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

[amberwolf]

Mostly things are still going about the same, slow progress but still progress.

Back is a little better, still hurts if I don't move around a lot, but can't do lots of heavy lifting/etc like I sorta need to be able to do.

Plants salvaged so far are still doing well enough. Still would like to save a ocpule more from the frontyard but dunno that I will be able to dig them up anytime soon.


Mdd0127 has been back down here a little more than a week (two?) I think now, and has been helping me out a lot while he works out trades/etc to get the stuff he needs for his new sustainable "HPV trike RV" project set up.


Tiny's doing fine, but her and Jeebus have issues cuz Jeebus is sort of a scaredy-dog and lowers his head and raises his ruff, which then sets Tiny off when she wouldn't be otherwise. She hasn't actually attacked him but has snarled at him with teeth and bit at air around him, so we keep them away from each other for hte most part. Wilbur and Tiny get along fine, unless he buttsniffs too much.


Since i really wanted to get back into the music thing and want to revisit some of my older projects that can't be loaded or accessed wtihout the Ensoniq ASR88 music workstation/keyboard, I've been looking and looking for one (even a rackmount version, ASR10R or smaller keyboard ASR10) that was A) affordable/reasonable (for a 20-year-old piece of music gear not many people liked in teh first place) and B) from a place I could be sure of actually getting what I pay for. Last week I finally found one for more than I wanted to pay, but less than a lot of others have been going for, and it is the exact model I have already (though mine doesn't work reliably in general and some parts not at all despite our best efforts to fix it). It was at a Guitar Center up in Tacoma, but GC will transfer stuff from store to store, so I ordered it, and it arrived at the GC a few doors down from wher eI work on Friday, and Mdd0127 transported it to my house for me since I had to go right to work from there.

Unfortunately when I got to unpack it later that night, it was beat up pretty severely from UPS shipping, with a key weight broken off floating around inside, one plastic endcap almost entirely ripped off the end, and a huge dent in teh front structural bar that pressed in a few keys where they cdouldn't be pressed down, and ohter bits floating around inside. We fixed all but the endcap and the weight, neither of which is really that important, and it is now working "fine" with my harddisk/cd/etc. We jammed last night with him on guitar and me on the keyboard, and had some interesting "music" going (I'm not good at jamming with others). Didn't record anything but we might try to today/tonight now that I figured out how to get the mics recording, I think. We'll see how that goes, if we have energy to try.


Almost everything that was in the yard outside the sheds is now either in the house for cleanup or is in the sheds. Most of the stuff that is really important to me to use right now is now in the house, though most of it is still in piles of various stages of sorting-out-progress, and cleanup. Some stuf fI haven't found yet and it might be missing, either destroyed in the fire, or stolen by someone, but it could be still in a shed; I've hardly gone thru half of what's out there so far.

I have managed to remove and recycle or discard at least 3 city-recycle bins worth of stuff, and one large-diameter city-trash bin worth of stuff that wasn't recyclable.

ArizonaHelpingArizonans yahoo group donated me some clothes (as did Mdd0127), and a well-used mattress/boxspring, as well as some towels, etc.

Been ;picking up bits of needed stuff from Goodwill for cheap as I am out with Bill for lunch each week, too.


Still gotta get pics off the phone to upload. I keep forgetting that.

 

[amberwolf]

Sorry it's been so long since my last update. Today I have pics, though.



But first: Since it is difficult to find time to go out for wifi (and it costs extra money I don't need to be spending, unless I sit out in the parking lots and risk being harassed or worse for not being a paying customer/trespassing/etc), I have gotten more serious about trying to get wifi set up at the house.

I tried a cantenna, etc, but can't reliably connect for more than a few seconds at a time to any unsecured stuff I can pick up with them (I think there is interference from trees, birds, traffic, etc; not sure). I can connect fine, sometimes 2 or 3 bars, but then it disappears from the list So, it's down to attempting to connect to the secure wifis that are close enough to not worry about that sort of thing, and don't need any special antennas/aiming to connect to. But they do require the security codes.

Even before that, and since then, I have been fighting with computers and wifi stuff (like wifiway) for about a month now, in spare moments here and there (and pretty much all of Saturday before last, and too much of the Sunday after it) trying to set up wifiway to let me access some of the many wifi routers in my area (all of which are secured, unfortunately). Only ONE (the X31 from Bigmoose) of the computers I have working will even attempt to boot to a USB stick or harddisk, even though some of them have the option to do it they won't actually try, so I had to burn the wifiway live to cd, which at least *starts* to boot on most of the computers...but then locks up at one part or another, apparently attempting to load drivers or something. I don't know enough about linux to be able to tell, and without internet access to research the problems as they arise, I can't fix most of them.

Even when i do get it to boot on a set of hardware, it won't detect the wifi devices I have. Unfortunately the only two I've got that it can talk to appear to be the built-in wifi on the X31, and an old PC-Card style Linksys G card. So I can only use wifiway on the laptop. Not that big a deal, except that I can't use the laptop for anything else while it's running, and it takes wifiway so long to do anything that I would have to just leave it at the house running all the time...which I don't want to do cuz I like to have it with me at work for breaks and lunch to do things on, read, type stuff up, etc.

Plus, for some reason it always locks up if the harddisk is still installed in the X31, so I have to pull that out to successfully boot. Even then, when it pauses to ask if you want to boot in Spanish or not, it won't continue unless I pull hte USB stick out and put it back in. Then the countdown continues and it boots.

Then there's the problem that every version of wifiway I have actually been able to finish downloading (most time out or would take more than a day to finish due to slow wifi when I'm out and about) is in Spanish, and even though it says it has an English option, those modules must not actually be part of the build, cuz no matter what I do it won't switch over. I can't read enough of the technical stuff in Spanish to figure out what I'm doing in it, so it's been frustratingly pointless. I have yet to actually get it started on the process of finding/connecting to the local wifi routers--though I did get it to detect some of them, it won't find most of them, which is wierd cuz they can easily be found when I'm booted to Windows. :?

It has an option in it's "Start" menu to "install" wifiway onto a harddisk, so I put an old small one in there and let it wipe/format it and install itself, but most of the time it just hangs somewhere in the install process, and even when it finishes it doesn't boot to English on the harddisk (even when the finished version actualy does boot, which isn't always). Harddisk tested fine, and I tried another just in case...so something is just wierd with the way this wifiway linux thing works, I guess.


While I type this there is yet another "english" version of wifiway downloading, but it probably won't finish before the wifi times out--if it does, then I'll see if it is actually in English (none have been so far, that actually finished downloading).


FWIW, I've tried to go thru various tutorials on how to use the assorted "security-testing" suites, in linux or windows, but almost always the sites they are on are blocked by the wifi I'm on, or bandwidth is so low that I can't watch the videos.

So if anyone out there has ideas on exactly what steps I ought to do for this, I'd be up for PM or email conversations about it, or a thread down in Other Toxic Discussions or wherever about it.

Next post is for pictures and updates.

 

[amberwolf]

First, pics of the "new" (to me) ASR88 from Guitar Center's used stuff, as it arrived with the damage before Mdd0127 helped me fix it to usability. (it's still not perfect but it's way better than what I have in the other one, and much better htan it arrived).

It doesn't have the "CDROM" listed in teh ad. Just the Zip and hte ASR itself. I explored all of the packaging and cardboard layers...nothing.
View attachment 18

It works with my old harddisk and cdrom, though, so I guess it doens't matter. I can load my old projects, sounds, etc, and can now continue with my music like I used to, even without SONAR/Cakewalk on the computer. Mdd0127 and I jammed a couple of nights the weekend that it arrived, and that was a lot of fun.









View attachment 11

View attachment 9






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[amberwolf]

Some pics of Tiny and the couches my neighbor brought over, and hten some of the plants I saved out of the front yard, and osme of the ones that have partially recovered from the hackjob done to them by the crew.

 

[consumer-unit]

Hi amberwolf,
Hope things are getting better for you. I myself have dealt with loss, I recently lost someone very close to me due to a motorcycle accident.

I can recommend a Wi-Fi antenna (link) I use when I go on road trips, camping, holidays ect. It's really powerful and just has to be plugged into a USB. I was suprised how many wifi's there were in my area when I plugged it in. Also if you need to "recover a password" from a WEP network it can crack WEP encryption.

All the best,
Alex.

 

[amberwolf]

And something really wierd, creepy, and distressing, though natural: As I've been watering the tree (dribbling only) at it's southwest corner, I guess the dirt in the grave has been compressing, and several days ago or more, the grave collapsed in on itself when Tiny ran across it while playing. She fell and rolled in the dirt, but didn't get hurt, just disoriented and decided it wasnt' playtime anymore, and ran inside after she got up.

I think it was day before yesterday that more of the grave collapsed farther in, so now the top was about a foot down from the surface after that.

After hemhawing around for a day or so I eventually dug up some of the dirt around the border of the grave, and put it into hte gap, so now it's maybe 6 inches deeper than before, instead. Then I planted some lantana I moved from where I found some seedlings sprouting under the orange tree and where the grapefruit tree used to be. One for each of the dogs, over where each of them is buried, so now they each have their own lantana. Haven't got a pic of that yet, I forgot to take one yesterday evening, and it was probably too dark anyway.


But I now have the nightmares about hte grave being dug up and hte dogs' remains scattered around and whatnot, and Tiny being swallowed up by the empty grave, etc., even though it's all stupid, but now I've got those in addition to all my other repertoire of nightmares to go thru every night.

 

[amberwolf]

Then there's this other thing that someone returned at work, which has been sitting around in the clearance bin since then. Every time I see it, it hurts, and you'll see why, below.




This is about what hte music room looked like a couple weeks ago; it's not much different now. Still working on getting everything working together and software reinstalled.




Tiny's still doing fine. I've been looking around for dogs to add to "the pack", since she seems ok with at least some other dogs, but so far haven't found one that didn't get a home before I got to them, or that hte various rescues wouldn't let me have with Tiny for one reason or another. Still looking, htough.


I hear that minimum wage is going to go up to $10/hour, so I guess that means I'll be getting a raise soon. :lol:

 

[amberwolf]

I can recommend a Wi-Fi antenna (link) I use when I go on road trips, camping, holidays ect. It's really powerful and just has to be plugged into a USB. I was suprised how many wifi's there were in my area when I plugged it in. Also if you need to "recover a password" from a WEP network it can crack WEP encryption..

Well, I don't need an antenna, I can pick up local signals fine; they're just secured. I just need to get wifiway or something similar to actually work.

For picking up the farther unsecured signals, I think I simply need a better line-of-sight, cuz i'ts probably random obstructions moving in the path that break the connections in hte mile or two from me to the wifi.


If I had one of these I could pick up locally really cheap and return at no cost if it iddn't work, I might try it. though.

 

[amberwolf]

Am out for groceries/etc today; being Easter the traffic is a lot lighter than usual, stopped for wifi access too since plans with Bill fell thru.

No luck wiht the wifi thing yet. Yesterday was at a friend's place fixnign his music computer, and downloaded several "English" versions of Wifiway, all of which ended up being the exact same Spanish-only version I have already been fighting with for weeks. Also downloaded a couple of other similar-type live-cd ISOs, and I have no idea what language they are really in cuz they won't even boot on any of my machines; they lock up trying to load drivers--I guess my stuff is just not the right hardware for these things. (though they're pretty generic stuff, and bare-bones, ought to work with the info given).


So...still stuck on that part. I'll figure it out eventually. Just not going to be anything remotely like easy.





In other news, oddly enough, almost every tree and lantana in hte backyard that they hacked off all the way to the ground has begun to recover. It will not be anywhere near what the landlord said ("plenty of shade by midsummer") but at least they are still alive, and will recover more eventually. Probably be at least several years before they are anywhere near where they would have been by now without the unnecessary destruction.

You can see some of them in the pics in posts just previous to this one. No new pics yet; my phone battery died today when I was going to take pics, and I headed out right after getting it charged just enough to use if I need it on the road. So maybe pics by next time I'm on wifi.


It's only taken almost two months of dribbling water on each one every other day or every third day or so, to soak the ground around them, to get them to begin to come back. Most of them are just now in the last week or so beginning to get more than a couple of leaves. Three of the lantanas are much further recovered, all over in the northeast corner of the yard, two where the grapefruit tree used to be (years ago) and one just south of that. A second lantana a couple feet east of it is starting recovery but isn't as big as it's neighbor.

Right between those two, however, is a whole bunch (dozens) of NEW lantana sprouts, which I am slowly transplanting to new places I've wanted lantana in for a long time. Most of them seem to be taking, some are not. I'm planting most of them in pairs so that it's more likely at least one will make it.

Did the same thing previously wiht the "eucalyptus"-like tree sproutlings I moved from under the mulberry and orange trees at the east side of the yard--there were a lot of them, and while I'd love to just plant rows of trees around the yard I know they won't survive to grow in the summer heat unless I plant them whree they wil lhave shade for part of the day from other trees or buildings or fences, unless I manually shade them.

So none of them (trees or lantana) are planted along the east or north fences, where I REALLY want them, because those get sun all day long, just about, and nothing but weeds (and not much of those) will grow there, cuz they all die in summer despite watering (even with soaker hoses). I'd have to build shading for them, and since some of what I want would be outside the fence, the shading would probably just get stolen or vandalized.



The one tree that doesnt' seem to be recovering at all is the mulberry over by the corner of the northernmost new shed, at it's northeast corner by the water faucet. It was the largest of the ones completely destroyed by the landlord's work crew. It had been big enough that by this summer it would have done a LOT to shade that shed for the morning.

But the transplanted "eucalyptus"-like tree (moved from the front yard) is recovering slowly--it looks like a teeny tiny little bush about the size of my outstretched hand. Given that it was barely a few leaves starting to grow from it's chainsawed remains and I'd had to hack it out of the ground in front yard to get it there, I'd say it's doing really really well. But it will be years before it is anything like as big as the one it's "replacing", whose stump is only a foot south of it.


The most surprising recovery is hte mulberry that I'd planned to transplant from the southeast end of the back room, near the corner of the carport by that gate, that they'd chainsawed so far down into the ground that I'd thought they had acutally pulled it out roots and all, because there wasnt' even a stump. However, since I had planted a new lantana over in that corner of the yard, and have been trickle-watering it for two months like the rest of the plants/trees I'm trying to encourage (while not watering anything else because it would cost too much now that rent has gone up due to new taxes), then the water for that has revitalized the roots of that mulberry, and it is now growing a new trunk, which finally burst out of the ground a few days ago.

I'd like to move the tree cuz it's only about 3 feet from the house, but I'm not sure it will survive it if I do. And I'd have to move the lantana I've planted around that area first, cuz those would get trampled in the process of digging up the mulberry enough to get it moved without destroying it. So, once it's recovered more, and hte lantana is more established (better able to handle bieng mvoed again) maybe I can do it (even though that will mean it's roots wil be bigger, and it'll be harder to dig up).

But I'll have to build a bigger shovel first, cuz the old army folding camp shovel is all I've got left, for now.


I also planted four new lantana sproutlings on the grave, one for each of the dogs. They're still teensy-weensy little things, so there are bricsk aorund them to try to keep Tiny from trampling them when she runs around, since even the big rocks around the grave are no barrier to her. The grave subsidence is still in progress, has gone down another inch or two in the last week. I'm still having new nightmares from it, unfortunately. Some of them involve Tiny trying to dig up the grave (cuz I know she can smell the decay down there, and sometimes she seems interested in doing that but hasnt' actually done it yet) and then getting swallowed up by it as an inferno of flames shoot out of it, and it expands and drags the whole house down into a flaming pit, with all the dogs burning and trying to climb out of it but me unable to move at all to help any of them. Some are worse than that.



Despite that, things are getting better, slowly.


Tomorrow I ahve to work, but the next three days, including hte 23rd that is the anniversary of the fire, I have off, and will be at home for most, probably all, of that time (will be home all of the 23rd itself).


I had thought that I would not be able to have that time off, despite prevously requesting it at work and being granted, because BOTH of the two new people we'd hired (that would have given us the manpower to allow me the time off) quit--one of them just stopped showing up for his new-hire training, and the other gave his two-week notice. And another coworker that had already planned a cross-country trip for hte same time period couldn't cancel her plans.... But my manager (the same one that was there that day when I arrived at the house to see the fire trucks, etc), pulled off some sort of scheduling miracle and I got the time off anyway. I assume she's going to have someone from another store come help out, cuz I don't see any other way she could manage it, but however she did it, I am VERY grateful.



Anyway, enough rambling (again), and more good stuff to report hopefully soon.

 

[amberwolf]

Apparently the house *is* better-insulated now, like it should be after the work done to fix it:

Last year around this time, I was using about 10KW/h per day, sometimes as little as 8, occasional peaks of 12. This year, it's only about 4 to 6 KW/h per day, peaking a few days (when I use the water heater and washing machine and stove/oven for a few hours), at 13 or 16.

If it gets as cool as ~68F (by dawn) at night outside, then with just a box fan pulling air into the bedroom thru a window from the backyard, and the rest of the windows in the house open for airflow, then it gets as cool as 70-72F inside by dawn, when I close it all up to "keep the cool in".

If like the last couple of days, it gets as hot as 95-100F outside, then the hottest it gets inside is around 82-83F, after the cool-down method used above.


So far I have not had to use the air conditioning, which is good, cuz when I tried to test it right after moving in, it doesn't come on regardless of settings on the control box, and verified the breaker is on, though I don't know if it's got power up on the roof yet. Of course i could call the landlord about it, but I would rather fix it myself, and not have to deal with anyone coming inot the house or yard.


Tomorrow am going to have an "open house" of sorts; I sent out an invite to most of the local people that helped me back when hte fire happened, that I had email addresses for, so they can come by and see things as they are now.

 

[dogman dan]

Nice to have insulation eh? I think you may be able to afford to run that big AC for just one hour a day at dawn. It will be very efficient at that time of day, and of course, shut off half the vents. Then you can store that cool a long time in a back bedroom or the music room. That's how my house works too, I can delay using any of my AC many hours longer than before I insulated the attic more. But fill that room with big panting dogs, and it's like turning on a heater.

Glad to hear most of the plants are coming back. The trees will do a big growth spurt in the first year, so they may come back sooner than you think. Everything you have in the yard is hard to permanently kill. I'm completely un surprised that the mulberry came back. Find some cheap fertilizer at a yard sale, and make em pop even more growth this spring.

I knew the lantana would come back, that is some tough stuff, with very deep roots. But when cut deep by people or frost, it can take a long time to pop up again.

Watering. I know you like to do the slow trickle thing, but on the trees in particular, they really need a larger circle of dirt watered. Slow trickle on a sprinkler once a month will encourage a wider root system. Spot watering will tend to concentrate the root growth to that spot. Particularly the trees that were bigger, water a larger area once a month. Or, move the spot you put the trickle around the whole area by the tree, rather than put it on the base all the time.

Just keep filling in the grave. Some of what you see is just the dirt finally settling fully, and the rest is them returning to you in the form of new plants. Good idea to plant something there, that plant will be their memorial lantana. The lantana will keep growing up through the new dirt. Just leave a small hole around it for now.

You got nice karma, as shown by your neighbors gift of the couches. Bad shit comes, but the good shit outweighs it for good people like you. The dude abides.

 

[The fingers]

A couple of scoops of sand might be helpful where the dirt is settling, we used a lot of it on the golf course years ago to improve drainage. Water goes through it without carrying it away like clay.

 

[amberwolf]

I invited (last minute, unfortunatley) the local people that helped me out, an dpeople I hand't seen in years that I still had valid email contact info for, to come over throughout the day Wed for hte fire anniversary. I realized even when I sent hte email that most of them probably wouldn't be able to come, or wouldn't even get the email until too late, but it was all I could manage at the time. I couldn't use all my phone minutes up calling them for invites, for the ones I have numbers for, or I would've done that, too.

Tiny was happy to have me around for so much of the week, but was a little bothered that I left "early" this morning (about 11am-ish) to go to work (rather, to send some emails and post this before going to work less than an hour from now). She was REALLY happy when Jacque from the rescue came by to drop off her meds--not cuz of hte meds but just to see her. (though Tiny wasnt' really happy to see anyone else that came over, and ended up having to stay in the bedroom most of the time that the few people that showed up were here).


I'd sort of given myself a cutoff date of the anniversary that if the landlord's son (I guess he's also a landlord; at least I think of him that way since he's been my major contact with them since the fire) hadn't come back to do the landscaping in the front yard he'd said he was going to do, including grinding down the stump and planting another tree there, I'd just do it all my own way instead. So since I haven't heard a word from them, I cleaned up a lot of the construction debris still in the front yard that they didn't pick up, and started setting up the recovering trees around the stump for more permanent watering conditions, etc. I also decided I'd plant some other stuff in front of the house to create shade, since I no longer have all the other stuff to do that, and wont' have trees to do it for a long while (years, probably), though he had said that I'd have plenty of shade by midsummer there's no way that's going to happen with what's left in the front yard, or what's left of the stuff in the backyard, for the areas that I needed them for.

So, while waiting to see if any of those invited would come, I dug water-channel-trenches along the front of the house, about a foot away from the wall and porch, and the side-yard's end fence, to plant more lantana in, since there's still dozens of sproutlings under the recovering lantana, and more coming up each week so far.

Then I soaked the trenches with a trickle of water most of the day, and hten the next day (thu) I put one in every foot or so along hte trenches, in the morning. I figure quite a few won't make it, so haivng htem that close shouldn't matter. If they do all make it, well, lantana trims bakc pretty well so it just means it'll all be denser, and better shade, once it gets big in a couple of years or so.

I also looked for my circular saw so I could gouge big grooves out of the old fir tree stump, figuring I can drill and cut it out so I can plant a lantana right in the middle of it, with a mound of potitng soil/dirt mix over it like a little hill. Then the lantana roots can start working their way into the stump and helping to break it up, over the years, and in the meantime will cover it up for appearance's sake. Couldn't fidn the saw, so I didnt' get that part done, but it's going to happen as soon as I do.


I also started reworking the individual circular berms around the separate lantana I'd already started planting along the east wall of the house in the backyard so that they'd also be a single trench, to make watering easier. That trench will continue in segments around the backyard fence, too, as I will be planting lantana along all of the chainlink fence, though i dont' expect it to survive the summer heat, it's the first chance i've had to do it like this, with little new sproutlings instead of attempted transplants of cuttings/etc (which only wokr a small percentage of the time for me). Since I have to mvoe the sproutlings anyway, I might as well move them somewhere that makes them useful, too.

Thursday I went to lunch with Bill, after planting those lantana in front yard, and we went by Lowe's to get a couple giant bags of potting soil, which may help with the stuff in the backyard along the fence where nothign ever grows (partly cuz of the soil, mostly cuz of the heat/sun/no shade). I didn't get to dig the actual trenches back there and put the soil in them yet, was too worn out by then. But it's there when i get that far.

Then I dug out my soaker hoses I've been accumulating for this purpose, and laid them out in the trenches and planned-trench-areas I've yet to actually dig, to simplify the watering. When there were only a few it works out ok ot just move a hose trickling water onto each one a few hours, but now that there's a lot and going to be many more, that would take so long that the ones early in the chain would die of dehydration before getting more water. So now all I'll have to do is move the hose from one soaker hose ot the next (with each hose buried in the trenches to keep the water in the ground and not evaporating out the surface in the summer sun). Eventually I'll get enough regular hoses to run to the soakers, and faucet-splitter-valves, to not have to move any hoses and just have to turn on/off the right valves. Maybe eventually I can automate that.

(Solcar had actually sent me a couple of controllers for such a system that I was going to use for this kind of thing, but AFAICR they were lost in the fire, or I'd be setting that up as soon as I ran across enough solenoid valves, like those from old washing machines. Eventually I'll get more of those, and I see such contorllers at Goodwill every so often, too).



Speaking of Goodwill, I also found two old Dell LCD monitors with USB touchscreens. One had no backlight, but I got it anyway cuz I figured (correctly) that it was just a bad capacitor. Replacing that fixed it, and now once I get drivers for the touchscreens, I will be able to use them for my music/etc computers to run the software that works better iwth touchscreens, like the mixing console for SONAR, Lightwave3D's main windows, etc. They are only 1024x768 max, and only 17", but that's good enough for that purpose, and I cna run a higher resolution secondary monitor for the other stuff that takes more room, like SONAR's trackview, etc.

While I had the parts out, I tried replacing the bad c aps in the Samsung that died while at the apartment, but it stilld oesn't work--backlight comes on for less than a second, then shuts off, right afte rit's powered on, but that's it. It will come right back on as soon as I power cycle the monitor via it's button, but wont' stay on. I don't yet know why, and was too tired to troubleshoot it; couldn't think straight. So that will still need working on eventually. I have other monitors so it's not a big deal yet, but I like that monitor and want to fix it.


I had wanted to also work on the replacement CrazyBike3 or whatever it becomes, but never got to it on my days off. I had planned to do some work on it on Saturday, before or after going up with a friend I hadn't seen in years that did come to the "open house" to his storage container he's cleaning out to see what might be there that's immediately useful to me (trying not to just accumulate things that "might" be useful eventually, at least not until I clean out all the rest of the existing stuff to remove stuff that is *not* useful, which will probably take months more fromnow). But the scheduling at work was a little messed up so I went ahead and traded with a coworker that had had big plans for Saturday, since mine weren't something that couldnt' be easily enough done another time.


So all in all, it was a good week, which was much better than I expected. At the very least, none of it was *bad*, so, I'll take it.


I knwo theres stuff I meant ot post about that I'm forgetting, but I'll have to put it up next time if I remember it.

 

[amberwolf]

Nice to have insulation eh? I think you may be able to afford to run that big AC for just one hour a day at dawn. It will be very efficient at that time of day, and of course, shut off half the vents. Then you can store that cool a long time in a back bedroom or the music room. That's how my house works too, I can delay using any of my AC many hours longer than before I insulated the attic more. But fill that room with big panting dogs, and it's like turning on a heater.

Yeah, maybe. We'll see what kidn of power usage it has when I get it working. I did that sort of thing wiht the window AC unit, too--chill the room with it at night and then mostly not run it in the daytime.

Also, I'm on "time of use" plan now (I couldnt' hcange that on hte previosu SRP account, cuz it was unde rmy mom's name and they wouldn't let me change anything on it after she died cuz they said she had to sign off on the changes...even though she was dead and I'd even sent them a death certificate, etc. I coudln't even shut off the account and start a new on eunder my name!). So I have much cheaper power than before, except during the seasonal "high usage" times. Right now that's 1p-8p, I think, M-F. Weekends and rest fo the time is less than half the cost (maybe a third) of high usage peak times.

Stick to when it's efficient to do things, and not use power during peak times, and it should help a lot.

Glad to hear most of the plants are coming back. The trees will do a big growth spurt in the first year, so they may come back sooner than you think. Everything you have in the yard is hard to permanently kill. I'm completely un surprised that the mulberry came back. Find some cheap fertilizer at a yard sale, and make em pop even more growth this spring

.
Got some potting soil at Lowe's yesterday with Bill, and it'lll hlep those. I have some powdered "miracle gro" to mix into a sprayer, and need to dig those out and put that on the ground around all those trees, and water the area well so it soaks down in.

I knew the lantana would come back, that is some tough stuff, with very deep roots. But when cut deep by people or frost, it can take a long time to pop up again.

Some is coming back really fast, but it is what I am trickle watering a lot.

Watering. I know you like to do the slow trickle thing, but on the trees in particular, they really need a larger circle of dirt watered. Slow trickle on a sprinkler once a month will encourage a wider root system. Spot watering will tend to concentrate the root growth to that spot. Particularly the trees that were bigger, water a larger area once a month. Or, move the spot you put the trickle around the whole area by the tree, rather than put it on the base all the time.

I do move the spot around, though probably not as much as I should. The main reason I trickle water isntead of soaking on the surface is cuz surface water evaporates a lot, while trickling gets it down deep, allowing much more time for the water to get down in there before the top of the dirt maxes out in a puddle. I fi set the rate right, it only stays damp on top and never puddles, so it is almost all going down where it will do som egood.


I'm also working on getting my soaker hoses buried in the ground around plants and trees, so they can be used to do it even more effciently. I'll put a ring around each tree, out around whree the edges of the branches are, which should allow for good root growth?


I would prefer to sprinkle-water all over the yard, but I sipmly canpt afford to do that; I'll end up with $100-$150/month water bills.

Just keep filling in the grave. Some of what you see is just the dirt finally settling fully, and the rest is them returning to you in the form of new plants. Good idea to plant something there, that plant will be their memorial lantana. The lantana will keep growing up through the new dirt. Just leave a small hole around it for now.

That's the plan, right now. Havent' got to doing any of it except getting the lantana planted there, and keeping it watered, but eventually there will be time/energy to get it done.

You got nice karma, as shown by your neighbors gift of the couches. Bad shit comes, but the good shit outweighs it for good people like you. The dude abides.

I hope so. Sometimes I wonder, when bad stuff comes in big long waves, but good stuff always keeps happening even during those, it's jsut a lot harder to see/remember at those times. :/ I sort of have a buddhist outlook on life, more than any other philosophy, and so really i figure any karma i'm working with now is from a long time ago, and anything i do now is affecting the far future, rather than the present.

But there's no way to really know; I simply do whatever good I can, and try not to do any bad. I'm sure I sitll do, and I'm sure I've negatively affected many lives, whether I meant to or not, but I always hope that the good far outweighs the bad. I try for it to.

Either way, life is what it is, and what we make of it, so i keep pushing ot try ot make it better as mch as i can, for those i can.

A couple of scoops of sand might be helpful where the dirt is settling, we used a lot of it on the golf course years ago to improve drainage. Water goes through it without carrying it away like clay.

That's a htought. Ther eis some sand under all the dirt back where the swamp cooler used to be, some of which I had been moving out under the porch bricks when I was putting that in originally, years back.

 

[dogman dan]

As long as you move the spot you water around so each area of the roots gets water monthly, that will do fine on the trees. I should have known you were smarter than that. But I have seen some very smart people water right at the base of the tree rather than out at the (former) drip zone of the foliage. With three sons with ag degrees, my dad could never be convinced to water trees properly. He watered that 2' around the trunk till he died. A shallow trench in a circle 4" or so out from trees is a good way to spot water all of a trees outer roots. Or make rings with soaker hoses.

Sand is good, I never competed the project myself, but over half my clay yard got 2" of sand topping it. It's called mineral mulching. What happens is the sand holds very little water, so the first 2" where all the evaporation happens drains the water to the clay or potting soil underneath. Then once the tiny bit of moisture in the sand dries out, it forms a blanket over the moist soil preventing it from evaporating.

This of course doesn't prevent the evaporation from sprinkling, so I use a type of sprinkler that puts on the water very fast, and water my entire 1/3 acre in one hour at dawn. (actually half the back remains dirt, full of my junk piles) By the time the sun is up, the sand looks dry but the soil underneath stays moist all day. The kind of sprinkler I prefer is cast iron with a large hole in the top. Other kinds of sprinklers water a larger area, but they have to run a long time and just throw the water away into the air.

 

[amberwolf]

As long as you move the spot you water around so each area of the roots gets water monthly, that will do fine on the trees. I should have known you were smarter than that. But I have seen some very smart people water right at the base of the tree rather than out at the (former) drip zone of the foliage. With three sons with ag degrees, my dad could never be convinced to water trees properly. He watered that 2' around the trunk till he died. A shallow trench in a circle 4" or so out from trees is a good way to spot water all of a trees outer roots. Or make rings with soaker hoses.

I also considered making a berm around each tree, by moving a couple inches of the dirt around the base outward to the "drip zone" (the orange tree is so old it already has a natural one from subsidence), but it was much more work than I wanted to do; the soaker hose ring only needs a single 2-3" "trench" to put it in, then run the soaker, then re-dig another couple inches under the hose after it's good and damp, so it will be much softer and easier to dig even thru the grass roots.

I already did that method for the lantana trench near the fence in back, for the southeast corner, yesterday and last night. (and similarly for the front yard along the porch and south wall). Tonight if it is not still raining (is sprinkling right now and has been on and off all day) I'll finish that up, then start mixing potting soil with the existing dirt there. Most of the fill dirt will stay out of the trench and be a berm around it to help me know where the plants are when I'm trimming the grass, so I can hand-trim/pull it inside the berm to avoid any accidental destruction of lantana.

Sand is good, I never competed the project myself, but over half my clay yard got 2" of sand topping it. It's called mineral mulching. What happens is the sand holds very little water, so the first 2" where all the evaporation happens drains the water to the clay or potting soil underneath. Then once the tiny bit of moisture in the sand dries out, it forms a blanket over the moist soil preventing it from evaporating.

That's a thought...I dont' have enough sand to do that though, and I probably won't go get any. It'd take a LOT to do that for the yard, even just in areas where it would really help most.

This of course doesn't prevent the evaporation from sprinkling, so I use a type of sprinkler that puts on the water very fast, and water my entire 1/3 acre in one hour at dawn. (actually half the back remains dirt, full of my junk piles) By the time the sun is up, the sand looks dry but the soil underneath stays moist all day. The kind of sprinkler I prefer is cast iron with a large hole in the top. Other kinds of sprinklers water a larger area, but they have to run a long time and just throw the water away into the air.

I have a die-cast "twinhead" sprinkler that just has two large holes in it, and I guess it's shaped inside to swirl the water into a "throw cone" for each one? That's what it looks like. I didn't use it much in recent years cuz Hachi would just drag it around the yard. I also had a few others mostly plastic but she ate a lot of them or damaged them beyond usability. :lol: The only one that didnt' let her do that easily was the "rainbird" type that goes psst psst psst a while and hten returns rapidly to the start of the arc. It's the one in the Hachi Vs The Sprinkler videos on YT.


Yeah, the main reason I kept running sprinklers the last few years except in still humid weather was because Hachi loved them. Before her, I usually just flood-watered periodically, mostly around the trees but with overflow for the rest of the yard. Then trickle watering specific trees/plants between those times. My mom loved sprinklers, usually doing the whole yard at the same time with several of them, cuz it was like having rain. I liked it for the same reason, but can't afford to run it that way.



Pics of stuff to follow if they upload in time before I have to finish heading to work.

 

[amberwolf]

First the front yard stuff. Can't really see the lantana in teh trenches cuz they're still too small. These trenches are real close to the fence, porch, and house, cuz I wanted the roof runoff water to end up in the trenches, for the little rain we ever get.

As expected, a number of the little lantana sproutlings have already died. But if I have enough after doing the back fence stuff, I'll replace them with new ones as they come up.

The ones in the back yard are further from the house/etc since that wouldnt' work anyway for any of the locations I want to add lantana, and are more like 2-3 feet from house, fence, etc., to allow me room to get behind them wiht a weedeater/etc., and also to allow the dog(s) to still do her (their, once there's more) fence-prowling while the lantana are still small without trampling them. Once they're large enough, they will enable me to just block off the space between fence and lantana and keep the dog(s) away from the fence entirely. Gonna be a while for that, though.










Then the backyard stuff. I had started out using little pots, many made from old butter tubs, etc., with drainage holes sliced in the bottom edge, but kept ending up with so many lantana in a single pot just from a few minutes' harvesting that I later went to a layer of dirt in a bit styrofoam "cooler" that we get our fish in every week at work. (I'm collecting them to later use for insulation in the sheds once I get them each in turn emptied enough to do that, especially in the one under the big mulberry tree, which will have the most shade for most of the day, and has the tallest roof, and thus will probably be my "workshop".)









View attachment 14









Bricks mark the outer line of where the trench will be. I am only leaving the gate sections "open"; am trying to figure out something I can use to screen the gates with that won't violate some city code or other, but still be movable with them, and do an effective job of screening.







The "eucalyptus" or whatever they are trees are planted several feet from the fence, so that I can keep them "large" and shady without overhanging outside the fence (can trim them off at the fence line without destroying too much of their shade/etc., once they get that big in probably several years). Ther'es five of them, IIRC., along the east fence north of it's gate.





This is the source of some of the lantana sproutlings: the area under and around these two. Most of them come from another nearby pair that I guess I forgot to get a pic of. There are also two that look like mulberry sproutlings, and I am considering putting them in the empty areas of the front yard once they are large enough to survive out there.




I forget where this one is in the yard. But



Then there's another line of four e-trees lined up with the corners of the sheds, a few feet in front of them, at the west side of the yard. Also one under the "windmill" decoration, until it gets big enough that I have to move the windmill, it will protect it from trampling by dogs and people. I'd like to also plant some in teh middle of the yard, but if I do then there is no option to pull a vehicle or trailer into the yard thru the alley gate on the north fence, and I might need that option someday.



The biggest surviving lantana is the only one not cut back into the ground, over between the sheds.



This water faucet over by that lantana is apparently added to the system in a wierd way, which means that now it doesn't work. Whoever added it (way before I moved here) must've tapped it directly into the main pipe coming from the old alley meter, instead of running it from the house after the house cutoff valve. This didn't matter, really, even when they put new water mains and meters in the street, and put a new main pipe to the house in, cuz they capped off all the old main pipes at the alley end. As long as the old main valve was left on, the faucet still worked. Of course, I had no idea it was plumbed that way...I only knew it never stopped working. Until now.

So...a few weeks ago the city and utility companies started replacing hte utility poles in teh alley. When they installed the new pole, they somehow managed to spear the guy-wire stay for it right into the old now-unused water main, on the house side of the cap.

They probably would have known that they did it, and fixed it, or whatever, if the faucet had been in use at the time, cuz the water woud've gushed out then, but I had not yet tried to use it at that point, only been using the one at the back wall of the house up till a little while after the new poles were put in. When the fire-repair work was completed on hte house, possibly when the main input was moved to the front of the house, instead of the back, during that repair, the valve to that old main and thus the faucet was shut off. So when they speared the old main, there woudlnt' have been any water coming out and they wouldn't have known.

Only when I tried to use the faucet and found it didnt' work did I go turn the old valve on. Then I noticed th water pressure on the faucet was really low, and pretty much stopped if I even put my thumb over the hose end to spray. I assumed there was a break in the pipe somewhere, and thought maybe it had rusted thru or something somewhere along the path form the house to the faucet, and left it on and waited to see what area got damp near the surface.

A while later, I noticed it flooding out by the alley fence, which was wierd, and then saw it bubbling up just past the fence. When I went to look, and saw wher ethe guy wire stay was and it's angle in relation to the bubbling up water, well, evne an idiot could figure out what happened and how it must be plumbed.


So I shut off that old water main valve, and started digging a hole down beside the faucet to find it's connection to the old main, so I could cap it myself inside the yard area, and not have to worry about it anymore, but still have a working faucet. But my bakc still hurt hten (it's lots better these days) and I haven't got back to the digging. I figure I'm halfway down, based on the angle and placement of guy wire stay and bubbling leak hole, where they ought to intersect, asusming the faucet join is at the same depth.

I am doing it myself because I figure if I aks the landlord to do it he'll just take the whole faucet out, and I wont' have one anymore. (that's hwat happened ot the outlet on the carport during the repairs, cuz it wasnt' on the city plans, so it's probably the same with this faucet since it was left unworking after the repairs). He might fix it, but I'd rather not run the risk of losing it. Or of having him or his workers destroy things that are growing back, etc., or my new plantings, etc. I'd just rather do it all myself no matter how hard it is than deal with even the possibility of that.


So this is the faucet and the stay/leak hole:








Then there's the lantana that stareted recovering by the house where the ol swamp cooler was. it was doing great, but Tiny has trampled it in her investigations, and now it is almost dead again. All the branches are broken, except the top two, and even those the leaves all died on. They're still green, and I'm hoping they'll come back, but we'll have to wait and see. For now I put chicken wire up around the area to keep her out of it so she doesn't make it worse.

.

 

[dnmun]

if it goes to the water meter they will have to run an entire new service entrance line. i think code is 1 1/2" PEX or regular poly now. if they are lucky they can snooker it back out to the meter from the place in the yard where it turns so they don't have to trench the entire length. i was able to connect to the end of mine in the basement and pulled it through the ground with my old 1965 International travelall with a chain tied to the hitch. my original service was 1/2" galvanized like that and i used a male adapter from 1/2" pipe thread to 3/4" sweat to copper tubing and soldered the soft copper loop onto the end of the galvie where it came through the basement wall and then when my friend drove the international forward it pulled the 1/2" through the ground out to the meter box and i unwound the 3/4" soft copper loop behind it as it went into the hole in the basement wall. i was able to stop him just before the last of the 3/4 copper went through the hole in the basement wall. about 12" left when it got to the meter box out front.

saved me about $1200.

 

[amberwolf]

if it goes to the water meter they will have to run an entire new service entrance line. i think code is 1 1/2" PEX or regular poly now. if they are lucky they can snooker it back out to the meter from the place in the yard where it turns so they don't have to trench the entire length.

I probably didn't explain very well, but it has nothing to do with the present water main, which runs from the street in the front of the house, with it's own shutoff/input vlave right there in front of the house.

It's the old unused disconnected capped-off main that ran to the alley that is the one the faucet was apparently "tacked onto" by whoever originally installed the faucet, and therein lies the problem.

Since the faucet is on the "wrong" side of the old main shutoff/input valve at the house, in the backyard, it had no water to it then (which I didnt' know because I hadn't used it yet at that time after moving back in), because that old main's input valve was still shut off from whenever they did teh repairs ot the house.

No one ever bothered to turn it back on becuase there would have been no need or desire to, since it shoudln't even be used by anything now, because it is the old main, in the backyard, and the new main has it's own valve in the front yard.


If it had been the active main that it had been on, then when they punctured it the utility company would have known they did it, and they'd've had to repair it at that time.

But since it was the inactive disconnected capped off main they punctured, with no water flow, they didn't even know they'd done it, because that old main's input valve was still shut off from whenever they did teh repairs ot the house.

I wouldnt' even know about the puncture myself if the faucet was installed on the "correct" side of the house plumbing, running from the house-side of the old shutoff valve instead of being incorrectly installed on the meter/main side.


But when I am done with the digging and capping, it won't matter because it will then be disconnected from any of the old main stuff to the alley, and the old house-side main shut off int he backyard will have become just a shutoff valve for the faucet itself (which will be kinda convenient, as I can then not have to walk all the way out to it to turn it on or off if I don't need to change it's flow setting, just turn the lever/ball valve on or off). I just don't know when that will actually happen, with the amount of time other things are taking.

 

[dogman dan]

That lantana is great stuff, and one of my favorite go to plants. Takes some water to get it going, and in my climate some varieties freeze and die. But established ones like yours are truly hard to kill. I have 6 lantanas in my front yard, but they are just starting to emerge from the root.

The other go to plant I really love is called damianita. A very tough plant able to take a shitload of freeze abuse, and also survive on nearly no water. I give mine more of course.

Here is a pic of my front yard today. All this on very little water really. The only water hog in the whole yard is the tomato spot near the front door. The three large yellow blooms in the center of the yard are damianita. I'm growing more from seed in my greenhouse right now. I can't bring you a plant across the state line, but I could send you seeds to start in pots. They have a lovely scent year round, like rain in the desert.

The short purple is verbena, and the tall purple is a winter annual called larkspur. Perfect for your yard in the winter. I can send you a ton of larkspur seed if you like, to sow in October.

 

[amberwolf]

UPdate for today, since I'm out and about:

Got some of the lantana planted in the southeast fence trench, wiht potting soil mixed in with the existing dirt.

About a third of the already-planted new sproutling lantanas in front and back are definitley not going to make it, or have already died. Another several aren't looking good, and probably won't make it.

Most likely I damaged their roots too much when transplanting htem. Lantana don't take "hydraulic" damage very well on their green parts--almost any kind of damage to them and that whole stem (or root) will just shrivel up and die within an hour or two--not just the part past the break but all the way back to the closest woody section. Once it's turned woody it's not so bad, but hwen green it's pretty fatal.

But most of them are doing fine, although they haven't progressed beyond the four-leaf stage. A few have started to grow taller, wiht mroe leaves.


Back on the fire anniversary, I decided to be sure I do *something* creative, or planting stuff, repairing stuff, building stuff, even just a little, every day, no matter what else I manage, or how I feel. Except on those days when *nothing* works or turns out like it should, for no reasons I can figure out, this kind of thing takes away from the depression and sadness and helps make me happier. On those bad days sometimes i tjust makes me more frustrated, but then there is Tiny to go play with or groom or just hang out with watching birds, cats, trees, wind, neighborhood, etc., and that helps with the frustration, at least, if nothing else.



Today I met up with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time, and though he didnt' have much time to spend, he picked me up and we went to his place to go thru stuff he needs to get rid of, and let me pick thru it first. I got some pin-together rack shelving that's fairly hefty, though not everything is there I can work with what is and make the rest, to use in the sheds to hold stuff. If I clean up the rust and stuff I can use them in the utility room to hold tools/etc, for what won't fit in teh tool cabinets/drawers, but I think they will probably work better in the shed that will be my workshop. Uprigths are too tall so will have to cut them down to fit inside, though.

There were also a pair of old Viewsonic 17" non-widescreen LCD monitors, in unknown condition but rpobalby working, and if not probalby just bad caps, so easily fixed. And an old 17" widescreen flat-panel Imac, either a G5 just like the one I lost in teh fire, or the next one up which might be the first Intel-based one (which means it could run WindowsXP natively instead of emulated, as well as MacOSX). It's just a box of parts right now, but I can put it back together and find out what's wrong and probably fix it--I worked on enough of them back at CompUSA as the Apple Tech in the shop. :lol:

I also picked up a short stack of SCSI harddisks, more for the possibilyt that they might work with my old Ensoniq stuff than anything else (but they are probably too high a capacity for that ancient stuff to recognize, at least some of them being almost 10GB, which is about 9.85GB bigger than anything I've actually tried on the ASR88 so far).


There were probably at least a dozen other ocmputers and whatnot, and lots and lots of parts, but unfortunately none new enough to be useful for any of my projects and stuff (what I already have is "better" for the most part, or the same, and I am trying very hard not to accumulate stuff I am not actually going to use. I DEFINITELY don't want to be working in computer repair again, fixing stuff up for other people especially since few appreciate the work that goes into it, and almost no one will pay for it). Most of the stuff looked just like the same things I used to have here; some lost in the fire and some just tossed out as too old to be useful, some might still be in the sheds, like my mom's old computers that I saved to get the data archived off of someday.

Lots of other interesting stuff, but not things I could use even if tey were being given away.


No update on the wifi search yet. Still trying to figure out the spanish-language stuff enough to do whatever is needed with what I already have. :/ One of those things where I wish I knew another computer techie that knows more than I do, to have them come over and deal with it and/or show me how. :lol: But I have been finding that I don't know anyone that even seems to know as much as I do about wifi security/etc., and the linux live cd use/etc for suites like Wifiway, and considering how little I know, that's a little sad.

I need to rebuild the big antenna and make a real mounting pole for it out of the tall 3" pipes I have (meant as a light pole, originally by whoever I got it from on Freecycle). Then I can mount the dish on that, and set it in a pivot on teh ground with guy wires to a collar at the top, and then be able to swivel it around to point at possible distant unsecured sources. I'd also need a horizontal-axis pivot at the dish mount, that I can manipulate from the ground fairly precisely. Though I am the kind of skeptic that thinks that by the time I get that all built and set up, and working fine, then whoever has the unsecured wifi will then go and secure it. :lol: But I'll prbbably do it anyway, if I have the time soonish.


First priority is still building the replacement bike, though.




In ohter (bad) news, one of my previously-broken-off molars on the lower right, a couple back from the canine, has started to become infected. I'm treating it with heavy crushed fresh garlic, vitamin c, etc., (eating a few crushed lobes every few hours, and keeping one crushed lobe right on the gum area with the infection dome) for now, and it si helping, but it may not stop it and I may wind up having to go to the dentist again. I hope not, both because I hate that and because it costs too much. Especially for molars. That's usually surgical rather than just a pull. In any case, they won't ever just give me antibiotics for the infection; they will only do that AFTER I pay way too much money for them to remove the problem area and drill holes in my head, etc. So we go the "natural" route first, since I already have the garlic and vitamin c. If it becomes uncontrolled, I'll have to give in and pay them to rip out pieces of me some more. (and of course, there are several other teeth that could go pretty much any time. I'd probably hate it, but it might be easier if I could just magically lose them all and get full dentures. :lol: )

 

[amberwolf]

Yesterday was very productive, though it was hot out my joints hurt less, so I got a lot of stuff moved.

The two refrigerators got moved out of in front of the middle shed to between tha shed and the south shed (I still haven't been able to make enough room inside a shed for them and still get to other stuff in there, though I'm getting close), and the powerchair remains, RC LiPo storage chamber (old oven), etc., all also moved.


I also ended up trashing (bulk trash pickup is later this week or early next) the old dining table, and part of a dresser I'd really wanted to fix, but they were out in the sun so long waiting for the house repairs to finish that they are severely warped, and split apart, and I am never going to have enough time and energy to fix them. I really didn't want to do it because the table was in the family for a long time, and the dresser has been mine since I was a little kid, but the drawers were totaly trashed and falling apart, warped too badly to fix. I do sitll have the dresser itself, in the north shed, behind a bunch of stuff, but at this point it would need new drawers built for it, so if I end up saving it at all by the time I get to it (eventually), I'd probably remove the front spacers betweent the drawer spots and just use it for a "workbench" of sorts inside one of the sheds.



The treadmill (which should still work and eventually will go in the house to be used, or will be scrapped for it's frame and motor and stuff) moved out from in front of the north shed to inside it, along with all the plexiglass/lexan/masonite/wood scraps, and assorted other stuff.

Moved the big wooden workbench from in front of the north shed (tread mill had been on it, both of them helping to block entrance to it before I moved back in) to along the north wall of the house (back room), which is eventually going to be a shadier spot, once stuff grows back, and I'll be able to work on stuff there. For now it is a gardening table; I've got some "planters" of lantana and other seeds hopefully going to sprout and grow, plus others with sproutlings trying to get big enough for planting.


It is now hot enough outside most of the time that the little lantana sproutlings generally don't survive more than a couple of days in the direct sun, even if they're watered all the time and/or have those water-crystals around them, or any other tricks I can think of. Only when shaded for most of the middle of the day do they survive. So I've stopped transplanting them, and am leaving htem in the ground in their original spots wherever possible for now, until they have big enough root systems/etc to make it when moved. Those that would end up entangled in ohter plants I couldn't dig them out of I've moved to the shaded planters to continue to grow.


I'd guess about only 1/3, possibly only 1/4, of the little lantana sproutlings along the front and the southeast fence have survived so far.


The planters themsevles are the well-ventilated (sieve-like) boxes our mice/rats/etc get couriered to us in. THey're really tough boxes, probably HDPE or nylon or something like that--but they don't want them back so we toss them out nowadays, and I'm now saving a few of them (we get some every week) to use for these planters.


Soil is potting soil plus some of the yard dirt from areas where stuff has been growing before, plus some from the "excess" dirt around the house itself left from construction (which is full of big concrete bits I have to pick out).


But all I really started out to do was wash all the blankets and air out the mattress, cuz Tiny's leaking over the last couple months has gotten thru the plastic I'd put on there (in sections) and made it stinky. Since it was a nice hot sunny day I knew it would help dry out the whole thing if I hand-washed some of the surface spots (simple green and then treated with SG doggie-odor remover).

Washing the blankets basically took all day (I had a pile of them (and sheets/etc) I'd put off washing for a good hot day to dry them thoroughly in), and I still have one left to do, cuz I ran out of energy myself to do any more last night. It also took about 32KWh of electricity to do that, between the washer and the water heater. Compared to my normal usage of 4-5KWh/day, that's enormous.



But I probably won't need to do that again for a couple months.

And I do it on the weekend, all at once, instead of whenever things get dirty, because it is more efficient, and less expensive. Keeping the water heater running for one day for a load every ~45 minutes uses notably less power than using it to heat water for just one load, cuz the water and hte heater are already warmed up, "preheated", I guess you'd say, instead of having to start from relatively cold room temperature like they would if I did it just one load in a day, whenever they got leaked on or whatever.

I just have to air-dry them on the clothesline right after she leakes on them, then keep them set aside in the laundry room until wash day comes up. As long as I dry them out quickly, they don't get stinky.


I also did a lot of yard-watering, basically doing a once-a-month full-yard watering (which was done by the rain the previous two months, when that happened, but is less likely to happen this month, with no sign of it yet or anytime soon).


And since I had to move dirt out of the way to make room for that work table on the "back porch", I went ahead and put htat dirt up as a berm around the northeast part of the "drip line" of the tree on the east end fo the porch, since it is on a little rise there I couldn't flood water it like the other trees before doiong that. Now I can. I only did the NE part of it cuz the natural rise up to the house takes care of the rest--basically I don't really want the roots to grow toward the house much anyway, I would guess, so having them grow out the other way(north and east instead of south and west) is probably better anyway.

 

[amberwolf]

Apparently we aren't replacing the two cashiers that left. So now I'm working 6 days this week, and the week after next. Next week I get two days off but not in a row like I had been, which means I won't be able to accomplish very much for a while, as it usually takes me a day to rest and catch up with myself, and then have a day to do things other than fairly mindless housework/yardwork tasks. Stuff that takes a lot of thought and time like building things (like the new bike) are often very hard to do that first day off work, especially if I am still in the middle of a (mostly) sleepless-night cycle (which tend to last a few days).

So for now there's only that sort of mostly-mindless stuff to talk about.

Had to move some of the aloe vera; was too close to things that I dribble-soak, and they got too much water. Moved them to areas I don't normally water so they should do better.

Most of the little lantana sprouts that hadnt' already gotten leaves at least as big as my thumbnail have died. I'd guess that means only about 1/5, maybe as few as 1/8 of them are left now. Not gonna make a very big "hedge" that way.

I have seeds now planted in several of those ex-small-animal carriers, will just have to hope for more sproutlings eventually, then let them grow big enough to move to separate planters, then let them grow a fair bit before transplanting to the ground in the open sun.


The lantana on the graves is doing ok but not really growing much, except the one on Hachi's--that one died, then the one I transplanted there (which itself was already doing pretty well before I moved it there, and was as big as the biggest of the other successful starters anywhere in the yard) died a day after I moved it. It was moved with all it's roots and soil intact, as a big head-sized lump of soil, so it should've done fine and barely even known it was moved. But something obviously happened; I just don't know what.

It doesnt' look stepped-on (which is probably what has happened to some of the little sproutlings--Tiny might've crushed them in passing; she's also eaten a few accidentally while munching on nearby grass--I know when that happens cuz she shakes her head and spits out what she was chewing). Well, when I have another that can be moved, I'll try again, Ig uess.



For the next couple weeks or so I am now "dogsitting" Wilbur and Jebus while Mdd0127 is accomplishing stuff where they can't go with him at the moment. They're missing him a lot, especially Wilbur, who keeps looking around for him and doesnt' want *me* to be out of sight very long either. Jebus mostly hides in one room or corner or under a tree, etc., cuz he is shy of Tiny. Unfortunately his cowing only encourages her to come up and see what's wrong, and then he gets more nervous, which makes her nervous, and if I let it go on it'd end up in at least a snarl/snap match, so I tell Tiny to leave him be whenever I see her near him. Mostly she leaves him alone and just goes around peeing on all the spots W&J peed on first. :lol:

Keeps them all busy, exchanging p-mails much of the time they're outside.

When inside, Tiny usually does the same things she would do without them--lay sprawled on the tile in the kitchen, or the floor in the corner of the bedroom or living room. Wilbur follows me around, and Jebus finds an out-of-the-way corner and stays there. Sometiems he lays on the couch where Mdd0127 last sat.


When I'm in the kitchen, Tiny almost always lays in the doorway between front room (livingroom) and kitchen, and Jebus lays right in front of the sink, which is pretty much right in the way of things. I've sort of convinced him to lay under the table instead, so at least I won't trip over him or step on a tail or paw by accident, or splash him with water while washing something. But he tends to creep out from under there and back to in front of the sink again.... :/

Wilbur usually stands wagging his tail just to the left of the stove, which is mostly out of the way at least--but I havent' convinced him that he should stay out of the kitchen entirely.

At least Tiny isn't jealous of them being there, or worried about me giving them something that she isnt' getting (cuz I don't normally give table scraps/etc to any of the dogs, mine or otherwise...there are occasional exceptions, of course ).

When i have to go to work, etc., then to avoid any issues between Tiny and Jebus, I leave W&J in the empty master bedroom with their water bowls and a blanket, and some toys which both of them ignore (seems like the only toys they like are balls, of which I don't have any left, except two tennis balls that I keep for Tiny to chase on her rare moments she wants to do that sort of thing). I also put the nature-sounds clockradio in there (from Bigmoose) to give them some noises to distract them from all the other noises outside the room/house--it's loud enough that it still helps distract Tiny in the livingroom, too. (normally it would be on the sewing table in the corner of hte livingroom, next to the kitchen doorway, to fill the livingroom and kitchen/etc with the sound, for Tiny).


The only other thing in there is the stacks of empty styrofoam containers and their boxes (which I get from work each week when the fish shipments come in; these boxes are being cut apart and used as insulation for the inside of the sheds, especially the roofs, as I have time/etc to do this--I still have to find a good cheap adhesive that will hold them in place and won't fail because of teh intense heat on the sheetmetal roof).


At other times, when I'm home, they are all free to roam the house and yard as they please, except that Tiny is sometimes posessive of my bedroom so I keep a gate on that--no dogs in there when I'm up and about, Tiny in there when I am in there sleeping (or rather, trying to, since i still do hardly any of that with the nightmares and whatnot).

Wilbur doesn't like not being able to come in there, and someitmes barks when he realizes he can't come see me. I don't mind except when it wakes me up from rare sleep, but it is the price to pay for ensuring no issues between Tiny and the others.

Jebus doesn't seem to have much interest in coming in there, because if I'm in there, usually so is Tiny, and he doesnt' really wanna be in the same place she is.

When I'm just in there, like typing or reading on the computer, fixing somethin, etc., then I leave the gate open, and Wilbur often comes in to lay down near me on the floor somewhere. Tiny doesn't have a problem with that, from what I can see. But she doesnt' want him on the bed with me, and she will get on the corner of the bed and "guard" me. :lol: I'm only worried something might happen if she was awakened in the dark suddenly by him stepping on her if he decided to come curl up there, or if Jebus suddenly decidded to actually come in tehre and did somethign similar.

I don't really think there would be any, but until I am sure Tiny has accepted things are the way they are, I'll keep that gate up while I'm trying to sleep, just in case. Might be another few days, I'd guess, from progress so far.


But this gives me a lot of hope that Tiny will be fine with other dogs (as long as they aren't afraid of her, or themselves aggressive), because I am not really a one-dog person.

 

[amberwolf]

Was gonna be working on the new bike today but lots of gusty wind has made it pretty hard to do. Bad enough I had trouble riding around on the first half of my grocery/etc run today.


Also, the wind and noise from it make Tiny really nervous (she doesnt' like stormy weather, and even though it's not stormy the wind is similar), and that makes Jebus nervous, and he whines, and then Tiny gets more nervous and follows him around, and I ended up having to keep Tiny on one side of the house gated off from Wilbur and Jebus in the other, or them outside and her inside and vice/versa, shuffling them around as needed, to be sure neither pushed the other too far. So far nothing has happened between them, but I've seen this type of nervousness with dogs end up causing a fight as fear builds up, and I don't want that.


If I didn't have to go out for the groceries and some parts and other stuff, I'd not even have left the house with them nervous like that, but I have to, so Tiny gets to wander the house while Wilbur and Jebus stay in the otherwise empty master bedroom. If they hadn't been all nervous I'd planned to see how they did by letting everyone have full access throughout the house today, as they'd all been doing better than usual last night together, and Tiny stopped even worrying about them coming into the bedroom.

But with the nervousness, I didn't want to risk anything that would mess up that building "trust", and set them back days or more.


Oh, and I finally got up on the roof to check the A/C unit up there, to see why it doesn't turn on when the controller in the house tells it to--not even the fan comes on. Turns out there are no fuses in the fuse box that is at it's base up there on the roof. Needs two cylindrical fuses, which I wrote down the info for but somehow misplaced the paper now that I am out and about and was going to pick some up. I know I already have a few of them that are probably the correct type, but I don't know where they are, and it's expected to start getting over 100F sometime this week. So soon I will likely need the A/C for some part of the day to keep the dogs cool.

So I guess I'll be making another trip out for them once I eithe rfind my note or get back up on the roof and re-note the info down. (have to put it in the phone this time, I guess).


Nothing else new on the house or yard.

 

[amberwolf]

I forgot: SRP added a new feature that lets me click on any bar in the daily usage graph, and it will expand that to an hourly usage graph, which is helpful cuz I can use that in lieu of a KillAWatt meter or similar to guesstimate usages for various appliances and such.

As an example, this is yesterday, when I turned on the water heater twice: once to wash work clothes and take a shower, in late morning, and once to shower again to try to scrub off whatever it was that suddenly caused a severe rash all over the areas between my ribs and upper arms, on both ribs and arms, on my neck and collarbone areas, and thighs, and beltline.

So the water heater is (as expected) a power hog while it's on and heating the water initially from cold. I do still have it turned up to make water hot enough to be *just* below what I couldn't directly shower without mixing any cold wiht it; I forgot what the temperature was, though I measured it a couple of times already. I didn't leave it on so I don't know what it's usage would have been to keep the water in it hot all day.

I have access to the hourly usage for those days before I started turning off the water heater when not actually in use, but I can't remember what else was being done on those days, so I can't say what part of the usage was for the WH and what for other things. :/ So I'll have to do an experiment at some point to check that.



(I still have no idea what it was, but it was very itchy, very sudden onset, and it did go away after I showered and scrubbed, so almost certainly an allergic reaction to some substance, but I can't figure out what it could have been based on it's locations, things I contacted or wore, etc. I even tried rubbing the clothing I'd been wearing on an unaffected area of my arm, and it didn't react even after a few minutes of that, with or without water added to the cloth. If it was something I ate that caused it, I'd not expect it ot go away with the shower/scrubbing, and I ate nothing I don't usually eat. So...I dunno).





Also...forgot to mention that I finally got the water pipe junction dug up, for that faucet that is apparently added directly to the old main that used to come from the alley. Turns out the old main is plain white PVC pipe; I forget what size. But that does make it a bit easier to cap off. All I have to do is dig a little further down to make room for working around the pipe, and then saw thru it a few inches past the T-junction on the alley-side of it, then glue on a cap. I think I even *have* a cap, on some of that salvaged aquatics piping from the remodelled stores early last year. If not, they ought to be cheap enough at the hardware store. I think i already have glue for it, but if not I may have to buy some anyway so I can fix up the PVC piping for the aquariums when i get around to being able to set those up (after they are moved to between the house and biggest mulberry tree).