End of the World. Beginning of a new one. The Life of Amberwolf.

[amberwolf]

Dogman left a few hours ago, after performing some more miracles helping me out. Some pics from last time we were posting above, and then some of both bikes in the front room, along with Tiny being bored:






Yesterday (I think) he'd gone out to get a bolt for his kickstand that had sheared off, and picked up the hot water hose fo rhte heater while he was at it. But the bolt was the wrong thread, thanks to whoever "helped" him at the hardware store. However, I still had some of my bins of bolts na dstuff, and since he had un buried them the day before, we got them out and found an old alternator bolt from that 85 ford ltd that worked perfectly. It probably wont snap lke the othe rone did. :lol:


He also went out riding on our canal trails, and had a lot of fun. I'm sure he'll psot about those rides in hos own threads; I didn't go cuz I didn't think I could keep up with him if he went fast (I didn't realize he was oging to go fairly slow to conserve power) and also i kinda needed to stay and sort thru things, clean things up, etc.

So I stayed and cleaned things up some, shuffled stuff around in the house and started putting tools away in the toolboxes, etc. Not really sorted, but they're at least in there so I know what room they're in. :lol: Tiny was lazy and slept under the kitchen table most of the time.

I'm so tired from lack of sleep that I forget at the mometn all of what happened that day, but I do remember that after he got back from his ride, he fixed his lunch and I wasn't hungry until after e was done cooking, then i made my own, and we sat out there on the back "porch" (which is still buried under dirt from the prep of the new back room slab; I gotta dig it out and clean it off to keep dirt from being tracked in quite so much), yammering with each other about various things.

At some point I realized the weather was just about right for wokring on the bike, and that I felt like fixing things, had the time, and could be out there talking with him while doing it, so I dragged CrazyBike2 out there and setup the welder to fix the broken seat frame.

I unlaced part of the seat webbing to weld without melting it, and Dogman found some metal bit to use for a brace to keep the fraem from breaking there again, and I welded it all bakc together at *almost* the right angle; had ot bend it some when I was done to clear the rightside cargp opod door.

Then I decided that since I had it apart anyway, and the existing seat webbing is all owrn out and ripped up, and I actuallhy knew where some new material was *and* the new paracord to lace it with, *and* the harbor freight tarp-repair kit, I should go ahead and actually replace the whole seat webbing too. So we did that, and Dogman helped enough to turn what would have been at least a few hours (maybe a day) of work for me into only an hour or maybe hour and a half. It's not perfect, but it is a lot better than the damaged webbing/lacing was. It'll do for now, certainly.


Regarding the welders, a gripe: I had to use the new cheap one, cuz I have to makea totally new extension for the new 240V plug type that's on there, cuz my $35 plug I bought to use with the temporary powe tap is a complete waste of money, never could use it cuz there wasnt' any power on that tap, and AFAIK it was never fixed the whole time the house was under rpeair (but I couldn't have used it even if it was cuz my welder was buried under lots of stuff I basically couldn't move, by the time I needed it again). The new plug is some all-vertical slot thing, four prong, not a twistlock. Also not the Y-bladed thing lke I already ahve dryer plugs for, or the one on my big Sorenson. So either I have to buy and wire in a receptacle for the plugs I have, or I have to buy or make adapters, or I have to buy and replace the plugs on my 220V stuff (welder and Sorenson). No matter which way I go, it's gonna be expensive to do, and it seems pointless to have to do any of them..

If I am REALLY lucky, I'll find the right plug on something from Freecycle/etc., or find a receptacle for one of the plugs I already have. Either solution would be ok with me, though I expect that getting plugs for the exsitng new receptacle is the "best" solution.




In the news of things to fix, it looks like the A/C-heat unit doesnt' respond to the controls. I dunno if it's a wiring thing, or something in the unit, or power. I havent' found my long ladder to be able to get on the roof to check things, I suspect it was taken by the workers, cuz it *had* been there after the looting seemed to have stopped. They left one of thier ladders there, with a can of sealant, but I'd ratheruse my own (and have one to be able to use when I have to get up there). I might have to build one.

Also, the front window blinds were installed backwards compared to the window itself--the right half of the window opens (sliding left) but the blinds open from th eleft to the right, those vertical wide band blinds, and they only go about halfway across. So one can never move the blinds out of the way of the openable part of the window, so wind thru it just blows slats off. Fortunately it was easy to turn it around, just snaps onto the hangers, though hard to balance it and me on a chair while I did it.

The shower/bath water control apparenly is either defective in both bathrooms, or else it is not set right, or else is designed to prevent one from ever getting a hot shower without setting the hot water heater to instantly scald you if you use any regular faucet's hot water.

I haven't worked out how to change it yet, and will have to write down what I can of what's on the valve/control to see if there is an online manual. Cuz if there isn't a way to change it, I'll hve to replace both of the controls with different ones, cuz it isn't safe to have ot change the heater thermaostat to scalding just to get a shower--if I forget and hten wash my hands or dishes in the sink, I could end up with burns, given my reaction times to things like that.



I found my motion-activated security ligght that used to be on the front of the house; I thought it had been taken but someone had tossed it behind a shed alonng with some wires and cables (including the cords they cut off the washer and dryer!) So I'm trying to decide if I want it in front or in back, and when I will install it.


Some pics: tiny's new dining area: (though I had to move the trashcan to on top of the kichen table, as she decidded it was just a box of noms for her)


Aftermath of Tiny's first bath at the house:
View attachment 6

Tough claws:

 

[amberwolf]

Mdd0127 came down from Cottonwood to help out, and arrived just as I got home from posting the above--he was hoping to get here in time to at least meet Dogman, preferably to help out at the same time, but things didn't work out that way, unfortunately.

Naturally, Wilbur and Jeebus (his dogs) came with him, and unlike my expectations, Tiny didn't really have any problem with them, even with all three loose in the yard. We did first walk them aorund the block on leashes, though Tiny refused to walk with anyone but me behind her, so they had to go in front of us. By the end of the walk she was doing fine (and had also reverted to her pulling habits, so I will have to work that out all over again).

While in the yard, Wilbur was pretty excited about her, and at one point Tiny let him know in no uncertain terms that she wasn't that excited about him, but it was just the one snarly snap, then Wilbur took the hint and ran off, and Tiny just kept doing what she'd been doing, instead of chasing him like I had been afraid of. Jeebus just went around trying to find and eat all the tennis balls. :lol: Tiny mostly ignored them, except for finding all their pee spots and peeing on top of them. She didn't know what to do when they all came inside for water, and they drank her dish dry, while she stood back with a "WTF" look on her face, probably thinking "isnt' that MY bowl? What do I DO?". :lol:

But she got along with them fine, which gives me hope that she could get along with other dogs I'm sure I will eventually get (probably sooner rather than later, cuz that is how things typically work).

Even more interestingly, she almost accepted Mdd0127 himself, too--she did bark at him now and then, but usually when he was walking away from her, or when our voices got louder for any reason (she doesnt' like loud stuff, or arguing, etc, which is a lot like Bonnie was), even if it was just echoeyness from the barefloored rooms. She only tried to nip his nose once, I think. I have a feeling it is because he looks and sounds more like me, unlike Dogman? Don't really know.





He helped me move more stuff, including moving the big cabinets (which Dogman moved out of in front of a shed so I could get in there) that'd been still in the yard into the back room of the house instead, and also washed the mold and bugs off of them for me, while I was at work. He left me a big plastic cabinet/shelf unit, too, which should help with storage of stuff (probably end up in the utility room as there is no cabinetry in there, and I need storage in there for stuff). It'll probably end up holding a fair bit of the stuff that is presently in the red bins of tools and whatnot that he moved into the house for me, and found a spot in the utility room for them until I can get to them.

Right after the rain we got (which was pretty hard rain, off and on throughout Saturday night and Sunday daytime), he put in the steel post near the corner of the back room that I am going to use for one end of my clothes line, and whlie it was sunny yesterday I welded a piece of an old folding table's legs across the top of it to tie the clotheslines to. The other end will just tie to the biggest mulberry tree (or at least, the half of it they didn't cut off) that's between the house and hte line of sheds. Since there is no shade at all there anymore for most of the day, and isn't likely to ever be again since the swamp cooler, the tree and lantana next to it, and half that big mulberry tree were all removed, then it should work fine to dry clothes there. It'll be a few days before the ground is dry enough to put the actual lines across the pole/tree, but it's ready to do that when I get ready to.

I've forgotten to post some of the stuff he and dogman did for me, I'm sure, but I can't remember it all, since they did so much for me.

Mdd0127 also left me a little video/still camera that actually takes a picture WHEN I PRESS THE BUTTON! I don't even remember the brand name, and it might not have all sorts of features or anything, but since it takes the picture I'm trying to take, at the moment I'm needing to take it, I'll accept a lot of other faults it might have that I don't know about yet. :lol: (not a lot more frustrating than trying to take that cute picture of Tiny or whatever and having the phone camera decide to finally snap the shot several seconds after I've pressed the button, waited, and then gave up and moved already, or Tiny's long since walked out of hte shot, etc). I hope to have pics posted from it next wifi chance I get, but I forgot to bring it to work with me, and I'm snatching some wifi before I go home for the night. Tomorrow I have off, and will likely be spending it sorting and cleaning and moving stuff around like I have much of the rest of the time since moving back in. (I have soot embedded into the cracks in my skin on my hands, it doesnt' come out when I scrub, so I figure it'll be a while after I finish all the cleaning/etc before I'll look like I have clean hands again. )


Alas, he had to leave, too, and was gone last night when I got home. He'd probably have stayed longer to help, but he caught a bad cold (probably while on his only shopping trip out for groceries while he was down here), and didnt' want to spread it to me, and had planned on going a couple of other places anyway and hten coming back this way. This just accelerated that plan.


So now I'm back to "normal", working things out a day at a time, with just Tiny for company, for now. I've issued invitations to a few friends to come by to see the place if they like, but so far none of the few that responded at all have taken me up on it. Only a couple that responded even sound like they're interested in doing so. But that's ok, I didn't expect anyone to want to.



At least now, thanks to Dogman and Mdd0127, I have a good start on getting the stuff inside that needs to be, and on having space to move around in the sheds to get to the stuff that needs to be organized. It'll still take a long time to finish that, but at least it wont' be anywhere near as long as it would have otherwise.



Sorry I don't have any new pics or even half the old ones: I forgot to bring the "new" camera or to copy it's pics to the computer bvefore I left for work today, and I forgot to bring the USB cable for the phone to do that, or copy them over, iether. Next time...I hope.




Oh, and I fixed the showers; it was an adjustment disc in there, limiting how far the handle can be turned toward HOT. Couldn't find the info online so I just started taking one apart until I saw the markings on the plastic disc behind the handle, under the metal covers. Was relatively easy. Now I can turn down the water heater from SCALD to just HOT. :/

Gotta find all my CFL bulbs to change out all these incandescents the house has right now (only a couple started out as CFL, like the back porch light and a couple of room lights, all the rest are incandescent and wasting a lot of power and making a lot of heat I don't want).

I still havent' decided on whether to put the motion-detecting security light on front or back porch, but it would make more sense to do it on the back, I guess? Eventually I'll get at least two more, and put one on the carport and one on the other porch, and probably another on the northeast corner of the back room's outside wall, under the narrow eaves. (but the carport and corner will require running a really long extension cord under the eaves to get power to them, as there's no longer any carport outlet or lighting, which is a PITA because I used to use that all the time).

 

[dogman dan]

Way to go MDD. I moved some heavy stuff, but I still have crushed back disks from 20 years ago. Moving those huge cabinets 4 feet was enough for me. In my prime, I'd have gotten them inside, but not now. My back howled till yesterday from what I did do. So it's good I left when I did.

I still can't believe how standoffish Tiny is. It's really that rare that I can't melt a dogs heart in a day or so. I should have brought a dog I guess. You are a pretty amazing guy to have her pick you out.

Incandescent bulbs in all the lights? Cheap frockers.

 

[amberwolf]

Only a minute to post, no time to do pics.

Had to change out the front door locks and will be doing the gate locks, and fixing the fence tomorrow, cuz the landlord "forgot" I was here and sent someone over to mow the front and backyards, and it was just luck that Tiny was asleep inside with me this morning instead of prowling the backyard or in the back room where she would've wandered out. Either she'd've been able to escape cuz the guy took down the stuff I'd blocked off the damaged section of fence with, and put his yard equipment thru that and climbed thru, instead of using a gate like a normal person, or she'd've potentially come after him for intruding into her backyard, thinking she was defending me.

I woke up to the sound of a lawnmower near my bedroom window, and both widnows of it are in the backyard-fenced area, so.....

So now that I know I can't trust people to have any respect for me, to even THINK of notifying me stuff is going to be done, much less knocking on the door to let me know they're there, but instead just waltz right into the backyard endangering my dog (and possibly themselves, knowingly, since I TOLD them about her), I have to do my best to make sure they can't get in there without asking me, unless they intend to cut locks or break fences or doors down to do it, in which case I'll just call the police for the trespassers.

I asked the landlord about it and he basically said he forgot I was living there already, in different words. I'd think that'd be tough to do, but whatever. People (including "close" friends) forget about me all the time, or fail to notice my presence, existence, etc., so I ought to be used to it by now.


Anyway, enough ranting: I've unburied the back porch, from 6-8" of dirt that was moved out whe the new slab was poured. Now that the backroom is taller floor I have to remove all the bricks and put the dirt that was on top of them underneath them instead, then put them back, so I won't be walking out into a puddle of mud like Mdd0127 and I had to deal with last weekend when it rained.

The rest of the temporary porch made of pallets and scrap wood laid over the mud is still there, until I can dig that dirt out, too, to get down to the original surface that is compacted already, that doesnt' turn into swampmud.


I've gotten about 1/3 of the kitchen stuff already brought in washed off and put away. Then there's still more kitchen stuff in the sheds to dig out eventually, but most of the really important stuff is inside.


The computer backups and software boxes I was worried might've been stolen weren't, they were simply moved around to another shed; I don't remember doing that so I dunno why they were there, but I probably did move them at some point, probably with help, and just forgot in all the confusion and stress. Maybe when Mark and I threw all the other stuff aorund the yard into th sheds, what we could fit in. I dunno. But at least it's there, though I have to move more stuff to get to it to move it inside.

I've sort of decided the back room will be a projects room, and the cabinet will be my electronics parts and tools and test equpiment and workbench, just like I'd planned originally before the fire. That way it's near the utility room with the 220VAC outlet for the Sorenson, and all the other tools and stuff, and a sink once I can find one I can install in there and get splitters off the washer plumbing.

gotta go now cuz they'r eclosing, and gotta get home to Tiny.

 

[amberwolf]

First, a backlog of pics, several posts' worth. This post will be the other Dogman visit pics, including him about to leave, and when he was helping me fix CrazyBike2 (only one of htsoe has him in it).

 

[amberwolf]

Now the pics of Mdd0127's visit. First the dogs togehter, and Mdd0127 weith them. Then som epics of the "porch" I slapped together over the squishy slippery mud so we could sitll do stuff without breaking our necks and tracking so much mud into the house, since it was still sprinkling some and still dumped on us more later. The green stuff was fuzzy (like pool table only thicker) shelf liners they used to have on the shelves at one of the stores I remodelled just before the fire last year. Didn't know what I would use it for then, but it works pretty well as mats to keep from slipping. Gray stuff is old rubber floor mats I used to have in the house to keep bikes from damaging the linoleum tiles (and to keep Bonnie from falling down after she had her stroke not long before she died), and also used outside as work mats on the gorund when it was cold or wet, working on the bikes/trike.



Then a series of "panorama" of the yard after setting up that porch, shortly before the rains came again.

 

[amberwolf]

Then a series of inside the house, showing stuff we got moved inside, and stuff I was in progress cleaning up (uncleaned stuff in the back room, starting to clean on the kitchen table and in the sink and on counters). Probably half (or more) of the stuff tha'ts inside now goes back out in teh sheds after I get the sheds unpacked enough to get organized to where I can build the shelves to put the stuff on, so there is room for things like the for-parts bikes and wheels and whatnot that don't need to be in the house.

Then pics of the frontyard just before the pouring restarted.

Then Tiny exploring the backyard after the first rain, just before it begain pouring again.

Then more pics of the front yard as it began dumping on us again (I think Mdd0127 was on a (unpowered) bicycle ride to get stuff at the store just before this, and was on his way home when it began pouring; he got there in hte middle of it).

 

[amberwolf]

Now some pics of the clothesline build. Table has pics of the stuff used to build it--some old dog tie-outs, naturally they're DayGlo colored. First attempt didn't work, mostly cuz I tied them to a too-thin branch and it bent under the weight. Next attempt was better but the post Mdd0127 had planted in the gorund next to the house for me didn't hold, the mud was still too soft. I didn't have time to wait for it to completely harden, so I added a diagonal wooden brace (4x4 post leftover from a porch I'd built years ago for my Mom, knocked down by my little sister swinging on the suspended bench that wasn't meant to be a swing ). The tieout cables now run down to a space between two trunks of the mulberry tree, tied together there by another part of the tie out stuff meant to keep a dog in a truck bed. (I bought al ltha tstuff on deep clearance a few years back to be repurposed for things like this, not use as dog-stuff).



Then pics of the excavation of my old brick "porch" from under the dirt leftover when they put the new slab in for the rebuild of the back room. Lotsa work still left on that to do, but at least it won't be pure mud when the next rain comes.



Then Tiny in the chair the other dogs used to love to sit in. Took coaxing to get her in it, and she didnt' stay long, doesn't like being on furniture.

Then pics of the grave for Hachi, Nana, Loki, and Fred, now that I'm bakc I could put the memorial stuff back on there (people were throwing it around the yard and into the street for no reason I could figure out, during the rebuild, so I picked it all up and put it away until I could be bakc there permanently). Then later I realized the fencing (of which I oonly have 3 sections left after people stole it to recycle I guess) would probably get stolen if it was out there like that, instead of left alone to keep people from traipsing across the grave, so I moved big heavy stones (that used to be in the northwest corner around that big whatever tree that I don't much like and serves no purpose, but which they left alone when they cut down stuff they had no reason to) to mark it instead--they probably wont' steal the rocks. I'm only half-finished with that, so I put the fencing there for the part I ddin't have any more strenght to finish just yet. So the first pics of the grave show the fe3nce on the north and east sides, and then the pics show it on the south and west sides, and the stones where it used to be. I still have to get some new copies of the picture printed that used to be in the frame (it got wet and sunfaded so it's just a rag of paper now).

I also put the two much larger stones that used to be in the front yard (by the driveway and the sidewalk) on top of approximately where Bonnie's grave is (I don't know exactly where it is now, since the lantana that marked it is long gone from the rebuilding and people trampling it, and even the rosebush next to it was destroyed/buried by the rebuild of the back room). Now it will be harder for poeple to jus twalk over all their graves without at least knowing they shouldn't go that way and should walk aorund instead. At least, for people that care about anything, of which there are fewer tahn there should be.

Then a pic of the area as viewed form where I like to sit next ot the bck door, and apic of the trusty dolly that's probbaly older than I am that helped me move those rocks, a few inches at a time.....

 

[amberwolf]

Now for some update:

I think it was Friday morning that the landlord sent someone over ot mow the lawn in back without asking or notifying me at all, and they jsut went into the yard (thru the broken fnece section instead of using a gate) and did it without even knocking. That prompted me to immediately change out the front door locks. so they wouldn't do the same thing to the house, and either let Tiny out into the street or else end up in a confrontation with her that might not end well.

The guy said he was leaving hte yardwork equipment in the west side yard, until they could come back for it. Fine with me, I haven't got plans for that area finalized yet anyway. (gonna be a covered dog run / work area eventually, I think). After my discussion with the landlord, I expected that he'd notify me when they were going to come by after it, but as it turns out, they didn't bother. They just came by either when I was home and didn't knock, or waited till I wasn't home and did it then. Either way, it's infuriating that even after all the discussion no one can be bothered to even treat me with a TEENSY TINY bit of respect. So I decided I'd have to immediately deal with the gates/fence isntead of all the other things I had plannned to do this weekend (which had included low-stress things like cleaning and sorting stuff already in the house, so I could rest and heal my various strains and injuries I've acquired over the last ocuple of weeks, some of which still hurt quite a lot, and are much worse now after all of this weekend's activities).


And so Saturday and Sunday (yesterday/today) I spent almost all of fixing the broken chainlink fence areas and gates, and welding on tabs that I can put my own padlocks thru instead of using the chains and locks that they put on them that they have keys to. (I went with Bill to lunch and to move the last of the stuff from his place to mine, which took about 3-ish hours total).

I made the tabs out of old bedframe rail sections, which was REALLY hard ot drill thru...destroyed at least 3 bits doing it, even using hte HF drillpress and oiling as I drilled, at various speeds. I dunno what bits I'd need to drill thru that stuff but titanium nitride or other steel bits don't work very well. Or else I am just stupid and don't know how ot do it, which is also possible. I even tried drilling small holes and then enlarging them, one size at a time, and that didn't work any better.


The gate repairs were pretty hard to do, cuz I first had ot pound uprights into the ground near the broken-at-the-ground gateposts and tie the gateposts to those, to keep them at the correct angles while welding supports to them.

I could not use my original plan of putting a post down thru the original one and welding htose together, cuz whoever originally built this fence was an idiot and poured concrete randomly down into the posts (not fillin ghtem, just chunks at some levels and not others), and also about a foot b elow ground level they had some (but not nearly enough) concrete, when if they'd only poured it all the way up to groundlevel the posts would never have broken off from rust in teh first place.

So I wound up cutting some sections of old pipe about a foot long, and placing three of them vertically along the break in each of the gateposts, and welding them to the unrusted top section of the posts. I could not weld to the part below hte break, as the rust is too advanced and cannot be ground away--it' sjust concrete under there now. So the best I could do was to "pin" them together with these bars, and later once I find the stuff I have some metal strapping that I will weld around the pipes at the bottom and top to help more. For now I covered the holes iwth the dirt that came out of them.

It works well enough for now, but may require repair again later on. I'll have to watch for sag on the gates. I reinforced them in the direction they usually sit in, closed, by tying the posts with heavy wire on the big gate and lesser wire on hte smaller gate, to the fenceposts on either side "behind" them. Those fenceposts probably arent' in much better shape but don't normlaly see a load on them so they haven't got stresscracks at the base like the gateposts did. Also the chainlink itsel fis tied to the fenceposts and is already taut, so will help to pass the stress along to the rest of the fence and hold up the gates.

The fence section that was bent down next ot the house I had to rotate the bent post (it's concrete must not be in the ground too well for me to be able to do that!) parallel to the house, then push against it inch by inche bending it back as upright as I could, then mounting the chainlink back on it, and then forcing it to swivel away from the chainlink the opposite direction it had been bent, to re-strecth the chainlink out. Then I fishmouthed a new top tube (the old one was too short, I guess someone cut it during the house repairs?) and made it deliberatley an inch too long, then hammered it down between the posts, an dwelded it in place. Now the fence there is as fixed as I can make it without pulling it out completley and making new posts, then pouring new concrete aorund them.


If I can get some, I'd still like to pour concrete around the repaired posts--if I did that I think the repair would last essentially "forever" for my purposes, since someday I'd like ot build a block wall aorund the yard instead, if I ever come up with the money (not likely) or find osmeone tossin out the materials to do it with (possible, it happens on freecycle occasionally).


Then I got out some stiff steel wire I forget what it came out of, and started tying the chainlink to the re-installed top bar and vertical of the fence section they'd taken down (well, run over with a truck looks more accurate, but I didn't see it so don't know) while rebuilding the back room, but it turned out to be too stiff and I got too weak, couldn't hold onto the cutters and pliers anymore, and whacked myself right in the bridge of my nose with them. Blood everywhere, running freely for a couple minutes. Thankfully only on the outisde, didn't break anything inside. Stopped on it's own, but I only got apic of it after I'd cleaned it up to see how bad the wound was. I'ts really sore so it's probably bruising up now, but won't have a pic of that till later.

I had ot stop for the day at that point around 2 or 3pm today, cuz I was completely exhausted (still am), and hungry, and thirsty, having just had some bacon, eggs, and oatmeal sometime early that morning hwen I fed Tiny her breakfast, and needed something before I forgot to eat entirely and just passed out. :lol:

I went in to firs tupload the pics I'd been taking to the laptop, then was gonna fix someting to eat, but when I saw there were a couple hundred pics in the folder I decided I'd go ahead and get them posted, os I went o McDs and am here now still about four hours later (they have a power outlet near the table) as i wiat for bandwidht as pics upload. takes forever someotmes, other times instant. lots of poeple with laptops here. Also lots and lots of screaming kids causing havoc. If there were a quieter also-cheap place to do this at I'd be there instead. But nothing around here that i can sit down at for long enough has wifi except inside, doesn't leak out like it did down at the apartments, so i have to buy something to stay.

So the only fence not yet repaired is the wooden section that's just covered in screwed-down plexiglass, that was kicked in by looters. I managed to drag one of the sections to be used to fix it with over there, but that's as far as I could get.

Sorry the pics aren't inline with the explanations above, but I'm having enough troulbe just typing stuff up and mousning around that I am just uplliading the pics at the end of each of these posts.

 

[amberwolf]

Now for some more: there are a few plants beginning to grow now, new ones that i will need to move to pots and nurture where they can't be destroyed by the landlord and his workers, whenever they are in the yard for whatever reason, with or without my knowledge.

some little sprouting trees, maybe eucalyptus or maybe whatever that tree that starts with an S is, under one of the mulberry trees. and a lnatana i think, under the orange tree. used to be a little orange tree sprouting up there too but they managed to chop that one completley off at the ground. sad, cuz i was gonna move it to where it might've grown up to be a nice big orange tree all it's onw, instead of this ancient wizened little bush that makes rocks.

wish i'd had energy to do it today, cuz every moment they're where they are they are in danger from the landlord and workers.

no sign of anything from any of hte cut off treestumps or lantana stumps.


also, they are apparently changning out utility poles in the alley, and jus dug the new hole yesterday, i think i twas. it's covered up but hte idrt is next to it, with a pic of the old pole still there til lthe new is in place.


then the pile of stuff tey want ot recycle, still in the yard. why they didn't take that stuff out and clean up their mess instead of hacking up my trees and plants, i don't know. heck, even when they came in and cut up grass and wees around the edge of the yard theyd dint' bother with the part tha twould actually be hard for me to do--the parts on the OUTSIDE of the fence, in teh alley and such, which also have to be done or the city complains. so their whole story about wanting to "help" me by doing these things doesn't make sense. if they wante dto "help" instead of hurting me, they'd've:
--cleaned up their mess
--moved the dirt on top of the porch and aorund the house out, to level low areas in teh yard, especially near the back door.
--fixed the fences and gates
--trimmed up the stuff that actually needed it that is hard fo rme to do, like the alley and outside the fence.
--fixed the stuff not finishe don the house, like the breaker in the box that still pops, but doesnt' appear to be connected ot anything that i can figur eout yet. or the breaker at the bottom that they didn't pop the metal plate out from in front of, and is for the front room and kitchen lights--if it needs to pop i don't know that it could, cuz the metal cover plate pushes against it's tab, holding it in place.
--putting the eaves back together over the breaker box, where they left it all open when they installed th new hookup stuff. dunno how much rain gets in there but i'm sure some does.
--put the mailbox under the front porch again, since it gets rain in it where they put it on the outside of the porch support post.
--other stuff i forget what it is right now.

 

[bigmoose]

Looking good getting settled in! Still trying to figure out the overall view of things. Sometime post a pix from farther away showing your homestead in the context of the street . In the pix below is this the alley or the front street.

 

[dogman dan]

That's the side of the house, which is on a corner. Straight out the back door is the alley, out the back door and to the right if you have your back to the door is the other street.

Amazing progress there. Way to go.

Keep watering the plants, cut or not. Hang in there. I have seen Lantana that got frozen hard take till 4th of July to sprout from the root again. Lantana grows huge deep roots. I bet you a lot of your lantana will recover, but it could take all summer for it to grow back to the surface.

It's still pretty early in the spring, so not so unusual for things to not spring back yet. One thing professional horticulture taught me, with patience it's amazing what can survive. Meanwhile, if there is any of that money we sent you left, go buy a small tree to nurture. They should be fairly cheap in the 5 gallon size. Something that eventually gets big near the back door would be good, like an Arizona ash. Less flammable than a eucalyptus, and not dropping fruit like a seed grown mulberry.

Locate it about 10-15 feet out from the house More or less between the brick porch and the dogs graves. It will get big, so not too close. Then it will shade the house in the AM, and help that room keep it's cool longer in the day. And give you some more shade by the back door for working on stuff outside in mid day. Nurturing a new tree will help you feel better. It will also become your dogs memorial tree, combining a fresh start with memories of your dogs.

Get some of that Amdro to keep the ants from devouring the new tree too. That stuff is amazing.

Another thing I have been thinking about. It would be possible to run a small duct from a window AC unit hidden in the back, to your bedroom window. Not mounted in the window, so it won't torque the landlord. It can be quickly removed to secure the house when you are gone. But you could still blow in some cheaper AC. But if you close all the ducts but one, you might be able to run the big unit just as cheap. Set the thermostat in the hall to 85 or so, but a back room will get cooler. Then manually turn it on only at night. If using it in the day, spray down the coils of the unit on the roof with water. I suppose you already know that trick. I use it all the time on my window AC when it's too dry.

 

[dnmun]

i have a window mount evaporative cooler in my house in colorado where it is dry like there. it is cheaper than the AC and you have to maintain it so it functions properly and then you have to keep the water to it on all the time.

since you need to water all your plants, you can use a 5 gallon bucket to pour the rinse water from the sink into, and you can use a small pump to pump water from the bathtub after you take a bath. that would get you about 30 gallons a day. then you can also let the water in the evaporative cooler run all the time by setting the float inside to force it to overflow into the drain and then put a hose on the drain from that and run it to you plants in the yard. that is the best deal because then the water in the evaporative cooler is always cool and fresh because of the constant replenishment with cool fresh water and your plants will like the water even if it is warm.

you could even have a garden. amazing that the landlord would be considerate enuff to send someone to cut your grass for free. there is no grass to cut. your yard is like huge, the curse of the suburbs. huge yards and urban sprawl to the horizons on the back of cheap gas after we won the second world war. our curse on future generations who will have to figure out how to get around when the oil runs out. in my neighborhood it is all small lots because 100 years ago everybody had to walk or ride the trolley if they lived in town and if you were rich you had a horse and buggy (to take care of). everybody else lived in the country even though it was only 20 miles. a distance that is nothing these days on the freeway

 

[dogman dan]

Some of my comments might make no sense to others.

Landlord now forbids use of window coolers. Maybe he thinks that caused the fire? Now he has central refrigerated air that he believes will be too expensive to run at all. He does have one window cooler left. I was thinking of how he might be able to run it some, without actually mounting it in the window.

I have three window coolers in my house, and save a lot by not cooling the whole house till closer to sunset. The swamp cooler on the roof is set to run only if the house is flaming hot. Using the swamp cooler less helps me afford to water my huge yard. Using the evaporative cooler too much will jack the water bill unbelievable high if I have a green yard. Gotta have some of it grass for the dogs. They fry their feet on bare dirt.

 

[dnmun]

you know how the water gets stale and minerals build up on stuff inside the swamp cooler but if you adjust the float so that there is a constant overflow of water into the overflow tube then you can run the hose from that nipple underneath the tank out to where the trees are you wanna keep wet. that allows you to water the plants and at the same time it keeps the water in the cooler at a lower temperature so the cooler works much better. that is what i learned from using them anyway.

 

[dogman dan]

I just use a bleed tube to keep the water from scaling up the cooler, which is unfortunately stupidly located on the blazing hot roof. So while the water may be hot when you start it up, it quickly disappears to be replaced with new hot water from the hot water in the city water lines. The real problem is that a swamper can cool the air 20 degrees F. So if it's 110, you get refreshing 90F air blowing into your house.

The bleed tube trickles water when the cooler is running, and that line goes to a rain gutter, that takes what little rain we get and directs it to two oak trees, that shade the W side of the house. But for sure, cooling one room with electricity vs cooling the whole house with an even bigger electric load plus cranking up the water bill gets really expensive. What I tend to do myself is run the swamp cooler for an hour in the early morning, then shut it off for the day. That way, you can keep in the cool most of the day since I have good insulation in the attic. Then one room is cooled with the window coolers all day.

 

[GCinDC]

I am truly a dog in human form, I need to be in the dog pack. Humans I can take or leave.

i used to have this on a mixed tape. listened to it a million times. thought you might enjoy:
[youtube]SpX6ju7syHU[/youtube]

 

[dnmun]

I just use a bleed tube to keep the water from scaling up the cooler, which is unfortunately stupidly located on the blazing hot roof. So while the water may be hot when you start it up, it quickly disappears to be replaced with new hot water from the hot water in the city water lines. The real problem is that a swamper can cool the air 20 degrees F. So if it's 110, you get refreshing 90F air blowing into your house.

The bleed tube trickles water when the cooler is running, and that line goes to a rain gutter, that takes what little rain we get and directs it to two oak trees, that shade the W side of the house. But for sure, cooling one room with electricity vs cooling the whole house with an even bigger electric load plus cranking up the water bill gets really expensive. What I tend to do myself is run the swamp cooler for an hour in the early morning, then shut it off for the day. That way, you can keep in the cool most of the day since I have good insulation in the attic. Then one room is cooled with the window coolers all day.

i have well water there so the cost is not a problem. but you are right about how the evaporative mechanism can only cool the air so much, and it depends entirely on how low the humidity is too. i wondered if there might be a better material to use for the 'moss' that the water trickles down through and if there was something better available to make the cooler more efficient. but they are a lot cheaper than the AC compressor and mega sized house fan and evaporator inside the blower unit in the attic.

i use a window AC here in portland that i got for free out of a dumpster, but i only use it about 2-3 weeks since it is so cool here most of the summer that i can get away with just a fan and keeping the windows closed during the day and opening them at night. but just a few days of running the window AC can double my monthly electric bill from $22 to $45.

 

[amberwolf]

Looking good getting settled in! Still trying to figure out the overall view of things. Sometime post a pix from farther away showing your homestead in the context of the street .

I'll try ot remember to take one when I get back from wifi today. For now, here's a google map pic with edits to show stuff as it is now, vs their last images from a few years back or whenever it was. Was gonna post it bigger but bandwidth is so low here i couldn't get anything else to upload.

EDIT; still taking forever ot upload so will add it back in after i get done posting the other replies to stuff above.

edit2: finally got it to upload, couldn't read the small one had to retry larger one. have been here for hours napping and posting and typing and uploading. time to go home.

In the pix below is this the alley or the front street.

As Dogman notes, it's the side street, about in the middle of the fence along 29th Drive (east side of the yard). That side of the yard is VERY hard to grow anything in, because it gets morning sun to preheat it, and keeps midday thru early afternoon sun for any areas not shaded by the trees near there, and then all the way thru evening sun for those unshaded areas, so in the summer it all just dies, even with a "soaker hose" trickling a few inches under the surface about a foot away from the fence. Even the grass and weeds die off in midsummer.

I gave up on that area and the center of the yard, and only try to keep the lantana and trees watered in summer. Cost is far too high to do anything else nowadays, and is worse now that rent is higher cuz of the new tax. (right now, I get to take home about $10-$100 more per month than I pay in rent, depending on the hours I get at work, so there's not much left for anything else. I get one, someitmes two "extra" paychecks a year, on months where there are 3 paychecks instead of two due to the way the week-ends line up, and that half-month or full-month of pay lets me afford the rest of the year, uusally, along with very occasional sidework for others that sometimes pays in stuff I need).


Replies to the rest of people above in progress.

 

[amberwolf]

Keep watering the plants, cut or not. Hang in there. I have seen Lantana that got frozen hard take till 4th of July to sprout from the root again. Lantana grows huge deep roots. I bet you a lot of your lantana will recover, but it could take all summer for it to grow back to the surface.

I know. It isn't even whether or not it would recover that makes me so angry---it's that they just did it without even asking, or even just telling me it owuld happen, or anything. And that they did it while I was away, so that I came back to the shock of seeing it chopped up like that, completely unexpectedly, just like coming back to the fire and the dogs all dead. And that none of them cared one whit what I thought about it all.


FWIW, the landlord said it was all suppoosed to be to "help me" but all it has done is hurt me emotionally, and make months more work for me to do. I don't have time or energy to do much of the cleaning and sorting or anything else to move back in now, because nearly all of my time outside of working my dayjob has to be spent on salvaging what I can of the stuff they didn't manage to kill completely, and move it to containers I can move inside, or plant in places I can "defend" or protect in one way or another, whenever they come over to hack up more stuff.

So far, most of it does seem to have some leaves already, including what htey re-hacked up in front that used to be around the tree. SOme of them they actually pulled out of hte ground so they're probably gone permanently. But I have been spending almost all my time since my last wifi session before and after work the last several days digging up the surviving tree stumps and lantana stumps from the front yard, mostly around the cut-down fir tree that used to be front of the room that burned (on the left if you look at the front of the house with google streetview https://maps.google.com/maps?q=2922+West+El+Caminito+Drive,+Phoenix,+AZ,+85051&layer=c&z=17&iwloc=A&sll=33.558809,-112.122379&cbp=13,0.3,0,0,0&cbll=33.558557,-112.122381&gl=us&ved=0CAsQ2wU&sa=X&ei=xAAmU_-pDsaQwAGw-YGIBw ).

I have blisters on my blisters, cuts and scrapes all over, chunks of skin out of my hands and arms, my back hurts a lot, and all of that makes it hard to walk even with the cane (hands hurt trying to hold myself up with it), so it's hard to work or much of anything else. But I have managed to pot up (in kitty litter buckets and styrofoam fish-shipping-containers and cardboard boxes) a number of those treestumps that started to grow new leaves. I also moved what I could of the lantana that survived, directly into places in the backyard I used to have it where they completely destroyed it near the house in hte rebuilding process. I don't know if they will survive, because I could not dig deep enough to get their taproots, only about a foot of them at most, and had to also cut most of their large side-roots that short too, as I just don't have the strength or time to dig them up properly.

There are still several surviving treestumps I hope to move before they come back to trash the rest of the front yard and redo it however they feel like, instead of how it would be useful (and pretty) to me, but I don't know that I will be able to. I want to do more today, but I can't. It was all I could do to go around this morning watering the stuff I already moved in previous days this week. Oh, and I found there is a deep-ish hole where hte former grapefruit tree roots have been eaten away by bugs finally, over by what's left of the lantana they chopped off at the ground that used to grow under it. So I put a bunch of the seeds out of the dried up little oranges off what's left of the chopped up withered old "orange tree bush" in there, along with soil from under it. I doubt they'll sprout, but if they do then maybe they will grow into a new orange tree. I also planted some where the mulberry tree they chopped off at the ground between two lantana they also butchered, over between the old orange tree and the hole above. I'll put some mulberries in both places, too, and see which ones sprout into trees. If both end up grwoing in each place, then I'll move one somewhere else before they entangle and are inseparable.


It's pretty likely that once I find enough buckets and boxes to move them into, I'll have to move all the lantana and trees that are small enough to do so into them, so I can keep them inside whenever workers ahve to be here for anything, just so they don't hack them all up again. It's just plain stupid to have to do this kind of thing, simply because people have no respect for me or my stuff, and don't care what I feel enough to even talk to me about stuff before they destroy it. But I already know I can't trust anyone involved, so I have to be paranoid about it or else I will never ever get anything done, because I will constantly be re-doing all this work over and over again. I won't even have time to do the day to day things that are needed to survive, beyond working at the dayjob and hurrying to get groceries on the way home--won't have time for ES, either. As it is, I'm always afraid anytime I am away from the house that I will come back to find they've broken into the yard and chopped up everything again, or broken into hte house and either let Tiny out to get run over or got her to attack them and taken her away becuase of their stupidity.

It's pure paranoia...but not unjustified, becuase they already did these things (albeit not by "breaking in" but by going in there without asking or warning, just walking right in and doing what htey pleased, including into the house, without even knocking!).

It's still pretty early in the spring, so not so unusual for things to not spring back yet. One thing professional horticulture taught me, with patience it's amazing what can survive. Meanwhile, if there is any of that money we sent you left, go buy a small tree to nurture. They should be fairly cheap in the 5 gallon size. Something that eventually gets big near the back door would be good, like an Arizona ash. Less flammable than a eucalyptus, and not dropping fruit like a seed grown mulberry.

I'm first going to try to revive and grow all the surviving stuff that's here already. If that doesnt' make it after transplanting, I'll see who on Freecycle or Craigslist has plants that need moving (usually free for the taking if you can do the work). If there arent' any, then I'll sign up for one of the SRP shade-tree seminar things, where they give you saplings to plant.. Then if all else fails, if I can spare the money out of what's left of donation I'll buy new trees.

What I really need are trees and bushes in front, to shade the front of the house and the roof, but that whole part of the yard is out of my control, since anyone can just come and go there and do what they like to any of it. I can't afford to spend any time or effort or money on anything in it, because of the likelihood that will happen, randomly, without notice. So that part will stay however the landlord leaves it, with whatever rain manages to fall on it to water it.

Locate it about 10-15 feet out from the house More or less between the brick porch and the dogs graves. It will get big, so not too close. Then it will shade the house in the AM, and help that room keep it's cool longer in the day. And give you some more shade by the back door for working on stuff outside in mid day. Nurturing a new tree will help you feel better. It will also become your dogs memorial tree, combining a fresh start with memories of your dogs

.

For the moment I am trying to make surviving lantana from in front regrow there. There's also a mulberry stump still there, which I unburied. I don't know if it will regrow or not, since it has no leaves or anything showing yet (none of the several they chopped off at the ground show signs of reviving, though some of the lantana and eucalyptus or whatever it is have). I would have things I already "know" and care about than anything new, there. I'd rather have it be ones the dogs also knew and used/liked, but only one of those (the lantana that used to grow out over their grave) seems to be reviving a little, so far.


I'm also spreading out the branches of the mulberry tree that's at the northeast corner of the house to maybe get it to shade more of the back porch area, and tying back some branches of the big mulberry tree at the northwest corner of the house to keep them closer to the tree or the ground and away from the power line, so they don't have to be cut to SRP's 6-foot limit, but instead will still be there to shade that area. It's a long process to do it because of getting up and down a ladder over and over again to do each step.

Get some of that Amdro to keep the ants from devouring the new tree too. That stuff is amazing.

I meant to look for that a few days ago but forgot. Will try to remember next time bill and I are out and about.

Another thing I have been thinking about. It would be possible to run a small duct from a window AC unit hidden in the back, to your bedroom window. Not mounted in the window, so it won't torque the landlord. It can be quickly removed to secure the house when you are gone. But you could still blow in some cheaper AC.

That's the present plan, should I need to do so if the cost of running the central unit be too high (which it almost certainly will be). I have stuff from the store remodels to build a frame and shelf to hold it up, and stuff I saved from scraps of their ducting the new A/C during the rebuild that can be used to connect thru the bedroom window (or whichever other room I have to be using for long enough to be worth running it).

I just wish they hadn't stolen my large good window unit while the stuff was still being moved out of the house and into sheds those first days.

But if you close all the ducts but one, you might be able to run the big unit just as cheap. Set the thermostat in the hall to 85 or so, but a back room will get cooler. Then manually turn it on only at night. If using it in the day, spray down the coils of the unit on the roof with water. I suppose you already know that trick. I use it all the time on my window AC when it's too dry.

[/quote]

yeah, i've done thos ethings a lot before. even posted some data on it in on eof my htreads, probably the crazybke2 thread, over the years. curtaining off rooms works too, though i have to do it differnetly now, since i don't wanna mark up these new walls with holes, so will use tension rods across dorways and such instead.

howeve,r the big units don't run as cheap as the little ones cjust cuz the motor uses a lot more power and still has to suck air all the way back to the central return vent no matter what. so the only wya it really works is if its one of the two rooms that directly connects to the little 'hallway', that has the return in it. and probably only if i hard-block-off the rest of the house from it, not with just a curtain but with a physical hard divider, to keep it from pulling warmer air form the rest of the house thru it.

i don't really know though, cuz i still have yet to nede to test it out, it's just not nearly hot enough to worry a bout yet. hoepfully will be atl eeast a couple of months or more before it gets that way.

one thing i am doing to save energy right no w is leaving the water heater breaker off except when i am going to shower or wash clothes--everything else i can more cheaply heat small amounts of water with the stove, or just use cold water for, until i can find some on-demand point-of-use heaters for the places i use it. And I am making sure to only do any of those things before 5pm or after 9pm, which is the cheaper times for SRP's time-of-use plan right now, which is hte cheapest rate (presently 6.86 cents/KW/h offpeak, and 10.12 cents/KW/h onpeak). The times and rates change depending on time of year, though, so I have to remember when that happens and adjust when I do things accordingly. Basically I try not to use any power at all, even "vampire" power from trickle usage on things with clocks, etc., whenever it's onpeak times.

 

[amberwolf]

i have a window mount evaporative cooler in my house in colorado where it is dry like there. it is cheaper than the AC and you have to maintain it so it functions properly and then you have to keep the water to it on all the time.

That's why I wish they had left the big swamp cooler on hte house. It was very useful most of the year, only not useful for a small part of it when it is too humid to do much. Even then, without water on, it was sitll useful for moving cooler outside night air thru the house much better than a box fan in a door or window could, to cool the house during the night before shutting it all down for the day.

since you need to water all your plants, you can use a 5 gallon bucket to pour the rinse water from the sink into, and you can use a small pump to pump water from the bathtub after you take a bath. that would get you about 30 gallons a day.

I use a little cat litter bucket on a dolly (cuz I can't usuually carry it with water in it) for the sink rinse water. When possible I put i tin the sink to do the rinsing but someitmes have to sit on a short chair or stepbox on the floor to do the rinsing in the bucket, if i know I can't lift it ou of the sink to put on the dolly. If I can't do either, then I will use a second bucket in the sink, and use a bowl or whatever to scoop water from one to the ohter as the one in the sink fills up, then pour the rest out when light enough to lift. Eventually I will figure out a way to put a removable drain hose on the sink to run out the back door so I don't have ot use the bucket/dolly to move it (it's a lot of work).

The pump for the bathwater is already in the plans--i used to use one before, saved from work when they replaced the big one that ran the sump for the towers of fishtanks (all that was wrong was the start/run cap, which I replaced wiht one out of a scrapped cieling fan motor). Now I have several brand new sump pumps bought super cheap on clearance, to use for the smae thing, once i have time to find and setup the hoses and such to do it, and the suction cups to hld the hose to the tub bottom near the drain.

then you can also let the water in the evaporative cooler run all the time by setting the float inside to force it to overflow into the drain and then put a hose on the drain from that and run it to you plants in the yard. that is the best deal because then the water in the evaporative cooler is always cool and fresh because of the constant replenishment with cool fresh water and your plants will like the water even if it is warm.

Not sure how practical that would be simply because that would use LOTS of water all the time, and I doubt I could afford it. But there is always some overflow when it refills, or at least there was with the old big unit that was part of the house before they took i tout. that's why the lantana and trees did so well over there before they chopped them all up. I don't know how it will work with any evap I build for the window, though, since I will have ot figure out what compromises work best when I do it.

you could even have a garden. amazing that the landlord would be considerate enuff to send someone to cut your grass for free.

it wasn't "considerate", since it didn't need cutting for most of where they did it; i'd already done it for most of the yard and was working on the edges as i had time and energy. where it really needed it where iit's really hard for me to do it myself was the alley but they ddin't bother with that. they did get the front yard but they were (are) going to "landscape" it anyway so that's just a part of that work anyway.

there is no grass to cut. your yard is like huge, the curse of the suburbs. huge yards and urban sprawl to the horizons on the back of cheap gas after we won the second world war. our curse on future generations who will have to figure out how to get around when the oil runs out. in my neighborhood it is all small lots because 100 years ago everybody had to walk or ride the trolley if they lived in town and if you were rich you had a horse and buggy (to take care of). everybody else lived in the country even though it was only 20 miles. a distance that is nothing these days on the freeway

Not much disagreement there, except that i love the huge yard because i prefer the open country or forest areas to live in, but can't myself practically live there yet (would need some way to be monetarily self-sufficient first, to be able to buy the land, pay the taxes, buy food, pay utilities, etc., and/or setup solar or wind or water generation, etc).


As for no grass to cut; there is grass, it grows mostly along hte fence edges where it's hard to cut, and under the trees and lantana where i can afford to water regularly, and in hte alley where it has a water source from leaks in the city system they don't care about. Then there's lots of fast-growing weeds and stuff that grow in the same places, and randomly around hte yard. If i could afford ot water it, there'd be grass all over, but most of the time I can't do that nowadays. Maybe i fI could build a shade-grid or screen/mesh over the whole yard except where the trees are, it'd be cooler enough on the ground to not need as much water, and grass would grow.

 

[amberwolf]

you know how the water gets stale and minerals build up on stuff inside the swamp cooler but if you adjust the float so that there is a constant overflow of water into the overflow tube then you can run the hose from that nipple underneath the tank out to where the trees are you wanna keep wet. that allows you to water the plants and at the same time it keeps the water in the cooler at a lower temperature so the cooler works much better. that is what i learned from using them anyway.

If water wasn't so expensive here I could probably do that. But it costs too much to keep any constant flow, other than the trickel water I rotate between the trees/lantana each day. So I live with it the way it is, and simply flush the water as it gets icky, and clean the system when I have to. (or rather, that's what I did with the old big unit, since it doesnt' exist now and i don't have anything else ot use like that yet).

 

[amberwolf]

The bleed tube trickles water when the cooler is running, and that line goes to a rain gutter, that takes what little rain we get and directs it to two oak trees, that shade the W side of the house. But for sure, cooling one room with electricity vs cooling the whole house with an even bigger electric load plus cranking up the water bill gets really expensive. What I tend to do myself is run the swamp cooler for an hour in the early morning, then shut it off for the day. That way, you can keep in the cool most of the day since I have good insulation in the attic. Then one room is cooled with the window coolers all day.

That's what I hope to do now that there's actually real insulation in the attic, vs how it was before, and insulation on the inside of every room, behind the drywall.

The one thing that's worse is that the new wood-plastic-laminate flooring has insulation under it, too, preventing heat from escaping into the always cool concrete slab. So it may end up being a toss-up on any benefit from the other new insulations, especially since there are now no trees and bushes to shade the front (south) of the house, and much less to shade the rest of it.

 

[amberwolf]

Got wifi for a few minutes today, so:

So far all the transplants and "potted" dig-ups are still green and growing, but sometimes they die after a couple of weeks, so we'll see.

Lantana back by the back of the house that was chopped off at the ground is also coming very slightly back, it has four little leaf buds on one side f hte stiump; using a big mirror saved befoe the fire from the alley to reflect sunligth onto it thru part of the day, since otherwise it's always in shadow. seems to be helping.

managed to really hurt my back, popped something out of alighment, probably wihile digging up the plants from the front yard or moving other stuffaround the sheds and yard, so the hurting i had that kept me inactive sunday just got worse thru the next few days. couple days ago while straining in the bathroom at work it popped partway back, so i guess i performed chirocraptics on myself.

it iddn't fix it completey but it is way better so no wi can bend down to get things off the floor without climibing down there and back up over several minutes to get stuff i dropped. maybe will et better more as time goes on. we'll see.

tiny's bath went ok today, sunny but cloudy enough to not get that hot so she spent most of her dryoff time outside in the sun playing around getting dirty again.

gotta go, more later.

 

[amberwolf]

I got the "music room" started on setup, but a number of problems cropped up that kept me from doing much yet.

--several of my cables appear to have developed connection issues inside them since I was at bill's pre-July2013 when I last used them, so I have to go thru them all and find the problems and fix them. It could also be in the connectors in the equipment, but probably not, though I haven't swapped things around to verify yet on all the problems.

--the computer Bigmoose sent me that I cloned my surviving music computer harddisk to a spare harddisk from Bill and installed in there to use it as my new music computer, which worked at Bill's pre-July2013, now wants to be activated again before I can log in. However, I don't have internet access at home and didn't feel like wasting my celphone minutes to activate by phone, since it shouldn't need to do that. I vaguely recalled that I did something else to activate it while at Bill's but can't remember what, and cant find the info that I'm sure I saved on the laptop when doing it--it's also not on any of hte thumbdrives/etc or other backups I made whiel there. So...I'll have to look it up again.

--I couldn't get the ASR88 to boot fully (it's very temperamental now and only works occasionally), so couldn't use it as a controller.

--I picked up a little radioshack mixer from goodwill but it has bad hum issues I have to look into (bad caps in PSU probably) and a probable connector jack issue on each channel of one sort or another, so can't mix/monitor more than one thing at a time right now (not with the cabling I have that sitll works).


So for now I'm jus tusing the little MIDI keyboard I'd found at goodwill to controll the EMU6400 from Hora if I want to compose anything, and hte Yamaha acoustic from Thud if I am just making sound/noodlin around on guitar. Havent' actually done anything besides putter with it yet, though, cuz I was frustrated so badly by the problems so far and had to walk away from it for a while.




Back is better last couple of days than rest of week has been, by far, but still hurts. Am trying not to do anything to stress it, give it time to heal, but that means not doing much of anything around the house to get things cleaned up, moved around, etc. Almost nothing can be done int eh sheds without that, so....


Mdd0127 came back down to Phoenix for a short while, and will be helping as he can (his neck is bad like my back has become), so together we might be able tod o some of the stuff I can't on my own, while he can stay, at least until another of the city plagues hits him.


No new pics yet; I took a few but forgot to upload them to the phone and don't have the little cable with me to do it now.

Tiny's still doing well, and she remembered Mdd0127 and wags her tail at him while she barks at first sight, then just walks up to him. She even rolled over to beg belly rubs from him, so she's accepted him for sure now. :lol: She's also still accepting Jeebus and Wilbur, htough she still doesn't like Wilbur's butt-sniffing.


Last night I was outside the fence talking with Mdd0127 for a while, and Tiny sat at the gate near us and got tired of being there, so she started talking to us with noises she's never made before to let us know she wanted to be there with us, almost the way Bonnie used to. So I let her out to sit there with us in the carport, with the other two nearby, and she mostly behaved pretty well after she settled down next to me.


I've managed to get hte curtainrods up in some of the doorways like backdoor, between kitchen and backroom, and my bedroom, and for now put sheets up there held on the rods iwth old broken motor magnets I think I originally got from Karma when he rewound the cieling fan as a 3phase motor for me (which someday I would still like to test out as a bike motor, but still needs to have a magnet rotor ring made for it). These curtains will do for now for letting Tiny go in and out without letting the cooler night air exchange for warmer air in daytime. Later I'll need to put a heavier blanket or something for the backdoor one, but that can wait a little while--month or two depending on weather. Might need to add weights to the bottom to keep stiff breezes from blwoing the sheet out of the way soon, as it gets windier season.



Couches and recliners from the neighbor were brought over a couple days ago, and despite what I'd experienced with Tiny before with furniture, it was super easy to get her to climb right up onto the couches and lay down next to me sitting there, though she doesn't appear to care to do it on her own without me there. That will probalby change now that she's discovered windows--te ones to the backyard on the north wall of the backroom are level with the backs of the couches, which means when she's standing on the cushions she can look right out and see the world from there, and smell it too if hte window is open. Pics later when I remember to put htem on the latpop.



Transplanted stuff is still allive and growing a little. Still have a few I'd like to save from the frontyard but can't till my back heals. Also need to move a couple tiny seedlings from under a backyard tree to somewhere they can grow up on their own, or at least to pots or boxes to grow in till I can plant them in a final location, wherever that ends up being.



Not much else happening yet.