Today I have for you a collection of mostly useful or “lite” links. NO politics. Enjoy.
A few years ago, two of the many kind readers of this blog sent a substantial donation specifically for buying a generator. The money they sent was enough to purchase an inexpensive generator — or make a good start on saving for the compact Honda or Yamaha they knew was on my wish list. They gave me that option. My choice. I decided to stash the donation and keep on saving for the Dream Generator. While it made me nervous not to have backup power, I figured that — not being particularly a Ms Fixit — I needed the reliability,…
Cussing. Mainly. Otherwise known as installing my first-ever gutter and downspout. It was just a 14-foot span and would not have been a difficult job at all, had I had the brains to ignore the manufacturer’s instructions. Those instructions called for gluing together the entire main gutter span — in this case a 10-foot section and a two-foot section — before bracketing it to the fascia board. Given that the glue sets in geological time rather than human-relatable time, that meant I was up on a ladder handling (all by my lonesome) a 12-foot gutter section that flopped like a…
Getting there. The Wandering Monk will finish the north-side wall (the one he’s sitting on) by early this afternoon. I’ve been out there working with him all week, but today I’m indoors, online, taking care of new-site business. Anyhow, face it. Though I can shovel rock and make artistic decisions, he’s about twice as efficient as I am at the heavy lifting. We’re leaving the east-side wall just two blocks high for now so we can monitor the drainage behind it when the rains come this weekend. But that north wall, the long wall, the high wall, the wall requiring…
Yesterday began the retaining-wall construction. The Wandering Monk arrived at 8:00 and when I made the fatal mistake of asking, “What do you need me to do?” I got dragooned into nearly nine hours of hard labor. First job: shoveling dirt out of the footer trench as the Monk made several passes through with a pickaxe, deepening it and shaping it for the concrete pour. While he finished that and began placing rebar, I cleared the hillside of large rocks, concrete pipes, bricks, and old concrete chunks he and Lester had earlier dug out of the ground. By lunchtime we…
That’s the Wandering Monk up there looking like a rather tall member of the seven dwarves. That’s him taking a break from carving out the channel that will hold the footer for the retaining wall. That’s him with the block newly delivered to my driveway. You don’t see the pallet with the 54 sacks of concrete on it. Still. Even with five pallets of block and one of concrete to go, the big, scary project is now a whole lot less scary. Because this … … and this … … are done. It took two days of this … ……
Update on big, scary earth-moving project Rained all night, so the big-scary earth-moving project almost didn’t start today. But the rain wasn’t heavy and the area to be worked is sheltered by house, hill, and trees. Two inches down, the ground was dry. Or as dry as it gets around here. So it has begun: That’s Lester hunched over the controls of the machine. He decided he was well enough, after all. And I must admit he does better on the seat of that little tractor than he does on his own two feet. The Wandering Monk, there in the…
This afternoon, after putzing at the computer and attending a small holiday festival, I concocted a Virgin Mary and stretched out on a recliner in the back yard. It’s lovely, but it doesn’t feel that summer will be with us very longer. It’s been a muted season, in any case. Not cold, but cloudy and drizzly. The rare occasions the sun’s come out, we’ve been blasted with 95-degree surges, not our usual balmy 70 degrees. But mostly … it’s been just what outsiders think of when they think of the Pacific NorthWET, a land without summer. We already had several…
Just past the halfway mark of my six months without home Internet. Not too painful so far, right?
Its original purpose of lowering monthly payments to clear last year’s home-improvement debts kind of went kablooey when Dave quit paying for the blog. At that point, I emptied savings to clear nearly all that debt, figuring any unnecessary monthly payments would not be a good idea right now.
Kept a small emergency fund, of course. Always keep a small emergency fund unless you’re living in your car and eating out of Dumpsters.
My latest foundling
Meet my latest forest foundling …
