Pity the Petunias

We have flowers at the Davidson home, particularly petunias and alyssum.

We generally have black thumbs. We'll see how they do. But as for now, they appear to be happy.

More to plant -- including tomatoes -- in the next few days. Once I finish getting the garden cleaned out.

Si Stultus Est et Operatur, Non Stultus Est

 

Here's the story, if you want to know: When we moved into this house, we had a gas furnace installed. That meant a lot of exposed ductwork in the basement. I took advantage of that and strung a CAT-5 cable from one wall of the study to the other, so I could have a hard connection to a printer on the other side of the room. That's Phase 1.

Phase 2 came about after I began working from home and needed a hard connection between the router and my work computer. The short term, almost two-year solution was to have the cable on the floor, but my wife kept tripping over it. So today I strung cable from the router to a wall near the original cable setup, and ran the cable through the wall to the old system outlet. Thus the odd connection. But it solved that tripping problem.

It looks really stupid, but it works. And as a friend says on Facebook:

MY GOOD PILLOWS!

We have two couch pillows that have followed us through three houses. The collection has been added to over time, but these two. Perfect for napping.

One is rather flat, but firm. A foundation pillow, ready and willing to work in combination with the other to grant perfect head and neck placement.

That second pillow. Soft as the proverbial downy chick, yet resilient, able to maintain its shape and fluffiness to swaddle the head in a cloud. Cumulo-nimbus.

Over the years, they grew tatty. The flat one's blue faded from bright to grey. The white fluffy one fought valiantly to retain its color, but yellowed as the years passed like a wise man's tooth.

Both pillows were in the trash when we pulled it out to the curb last night. I wept like a child.

Mrs. Judson was right to be upset about the state of her pillows.

So, How Does it Go?

First of all: ahaha.

I thought with the stay-at-home order, working from home, and time freed up since I'm not communing, I'd have more time for things like editing that novel and blogging.

But as you know, round about the time the virus started lolloping through the state like a big bear, we decided to remodel the master bathroom. Not done yet. And the paint on the walls, completed today, may be TOO YELLOW. Send help.

I'm ready to go back to work, not necessarily because I want to go back on the Chernobyl mobile and such, but because I'm tired. That bathroom remodel has taken up a lot of time. Add to that the garden. Oh, the garden. The crabgrass is gone from the raspberries. And the tiller is now in the dumpster at Ace Hardware and we have a new used one I used just this week to prep the garden for planting. That, I'm going to leave to Michelle, as I've still got the bathroom to deal with.

And while it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm really trying not to. The bathroom is close to being done. The paint is a minor issue, given what else we've gone through to get the room to where it is now. Painting would add another day to the project, so not that bad. Still, I'd like to think the only thing I have to do with paint now is touch up, not start over.

Second of all, the stay-at-home order technically expired on May 1. But we're going through stages of re-opening. Stage 2 starts tomorrow, meaning businesses like restaurants and hair salons and such can re-open. All's up in the air as to when we'll get back to work. I keep hearing the word June popping out of the mouths of higher-ups. Part of it is that many of our projects make social distancing a difficult thing to achieve. I keep thinking every Monday when I check in for work that I'll get the message that we're headed back, but that's two Mondays now without the word.

I'm doing about a third of the hours I'm used to, but still getting paid for the difference. When this started six or so weeks ago, they said the Department of Energy had lined things up for this pattern to continue for ten weeks. That seemed like a long time then, and seems like a long time still. I hope things are back to more normal before that ten-week period is up.

The kids, I think, are doing okay. They're both chafing a bit at the social distancing, particularly Isaac, who loves being with his friends. We are winding down home school, though, which is a good thing. Today we spent a good few hours helping Lexie and Isaac with their sculptures for their art class. I'll have to post pictures.

I should say I'm pretty proud of Lexie -- she's earned five merit badges while being stuck at home: Geocaching, Citizenship in the Nation, Home Repairs, Photography, and one other that's eluding me at the moment. Oh yeah. Family Life. That's a biggie. Isaac did manage to squeak out Home Repairs, which is a good one for him to earn. That also means one more Eagle palm for him.

Liam is still doing the mission thing. He's getting more used to working on the church farms in the area, though the wind out there in Osgood is really wearing on him. He started again at Sellers Creek Trek Center this week. He really enjoyed that last summer, so I hope that's a good thing for him.

Back to that Fence

A while back, I bragged about finishing that back fence.

Of course, the fence itself was done. The woody part. But now I have to stain it. And time is running out.

So with the stain I had left over from the previous fence project, my daughter (who is earning the Painting Merit Badge in Scouts BSA) got just over four of the panels done. Now I have to go to Home Cheapo and hope they have the same kind of stain. Online, it appears they have it in the one-gallon buckets, but I need this in bulk, at least five gallons or so. So maybe on the way home from work tonight, I’ll swing by and see what they’ve got. Before the season is over.

What we’ve got done looks good, though, and confirms that the stain on the older section of fence is just as vibrant as what we’ve put on the new fence. Maybe with a little hard water staining on the older section. But that’s a no nevermind, at least for now.

Will I get to the siding this year?

Possibly. The fence, unstained, and in need of at least two coats, is the priority. We’ll also have to talk to the new neighbors about getting their side stained too. I’m willing to do the work so the wood is preserved, but we’ll talk with them to see if they’re willing to do it. Either case, it’s got to be done before the snow flies. Two coats. And a coat again next summer.

And maybe I can get that little bit of fence between Karl’s house and ours done this fall, including the staining. It would sure make things look better on that side of the house.

Back to that siding. Maybe if I delay it until next spring, I could wrangle a few window replacements into the mix as well. We’re already talking about removing the garage window and just walling it up so I have more space for shop shelves – we need shelves, as the amount of camping gear we’re collecting continues to rise. Right now, we’d ordinarily have it stored in the camper for the winter, but we’ve loaned the camper to our former neighbors who are building a house and living on the property as they do so. (They have a tent camper and a few ramshackle outbuildings to live in, but our dinky camper will give them some more space.)

And I think I have at least two tents I need to give away or throw out. That would simplify things a bit.

Lisinopril

When I went to the doctor Friday, it was on the assumption that since my blood pressure is high, he was going to put me on some kind of blood pressure medication.

I was hoping for Donald Duck's Atomic Pills. No such luck. Instead, lisinopril.

It's supposed to help reduce the blood pressure. And make me pee more frequently. Though I don't really need any help in that particular department.

My secret hope is that they are in fact Atomic Pills and will give me some kind of gnarly powers. We'll see.

Persistence. Maybe Stupid Persistence, but Persistence Nonetheless.

Last October, we had a surprise snowstorm that brought about five or so inches of heavy snow. Most of the trees in the neighborhood still had their leaves on, including our apricot tree in the back yard. The snow caused one of the three main branches of the tree to snap, nearly dividing the tree in half. I was pretty sure the tree was doomed. Fast forward to this summer. It's now heavy -- very heavy -- with apricots, even after I thinned them. Hoping the tree, which is REALLY EXCITED TO BE HERE, will survive the summer.

Any ideas what I can do to help this poor thing?

No Disintegrations, A Follow-Up

So I've been a little bit busy lately -- but not busy enough that some work hasn't been done at the house.

Here's an update from my list as reported on June 18.

MAIN FLOOR TILE. Need to tile bathroom and foyer closet, and grout laundry room. Fix soft spots in the kitchen.

UPDATE: Bathroom is tiled. Need to do the baseboards and then grout the entire assembly. Had hoped to get further along with this project, but I spent half the day trying to cut the bolts holding the toilet to the floor until I have up and bought a Dremel. The Dremel had the bolts cut in less than two minutes. Should have started the day buying the Dremel.

ROOF. Finish ridge cap on the upper portion of the roof and replace shingles on the porch and kitchen window pop-out. Also haul off the discarded shingles. Yesterday’s gullywasher also reminded me I need to clean those gutters out. Maybe if it’s not raining this evening . . .

UPDATE: The ridge cap is finished. We've hauled off one load of shingles, including the shingles that were on the porch. I've got about a half-hour's worth of work to do on the porch roof, and it'll be done. Need to do the kitchen pop-out, then clean the gutters on the lower portion of the house.

The other items on the list, well, haven't gotten to them yet. But chew the list down a bit at a time. And get the visible stuff done. Should be able to finish the shingles tomorrow (maybe get the gutters cleaned out). Then the tile in the bathroom and laundry room get grouted.

Then Saturday, EAGLE PROJECT!

Nooclear, uh, Soooolar Power!

Since I can’t have a small modular (nuclear) reactor in my back yard (yet . . .) we’ve decided to settle for solar power.

QUESTION: Would I really want a small modular reactor in my backyard?

ANSWER: If I had the acreage, I’d do it.

Here’s our courageous story:

A few months ago, we had a salesman from Utah-based Blue Raven solar stop by the house (we also had a salesman from CenturyLink stop by as well; we ended up saying yes to both, so it was a good month for sales people to stop at our house). And lest ye think we were easily influenced by a slick salesman, we’ve been kicking around the idea of installing solar power since we moved to Ammon about six years ago. So we were eager to listen to what these folks had to say.

By the numbers, what they said made a lot of sense.

On average, we’re paying about $84 a month for electricity from Rocky Mountain Power. Now, it’s easy to hate your electric utility, seeing as there’s no competition among them. We fought back against high electricity bills when we moved into this house by ditching the electric water heater and the in-wall electric heat for gas appliances as soon as we could. (One of the benefits of converting an all-electric home to natural gas is that the outside walls are six inches thick, rather than four, so there’s that added insulation.)

As we put pencil to paper, we saw that, short-term, we’ll pay $90 a month for the solar power installation, plus the regular monthly fees – about $25 – to Rocky Mountain to remain connected to the grid. That seems expensive. But we’re hoping that our 4.72 kwh system will generate enough electricity, particularly as we engage other cost-saving measures such as shutting off unused computers and converting over more to LED bulbs, to help offset the increased cost as we sell electricity back to the utility. As it is, with optimum generation, we ought to be capable of producing 102% of our electrical needs. We’ll see what happens.

Then there’s the benefit of the federal tax credit – a whopping 30% -- for residential solar installations. For our system, that amounts to about $6,000, likely spread over two tax years. Our loan is structured that we have to put that money back into the system, or our payments go from $90 a month to $130, so it’s a good incentive to kick that money back into the loan, which is what we’d do anyway.

Blue Raven will also make our first eighteen payments of $90 a month, so if we also pay $90 a month, we’ll see that loan amount nearly halved in the first year.

While the numbers helped, two other factors helped us clinch the deal. First, a good friend of ours in Sugar City is also installing solar through Blue Raven, and he agreed with us that the numbers looked good. We also have a good friend in the neighborhood who had Blue Raven do solar on their roof almost a year ago, and they’ve been pleased with the results so far.

We’re about three-quarters of the way through the process – we still have to have Rocky Mountain come put in a new meter before we can turn the system on (and thanks to a hailstorm that damaged the roof, the panels will have to come down for a day as we get the roof repaired). We’re optimistic, however, that everything will be running by June.

I’m anxious to see what our performance will be like, particularly as we head into another air-conditioned summer. I’m planning on doing some economies with the AC this summer, as for about six weeks I’ll be the only one home as everyone else heads off to scout camp. I’ll put the temperature at 72 rather than the 68 most want it at, and we’ll see how it goes. That does make the top floor of the house a bit warm on the warmest nights, but I’ll just sleep in the basement with the dogs and turn the AC lower on the weekends when everyone’s home. (Although to sleep even better, I should put the dogs elsewhere as they generate a LOT of heat when they sleep.)

I’m also going to do some insulation – when we remodeled the laundry room last year, we discovered the roof above it had not been insulated, nor the roof above the adjacent bathroom. So I’ll be at work tossing some insulation up there in the hopes that’ll help cool things down/warm them up in that part of the house. I’m also working on insulating the garage. Though it’s not heated, having that additional insulated space next to the house should help a little.

We Get to Drink from the (Almost) FIREHOSE!

So last summer, while the family was at camp, our Internet crapped out. I couldn’t connect at all and it was getting frustrating not only trying to update this fabulous blog but also get into the class I was teaching. You know, the paying gig.

Riveting stuff, I know. But it gets better.

Cable One sent out a technician and he poked around for a while at their outside box (a long while, but more on that later) and then poked around inside for a while. He asked if we had any other cable connections in the house. I showed him, and he was not impressed.

He did manage to get us connected again, but in talking with their tech support afterward (they called to follow-up on the visit) the guy said something classic:

“Looks like you might have something wrong with your wires.”

He meant the wires in our home, and suggested we contact an electrician to have at least one new connection put in so we’d have a better overall internet experience.

I chalked it up to the typical “We don’t know what’s wrong, so let’s blame the wires” talk and did nothing about it apart from look at the costs of CAT-6 cable at Home Depot.

So you know where this is going.

This weekend, in a fit of frustration trying to connect with the FAFSA website (don’t get me started) I decided I’d had enough. I grabbed the new cable we had just purchased that weekend and marched outside to the famed box on the side of the house. I remembered clearly the guy on the phone saying “When you get your house re-wired, call us and we’ll come out and get you hooked up.” So I was hopeful but not optimistic when I opened the box – to find one simple screw-in connection and a ground wire. I think I might be able to stave off a service call, I thought. I connected the wire to the box. Then strung it through the garage, through the back door of the house and to our wireless router.*

After a few sparks and a quick whiff of ozone, GLORY BE we had an internet connection that stretched for miles. Relatively. But you get the idea. We could have MULTIPLE devices connected at the SAME TIME.

I’m still wrassling with FAFSA (again, don’t get me started) but everything else has been wonderful. We were able to watch the Super Bowl this weekend, streaming it, with only a few temporary glitches.

So the question from my wife came up: Why did you wait until now to fix this, when you knew what the fix was this summer?

Answer: I’m a man. But I can change. If I have to. I guess.

This isn’t to say our connection is perfect – we still see a slowdown in the evening when lots of people are using the net – but it’s nothing like the slowdown we’d seen for months.

We’re drinking from the fire hose, folks, and it feels great. Should have found that marble in the oatmeal a long time ago.

*Naturally, once I saw the improved connection I installed the new cable properly, even digging through the insulation in the wall to get the cable to come out the proper box in the kitchen. While my wife is a patient woman and put up with lousy internet access for months, she would NOT put up with a cable snaking in through the back door for more than the necessary time to test the new connection.

Again This Tile Job?

After a month of busy weekends, I finally got back to the tile job today -- though I had to take a day off work to do it. Well, do the tile and other nefarious activity I can't reveal at the moment. But underneath the table is now grouted, and I hope by this weekend to have the rest of the "dining" area of the kitchen completed. If I can get the china cabinet (not pictured because it's scary) moved. . .

Tile Job Follow-Up

The kitchen tile job is moving along. It went a bit slower today than I'd hoped, but I ran out of Wonderboard and had to take some time to figure out how to do the fireplace hearth. Now if we only had a good fireplace to match the tile job . . . well, maybe next year.

Tile Job

It's amazing what dogs will get curious about.

Well, that's a lie. They'll get curious about anything. Right here, Daisy is getting curious about the tile job I'm starting in the kitchen. Hope to have a good swath of it finished by the time this weekend is over.

The Bountiful Basket Diet

About a month ago, Michelle signed us up for the first of our Bountiful Baskets. For the uninitiated (and I'm sure there are only just a few in this neck of the woods) Bountiful Baskets is a Utah-based outfit that, for $25 a week, sends us outlandish amounts of fresh produce for us to eat. Yes, we could buy the produce at the grocery store -- and indeed we do, apples, grapes, carrots, cucumbers and a few other common bits being our staples.

What I'm liking about Bountiful Baskets is that we're being introduced, as a family to new fruits and vegetables. Until a month ago, for example, I had never eaten a mango (I know; I don't get out much). Friday, I cooked a stir-fry with bok choy, which was suddenly popular in the basket last week, and on Saturday I cooked a stew that was entirely of Bountiful Basket stuff except for the beef and the onion.

Another bonus: Rather than having the produce go bad, we're forced to eat it. That means fruits and vegetables are supplanting the ordinary snacks we'd eat. We're being forced to eat healthier because I'm too cheap to allow anything to be thrown out. Check that. The black bananas can go, as can the beets, rutabagas, turnips and any other unwholesomes. It's my wife who keeps us on the straight and narrow, eating the stuff that we get.

In fact, yesterday for lunch we basically had a variety of sliced apples. That was it. I felt so proud.

So I'm excited to see what'll come this next weekend and what new culinary adventure awaits.

Records Purge Begins . . . NOW!

Once and a while, when my filing cabinet is threatening to explode due to the amount of paper stuffed in it, I do a purge of the records. I don't use a shredder; we happen to have a wood stove that likes to burn excess paper.

Sure, I could recycle it by taking it to work and putting it in the recycling bins there. But that makes for a nearly 100-mile one-way trip for those records, so the green burn I get off recycling the paper is probably negated by the fossil fuel used to get me there. Since we're already burning a fire to heat the basement, I just shove all the paperwork inside the stove and let it crackle away.

I don't know why I cling to all this paperwork: Utility bills that are paid in full and four years old, pay stubs from 2006 -- It appears the last time I did a purge was in 2006, because that's where all the paper records I have stop.

Not that we have a lot of electronic records, either. I just don't see the point. Maybe in some distant future when we have to account for every single atom of carbon shoved into the atmosphere, somebody might want to know how much I paid for electricity or natural gas in 2006. But I fthey want the information that badly, they can go to the utilities, not me. And they'll have to penetrate the bureaucracy in order to get that info out of them. Good luck with that.

I still have some sorting and purging to do. I've done the easier ones first -- power, water, gas, paystubs -- but the other ones are a bit more dicey. The tax records I scan in every scrap of paper and keep electronic copies, purging the paper records after a few years. If the IRS is that interested in going over my finances from 2006, they've got as many records as I have in their own vaults. Also dicey is the file that contains the manuals and warranty information for the small parade of minor appliances that have come through the house. I know we have instructions for at least three irons and six curling irons that have long since gone to the landfill, but who wants the agony of sorting through all that paperwork just to match up the correct manual with the correct appliance sitting upstairs? I don't, so I'm ignoring that file for the time being. Also daunting are the files upon files of newspaper clippings, from the era when I was a newspaper reporter. Many of them, thankfully, I've scanned in, so the paper copies are already gone. Others went up the chimney without a preliminary run through the scanner because it was all city councils, county commissions and such so who cares about that? Most of the stuff I have left are full tearsheets, and nobody I know has a scanner that big, so they'll have to hang about a bit for a while longer. Until another fit of despair comes and I just chuck them as well.

Other things are easier. Just a few weeks ago, I scanned in a pile of kids' drawing and other homework and such. I don't know that, years later, they'll want to know what they were doing and drawing in the fourth grade or in kindergarten, but just in case, some of it's there.

Then there's the issue of e-books. I have, at last count, more than 100 linear feet of books in this room alone. I've read most of them, and can't bear to part with them. I love the feel of the paper and the heft of the book, so e-books are lost on me. I've taken a shine to transferring CDs and DVDs to digital because then they're portable and I can watch them on the iPod Touch while going to and from work, where I spend a lot of time scanning in paper work records and storing them digitally and sending the papers back to the recycling, or the landfill, wherever they end up.

Anyway, I've babbled long enough about records storage at our house. One of these days, I'll have to sort through all the electronic records I've got. They dwarf the paper records, I can tell you that.

Beautiful Soup

Before anybody gets indignant over the spiritual implications of making soup on Sunday, let me say this: You can talk to tomatoes all you want about the Sabbath, but if they're ready, they're ready.

So today we made soup. Tomato soup. Almost entirely of home-grown ingredients. We had tomatoes from our garden and from Michelle's sister's garden, plus our garden onions and carrots. The peppers and celery had to come from the store, as we don't have room for celery and we grew only green peppers this summer.

What a year for tomatoes this was. This is the first time since Michelle and I got married that we got more than a dozen tomatoes out of our garden. And this year we got loads. Bowl after bowl -- we only accepted those from Michelle's sister because we wanted to make more tomato soup.

And what soup it is. Lovely soup, not the condensed stuff out of a can, but stuff that actually has flavor not remnicient of Spaghetti-Os. Good tomato, with that hint of onion and celery. Soooooo very good. Last year, we only made seven bottles. This year, sixteen of them, plus one ready to eat in the fridge. Can't wait.

Other news: Had a minor electrical victory yesterday. I was cutting a piece of plywood on the table saw when the saw cut out. I thought we'd tripped a breaker in the shed, and indeed we had, but it would not stay on or off. So I replaced the receptacle where I had the saw plugged in, but it still wouldn't work. So I yanked the breaker and replaced it. Voila. I'm happy I didn't have to call anyone in on that one.

Why Oh Why Oh Why Oh Why Oh Why?

Vacation was starting out so well. Then this week came.

Last night, Michelle idly asked, "So, were you planning on any home improvement projects while you're home this week?" The question caught me off guard, so all I could muster was a mumbled, "Yeah, sure," accompanied by my patent stunned bunny look. So today, we came home with about $500 worth of home improvement project materials -- tile, grout and a new cabinet for the upstairs bathroom. So my next few days are planned out for me.

Tonight, I've managed to get the old linoleum floor up, the toilet hauled out and the old sink and cabinet yanked out. I'm now surveying the expected water damage in a 30-year-old house owned by a series of people who weren't very handy with plumbing. I may just clean things up a bit and do some probing on the subfloor tomorrow just to make sure everything is peachy. Then, if I can manage it, I'll put down the Wonderboard and lay the tile tomorrow, leaving the grouting for Wednesday morning. I certainly hope that's how it works out, though we've already hit one project glitch -- we bought a 21-inch countertop but an 18-inch cabinet. So we've got to exchange the cabinet.

I did manage to accomplish what has become a rite of passage with any home improvement project -- I managed to find part of the debris -- in this case some trim wood -- that I could toss in the fireplace. I figure with the rest of the house watching as part of it goes up in a controlled flame that the house will decide to behave itself.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like . . .

I apologize for the quality of these pictures; a new digital camera is on the list for Christmas. But, here you see in almost its full glory, the Davidson Christmas Extravaganza. More lights are in the offing; I have to replace some I had to throw away last year. Also, we have not put out the deer yet, because there are teenagers about. Can't put them out for obvious reasons.