotten the first board in place for the 5th bed... I used some bad words.
But I was finally able to start with the frame. Previous frames, I leveled first and constructed later. I tried constructing first this time. If you place bricks angled at all the corners, you can get all the board corners to match. That worked pretty well. I got the lower layer of the frame attached in only 30 minutes. That sounds long, but I am obsessed with getting all the corners matching as perfectly as possible. These beds should last 20 years and I'll be looking at them a lot, so why not go for the best appearance?
To construct each layer of the framed bed, I set the long boards on a brick at the corners. The brick also holds the short end boards at the same level. After that, I can use long clamps to loosely hold the 4 boards together. After that, I tap the boards until the square ends match up. Sometimes the boards are not exactly the same width, so I wedge one up to match the next. I used little twigs on the first few beds but realized the axe blade was very good for that.
I have 2 drills for the project. One is a standard electric drill for drilling pilot holes for the long screws that go though both boards at the corner. The second drill is a cordless drill with a screw setting (has a slower speed and a torque control to not overdrive the screws in). But most importantly, it means I don't have to keep changing the drill bit for the screwdriver bit. And I'm using lubricated star-drive screws designed for preservative-treated boards. Those resist the P-T board chemicals AND go in easier. They are worth the very slight extra cost.
I got the lowever level of the framed bed finished and saw bad news. The sun was on the horizon! It was only 4:15! But my horizon is not flat horizon. The land slopes up radically on my west side. But I had all the tools out, the 2nd level of boards ready, and I wanted to finish the 2nd level today. It supposed to rain tomorrow and get colder.
And wouldn't you know it, my box of screws was empty. Back to the house... I thought, and correctly, that I had another box of them "somewhere". Took only 15 minutes to find them. Yes, they were in an obvious place, but not obvious to ME today... LOL!
So back outside in the fading light. Fortunately, the 2nd level of boards is WAY easier than the first. And I found a few quick tips to make that easier. I had used a square piece of 4"x4" to establish square corners on the first couple of 4' wide framed beds. I found that using 4" bar clamps on the 3' wide 3rd and 4th beds was easier. I tightened them loosely, tapped all the corners flush, then tightened the claps more and drilled the holes. Worked great.
Except the 5th and 6th beds (like the 1st and 2nd beds) are actually 4'3" wide and the 4" clamps are JUST too short. Well, guess what, you can hook 2 clamps together! So I attached a 4' clamp and a 12" clamp across the beds at both ends and locked all the corners tight after making them flush in all directions*.
After that, and with the sun over the local elevated horizon, I got the last of the screws in! The framed bed isn't complete. The 2 levels are not attached to each other. I uses a 1"x6"x6' P-T board for THAT. I attach it on the inside of the long boards. Half the width above the seam between the frame boards and screw it on. Then attaching screws in that 1" board below, draws the 2 levels together beautifully!
Tomorrow isn't going to be as nice as today. 50 degrees vs 75. But 50 is OK I might get the last LAST, LAST LAST framed built finished tomorrow. If it doesn't rain...
So close to the end, and chasing the decent weather to the finish, LOL!
But you know, if there weren't surprises all the time in a project, it probably wouldn't be worth writing about it. Seriously, how exciting would it be to just write "I built 6 framed beds this year"?
* I still had to tap boards around in all the corners until the matched up evenly horizontally AND vertically. THEN I tightened the clamps hard and drilled pilot holes for the screws.
Pictures in a few days when I finish...
Friday, November 21, 2014
Bleh!
I KNEW it wouldn't be easy gettig a laptop to just connect to the
wireless router,. The laptop asks questions I can't answer. Verizon
said it would just ask for a "SSID and a "WEP KEY". Yeah, ROTFLMAO!
Worse, it offers options I don't understand. Even WORSE. I think it is
offerring me connections to all the neighborss' wi-fi (and one is
either very innocent or downright dirty). I don't want to know that
stuff.
But I can't get the laptop working and I used up the battery earlier, so it is charging again (and I'll leave it connected). I'll call Apple after it is charged. I think I know the right details for Verizon. Its the laptop questions I need help with.
This is why I didn't do this before. Any two pieces of computer equipment do NOT want to talk to each other... And I'll mention again MY BAD LUCK on minor things like this...
Need to do live chat with Apple and that typing kills me. I bet they tell me to talk to Verizon. That makes me the bouncing ball between the two of them...
ARGH!
UPDATE! With the hour-long struggle with the Verizon tech help (as opposed to the USELESS TWO hours of non-help from Apple) we have achieved LAPTOPNESS! I have to say that no matter what the problem and whether it was actually a Verizon issue or not they have helped me through thick and thin. And yes it is 11:30 AM here and I've been up ALL NIGHT again, struggling with computer challenges , but it was worth it (as it usually is when successful)!
And I have to say my $200 cheapo refurbished MacPro 13" laptop is acting SUPERBIO-PRIMO!
The next comments you get are going to be laptomese and I think The Mews will love it too!
But I can't get the laptop working and I used up the battery earlier, so it is charging again (and I'll leave it connected). I'll call Apple after it is charged. I think I know the right details for Verizon. Its the laptop questions I need help with.
This is why I didn't do this before. Any two pieces of computer equipment do NOT want to talk to each other... And I'll mention again MY BAD LUCK on minor things like this...
Need to do live chat with Apple and that typing kills me. I bet they tell me to talk to Verizon. That makes me the bouncing ball between the two of them...
ARGH!
UPDATE! With the hour-long struggle with the Verizon tech help (as opposed to the USELESS TWO hours of non-help from Apple) we have achieved LAPTOPNESS! I have to say that no matter what the problem and whether it was actually a Verizon issue or not they have helped me through thick and thin. And yes it is 11:30 AM here and I've been up ALL NIGHT again, struggling with computer challenges , but it was worth it (as it usually is when successful)!
And I have to say my $200 cheapo refurbished MacPro 13" laptop is acting SUPERBIO-PRIMO!
The next comments you get are going to be laptomese and I think The Mews will love it too!
Thursday, November 20, 2014
A New Piece Of Equipment
Well, having a desktop computer being my single piece of high tech equipment since my first Commodore computer in 1983, I have LEAPED into the 21st century!
I now have a cheap refurbished 13" screen Mac Laptop. Its cosmetic condition is way better than promised by the seller (on Amazon.com). It's sole intended purpose is to visit my (and the Mews) blogging friends. I figure we can visit our friends on a more regular and timely basis if we have a laptop out in the main part of the house.
I talked to my ISP and confirmed that my existing router should accept a signal from the laptop, and I have the information they SAY is sufficient to connect. It is charging now, and I will see what happens tomorrow.
According to the seller, I have 30 days to decide if I like it, but I should know on the first day. It was cheap enough to give it a try without much concern. Security is no concern, as it won't actually have any information on it. I mean, it has a good basic set of software, but I won't be keeping any files on it. If I understand correctly, just reading blogs and not even email won't leave anything to be read except my blog-visiting history, and I can't see what good that would do anyone (though I will add firewalls and such anyway if they aren't already on there).
I do think I want to download a manual for it (wasn't included) to see what I can do with it (or should not do with it for security reasons). It's portable of course, but I don't plan to use it that way. I just wanted a remote station to read blogs and possibly browse during TV commercials. It won't have connectivity to my desktop computer (I will check on that because I don't currently WANT it to). Mostly, I need to start with one feature and see how that works.
It seems a reasonable good deal for $200. The keyboard isn't full size, but it is close. And I bought a cheap wireless mouse to go with it. I typed on it a bit before I started to charge it up and I'll have to be a bit careful. But its not like I would have to use it for extensive typing.
And who knows, maybe this will get me into more of a wireless world. Which is a bit ironic, because from 1988 to 2006, I was the Telecommunications Manager at a Federal Agency overseeing policy and operations for all the landline and wireless voice services, yet never used any of the wireless stuff myself.
Looking forward to the powered-up laptop access tomorrow!
I now have a cheap refurbished 13" screen Mac Laptop. Its cosmetic condition is way better than promised by the seller (on Amazon.com). It's sole intended purpose is to visit my (and the Mews) blogging friends. I figure we can visit our friends on a more regular and timely basis if we have a laptop out in the main part of the house.
I talked to my ISP and confirmed that my existing router should accept a signal from the laptop, and I have the information they SAY is sufficient to connect. It is charging now, and I will see what happens tomorrow.
According to the seller, I have 30 days to decide if I like it, but I should know on the first day. It was cheap enough to give it a try without much concern. Security is no concern, as it won't actually have any information on it. I mean, it has a good basic set of software, but I won't be keeping any files on it. If I understand correctly, just reading blogs and not even email won't leave anything to be read except my blog-visiting history, and I can't see what good that would do anyone (though I will add firewalls and such anyway if they aren't already on there).
I do think I want to download a manual for it (wasn't included) to see what I can do with it (or should not do with it for security reasons). It's portable of course, but I don't plan to use it that way. I just wanted a remote station to read blogs and possibly browse during TV commercials. It won't have connectivity to my desktop computer (I will check on that because I don't currently WANT it to). Mostly, I need to start with one feature and see how that works.
It seems a reasonable good deal for $200. The keyboard isn't full size, but it is close. And I bought a cheap wireless mouse to go with it. I typed on it a bit before I started to charge it up and I'll have to be a bit careful. But its not like I would have to use it for extensive typing.
And who knows, maybe this will get me into more of a wireless world. Which is a bit ironic, because from 1988 to 2006, I was the Telecommunications Manager at a Federal Agency overseeing policy and operations for all the landline and wireless voice services, yet never used any of the wireless stuff myself.
Looking forward to the powered-up laptop access tomorrow!
Monday, November 17, 2014
Football
Thank you, The Washington football team, for being so embarrassed by the lowly Tampa Bay Bucanneers. Now I don't have to even THINK about watching the homie team for the rest of the year...
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Fun With Lumber
Or I could title this "I have bad luck on minor things"! I went out and bought the lumber I needed for the remaining 2 framed garden beds a few days ago. Back at home, I decided to back the trailer up to the garage so I wouldn't have to carry the heavy preservative-treated wood from the far corner of the front yard where I store the trailer.
I'm sure anyone who has some experience in backing things up with a car knows that the longer the hitched item is, the easier it is to back up because the directions don't change as quickly as with short items. Well, my trailer is only 8' long, and I couldn't even see it in the rear view mirror, or by opening the front car door and looking out. I finally had to go in the garage and clamp a board upright in both rear corners of the trailer. I think I will attach a couple of small flags on dowels attached to the trailer corners!
But I got the twelve 8'x2"x8" boards unloaded into the garage and the trailer put off into the yard corner. Today, I set about cutting them to size. The preservative lumber is odd. They are not a full 2" thick or 8" wide, but thy ARE longer than 8'! Perhaps that is so the poorly-cut ends can be recut better.
Anyway, I needed most of the boards cut to 7' long, so it didn't really matter. Except the few end boards which I wanted to cut into two 4' long boards. Still, the extra length made that not a problem. I carefully measured each board's length before I made any cuts, and they were all 8'1" long. Perfect.
Except one board. Which I failed to measure. Which was one of the few boards I chose for the two 4' pieces... So I got a 4' board and a 3'10" board, which just won't make a rectangular framed bed!
Think about it. For 8 of the boards, it didn't matter (they were getting cut to 7'). For 3 of the remaining 4 boards, I measured (and they were all at 8'1"). The ONE board I didn't remember to measure NEEDED to be 8'1" so that I could square the ends with good smooth cuts.
So the ONE short board had a 1/3 chance of being among the 4 boards that HAD to be over 8' long AND a 1/12 chance of being the only board I didn't measure. Giving a 1/36 chance THAT board was the only one I didn't measure AND was too short. Which means that, with 36 sets of identical boards, I would have NOT had a problem 35 times and a problem only once... And I managed to achieve that "1 in 36 times event".
I have the worst luck with minor things!!!
So now I have to go back to buy 1 board. Grumble, grumble, grumble...
I'm sure anyone who has some experience in backing things up with a car knows that the longer the hitched item is, the easier it is to back up because the directions don't change as quickly as with short items. Well, my trailer is only 8' long, and I couldn't even see it in the rear view mirror, or by opening the front car door and looking out. I finally had to go in the garage and clamp a board upright in both rear corners of the trailer. I think I will attach a couple of small flags on dowels attached to the trailer corners!
But I got the twelve 8'x2"x8" boards unloaded into the garage and the trailer put off into the yard corner. Today, I set about cutting them to size. The preservative lumber is odd. They are not a full 2" thick or 8" wide, but thy ARE longer than 8'! Perhaps that is so the poorly-cut ends can be recut better.
Anyway, I needed most of the boards cut to 7' long, so it didn't really matter. Except the few end boards which I wanted to cut into two 4' long boards. Still, the extra length made that not a problem. I carefully measured each board's length before I made any cuts, and they were all 8'1" long. Perfect.
Except one board. Which I failed to measure. Which was one of the few boards I chose for the two 4' pieces... So I got a 4' board and a 3'10" board, which just won't make a rectangular framed bed!
Think about it. For 8 of the boards, it didn't matter (they were getting cut to 7'). For 3 of the remaining 4 boards, I measured (and they were all at 8'1"). The ONE board I didn't remember to measure NEEDED to be 8'1" so that I could square the ends with good smooth cuts.
So the ONE short board had a 1/3 chance of being among the 4 boards that HAD to be over 8' long AND a 1/12 chance of being the only board I didn't measure. Giving a 1/36 chance THAT board was the only one I didn't measure AND was too short. Which means that, with 36 sets of identical boards, I would have NOT had a problem 35 times and a problem only once... And I managed to achieve that "1 in 36 times event".
I have the worst luck with minor things!!!
So now I have to go back to buy 1 board. Grumble, grumble, grumble...
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Random Successes
1. Got the 4th of 6 framed beds completed. Next job is to fill them halfway with existing soil from where the 5th and 6th of 6 beds will go. Today is about the last decent day to work outside for a while, so I better take advantage of it.
2. Accumulating more stuff in the basement to have Salvation Army pick up. It sometimes seems everywhere I look there is more stuff I really don't need. Some of it is so odd I am labeling it.
3. The new trash pickup service is great! The fact that they provide company-labeled trash bins is a great improvement. With the labeled bin, they don't forget me if I only have enough trash to tput out once a month. If they see their bin, they empty it.
4. The strong winds this month have been a benefit. Usually, the basket oak trees hold on to the leaves until January. But they are almost all fallen now. I can mow over them several passes with the riding mower until they are all mulched into the lawn. What falls from the trees seeps into the yard to feed the trees. And the grass.
5. Getting ready to have the tub tiles replaced. After 28 years, they are coming loose around the faucet. I should have been aware that there was a problem, but some things happen so grdually, you don't notice.
6. And as long as I have some tile work done in the bathroom, I might as well fulfill a minor design fantasy. I always loved Rachel Ray's green tiled kitchen. I think I will duplicate that. I do love green.
7. Dug up 4 Basil plants before the freezes hit. Will keep them in the south-facing window so I can pick some leaves all Winter, I hope.
8. Have 3 planter-boxes of Meslun, Leaf lettuce, and Head lettuce. Hoping for routine salad improvements all Winter.
2. Accumulating more stuff in the basement to have Salvation Army pick up. It sometimes seems everywhere I look there is more stuff I really don't need. Some of it is so odd I am labeling it.
3. The new trash pickup service is great! The fact that they provide company-labeled trash bins is a great improvement. With the labeled bin, they don't forget me if I only have enough trash to tput out once a month. If they see their bin, they empty it.
4. The strong winds this month have been a benefit. Usually, the basket oak trees hold on to the leaves until January. But they are almost all fallen now. I can mow over them several passes with the riding mower until they are all mulched into the lawn. What falls from the trees seeps into the yard to feed the trees. And the grass.
5. Getting ready to have the tub tiles replaced. After 28 years, they are coming loose around the faucet. I should have been aware that there was a problem, but some things happen so grdually, you don't notice.
6. And as long as I have some tile work done in the bathroom, I might as well fulfill a minor design fantasy. I always loved Rachel Ray's green tiled kitchen. I think I will duplicate that. I do love green.
7. Dug up 4 Basil plants before the freezes hit. Will keep them in the south-facing window so I can pick some leaves all Winter, I hope.
8. Have 3 planter-boxes of Meslun, Leaf lettuce, and Head lettuce. Hoping for routine salad improvements all Winter.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Veterans Day
I am not a veteran. I came of that age during the Vietnam War and I was against that war. In my 2nd year of college, the draft lottery started. I gave up my college deferment and took my chance.
My number was something like 254. They didn't reach that number and I was free of the draft after that.
I will not say that upset me. I thought the war was dumb. But I did not think less of those who did serve. Had my number been called, I would have served (reluctantly).
My father was rejected for service in WWII for heart reasons. I had many uncles who did serve and valiantly. Most of them thought the Vietnam war was idiotic.
I sometimes wonder how differently my life would have gone had my Vietnam number been called. I wouldn't have been a great soldier. I abhor militaristic hierarchy. But I would have done my best. I would probably have been killed, because I do have a sense of getting out in front of situations. But my number wasn't called and I am here today. Some people I knew in college surely aren't.
Everyone has a view of how to live and what to die for. I didn't choose to risk mine in Vietnam. But I have no doubt that I would risk it to push someone out of the path of a speeding truck or in stopping a fight. Its all where you decide you would risk death.
I thank those who decide to risk theirs and serve in war. To each their own...
My number was something like 254. They didn't reach that number and I was free of the draft after that.
I will not say that upset me. I thought the war was dumb. But I did not think less of those who did serve. Had my number been called, I would have served (reluctantly).
My father was rejected for service in WWII for heart reasons. I had many uncles who did serve and valiantly. Most of them thought the Vietnam war was idiotic.
I sometimes wonder how differently my life would have gone had my Vietnam number been called. I wouldn't have been a great soldier. I abhor militaristic hierarchy. But I would have done my best. I would probably have been killed, because I do have a sense of getting out in front of situations. But my number wasn't called and I am here today. Some people I knew in college surely aren't.
Everyone has a view of how to live and what to die for. I didn't choose to risk mine in Vietnam. But I have no doubt that I would risk it to push someone out of the path of a speeding truck or in stopping a fight. Its all where you decide you would risk death.
I thank those who decide to risk theirs and serve in war. To each their own...
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Energy Use After New Insulation and Other Stuff
1. Energy Usage After New Insulation:
One month does not prove anything much, but my first post-insulation project usage for October shows that my Oct 2013 usage was 1326 "some unit" and the Oct 2014 usage was only 973. It is promising, but weather in one month can be different one year to the next. I'll wait to see the next few bills.
But it does look good.
2. The framed raised garden beds are progressing. 3 of 6 completed and the boards for the 4th are all cut. Now that I have the process of building them routinely, the 4th will be easier than the first. And I am set to buy the lumber for the 5th and( last) 6th any day the weather is "OK".
3. I'm continuing to accumulate a pile of donatable items in the basement. Its not the "usual stuff". Today I cleaned out the top shelf of the pantry. Anyone have a bamboo multi-layer chinese steamer? I do, and I haven't used it in 20 years. Onto the pile it goes. I hope the Salvation Army knows what it is. LOL! I keep holding off calling Salvation Army for a pickup because I keep finding new stuff to add to the pile. I wonder what they will do with a 4" lens refraction telescope, for example. But that's their problem/good luck.
4. I'm loving the new trash pickup! I got rid of 12 bags of kitty litter last Friday and 10 today. They say they don't accept "lumber", but I have a barrelful of scrap ends, and so far as I can tell watching them mechanically lift and dump the dedicated container they provided, they can't see what is in it. I can keep cutting the trash lumber into 6" pieces and put them in bags all month until is is all gone. It sure will be nice to not have to drive to the landfill this winter! And I have a lot more junk to get rid of. I'll fit it it into the dedicated Evergreen container even if I need a sledgehammer to break it up. And I'm not trashing any recyclable or compostable stuff.
5. Last night was the first hard freeze here. I dug up 4 Basil plants to try to keep them growing inside on the south window. Picked the last tomatoes too. A few were at orange, so they might ripen. For the others, I will look up "fried green tomatoes".
6. Got out my 3 window box planters tonight. I can get some fancy mesclun lettuce from them over the winter, I have just enough potting soil left from last Spring to fill them.
7. The lowering sun this time of year is now blasting my eyes through the kitchen window. I found a tension rod to fit across the window and a valance to hang just low enough to prevent the glare as I make my lunch. 28 years and I'm finally getting around to doing that! I had a choice of 2 valances. One white lacey and one red. I chose the red; white lace isn't quite my style. Red doesn't fit the white wall and black appliance colors, but who cares. The cats won't complain. I've been considering having the kitchen tiled in various shades of 4" green and painting the rest of the kitchen celery. Maybe I'll hang a little label on the red valance "annoying red dissonance". LOL!
Actually, I like red/green/black as a color scheme. My living room is hunter green, the TV room (traditionally the dining room) is dark red, and all the other stuff is black except for the medium wood furniture. Oh well, I never expected to be displayed in "House Beautiful". I like what I like.
8. Next indoor project is to arrange the planting area. Everything since Spring has just been piled into the grow-light shelves. Since growing season starts indoors here in 2 months, I better get started on that soon. Or I'll need to do it fast the day I want to start planting.
One month does not prove anything much, but my first post-insulation project usage for October shows that my Oct 2013 usage was 1326 "some unit" and the Oct 2014 usage was only 973. It is promising, but weather in one month can be different one year to the next. I'll wait to see the next few bills.
But it does look good.
2. The framed raised garden beds are progressing. 3 of 6 completed and the boards for the 4th are all cut. Now that I have the process of building them routinely, the 4th will be easier than the first. And I am set to buy the lumber for the 5th and( last) 6th any day the weather is "OK".
3. I'm continuing to accumulate a pile of donatable items in the basement. Its not the "usual stuff". Today I cleaned out the top shelf of the pantry. Anyone have a bamboo multi-layer chinese steamer? I do, and I haven't used it in 20 years. Onto the pile it goes. I hope the Salvation Army knows what it is. LOL! I keep holding off calling Salvation Army for a pickup because I keep finding new stuff to add to the pile. I wonder what they will do with a 4" lens refraction telescope, for example. But that's their problem/good luck.
4. I'm loving the new trash pickup! I got rid of 12 bags of kitty litter last Friday and 10 today. They say they don't accept "lumber", but I have a barrelful of scrap ends, and so far as I can tell watching them mechanically lift and dump the dedicated container they provided, they can't see what is in it. I can keep cutting the trash lumber into 6" pieces and put them in bags all month until is is all gone. It sure will be nice to not have to drive to the landfill this winter! And I have a lot more junk to get rid of. I'll fit it it into the dedicated Evergreen container even if I need a sledgehammer to break it up. And I'm not trashing any recyclable or compostable stuff.
5. Last night was the first hard freeze here. I dug up 4 Basil plants to try to keep them growing inside on the south window. Picked the last tomatoes too. A few were at orange, so they might ripen. For the others, I will look up "fried green tomatoes".
6. Got out my 3 window box planters tonight. I can get some fancy mesclun lettuce from them over the winter, I have just enough potting soil left from last Spring to fill them.
7. The lowering sun this time of year is now blasting my eyes through the kitchen window. I found a tension rod to fit across the window and a valance to hang just low enough to prevent the glare as I make my lunch. 28 years and I'm finally getting around to doing that! I had a choice of 2 valances. One white lacey and one red. I chose the red; white lace isn't quite my style. Red doesn't fit the white wall and black appliance colors, but who cares. The cats won't complain. I've been considering having the kitchen tiled in various shades of 4" green and painting the rest of the kitchen celery. Maybe I'll hang a little label on the red valance "annoying red dissonance". LOL!
Actually, I like red/green/black as a color scheme. My living room is hunter green, the TV room (traditionally the dining room) is dark red, and all the other stuff is black except for the medium wood furniture. Oh well, I never expected to be displayed in "House Beautiful". I like what I like.
8. Next indoor project is to arrange the planting area. Everything since Spring has just been piled into the grow-light shelves. Since growing season starts indoors here in 2 months, I better get started on that soon. Or I'll need to do it fast the day I want to start planting.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Blogblast For Peace, Elections
Can't help it, I just love this one...
And...
-------------------------------
I can't forget US election day, though. I won't try to suggest who to vote for anywhere. But things have been improving since the Great Recession of the middle 2000s, we are out of 2 unilateral wars, and back into building alliances (as difficult and slow as that can be).
Mostly, though, I just want to say: VOTE!
Since my first vote in 1972, I have only missed voting in one Presidential or Mid-Term or Primary election. I skipped the presidential election in 1980 because I couldn't stand either Jimmy Carter OR Ronald Reagan and supported John Anderson. And with the long lines and the hopelessness of his chances, I just stayed home. I regret that.
Voting is precious. If you don't vote, don't complain about the results...
So VOTE!
-------------------------------
I can't forget US election day, though. I won't try to suggest who to vote for anywhere. But things have been improving since the Great Recession of the middle 2000s, we are out of 2 unilateral wars, and back into building alliances (as difficult and slow as that can be).
Mostly, though, I just want to say: VOTE!
Since my first vote in 1972, I have only missed voting in one Presidential or Mid-Term or Primary election. I skipped the presidential election in 1980 because I couldn't stand either Jimmy Carter OR Ronald Reagan and supported John Anderson. And with the long lines and the hopelessness of his chances, I just stayed home. I regret that.
Voting is precious. If you don't vote, don't complain about the results...
So VOTE!
Monday, November 3, 2014
Waterbed Management
I sleep on a King Size waterbed. Lots of room for me and the Mews. And Marley slept the entire night under the blankets at my side last night.
Did you know that water escapes a big thick plastic waterbed mattress? Yeah, me neither! It happens very slowly, and I suppose few people have a waterbed undisturbed for 28 years. I'm guessing some random breakdown of water into hydrogen and oxygen (there was a big air bubble in the mattress), some very gradual escape (even plastic/rubber isn't 100% impermeable forever,and "something else" (its always wise to cover all possibilities, LOL!). But over 20 yeras, the water in the waterbed had lessened,
SO... I hauled a garden hose into the house. I kept the connector to the waterbed all these years (I've had this waterbed mattress for 38 years - talk about a good deal). Well, the waterbed frame has drawers below it, so it just sat patiently in there waiting to be used again after the 28 years since I moved here.
The hose in through the bathroom window...
The window...
Outside the window...
Hose from the stand...
Looped over the holder...
Inside. The blue thing screws onto the waterbed fill at the long end. There is a black hose valve so I can start the waterflow from inside the house...
And finally, towels around the waterbed fill connection. There is always some leakage as it is detached.
So I connected the garden hose to the waterbed mattress connector and turned it on full blast. For . 10. Minutes.
That's a lot of water. The mattress is twice as thick as it was before. Now you have to understand that the incoming water is cold. I hope the Very Small Heater can warm it up enough by the time I go to bed. A cold waterbed mattress can suck the warmth right out of you even through several blankets.
But oh is it going to be nice tonight! It had gotten to the point where, when I turned over, my knees hit the support frame below the mattress. That sure won't happen for ANOTHER 20 years, LOL! And honestly, in another 20 years I doubt I'll notice. Or I'll have to do it again!
Update, it warmed up nicely. I slept like a good baby and I haven't done that for a while.
Did you know that water escapes a big thick plastic waterbed mattress? Yeah, me neither! It happens very slowly, and I suppose few people have a waterbed undisturbed for 28 years. I'm guessing some random breakdown of water into hydrogen and oxygen (there was a big air bubble in the mattress), some very gradual escape (even plastic/rubber isn't 100% impermeable forever,and "something else" (its always wise to cover all possibilities, LOL!). But over 20 yeras, the water in the waterbed had lessened,
SO... I hauled a garden hose into the house. I kept the connector to the waterbed all these years (I've had this waterbed mattress for 38 years - talk about a good deal). Well, the waterbed frame has drawers below it, so it just sat patiently in there waiting to be used again after the 28 years since I moved here.
The hose in through the bathroom window...
So I connected the garden hose to the waterbed mattress connector and turned it on full blast. For . 10. Minutes.
That's a lot of water. The mattress is twice as thick as it was before. Now you have to understand that the incoming water is cold. I hope the Very Small Heater can warm it up enough by the time I go to bed. A cold waterbed mattress can suck the warmth right out of you even through several blankets.
But oh is it going to be nice tonight! It had gotten to the point where, when I turned over, my knees hit the support frame below the mattress. That sure won't happen for ANOTHER 20 years, LOL! And honestly, in another 20 years I doubt I'll notice. Or I'll have to do it again!
Update, it warmed up nicely. I slept like a good baby and I haven't done that for a while.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Garden Enclosure Again
Got back to work on the framed beds. Bought twelve 2"x8"x8' pressure-treated boards yesterday morning and cut up half of them in the afternoon. Half because I bought boards for 2 beds and decided to do them one at a time.
First, I discovered why the first set of boards I bought a few weeks ago for the first 2 beds were hard to get squared in construction. I had the store staff cut them on their huge fancy saw. Silly me! I assumed the boards were the lengths the labels said (like 8' long). The length didnt matter for the long sides of the beds, but it did for the widths because I simply said "ct them in half".
"Half" isn't a measurement...
Only after constructing the first 2 beds did I realize that all the boards were not equal. Not exactly a functional disaster for a garden bed, but it vaguely offended me. I should have been forewarned by the very surly male store person who was talking to the female cashiers when I made him do some work.
So this time I simply took all the boards home to cut myself. It was a revelation! The boards varied in length from barely 8' to 8' 1"!!! End the ends were NOT square by as much as 1/4" over the widt. No WONDER I had had so much trouble getting the first set to match up square!
I have a radial saw to cut long boards to length easily. I have a good table saw too, but you can't slide an 8' board on it. Radial saws work best for that. So first, I measured a board and found it was long and not square at the end.
I have it next to an 8' workbench at the same level height, so I can handle 10' long boards. The radial saw is great for long boards because the saw moves, not the long boards. I bought it when I built the fence because I had to cut about 1500 long boards (yes 1500) for that project. It paid for itself just for that and I've probably cut almost as many more since then.
But back to the odd lengths and unsquareness of the boards... I first shaved 1/4" off one end of each, then stacked them to the side. When all were done, I clamped down a board at 8' from the saw blade (as a positive "stop"" and cut them to exact length. Perfect length and all square ends!
Two of the 8' boards were WAY heavier than the others (I could barely lift them), so I kept them aside to cut into the smaller widths for the bed ends of 3'. Like the longer boards, I shaved off the ends to get them squared.
Nothing ever works out as planned. I set up another positive stop (meaning a clamped board away from the saw blade an exact repeatable distance). And clamped the board against the saw fence so that there could be NO errors.
There was an error on the very first one. I screamed in frustration!!! How could it have been wrong? Oops, the edges of preservative treated lumber are not "perfectly" straight along the long edges. I had chosen the straightest ones I could find, but flat straight ones vary along their length. So, as I kept adjusting the clamping to get them as straight as possible, the board slipped away 1/4 inch from the positive stop...
You can't win sometimes! So this bed isn't 8' long; it is 7' 11 and 3/4" long. *sigh* It why I don't try to build furniture. I'm cursed with minor errors. OK, in the garden framed beds, it doesn't really matter much. But it still ticks me off!
So, this early afternoon, I went out to construct the 3rd bed. I have the digging routine down pat. The yard is sloped, so I have to dig a trench for each bed to make it level. I set the lower end of the long boards on a brick and raise it until it is level. Then I dig down the upper end by that much. It works. Then I level the end board and clamp the long boards to it.
Making the end board fit even with the long boards, I drive in three 3" screws on each side, then raise the other narrow end up onto a board to keep them even. Drive three 3" screws into each side there. Then remove the support boards and settle the completed frame into the shallow trench.
If it isn't level, I lift the frame and push dirt under it until it is level. Not usually required, but I did have to once. Then I make sure the frame is really square. You do that by measuring both opposite corners. When I tap them a bit so the opposite dimensions are the same, I know it is really square.
It started to rain slightly after I got the first layer of frame for the 3rd frame in place this afternoon, so I had to stop and put all the tools away. But at least that was done. Putting the 2nd layer of boards on the top of the 1st level is always easy. You just match the tops to the bottoms.
I cut a scrap board into two 2' pieces to space the beds apart for walkable/wheelbarrowable paths. The upper left is the bottom of newer box...
But the rain stopped. I didn't want to haul all the tools out of the shed in case the rain started again, but I did have time to haul all the boards for the 4th bed out of the trailer and into the garage. At least I know how to do the cutting better than the first time, LOL!
That will be tomorrow's start.
First, I discovered why the first set of boards I bought a few weeks ago for the first 2 beds were hard to get squared in construction. I had the store staff cut them on their huge fancy saw. Silly me! I assumed the boards were the lengths the labels said (like 8' long). The length didnt matter for the long sides of the beds, but it did for the widths because I simply said "ct them in half".
"Half" isn't a measurement...
Only after constructing the first 2 beds did I realize that all the boards were not equal. Not exactly a functional disaster for a garden bed, but it vaguely offended me. I should have been forewarned by the very surly male store person who was talking to the female cashiers when I made him do some work.
So this time I simply took all the boards home to cut myself. It was a revelation! The boards varied in length from barely 8' to 8' 1"!!! End the ends were NOT square by as much as 1/4" over the widt. No WONDER I had had so much trouble getting the first set to match up square!
I have a radial saw to cut long boards to length easily. I have a good table saw too, but you can't slide an 8' board on it. Radial saws work best for that. So first, I measured a board and found it was long and not square at the end.
I have it next to an 8' workbench at the same level height, so I can handle 10' long boards. The radial saw is great for long boards because the saw moves, not the long boards. I bought it when I built the fence because I had to cut about 1500 long boards (yes 1500) for that project. It paid for itself just for that and I've probably cut almost as many more since then.
But back to the odd lengths and unsquareness of the boards... I first shaved 1/4" off one end of each, then stacked them to the side. When all were done, I clamped down a board at 8' from the saw blade (as a positive "stop"" and cut them to exact length. Perfect length and all square ends!
Two of the 8' boards were WAY heavier than the others (I could barely lift them), so I kept them aside to cut into the smaller widths for the bed ends of 3'. Like the longer boards, I shaved off the ends to get them squared.
Nothing ever works out as planned. I set up another positive stop (meaning a clamped board away from the saw blade an exact repeatable distance). And clamped the board against the saw fence so that there could be NO errors.
There was an error on the very first one. I screamed in frustration!!! How could it have been wrong? Oops, the edges of preservative treated lumber are not "perfectly" straight along the long edges. I had chosen the straightest ones I could find, but flat straight ones vary along their length. So, as I kept adjusting the clamping to get them as straight as possible, the board slipped away 1/4 inch from the positive stop...
You can't win sometimes! So this bed isn't 8' long; it is 7' 11 and 3/4" long. *sigh* It why I don't try to build furniture. I'm cursed with minor errors. OK, in the garden framed beds, it doesn't really matter much. But it still ticks me off!
So, this early afternoon, I went out to construct the 3rd bed. I have the digging routine down pat. The yard is sloped, so I have to dig a trench for each bed to make it level. I set the lower end of the long boards on a brick and raise it until it is level. Then I dig down the upper end by that much. It works. Then I level the end board and clamp the long boards to it.
Making the end board fit even with the long boards, I drive in three 3" screws on each side, then raise the other narrow end up onto a board to keep them even. Drive three 3" screws into each side there. Then remove the support boards and settle the completed frame into the shallow trench.
If it isn't level, I lift the frame and push dirt under it until it is level. Not usually required, but I did have to once. Then I make sure the frame is really square. You do that by measuring both opposite corners. When I tap them a bit so the opposite dimensions are the same, I know it is really square.
It started to rain slightly after I got the first layer of frame for the 3rd frame in place this afternoon, so I had to stop and put all the tools away. But at least that was done. Putting the 2nd layer of boards on the top of the 1st level is always easy. You just match the tops to the bottoms.
I cut a scrap board into two 2' pieces to space the beds apart for walkable/wheelbarrowable paths. The upper left is the bottom of newer box...
But the rain stopped. I didn't want to haul all the tools out of the shed in case the rain started again, but I did have time to haul all the boards for the 4th bed out of the trailer and into the garage. At least I know how to do the cutting better than the first time, LOL!
That will be tomorrow's start.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Garden Enclosure
Back On Track! Sometimes, when I get most frustrated about a project, I back off and think. There is almost always a solution to any simple problem. I found a solution to the problem I most recently posted about on the subject.
The problems were having to build framed beds on unlevel ground, keeping 2 layers of boards even and connected, and making the paths wide enough to get around all the beds in an enclosed area.
Sometimes the solutions are pathetically obvious in hindsight, sometimes the solutions are less obvious.
The biggest problem with my original design is that I did not take the thickness of the boards. 2x8 boards are 1.5" thick. Not much, but after 3 beds with boards on both sides, that adds up. Each framed bed takes 3" and 3 beds is almost a foot.
So instead of all the framed beds being 4' wide, the center one is 3'. That gives me 2' paths and 3" to mess up in.
Then I realized that having 7' long beds meant that the center pole support would be in the middle of a path. ARGH! So, the center beds will be 8' and 6' instead of 7' and 7'. The ceter support pole will be exactly on the side of the 8' framed bed.
The last problem is that the yard is unlevel. I don't want to make the beds be unlevel, s I need to adjust the board frames so they ARE level. But at one end, that puts the frame above ground. I decided to slip a 1" board at the lower end on the first beds. That's a bad fix. The RIGHT way to do it is to bury a 2"x4" board at the lower level til it "just reaches ground level and set the new frames on top of that. If that isn't clear, don't worry it works. I had done that on another project 20 years ago and forgotten. I "reinvented the wheel" so to speak. Anyway, it will work.
So I am back on the project.
Tomorrow, I go to Home Depot and buy twelve 2"x8"x8' pressure-treated boards. I had planned to do that today, but I ended up raking fallen trees debris off my roof. and them sweeping the debris off the deck.
But I know how to complete my garden enclosure project now, and that's the main thing.
The problems were having to build framed beds on unlevel ground, keeping 2 layers of boards even and connected, and making the paths wide enough to get around all the beds in an enclosed area.
Sometimes the solutions are pathetically obvious in hindsight, sometimes the solutions are less obvious.
The biggest problem with my original design is that I did not take the thickness of the boards. 2x8 boards are 1.5" thick. Not much, but after 3 beds with boards on both sides, that adds up. Each framed bed takes 3" and 3 beds is almost a foot.
So instead of all the framed beds being 4' wide, the center one is 3'. That gives me 2' paths and 3" to mess up in.
Then I realized that having 7' long beds meant that the center pole support would be in the middle of a path. ARGH! So, the center beds will be 8' and 6' instead of 7' and 7'. The ceter support pole will be exactly on the side of the 8' framed bed.
The last problem is that the yard is unlevel. I don't want to make the beds be unlevel, s I need to adjust the board frames so they ARE level. But at one end, that puts the frame above ground. I decided to slip a 1" board at the lower end on the first beds. That's a bad fix. The RIGHT way to do it is to bury a 2"x4" board at the lower level til it "just reaches ground level and set the new frames on top of that. If that isn't clear, don't worry it works. I had done that on another project 20 years ago and forgotten. I "reinvented the wheel" so to speak. Anyway, it will work.
So I am back on the project.
Tomorrow, I go to Home Depot and buy twelve 2"x8"x8' pressure-treated boards. I had planned to do that today, but I ended up raking fallen trees debris off my roof. and them sweeping the debris off the deck.
But I know how to complete my garden enclosure project now, and that's the main thing.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Trash Pickup
Before I moved here, I rented a house in another county where trash pickup was a single-contractor county service, paid through taxes. When I moved here, it was all private multiple-contractor service, and I signed up. All had 2 day per week pickup and all cost the same (about $35 per month and that was 20 years ago). It was all OK for a while.
But then, the county started recycling pickups AND I had started a compost pile. Between recycling and compost, my "trash" dropped to almost nothing! My one bag of trash once a month got ignored because my pickup company guys kept forgetting I was a customer. And paying $35 a month for one bag seemed ridiculous. And back then, I had Tinkerbell, then Skeeter and LC and they preferred to do their business outside. I didn't even have much kitty litter to toss.
I tried 3 companies and they always lost track of me on the routes. They said "well just put out your trash can twice a week with a small bag in it. I didn't even have THAT most weeks. So I cancelled the pickup service and switched to saving it for a few months and then driving to the county landfill paying $1 for the bag (my "trash" is not smelly, almost anything "smelly" is compostable).
Things change. Ayla, Iza, and Marley prefer to do their business indoors. I've even seen them demand to come in, use the litter box, and then demand to go back outside. And I've started ending up with some bulkier trash. So I was going to the landfill sometimes with a few 100 lbs of non-recyclable, non-compostable trash, and the price of gas was going up. So between the flat disposal rate of $5 and a gallon of gas to get there in my SUV, it was starting to be noticible. And who wants to have to drive to a landfill to unload in Winter or mucky Spring rains?
Well, 2 days ago, a guy knocked on the door and asked abut my trash pickup service. I told him I didn't have one. Now, I usually automatically just (politely) blow off door-knockers. If I want something, I'll find it on my own and comparison-shop carefully. But he managed to get my interest.
I explained that the cost was too high, and that I usually didn't have enough trash to put out the barrel once or twice each week and that what I really needed was a service that charged half the price for a single monthly pickup.
I was surprised to discover my 2 major problems were resolved! First, they provide company-identified trash cans and the cost was half what it used to be. So, no matter how infrequently I put the trash out, they won't miss me! Second, at only $20 per month, the cost begins to approach my own cost of landfill dumping and gas (and time). And the contract is only quarterly, not annual. If I don't like their service, I can drop them.
Most of my trash is kitty litter, followed by styrofoam packing peanuts,and blue or black styrofoam containers (which are not recyclable here), and some strange odds and ends. I can manage a small bag each week.
And the cool thing is that I HAPPEN to have a LOT of unrecyclable, un-compostable trash right now. Heavy old rotting preservative-treated wood from the old raised framed garden beds I am replacing now! I estimate that the cost of landfill-dumping of all that stuff would be about $50 at least right now, and I'm less than half through tearing out the old wood. So I should actually save money through Spring and getting rid of it a LOT easier.
And I'll mention that the landfill is inundated by seagulls searching for scraps of food. They normally don't bother visitors, but one day they got all scared up and flew over my car. Raining poop... If you don't know about seagull poop, it dries quickly and turns to cement. It took me 2 hours to clean the car after that 1 episode.
I hesitated to hand the trash guy a $60 check for services I hadn't yet received, but he presented a pretty good collection of legitimacy. His car had the trash company logo (Evergreen Disposal) and I see their trucks each week. He had a well-worn Evergreen hat, pictures of him in an Evergreen trash truck, pictures of him with other Evergreen people, a picture of him at some trash conventionpictures of him receiving an award at an Evergreen company meeting, and I imagine a check made out to Evergreen Disposal would be awkward to cash... He suggested I use my smart phone to check their website (where he said he is a route manager) assuming I had a smart phone (who doesn't? Well, *I* don't, but he didn't know that). I think I was sufficiently cautious.
If I got scammed by a door-knocker, it will be about the first time ever and I might even tip my hat to him. I have a pretty good mental "BS meter".
But I expect I will be getting regular trash pickup starting Nov 4th at a really good price and saving myself a lot of trips to the county landfill.
But then, the county started recycling pickups AND I had started a compost pile. Between recycling and compost, my "trash" dropped to almost nothing! My one bag of trash once a month got ignored because my pickup company guys kept forgetting I was a customer. And paying $35 a month for one bag seemed ridiculous. And back then, I had Tinkerbell, then Skeeter and LC and they preferred to do their business outside. I didn't even have much kitty litter to toss.
I tried 3 companies and they always lost track of me on the routes. They said "well just put out your trash can twice a week with a small bag in it. I didn't even have THAT most weeks. So I cancelled the pickup service and switched to saving it for a few months and then driving to the county landfill paying $1 for the bag (my "trash" is not smelly, almost anything "smelly" is compostable).
Things change. Ayla, Iza, and Marley prefer to do their business indoors. I've even seen them demand to come in, use the litter box, and then demand to go back outside. And I've started ending up with some bulkier trash. So I was going to the landfill sometimes with a few 100 lbs of non-recyclable, non-compostable trash, and the price of gas was going up. So between the flat disposal rate of $5 and a gallon of gas to get there in my SUV, it was starting to be noticible. And who wants to have to drive to a landfill to unload in Winter or mucky Spring rains?
Well, 2 days ago, a guy knocked on the door and asked abut my trash pickup service. I told him I didn't have one. Now, I usually automatically just (politely) blow off door-knockers. If I want something, I'll find it on my own and comparison-shop carefully. But he managed to get my interest.
I explained that the cost was too high, and that I usually didn't have enough trash to put out the barrel once or twice each week and that what I really needed was a service that charged half the price for a single monthly pickup.
I was surprised to discover my 2 major problems were resolved! First, they provide company-identified trash cans and the cost was half what it used to be. So, no matter how infrequently I put the trash out, they won't miss me! Second, at only $20 per month, the cost begins to approach my own cost of landfill dumping and gas (and time). And the contract is only quarterly, not annual. If I don't like their service, I can drop them.
Most of my trash is kitty litter, followed by styrofoam packing peanuts,and blue or black styrofoam containers (which are not recyclable here), and some strange odds and ends. I can manage a small bag each week.
And the cool thing is that I HAPPEN to have a LOT of unrecyclable, un-compostable trash right now. Heavy old rotting preservative-treated wood from the old raised framed garden beds I am replacing now! I estimate that the cost of landfill-dumping of all that stuff would be about $50 at least right now, and I'm less than half through tearing out the old wood. So I should actually save money through Spring and getting rid of it a LOT easier.
And I'll mention that the landfill is inundated by seagulls searching for scraps of food. They normally don't bother visitors, but one day they got all scared up and flew over my car. Raining poop... If you don't know about seagull poop, it dries quickly and turns to cement. It took me 2 hours to clean the car after that 1 episode.
I hesitated to hand the trash guy a $60 check for services I hadn't yet received, but he presented a pretty good collection of legitimacy. His car had the trash company logo (Evergreen Disposal) and I see their trucks each week. He had a well-worn Evergreen hat, pictures of him in an Evergreen trash truck, pictures of him with other Evergreen people, a picture of him at some trash conventionpictures of him receiving an award at an Evergreen company meeting, and I imagine a check made out to Evergreen Disposal would be awkward to cash... He suggested I use my smart phone to check their website (where he said he is a route manager) assuming I had a smart phone (who doesn't? Well, *I* don't, but he didn't know that). I think I was sufficiently cautious.
If I got scammed by a door-knocker, it will be about the first time ever and I might even tip my hat to him. I have a pretty good mental "BS meter".
But I expect I will be getting regular trash pickup starting Nov 4th at a really good price and saving myself a lot of trips to the county landfill.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Garden Enclosure, Again
Some projects just go WRONG. And you don't realize until you are about half done. I thought the major work would be to build the enclosure and tearing apart the old rotting frame beds would be easy.
I'm an idiot! PPPPPPPTTTTT..............
I wish it was April again and I was just starting this. I would do it SO differently! But I wanted to save all the good soil by moving it from the old beds to the new beds as I built them. Seemed logical at the time, but Bad Decision. Happens a lot.
I had a friend who decided to almost double the size of his house by having half of it demolished and then added to. It went horribly! He could have had the whole house demolished and rebuilt so much easier and at about the same cost faster. Ruined a year of his life and cost me our friendship (I mentioned the renovator who built my toolshed and did some additions elsewhere).
Don't EVER make major recommendations to friends... He blamed me for the disaster and I wasn't sympathetic enough but that's another story (which I will tell someday soon).
But back to the garden. I SHOULD have just busted out all the old framed beds from end to end last April, disposed of all the old wood, and spread the soil and used my rototiller to level the whole *#%@ area. I didn't and I regret it now.
Part of the problem is that my lot slopes from back to front and from the center to the sides. Nothing is level here. It isn't obvious by just looking, but even an 8' long bed is 4" higher at one end than the other.
I have 2 of the 6 beds built. It was hard work. I had the original beds because the soil in the last sunny areas is all rock and clay. I should have remembered that when I planned to replace them.
If I was starting the project again today, I would just take out all the existing rotting boards at the same time and roto-till the entire area to level it all at once. Why not do that now?...
Because of a silly piece of twine. It outlines the whole new enclosure area. Silly, but I didn't want to undo the careful twine outline of the new bed. I can be very talented and very stupid at the same time. No laws prevent it..
But clearly, the way to go is to disassemble the 2 beds I built already (which in spite of my digging are unlevel and unsquare. Save the wood. Rototill the entire area and rake it flat as a pancake, THEN easily build the new framed beds on the leveled ground and add new soil.
And THEN build the squirrel and groundhog proof chicken wire enclosure.
My tomatoes MAY only cost me $10 each for several years...
I'm doing this because it is basically my "Last Hurrah" of gardening. In a few years (I'm 64) I won't be able to take on this kind of project. The new garden beds will basically last me my future years until I can't garden any more. So it is to rebuild them now or never.
And I will do it myself, or there is no point to it.
I'm an idiot! PPPPPPPTTTTT..............
I wish it was April again and I was just starting this. I would do it SO differently! But I wanted to save all the good soil by moving it from the old beds to the new beds as I built them. Seemed logical at the time, but Bad Decision. Happens a lot.
I had a friend who decided to almost double the size of his house by having half of it demolished and then added to. It went horribly! He could have had the whole house demolished and rebuilt so much easier and at about the same cost faster. Ruined a year of his life and cost me our friendship (I mentioned the renovator who built my toolshed and did some additions elsewhere).
Don't EVER make major recommendations to friends... He blamed me for the disaster and I wasn't sympathetic enough but that's another story (which I will tell someday soon).
But back to the garden. I SHOULD have just busted out all the old framed beds from end to end last April, disposed of all the old wood, and spread the soil and used my rototiller to level the whole *#%@ area. I didn't and I regret it now.
Part of the problem is that my lot slopes from back to front and from the center to the sides. Nothing is level here. It isn't obvious by just looking, but even an 8' long bed is 4" higher at one end than the other.
I have 2 of the 6 beds built. It was hard work. I had the original beds because the soil in the last sunny areas is all rock and clay. I should have remembered that when I planned to replace them.
If I was starting the project again today, I would just take out all the existing rotting boards at the same time and roto-till the entire area to level it all at once. Why not do that now?...
Because of a silly piece of twine. It outlines the whole new enclosure area. Silly, but I didn't want to undo the careful twine outline of the new bed. I can be very talented and very stupid at the same time. No laws prevent it..
But clearly, the way to go is to disassemble the 2 beds I built already (which in spite of my digging are unlevel and unsquare. Save the wood. Rototill the entire area and rake it flat as a pancake, THEN easily build the new framed beds on the leveled ground and add new soil.
And THEN build the squirrel and groundhog proof chicken wire enclosure.
My tomatoes MAY only cost me $10 each for several years...
I'm doing this because it is basically my "Last Hurrah" of gardening. In a few years (I'm 64) I won't be able to take on this kind of project. The new garden beds will basically last me my future years until I can't garden any more. So it is to rebuild them now or never.
And I will do it myself, or there is no point to it.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Games
I've stayed away from Pogo.com for a couple weeks. I can spend the whole night there SO easily. Scrabble, Risk, Hearts...
But I dropped in to play "one game" tonight and it seems there was a challenge from them to win 6 games of Scrabble in a week. 3,000 free token point and some badge.
Pish Posh.
Took me 7 games. Darn, I lost one by 2 points cuz I couldn't find a place to use that darn "J" I got right at the end. The others, I won by 100+ points.
They're clever, they keep me coming back...
But I dropped in to play "one game" tonight and it seems there was a challenge from them to win 6 games of Scrabble in a week. 3,000 free token point and some badge.
Pish Posh.
Took me 7 games. Darn, I lost one by 2 points cuz I couldn't find a place to use that darn "J" I got right at the end. The others, I won by 100+ points.
They're clever, they keep me coming back...
Friday, October 10, 2014
Politics
Well, it is less than 3 weeks before the midterm elections, so I am going to get a bit political until then. Its more than a hobby but less than an obsession.
I don't have a political party by loyalty. I generally vote Democratic because they support my views here in Maryland. But mostly, I try to vote be perceived honesty and concerns over issues I care about.
I consider my self "independent" in the sense that fair voting, honest and "greater good" concerns matter most to me. I care about fair and competitive election districts, getting as many people to vote as possible, and good honest debates between candidates. I don't like corporate money in political campaigns; businesses have no legitimate place in elections.
I'll discuss some particular elections in some detail in the coming few weeks.
And I will stop posting about politics shortly after the elections until late 2016.
I don't have a political party by loyalty. I generally vote Democratic because they support my views here in Maryland. But mostly, I try to vote be perceived honesty and concerns over issues I care about.
I consider my self "independent" in the sense that fair voting, honest and "greater good" concerns matter most to me. I care about fair and competitive election districts, getting as many people to vote as possible, and good honest debates between candidates. I don't like corporate money in political campaigns; businesses have no legitimate place in elections.
I'll discuss some particular elections in some detail in the coming few weeks.
And I will stop posting about politics shortly after the elections until late 2016.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
More Of Less Stuff
Each day, I keep thinking I should call Salvation Army but each day I find more stuff I can part with. So I plan to look around another day. Its worth the wait. You wouldn't believe how much unneeded stuff I've accumulated in 28 years here.
Some of the stuff I've dredged out of the attic and closets are actually good stuff I'll keep. But not much.
I have housewarming couch pillows in great condition because they've been in a closet because I don't have a couch. I got rid of the couch and loveseat 15 years ago. And a good story about those. A month after I donated them, I saw an article in the Washington Post newsapaper about a poor family that received some furniture and were thrilled. It was MY stuff! I recognized the odd patterns on the cushions.
So giving unneeded stuff away is good.
I've made quite a collection in the basement. A dining table that I meant to refinish and never will with 4 chairs, stackable chairs for parties I never had, an upright vacuum cleaner for carpets I don't have anymore, etc, etc, etc...
Would you believe I had TWO nearly identical 4" refracting telescopes? I can part with one of those.
And there are several boxes full of kitchen gadgets I never used. I don't exactly need the sieve that expands to fit the sink, or the strange flatware with the bright red ceramic handles, or the ones with the walnut handles either. Not my style and who needs 3 sets of flatware anyway. Those are partly why I asked my family to stop sending me christmas gifts, I have everything I want to have.
And there is stuff I bought myself that never worked out. Like the magnetic knife holders. And maybe someone could use that set of Ginsu knives. I mean they are actually pretty good, but I have better ones now.
The real weird stuff was buried in the computer room closet. A set of VCR storage drawers from a former friend. Four sets of golf club covers. Three tennis rackets I will never use again. And there were the "eldercare" tub bench and tub access supports left over from when Dad was here. I may need those things in 25 years (as Dad was 25 years older than me when he needed them), but I sure don't need them now and someone else sure does.
I'm dithering over the Christmas decorations. I haven't decorated a tree in 10 years, but I might any year now, and those things DO have memory value. Like the 25 pound tree stand that you can't find anywhere now. But mostly the decorations are all a bit unique collected over years; I'll keep those. How many people have 2 dozen fake male cardinals and bubble lights? But the dozen boxes of regular lights and cheap glass ornaments can go. Someone will appreciate them. I hope.
I could probably sell a lot of that, but something in me says that donating them would give more pleasure to people otherwise without them. And the idea of a child without much looking at colorful lights in the home (on a tree or not) feels good.
And maybe I'll include some of those bubble lights. I remember the wonder I felt when I saw them as a child. Better that some child wonders how they work than me keeping them in box of memory.
Mark
Some of the stuff I've dredged out of the attic and closets are actually good stuff I'll keep. But not much.
I have housewarming couch pillows in great condition because they've been in a closet because I don't have a couch. I got rid of the couch and loveseat 15 years ago. And a good story about those. A month after I donated them, I saw an article in the Washington Post newsapaper about a poor family that received some furniture and were thrilled. It was MY stuff! I recognized the odd patterns on the cushions.
So giving unneeded stuff away is good.
I've made quite a collection in the basement. A dining table that I meant to refinish and never will with 4 chairs, stackable chairs for parties I never had, an upright vacuum cleaner for carpets I don't have anymore, etc, etc, etc...
Would you believe I had TWO nearly identical 4" refracting telescopes? I can part with one of those.
And there are several boxes full of kitchen gadgets I never used. I don't exactly need the sieve that expands to fit the sink, or the strange flatware with the bright red ceramic handles, or the ones with the walnut handles either. Not my style and who needs 3 sets of flatware anyway. Those are partly why I asked my family to stop sending me christmas gifts, I have everything I want to have.
And there is stuff I bought myself that never worked out. Like the magnetic knife holders. And maybe someone could use that set of Ginsu knives. I mean they are actually pretty good, but I have better ones now.
The real weird stuff was buried in the computer room closet. A set of VCR storage drawers from a former friend. Four sets of golf club covers. Three tennis rackets I will never use again. And there were the "eldercare" tub bench and tub access supports left over from when Dad was here. I may need those things in 25 years (as Dad was 25 years older than me when he needed them), but I sure don't need them now and someone else sure does.
I'm dithering over the Christmas decorations. I haven't decorated a tree in 10 years, but I might any year now, and those things DO have memory value. Like the 25 pound tree stand that you can't find anywhere now. But mostly the decorations are all a bit unique collected over years; I'll keep those. How many people have 2 dozen fake male cardinals and bubble lights? But the dozen boxes of regular lights and cheap glass ornaments can go. Someone will appreciate them. I hope.
I could probably sell a lot of that, but something in me says that donating them would give more pleasure to people otherwise without them. And the idea of a child without much looking at colorful lights in the home (on a tree or not) feels good.
And maybe I'll include some of those bubble lights. I remember the wonder I felt when I saw them as a child. Better that some child wonders how they work than me keeping them in box of memory.
Mark
Monday, October 6, 2014
Old Stuff
You ever found something you liked and it just disappeared? I live that all the time. What ever I like is not popular enough to remain available. As a teen, I loved Whip and Chill. Gone. I love Sweet Tarts. So much that a friend brought me a HUGE single one 3" diameter from his vacation. My local butcher store used to have "cheesecake sampler packs". I loved those and they stopped selling them. I like Twisted Zin Zinfadel wine. If it wasn't for the fact that the store kindly special-orders it for me, I wouldn't have THAT either.
Not that I'm approving smoking, but I used to smoke Benson&Hedges 100s. No one carries them any more. Anything I like just goes away. I'm nearly anti-routine consumer.
I like my evening cocktail to be an ounce of gin, an ounce of pomegranate liquor, and ginger ale on the rocks. My version of a Singapore Sling. And sometimes using cherry liquor. Well, guess what? The makers (Dekuprs) dropped JUST those 2 liquors from their line last month!
My favorite candy bar as a kid was Skybar. It had 4 separate flavors in 4 separate pieces in each bar, Seen any of those lately? And the Zero Bar (white chocolate around nougat center). Can't find those either.
I'm cursed...
Sometimes I think that if I announced that I breathe oxygen, it would vanish...
But today, I found a 7-11 store that had Sweet Tarts! I bought 6 rolls (all they had). And better? They were buy-one-get-one-free! Bet that means they are the last ever made...
Not that I'm approving smoking, but I used to smoke Benson&Hedges 100s. No one carries them any more. Anything I like just goes away. I'm nearly anti-routine consumer.
I like my evening cocktail to be an ounce of gin, an ounce of pomegranate liquor, and ginger ale on the rocks. My version of a Singapore Sling. And sometimes using cherry liquor. Well, guess what? The makers (Dekuprs) dropped JUST those 2 liquors from their line last month!
My favorite candy bar as a kid was Skybar. It had 4 separate flavors in 4 separate pieces in each bar, Seen any of those lately? And the Zero Bar (white chocolate around nougat center). Can't find those either.
I'm cursed...
Sometimes I think that if I announced that I breathe oxygen, it would vanish...
But today, I found a 7-11 store that had Sweet Tarts! I bought 6 rolls (all they had). And better? They were buy-one-get-one-free! Bet that means they are the last ever made...
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Sweet and Sour Pork
Its NOT supposed to be batterred pork alone in some insipid sweet orange color sauce!
Batterred Pork is easy. Deep fry 1" cubes of pork butt in a thick spicy batter. Set aside. I use a "Fry Baby".
Holds 1 pound of Crisco shortening. Easy to deep fry small amounts in.
Cut coins/cubes of a dill pickle, green bell pepper, cherries, and pineapple. Heat them anyway you like (saute', M/V).
Sauce: 1 cup cold water, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1 T sugar, 1 T lemon juice, 1 T soy sauce, 2 or 3 T cornstarch. Throw it all in a saucepan to thicken. Viola, sweet/sour sauce for anything. Not tricky cooking.
Drop the pickle, pepper, pineapple and cherry into the sauce to warm. Add battered pork and stir lightly to mix.
Now how hard is THAT?
It should look like this:
And not that orange but I added the restaurant crap sauce to my good sauce cuz it did smell a bit orangey/sweet. I wish I had not done that.
But here is what they gave me (without their orange color sauce).
Which would YOU prefer?
The local best Chinese restaurant couldn't do THAT... Pathetic. And they should be shunned for the awful Spring Rolls. I actually took one Spring Roll apart to see what was in it. Nothing! Boiled cabbage as far as I could tell and nothing else*.
But I will say the Moo Goo Gai Pan was quite good.
* A Spring Roll is supposed to be fancier than an Egg Roll. A Spring Roll should have identifiable bits of shrimp, ground pork, and fancy chinese veggies like bean sprouts, water chestnuts, straw mushrooms, and bamboo shoots. Not soggy cabbage mush.
Batterred Pork is easy. Deep fry 1" cubes of pork butt in a thick spicy batter. Set aside. I use a "Fry Baby".
Holds 1 pound of Crisco shortening. Easy to deep fry small amounts in.
Cut coins/cubes of a dill pickle, green bell pepper, cherries, and pineapple. Heat them anyway you like (saute', M/V).
Sauce: 1 cup cold water, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1 T sugar, 1 T lemon juice, 1 T soy sauce, 2 or 3 T cornstarch. Throw it all in a saucepan to thicken. Viola, sweet/sour sauce for anything. Not tricky cooking.
Drop the pickle, pepper, pineapple and cherry into the sauce to warm. Add battered pork and stir lightly to mix.
Now how hard is THAT?
It should look like this:
But here is what they gave me (without their orange color sauce).
The local best Chinese restaurant couldn't do THAT... Pathetic. And they should be shunned for the awful Spring Rolls. I actually took one Spring Roll apart to see what was in it. Nothing! Boiled cabbage as far as I could tell and nothing else*.
But I will say the Moo Goo Gai Pan was quite good.
* A Spring Roll is supposed to be fancier than an Egg Roll. A Spring Roll should have identifiable bits of shrimp, ground pork, and fancy chinese veggies like bean sprouts, water chestnuts, straw mushrooms, and bamboo shoots. Not soggy cabbage mush.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Chinese Resaurant Food
Asiana Restaurant, Waldorf Maryland...
Ordered local 4 Spring Rolls, 1 Large Hot and Sour Soup, 1 Large Moo Goo Gai Pan, 1 Large Pork with mixed vegetables, 1 Large Sweet and sour pork. and 1 Large Schezhuan string beans.
Disaster.
The Spring Rolls were mush in a crispy wrapping. Spring rolls are supposed to have fancy stuff inside.
The Moo Goo Gai Pan was good.
The Hot and Sour soup was only vaguely hot and sour. Mostly tofu in chicken broth.
The Sweet and Sour Pork was hideous. It was just balls of pork in batter. Nothing else. And this particularly bothered me. And I need to explain about that.
When I was in college in the early 70s I learned how sweet and sour pork should be made from a real chinese cookbook. It is NOT batter pork balls in some wretched boring orange color sauce. The idea is that there is pork balls in batter surrounded with sweet things and sour things. Meaning pieces of pickles, green peppers, pineapples, and cherries in a sauce of sugar and vinegar.
I actually fed myself in college by making the real stuff for friends and their dates. We guys had just been allowed into coed dorms (formerly a girls dorm) and it was a real surprise. There were stovetops in the rec room. I won't even mention that there was a bathtub! But you could COOK there, and I did.
So my deal there was that I would cook a Sweet and Sour pork dinner for any guy and his date so long as they paid for enough for them AND me. So I ate free by cooking.
This orange crap that chinese restaurants are pawning off as "sweet and sour pork" offends me with their fake orangy sauce. But at least most of them have pickles and pineapple in them. Not so my local favorite chinese place. They USED to, but not now.
It got so bad that they messed up my order Friday. I ordered several dishes, but they gave me Moo Shi Pork instead of the "Pork with mixed vegetables" I requested. I hate that mushy Moo Shi Pork! Admittedly, when I called them soon after they knew they messed up my order and I went back today and got the Pork with mixed vegetables for free.
Its hard to know what you are getting at pickup unless you take everything out of the bags. And its almost that, if I check, they get it right and if I don't check, they mess it up.
Always check.
But mostly, I am disappointed. The food sucked. If I could make the sauces, I could do better at home. So I'm going to learn the sauces.
Ordered local 4 Spring Rolls, 1 Large Hot and Sour Soup, 1 Large Moo Goo Gai Pan, 1 Large Pork with mixed vegetables, 1 Large Sweet and sour pork. and 1 Large Schezhuan string beans.
Disaster.
The Spring Rolls were mush in a crispy wrapping. Spring rolls are supposed to have fancy stuff inside.
The Moo Goo Gai Pan was good.
The Hot and Sour soup was only vaguely hot and sour. Mostly tofu in chicken broth.
The Sweet and Sour Pork was hideous. It was just balls of pork in batter. Nothing else. And this particularly bothered me. And I need to explain about that.
When I was in college in the early 70s I learned how sweet and sour pork should be made from a real chinese cookbook. It is NOT batter pork balls in some wretched boring orange color sauce. The idea is that there is pork balls in batter surrounded with sweet things and sour things. Meaning pieces of pickles, green peppers, pineapples, and cherries in a sauce of sugar and vinegar.
I actually fed myself in college by making the real stuff for friends and their dates. We guys had just been allowed into coed dorms (formerly a girls dorm) and it was a real surprise. There were stovetops in the rec room. I won't even mention that there was a bathtub! But you could COOK there, and I did.
So my deal there was that I would cook a Sweet and Sour pork dinner for any guy and his date so long as they paid for enough for them AND me. So I ate free by cooking.
This orange crap that chinese restaurants are pawning off as "sweet and sour pork" offends me with their fake orangy sauce. But at least most of them have pickles and pineapple in them. Not so my local favorite chinese place. They USED to, but not now.
It got so bad that they messed up my order Friday. I ordered several dishes, but they gave me Moo Shi Pork instead of the "Pork with mixed vegetables" I requested. I hate that mushy Moo Shi Pork! Admittedly, when I called them soon after they knew they messed up my order and I went back today and got the Pork with mixed vegetables for free.
Its hard to know what you are getting at pickup unless you take everything out of the bags. And its almost that, if I check, they get it right and if I don't check, they mess it up.
Always check.
But mostly, I am disappointed. The food sucked. If I could make the sauces, I could do better at home. So I'm going to learn the sauces.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Bye-Bye Birdy
The hummingbird feeders haven't shown any sign of feeding for 3 days, I guess the cool nights have sent them south. I'll put clean nectar in them for 2 more weeks "just in case" and for any last-minute migrators.
I'll miss seeing those little aerial fighters until next Spring.
And they are going to be surprised next Spring. I've found better feeders (Aspect Humzinger 8 ounce - and there are larger ones) and ordered 4 of them. The place will be filled with hummer feeders next year.
The "best1" feeders have started to break apart from cleaning and handling. I'll sure keep them as backups, but the Humzinger ones seem better.
I'll miss seeing those little aerial fighters until next Spring.
And they are going to be surprised next Spring. I've found better feeders (Aspect Humzinger 8 ounce - and there are larger ones) and ordered 4 of them. The place will be filled with hummer feeders next year.
The "best1" feeders have started to break apart from cleaning and handling. I'll sure keep them as backups, but the Humzinger ones seem better.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Garden Enclosure Restart
Well, I decided I had to make some greater allowance for moving around the beds. I kind of forgot there would be a wall of chicken wire all around the edge... So the paths around the outside edges will be 2' wide and the inner ones more like 20". That's enough to get around.
So... I took the first big step and went to the Home Depot to buy twelve 2"x8"x8' boards. A few years ago, they wouldn't cut pressure-treated boards, but now they do. So I selected 12 decent boards (had to look at 20 boards to find 12 straight ones) and had them cut 8 of them 7' long and 4 of them in half.
That gives me enough boards to make two 7'x4' beds two 8' boards high.
Here's the plan... I have enough space cleared of the old rotting beds to build the 2 new beds. I can then move the soil from the existing old beds to fill the new 2. Then I can knock apart 2 more old ones and build 2 new ones, etc.
Why not just rebuild all the old beds you ask? Well, the paths between them were too wide (wasting space) and they faced the wrong direction. When you have limited sunlight, that matters. And odd as it may seem, six 7'x4' beds with narrower paths give me more gardening space than the four 8'x3' beds in the same area.
Trust me on this...
So over the next couple days I'll dig a shallow trench to set the new frames in level (a flaw to correct about the old beds which were more unlevel than you would think sitting on what looks like flat ground) and construct them more sturdier (sturdily?) And I will be adding compost to the new beds, which should get them off to a good start next Spring. And the new beds will be higher, so there will be more decent soil for roots to grow.
It's a lot of work, but it will be worth it. especially since I will be able to cover 1 bed each year with black plastic to kill the weeds and nematodes and such. Sometimes half the battle to grow good crops is to manage the soil. Healthy soil means healthy crops.
I'll take pictures as I go.
So... I took the first big step and went to the Home Depot to buy twelve 2"x8"x8' boards. A few years ago, they wouldn't cut pressure-treated boards, but now they do. So I selected 12 decent boards (had to look at 20 boards to find 12 straight ones) and had them cut 8 of them 7' long and 4 of them in half.
That gives me enough boards to make two 7'x4' beds two 8' boards high.
Here's the plan... I have enough space cleared of the old rotting beds to build the 2 new beds. I can then move the soil from the existing old beds to fill the new 2. Then I can knock apart 2 more old ones and build 2 new ones, etc.
Why not just rebuild all the old beds you ask? Well, the paths between them were too wide (wasting space) and they faced the wrong direction. When you have limited sunlight, that matters. And odd as it may seem, six 7'x4' beds with narrower paths give me more gardening space than the four 8'x3' beds in the same area.
Trust me on this...
So over the next couple days I'll dig a shallow trench to set the new frames in level (a flaw to correct about the old beds which were more unlevel than you would think sitting on what looks like flat ground) and construct them more sturdier (sturdily?) And I will be adding compost to the new beds, which should get them off to a good start next Spring. And the new beds will be higher, so there will be more decent soil for roots to grow.
It's a lot of work, but it will be worth it. especially since I will be able to cover 1 bed each year with black plastic to kill the weeds and nematodes and such. Sometimes half the battle to grow good crops is to manage the soil. Healthy soil means healthy crops.
I'll take pictures as I go.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Garden Enclosure
I'm back at the 20'x20' garden enclosure project. And while my initial goal was to maximize the framed bed area and minimize lumber purchases, I've concluded that I need to make some changes.
First, the framed beds were planned to be three 16'x4' beds. And two 8" wide boards high per bed. Second, my plan was to use only 2 of the 3 planned beds each year and let 1 go fallow (and solarized with a clear plastic cover) each year. But even a 2" thick board will bend out over 16', so that meant annoying stakes for reinforcement.
And, well, a 2"x8"x16' board is really hard to handle. And keeping 1/3 the growing space fallow/solarized each year seems wasteful. So instead of those 3 framed beds, I'm building six beds 4'x7', two 8" boards high . That means I can build all the framed beds using 2"x8"x8' boards, which I can haul home in my 8' trailer and I can actually carry those boards. With 6 beds instead of 3, I can keep 1 bed fallow and solarized each year with less growing-space loss, walk around them easier, and build them easier. I lose 24 square feet growing area (the 2' between the beds), but I gain 28 sq ft not being fallow each year, so its a wash.
I drew some pictures, but I just can't get the scanner function on the printer to work today (again)... The first plan had three 16'x4' beds side by side. The new plan has six 4'x7' beds in a 2x3 grid. I had to draw rectangles in Word On Mac, print it out, take a picture of the printout, and upload the picture. I'm just having a bad month with programs.
But here it is and you BETTER appreciate the effort to show it!!! LOL!
I spent about 5 hours fighting over several days with the usual programs to draw/scan/display, with no luck. But it only took 2 minutes to draw it in Word, 1 to print it, 1 to take a camera picture of the printed page, and 3 minutes to get it to a small jpeg file. Sometimes indirect ways are easier.
I need to reteach myself a lot of the programs; I don't use them enough. And I suspect I better clean up my Mac. It's running slower and even a Mac can get clutterred.
Anyway, I went out to dig the first of 9 holes to set pipes into to construct the enclosed garden (safe from squirrels, groundhogs, rabbits, etc). After I dug down 4" in the 1st spot, I hit rock. And I don't mean little baseball-sized ones. I dug a 2' hole around that rock and couldn't find the edge. So I tried the next spot where I wanted to set in a pipe. Same problem. I even tried breaking the rock up with repeated blows to it with a 5' beveled "breaker bar". And nothing broke. I caused no damage to the rock at all.
You never know what is under your ground until you start digging into it! In my case, I knew from some experience that my property is a silt plain draining to a swamp. There are pockets of pure sand, some of pure clay, and lots of hand-sized round rocks. I didn't know about the 2'+ rocks...
I think a geologist would conclude my property used to be a river path, with large rocks just under the surface that silted over with sand and clay millenia ago.
I can't dig those up, I can't use an auger to drill through them, I can't ignore them.
Well, wait, I CAN ignore them! The purpose of digging the holes around the garden-to-be is merely to set the upright PVC pipes in place. So what if I build a base of PVC pipes ON the ground instead of INTO the ground?
Instead of burying pipes in the ground, I'll make a frame of pipes on the ground with attachment connections sticking up. And I can attach the ground level PVC pipes to the ground firmly with 2' rebar rods.
Newest problen solved... I assume I will discover other problems before the structure is completed, but nothing that can't be overcome. Well, solving the problems is half the fun.
The initial plan was to assemble the upright pipes and then assemble the beds after. The plan NOW is to assemble the first 2 raised beds to establish one edge of the new layout, fill them with soil, then disassemble the other old framed beds, and clear THAT area for new construction and move the remaining soil from the older beds to the new ones as I move along.
I know this is hard to imagine without pictures. I'll be taking many as the project continues. Promise.
But at least I am getting started on it again and solving the problems I didn't expect.
First, the framed beds were planned to be three 16'x4' beds. And two 8" wide boards high per bed. Second, my plan was to use only 2 of the 3 planned beds each year and let 1 go fallow (and solarized with a clear plastic cover) each year. But even a 2" thick board will bend out over 16', so that meant annoying stakes for reinforcement.
And, well, a 2"x8"x16' board is really hard to handle. And keeping 1/3 the growing space fallow/solarized each year seems wasteful. So instead of those 3 framed beds, I'm building six beds 4'x7', two 8" boards high . That means I can build all the framed beds using 2"x8"x8' boards, which I can haul home in my 8' trailer and I can actually carry those boards. With 6 beds instead of 3, I can keep 1 bed fallow and solarized each year with less growing-space loss, walk around them easier, and build them easier. I lose 24 square feet growing area (the 2' between the beds), but I gain 28 sq ft not being fallow each year, so its a wash.
I drew some pictures, but I just can't get the scanner function on the printer to work today (again)... The first plan had three 16'x4' beds side by side. The new plan has six 4'x7' beds in a 2x3 grid. I had to draw rectangles in Word On Mac, print it out, take a picture of the printout, and upload the picture. I'm just having a bad month with programs.
But here it is and you BETTER appreciate the effort to show it!!! LOL!
I need to reteach myself a lot of the programs; I don't use them enough. And I suspect I better clean up my Mac. It's running slower and even a Mac can get clutterred.
Anyway, I went out to dig the first of 9 holes to set pipes into to construct the enclosed garden (safe from squirrels, groundhogs, rabbits, etc). After I dug down 4" in the 1st spot, I hit rock. And I don't mean little baseball-sized ones. I dug a 2' hole around that rock and couldn't find the edge. So I tried the next spot where I wanted to set in a pipe. Same problem. I even tried breaking the rock up with repeated blows to it with a 5' beveled "breaker bar". And nothing broke. I caused no damage to the rock at all.
You never know what is under your ground until you start digging into it! In my case, I knew from some experience that my property is a silt plain draining to a swamp. There are pockets of pure sand, some of pure clay, and lots of hand-sized round rocks. I didn't know about the 2'+ rocks...
I think a geologist would conclude my property used to be a river path, with large rocks just under the surface that silted over with sand and clay millenia ago.
I can't dig those up, I can't use an auger to drill through them, I can't ignore them.
Well, wait, I CAN ignore them! The purpose of digging the holes around the garden-to-be is merely to set the upright PVC pipes in place. So what if I build a base of PVC pipes ON the ground instead of INTO the ground?
Instead of burying pipes in the ground, I'll make a frame of pipes on the ground with attachment connections sticking up. And I can attach the ground level PVC pipes to the ground firmly with 2' rebar rods.
Newest problen solved... I assume I will discover other problems before the structure is completed, but nothing that can't be overcome. Well, solving the problems is half the fun.
The initial plan was to assemble the upright pipes and then assemble the beds after. The plan NOW is to assemble the first 2 raised beds to establish one edge of the new layout, fill them with soil, then disassemble the other old framed beds, and clear THAT area for new construction and move the remaining soil from the older beds to the new ones as I move along.
I know this is hard to imagine without pictures. I'll be taking many as the project continues. Promise.
But at least I am getting started on it again and solving the problems I didn't expect.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Baseball Again
I am pleased to announce that the Washington Nationals baseball team just won the National League East Division Championship!
Even better, they did it in an away series against their closest competitor, the Atlanta Braves (and last year's champions.
Washington, DC, does not have a storied baseball history. The previous team here (the Washington Senators) won only one World Series and played in only 1 other IIRC. In fact, they were famous for their ineptitude. The snarky saying about the Washington Senators was:
"First in War,
First in Peace,
And Last in the American League."
The Senators became the Texas Rangers in 1972, and Washington DC, the Nation's capital, was without a major league baseball team until 2005, acquiring the Montreal Expos. They started slowly, and have become a truly "capital" team. Their strong points are power hitting, aggressive base-running, balanced pitching and creative double-play fielding.
Many successful teams are lead by 1 or 2 future Hall-Of-Famers (not to say that some of the current Nats won't be someday). But the Nats are more of a collection of many really good players who work together well. The fielding is excellent, the starting pitchers are all close in success, the bullpen is superb, and even the bottom of the batting order is dangerous.
The 1st half of the season didn't look very promising. They were around .500 at the All Star Break. But they had almost half their starters out with injuries at one point and back-ups and minor league players filled in "well". Everyone was back for the 2nd half, and they just exploded! I can't find the stats, but they have to have played about .600 since then and that is rare.
It is an amazing change of experience for old Washington DC baseball fans. I an SO looking forward to the playoffs...
Even better, they did it in an away series against their closest competitor, the Atlanta Braves (and last year's champions.
Washington, DC, does not have a storied baseball history. The previous team here (the Washington Senators) won only one World Series and played in only 1 other IIRC. In fact, they were famous for their ineptitude. The snarky saying about the Washington Senators was:
"First in War,
First in Peace,
And Last in the American League."
The Senators became the Texas Rangers in 1972, and Washington DC, the Nation's capital, was without a major league baseball team until 2005, acquiring the Montreal Expos. They started slowly, and have become a truly "capital" team. Their strong points are power hitting, aggressive base-running, balanced pitching and creative double-play fielding.
Many successful teams are lead by 1 or 2 future Hall-Of-Famers (not to say that some of the current Nats won't be someday). But the Nats are more of a collection of many really good players who work together well. The fielding is excellent, the starting pitchers are all close in success, the bullpen is superb, and even the bottom of the batting order is dangerous.
The 1st half of the season didn't look very promising. They were around .500 at the All Star Break. But they had almost half their starters out with injuries at one point and back-ups and minor league players filled in "well". Everyone was back for the 2nd half, and they just exploded! I can't find the stats, but they have to have played about .600 since then and that is rare.
It is an amazing change of experience for old Washington DC baseball fans. I an SO looking forward to the playoffs...
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Baseball And Other Sports
I've been interested in baseball on and off my whole life. I played Little League baseball at ages 9-12, but was poor at it. Well, I was a small kid. I got put at 2nd base (which was where you put the 2nd worst player - the worst got put in right field) because I was quick "enough" and could manage to throw the ball to 1st base. I couldn't hit. My recollection is that the bat seldom got off my shoulder (the one hit I recall was a "Texas Leaguer" just into the outfield where no one was and Dad went wild with joy that I actually made a hit). So I was no natural at the game.
I did make an unassisted triple play though. Bases loaded... I somehow snagged a line drive over my head (jump high, stick glove up, ball finds glove), and the runners didn't know it. I stepped on 2nd base(force out) and tagged out the runner coming from 1st base. My one claim to baseball fame and obviously I will never forget.
I quit the next year. Some kids had gotten so much bigger and stronger. I couldn't even see a pitched ball, and it wasn't that I needed glasses! They were just too fast for me.
Forward to when I was 18, working in a Navy office before entering College. I had had what passed as my "growth spurt" (reaching a whole 5'6" and 135 pounds), but I had played 3 years of golf, tennis, and soccer in High School. So I had gotten a lot more coordinated and wiry. All the offices had slow pitch softball teams in the Navy Base league, and the Directors were always begging for employees to join the team. Well slow pitch softball is an entirely different game! And I discovered I had a TALENT. With a slow pitch, I could hit a ball wherever I darn well wanted to (between short and 3rd, between 1st and 2nd, over the right fielders head, etc). And amazingly, those "splendid physical specimens of young Navy guys*) couldn't.
Because they were all 6' tall, 180 lbs, and they just smashed the ball blindly... Usually straight up, or to the shortstop who always caught the ball. And the one thing I HAD gotten out of playing 2nd base in Little League was how to manage the game itself. I played both 2nd base and catcher in the Navy softball league, and I instinctively understood where everyone should be. I knew when to run out to catch a relay from the outfielders, and where to throw it afterwards. And the same when playing catcher. It just seemed so obvious. That's probably the only reason I played 2nd base in little league. THAT part, I understood.
* I'm not being sarcastic. The actual Navy guys on the team were years beyond me in growth and strength at my same age. They had to be to be accepted into the Navy. Any 2 of them could have tossed me around like a dodgeball.
I mention all this only to explain that I have suddenly started watching professional baseball again. I watched pro football on and off; the Washington team had some good years. It hard not to admire the skills of coaches like Vince Lombardi, George Allen and Joe Gibbs. But I don't watch football with much understanding of the game. Same with basketball. Both are just chaotic, as far as I can tell.
Baseball is different. Each player has a position. Each player has a responsibility to act individually, but for the good of the team. Each player has an individual at-bat against an individual pitcher and not ONE of his teammates can help him in the least. When yous are at bat, you are basically ALONE. You, vs 9 guys in the field trying to catch anything you hit...
I LIKE that! In baseball, you can like hitting, fielding, or pitching. My brief moment of time in the game, I came to like hitting best.
So... The Washington Nationals baseball team seem set to get into the playoffs as (possibly) the best team in baseball right now. Its been a journey. At the All Star break, they were about .500. They are at .574 today. Which means they are playing above .600 since.
The Nationals are surely going to enter the playoffs. And I am thrilled with that!
So why do I care? I care because they field spectacularly. I care because they pitch wonderfully. I care because they hit amazingly. But mostly I care because they seem to be the savviest players on one team since before my time! They always seem to make the right choices on the difficult plays. I admire that most of all!
I've never had a home baseball team to like. I left Boston just too young to care about the Red Sox. We lived in Virginia, which has no professional baseball ream when I was 13. We moved to MD too far away to like the Baltimore Orioles (my friends did, I didn't).
And in Washington DC, there was no professional MLB team between 1969 and 2004. So I'mnew to this Home-Team stuff. I just like the Washington Nationals because they play REALLY GOOD!!! And I admire THAT.
So I am LOVING this season for the Washington Nationals.
I did make an unassisted triple play though. Bases loaded... I somehow snagged a line drive over my head (jump high, stick glove up, ball finds glove), and the runners didn't know it. I stepped on 2nd base(force out) and tagged out the runner coming from 1st base. My one claim to baseball fame and obviously I will never forget.
I quit the next year. Some kids had gotten so much bigger and stronger. I couldn't even see a pitched ball, and it wasn't that I needed glasses! They were just too fast for me.
Forward to when I was 18, working in a Navy office before entering College. I had had what passed as my "growth spurt" (reaching a whole 5'6" and 135 pounds), but I had played 3 years of golf, tennis, and soccer in High School. So I had gotten a lot more coordinated and wiry. All the offices had slow pitch softball teams in the Navy Base league, and the Directors were always begging for employees to join the team. Well slow pitch softball is an entirely different game! And I discovered I had a TALENT. With a slow pitch, I could hit a ball wherever I darn well wanted to (between short and 3rd, between 1st and 2nd, over the right fielders head, etc). And amazingly, those "splendid physical specimens of young Navy guys*) couldn't.
Because they were all 6' tall, 180 lbs, and they just smashed the ball blindly... Usually straight up, or to the shortstop who always caught the ball. And the one thing I HAD gotten out of playing 2nd base in Little League was how to manage the game itself. I played both 2nd base and catcher in the Navy softball league, and I instinctively understood where everyone should be. I knew when to run out to catch a relay from the outfielders, and where to throw it afterwards. And the same when playing catcher. It just seemed so obvious. That's probably the only reason I played 2nd base in little league. THAT part, I understood.
* I'm not being sarcastic. The actual Navy guys on the team were years beyond me in growth and strength at my same age. They had to be to be accepted into the Navy. Any 2 of them could have tossed me around like a dodgeball.
I mention all this only to explain that I have suddenly started watching professional baseball again. I watched pro football on and off; the Washington team had some good years. It hard not to admire the skills of coaches like Vince Lombardi, George Allen and Joe Gibbs. But I don't watch football with much understanding of the game. Same with basketball. Both are just chaotic, as far as I can tell.
Baseball is different. Each player has a position. Each player has a responsibility to act individually, but for the good of the team. Each player has an individual at-bat against an individual pitcher and not ONE of his teammates can help him in the least. When yous are at bat, you are basically ALONE. You, vs 9 guys in the field trying to catch anything you hit...
I LIKE that! In baseball, you can like hitting, fielding, or pitching. My brief moment of time in the game, I came to like hitting best.
So... The Washington Nationals baseball team seem set to get into the playoffs as (possibly) the best team in baseball right now. Its been a journey. At the All Star break, they were about .500. They are at .574 today. Which means they are playing above .600 since.
The Nationals are surely going to enter the playoffs. And I am thrilled with that!
So why do I care? I care because they field spectacularly. I care because they pitch wonderfully. I care because they hit amazingly. But mostly I care because they seem to be the savviest players on one team since before my time! They always seem to make the right choices on the difficult plays. I admire that most of all!
I've never had a home baseball team to like. I left Boston just too young to care about the Red Sox. We lived in Virginia, which has no professional baseball ream when I was 13. We moved to MD too far away to like the Baltimore Orioles (my friends did, I didn't).
And in Washington DC, there was no professional MLB team between 1969 and 2004. So I'mnew to this Home-Team stuff. I just like the Washington Nationals because they play REALLY GOOD!!! And I admire THAT.
So I am LOVING this season for the Washington Nationals.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Going After The Moles And Voles
I spread Milky Spore around the lawn several years ago.
Its a tiny parasite that seeks and infests insect grubs in the lawn. And it seems to have worked reasonably well, I saw no mole tunnels for the past 2 years. No insect grubs, no moles! But I saw one mole tunnel today, so I need to maybe I need to apply it again. Or spray castor oil on the lawn. Moles hate that stuff. Apparently, it makes the insect grubs and worms they feed on taste vile. Moles aren't exactly evolved to consider the taste of fish as safe food and moles have a very highly developed sense of smell.
And it isn't the moles that bother me so much, it's the voles that use the mole tunnels to get around safely underground. Moles don't eat plants or plant roots, voles do. But to reduce the voles, you have to reduce the moles. No mole tunnels, fewer voles.
I have identified a lot of vole-holes. When you see a mole tunnel and a 1" hole in it, that's where the voles are coming out to feed on the plants above ground. So I have collected plastic covers to hold vole traps under. They are baitless. These aren't mousetraps that need bait. The idea is that under enclosed covers, the voles will search around and just walk into the traps eventually.
But I think it is time to discourage the moles themselves again. They seem to hate castor oil (as do I), and sites say that moles will leave areas soaked with castor oil. We'll see. I'll start from the center of the back yard and slowly work outwards. And then spray along the fence a few times a year to keep them out.
Part of my idea is to do something different every year that moles don't like. If I do enough things they don't like, eventually they will leave. And if the moles leave my yard, I can take care of the voles afterwards.
There is a mole poison, but I won't use that. One of the cats might catch a poisoned mole and eat it.
One thing at a time, as safely as possible, and gradually... The Cro-Magnons didn't kill all the cavebears in a year, though they did eventually.
Friday, September 12, 2014
More Energy-Saving Work
Now that the BIG DEAL insulation project is completed, I can move my attention to other energy-saving projects. I've seen charts that show the heating and cooling costs account for about a 1/3 of your total energy bill, which was more than I thought but not by a lot. The surprise was how much hot water costs (10-15%). That's double the refrigerator! Now, I have my water heater wrapped up in an insulation blanket designed for water heaters, so my hot water usage cost may be lower than average. But still, for one appliance, that's still a lot! So...
First on the list is the water heater. It's 28 years old, and was certainly a cheap one to begin with.
I've been debating among a new standard energy-efficient water heater, and instant-on water heater, and a heat pump water heater. I still can't decide which is best for ME (single person, low-volume, infrequent but frequent fast demand for cooking and dish-cleaning). I'm inclined to the "instant-on" (heats water as it passes through the pipes rather than stores it); one medium one for the whole house and one small one for the kitchen sink. But I'll do a final research this week. The payback depends on the type I select. The standard type is cheaper, so payback is faster, but costs a bit more over the years. The heat pump water heater has a longer payback, but is cheaper to operate after that. The instant-on type is between those.
The choice might seem obvious in the long-term, but technology changes and maybe I'll have solar panels on the roof in a few years (see way below).
Second is replacing the basement refrigerator (which I use as a sort of root cellar for long-term storage).
I keep a considerable amount of fresh food in the house (I don't go grocery shopping often), and my current kitchen refrigerator is good but not enough. The previous (original 28 year old refrigerator) holds the bags of carrots, potatoes, beer, garden seeds, birdseed, and other stuff, and long term frozen stuff. It is probably HORRIBLY HORRIBLY inefficient, so a newer modest refrigerator would probably pay for itself in just a few years. And the electric company offers a generous rebate for replacing old refrigerators with new energy-efficient ones. I'm guessing a 3-4 year payback.
Third, my basement workshop has four 4-bulb fluorescent light fixtures all wired into one switch. I seldom need them all on. Most of the time, I just need the one over the basement refrigerator. I can separate those connections into 2 switches so only half come on at a time.
Fourth, switching more bulbs from incandescent to LED bulbs. Any LED bulbs I use to replace incandescent bulbs will not only save money, but probably outlive me. And replacing bulbs in the stairway fixture 15' above the floor is a real adventure. Same with the floodlights outside the front door.
Fifth, I should consider replacing the washer and dryer. They are over 15 years old. I'll be checking to confirm it, but my recollection from reading Consumer Reports magazine is that the newest ones have a payback time in energy savings of about 4-5 years.
Sixth, and this one is VERY uncertain, replacing the standard heat pump with a geothermal one. I did some initial research and most places around here like to drill holes down at a cost of about $20,000. But there are some that seem to work just as well horizontally for $8,000. Geothermal is VERY energy cost-efficient. But $20,000 would take a 10-year payback. The horizontal geothermal is slightly less efficient but needs only a 8 year payback. But that depends on how much I'm saving with the new home insulation work just completed. I'll have to wait to see what my Winter electric bills are now. More research required...
Seventh and least likely, removing the 3 mature trees shading my house and covering the roof with solar panels. I like the trees, but I'm worrying in every strong storm that one of them will fall onto the house. Conflicting thoughts here. I might be able to actually sell the trees (2 are oak) to sawyers. But I still wouldn't have sunlight on the roof all day. It's close to cost-efficient, but I can't decide. I'll need to contact a solar engineer (not a salesman) and a sawyer who buys large trees. But it probably doesn't make sense to do both geothermal heating AND solar panels, so I'll wait a year.
That's a new TO-DO list, but one I can deal with.
First on the list is the water heater. It's 28 years old, and was certainly a cheap one to begin with.
I've been debating among a new standard energy-efficient water heater, and instant-on water heater, and a heat pump water heater. I still can't decide which is best for ME (single person, low-volume, infrequent but frequent fast demand for cooking and dish-cleaning). I'm inclined to the "instant-on" (heats water as it passes through the pipes rather than stores it); one medium one for the whole house and one small one for the kitchen sink. But I'll do a final research this week. The payback depends on the type I select. The standard type is cheaper, so payback is faster, but costs a bit more over the years. The heat pump water heater has a longer payback, but is cheaper to operate after that. The instant-on type is between those.
The choice might seem obvious in the long-term, but technology changes and maybe I'll have solar panels on the roof in a few years (see way below).
Second is replacing the basement refrigerator (which I use as a sort of root cellar for long-term storage).
I keep a considerable amount of fresh food in the house (I don't go grocery shopping often), and my current kitchen refrigerator is good but not enough. The previous (original 28 year old refrigerator) holds the bags of carrots, potatoes, beer, garden seeds, birdseed, and other stuff, and long term frozen stuff. It is probably HORRIBLY HORRIBLY inefficient, so a newer modest refrigerator would probably pay for itself in just a few years. And the electric company offers a generous rebate for replacing old refrigerators with new energy-efficient ones. I'm guessing a 3-4 year payback.
Third, my basement workshop has four 4-bulb fluorescent light fixtures all wired into one switch. I seldom need them all on. Most of the time, I just need the one over the basement refrigerator. I can separate those connections into 2 switches so only half come on at a time.
Fourth, switching more bulbs from incandescent to LED bulbs. Any LED bulbs I use to replace incandescent bulbs will not only save money, but probably outlive me. And replacing bulbs in the stairway fixture 15' above the floor is a real adventure. Same with the floodlights outside the front door.
Fifth, I should consider replacing the washer and dryer. They are over 15 years old. I'll be checking to confirm it, but my recollection from reading Consumer Reports magazine is that the newest ones have a payback time in energy savings of about 4-5 years.
Sixth, and this one is VERY uncertain, replacing the standard heat pump with a geothermal one. I did some initial research and most places around here like to drill holes down at a cost of about $20,000. But there are some that seem to work just as well horizontally for $8,000. Geothermal is VERY energy cost-efficient. But $20,000 would take a 10-year payback. The horizontal geothermal is slightly less efficient but needs only a 8 year payback. But that depends on how much I'm saving with the new home insulation work just completed. I'll have to wait to see what my Winter electric bills are now. More research required...
Seventh and least likely, removing the 3 mature trees shading my house and covering the roof with solar panels. I like the trees, but I'm worrying in every strong storm that one of them will fall onto the house. Conflicting thoughts here. I might be able to actually sell the trees (2 are oak) to sawyers. But I still wouldn't have sunlight on the roof all day. It's close to cost-efficient, but I can't decide. I'll need to contact a solar engineer (not a salesman) and a sawyer who buys large trees. But it probably doesn't make sense to do both geothermal heating AND solar panels, so I'll wait a year.
That's a new TO-DO list, but one I can deal with.
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Landscaping, Part 3
So I got to the point where I wanted to put edging around the trees and shrubs in the front yard. The point was to prevent lawn grass from ...
