Category: ebola

Beautiful and warm, sunny and blue sky.  I hope. [very nice, getting into the 80s with clear skies and cool breezes]

Yesterday was very nice.  68F at 9am, 82 with a cool breeze in the shade in the afternoon.

I spent the afternoon outside.  I got the electric chainsaw back out, and took the time to sharpen it.  Made a HUGE difference even though it was my first time sharpening and kinda haphazard…  Cut up the remaining branches, and took another of the multiple trunks off one of the chinese cherries.   That wood is certainly dense.

Then I moved to the oak in the front yard and got out the “High Limb Saw” or chain saw in the middle of a long rope.  I took down about half a dozen limbs that were either dead or too far over the neighbor’s yard.    By the end of the afternoon, I was getting pretty good at throwing the sandbag over the high limbs to get the rope over.  It is a workout.

Cut up the branches with the electric chainsaw (very handy, fairly quiet, not intimidating, recommended.)  Threw the debris on the heavy trash pile.

Today if it’s still nice, I’ll get up on the roof and trim back those branches, and start in on the sprinklers.  We’ve removed bushes and some beds in the front of the house and have a whole zone or two of sprinklers that should be capped off.   They were originally installed poorly, with 12″ pop ups completely above the earth.  In other words, a dozen sprinkler heads like cans of tennis balls, sticking up where we don’t need them.  I keep tripping over them, breaking them off, and catching the hose on them.   I could leave a couple of risers for drip irrigation in the future, I guess.

Number two daughter turns 9 today and she’s bouncing off the walls.  Fortunately, I’d bought a bunch of stuff prior to lockdown, and amazon is still open to deliver stuff that my wife ordered.   Even without a get together with her friends, she should have  a good day.  I thought about sending cupcakes to all her school friends, and having them do a zoom vtc while they ate them and got a goodie bag, but we couldn’t get it organized in time.

The new version of my NVR software eats hard drive like crazy.  By default it records a constant stream from each camera.  That’s a lot of data…  Even setting up ‘record on motion’ for all the 3mpx cams didn’t save enough disk space with the three 8mpx cams streaming constantly.  I LIKE them capturing everything, but I don’t have the space.   So I ordered an 8 TB surveillance drive from amazon.  Only $220, which is astounding to me.  The surveillance drives are built to handle the 24/7 writing and constant use, and they cost a bit more.  Interesting to me to see the different drives being built to different specs for specific uses.  I’d say that was a sign of a mature market.

Oh, and I threw out a couple dozen shelf stable entre’s from Dinty Moore, completes, and a couple from an indian company.  They were  bb 2014 1nd 2015.  While still sealed and under vacuum, the egg dishes had turned uniformly brown, and the meat dishes looked pretty gross.   The indian dishes actually looked the best.  They all smelled ok, and probably wouldn’t kill you, but I’ve got food that isn’t nasty looking.  They were WAY in the back on the shelves in the garage.  High heat is probably to blame for the changes in appearance, oh, and the extra 5 years….

Dinner was late and needed to be quick and easy, so frozen cheeseburgers, cottage cheese, tomato, onion, and a pasta side dish.  Flavored pasta dish was bb 2016 in a foil lined paper pouch.  Tasted just like it should.

Stay in, Stay safe.

nick

Forecast says clear, my gut says- intermittent rain, with cooler temps.

Yesterday we got spotty rain off and on all day.  I didn’t let that stop me from working in the gardens and yard.   Cut up some branches for the woodpile.  Took down a branch to let more light into the back yard, in the late afternoon.  Two of my beds don’t get much direct sun before noon, so I need as late in the day as I can get.

I reseeded where something had dug up my seeds.  And this time, I put metal mesh (hardware cloth) over the top of where the seeds are.  That should keep the squirrels out of it until the plants have a chance to sprout.  I also reseeded the radishes and turnips in the ‘window boxes’ on the fence, and I went ahead and planted a few corn kernels.   I’ll see how they do and if the squirrels eat them.

If the weather’s good today, I’ll try to do some work on the sprinklers, and maybe get the rope saw out and do some pruning on the live oak in the front yard.  Maybe.

I did get some small cleanup done in the driveway, which the wife took as an anniversary gift 🙂  I sold and delivered a pallet jack to my buddy, and put some stuff out for heavy trash.

I feel like I got a bunch done, even with a fairly late start to the day.  I hope today goes as well.

Dinner was live Maine lobsters, flown in as a gift from my  in-laws.  I had to cook it, but it was a nice dinner.  I used the pot from my propane turkey fryer, and I should have used the gas ring too.  It took forever to heat the water on my electric range, and my timing was thrown off by the time it took to get it back to a boil after the lobsters went in.  Tasted good, but they were a tiny bit overcooked.  A bit of steak from the freezer made the ‘turf’ part of our ‘surf n turf’.   Boiled potatoes and steamed asparagus rounded out the meal.  Damn strange slow motion disaster.

I broke my own isolation twice this week, both times for money.  Not JUST money, but money was involved.  I hope it doesn’t bite me in the @ss.

Stay in, stay safe.

nick

Warm?  Sunny?  Humid?  or rain.  No one knows.

Yesterday was another gorgeous day, although it did get a bit hot by the late afternoon.

I finished cleaning up the worst of the leftover rat shite and the shelves will be ready for use today.  I also cleaned up an area under my workbench, which was storing cr@p that doesn’t need to be in the garage, and had been walked on by the rats.  I’ll be able to organize that area now too.  Bulk medical will go there in sealed bins.  And maybe my gub support infrastructure and my non-prepping hobby messy stuff can go there.

I’ve still got some food on the garage shelves that I need to get out, then when everything is mostly in one place, I can see what to put back into that area, and what to leave nearer the kitchen.

I added more dirt to the potato towers.  Surveyed the new plantings, and I’ll have to replant some and cover with wire mesh.  Otherwise, the squirrels find the seeds to be a tasty treat.  It’s been long enough that if the radishes in the window boxes were going to sprout they would have, so I’ll reseed those as well.  I’ll give the beets and turnips a bit more time, since I can’t really replace them with anything at this late date.  I might have to do a bit more tree trimming to get enough sun where it needs to hit, I’ve been watching the beds throughout the day and some aren’t quite getting enough sun.

I spent part of the afternoon changing out a camera that just wouldn’t stay in a high rez stream.  I’ve got more of that style and make, so I got one out and replaced it.   I then took the bad one and decided to take out the IR filter so it would give good pics at night, when I have IR floods on.  I wanted to test on the bad one before doing it to the backyard cam.  Unlike most cams, the IR filter was glued to the CCD chip.  Alcohol didn’t break the bond, nor did acetone, but naptha eventually did.   I threw the cam into place just to see the result.  I am now getting good image in the back yard, which is dark under visible light.  Unfortunately, they’ve tuned the color to compensate for the IR filter, and without it, daylight looks strange.  I don’t think there will be enough adjustment to make it look good.  If not, I’ll find another cam to put there that looks good in the day and night.  Sometimes, trying to go cheap, with existing stuff, just doesn’t make sense.

I hated not seeing the back yard at night.  My monitor is mounted on an arm, and lives just above my PC’s center screen.  If I hear something or glance up, I can see all around the house.  Once you get used to that ability, you REALLY miss it if it’s not there.

Dinner was chicken mole’ from a(n old) can with additional can of costco chicken added, served as enchiladas with cheese.  Refried beans from a can (2018), and a corn salad, and brown rice rounded out the meal.   The enchiladas were really tasty, and a nice change of pace for Taco Tuesday.

I think we’ve got a long road ahead of us, and things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.  Spicy time is coming.  Get prepped.

Stay in, stay safe.

nick

Still cooler, but possibility of rain.

Yesterday was another gorgeous day.  Blue sky, high wispy clouds, cool breeze, and very moderate temps.

I bundled up the last of my tree pruning and got that out for trash pickup.  Watered the gardens.  Added dirt to the potato towers (which are going nuts).  Moved some minor stuff around.  Not nearly as productive as I should have been.

One reason was I spent some time on the phone with an old friend and mentor.  He’s in LA and doing fine, ready to wait this thing out.  I found out that one other friend had passed away last year and another work acquaintance too.  Getting old isn’t any easier if you beat the hell out of yourself when you were younger, and especially if you KEEP beating the hell out of yourself as you get older.

This might be a good time to take up some stretching and light exercise, if you haven’t been doing either of those.   Old and flexible and strong beats the snot out of old and frail and stiff.

Plan for today is more of the same.

Dinner was pork chops cut from a bulk pork roast and seasoned and vac sealed before freezing.  Canned BBQ beans, and canned peas.  I tried sauteing some cuttings from my broccoli, but they were bitter and tough.  Oh well.  Ice cream with the last of the cherry pie filling on top for dessert.

Stay in, stay safe.

n