Work, Work, Work

12:46 Friday, 5 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 70.86°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 59% Wind: 15.39mph
Words: 834

Went to Home Depot yesterday, dropped Mitzi off at Trader Joe's. I got some grass seed (another tyranny of choice struggle), and a little hand spreader. Later learned Mitzi has one of those back in Florida. Well, now we have two.

When we got home, I went down by the road and kept raking, picking rocks and pulling roots. The dirt was hard and I probably could have used a hoe instead of the rake. So hard that I gave up! I'd hoped to get the seed in before the rain came, but figured I might have to come up with a new plan.

Mitzi suggested we just get a bunch of top soil. Well, it rained at bit yesterday, about a quarter of an inch, and so this morning I went down to see if the dirt was any more cooperative. For the most part, it was. So once I got started, I didn't stop.

I was able to loosen up about an inch or more of most of the area. Pulled up more roots, which seemed to come up more easily after the rain, and that loosened the soil here and there. Picked more rocks. I'm hoping that if and when this grass comes in, our neighbor will mow it, so I want her to know I got most of the rocks out the area.

I didn't do the whole stretch on my side of the driveway (Mitzi wants to do something with the other side of it.), but about three quarters is done. There was still some debris that needed to be picked up on that part and Mitzi worked on that this morning.

Anyway, grabbed the spreader, spread some seed, raked that in and tried to level everything out as best I could. Did another layer of seed, raked that in, then connected three hoses to get enough length to water it all in. There's something odd about that soil down there, because with just that little amount of rain, it made it incredibly sticky and it clung to the bottom of my shoes in huge layers. Noticed it trudging up to the garage to get the hoses with my feet feeling like lead. Tried to stomp it off with minimal success. Ended up using the rake tines to scrape it off.

Watered it all in as well as I could. It's windy today, so it'll probably dry quickly but I'm not too worried about the seed blowing away. There's a lot of seed, and it's pretty well raked in with soil and the remaining debris from the bush hog. I'm supposed to water it every day for two weeks, but we're leaving a week from today. I hope to get some bales of straw somewhere and put that down before we leave so it doesn't dry out too much while we're away.

I noticed both of the ratchet straps had come loose from the black walnut in all this wind. I went down to put them back on and noticed the rope line was slack too. Looks like it's rooted itself pretty upright again. I went ahead and took the slack out of the line and put the ratchet straps back on just in case. I'll probably take everything off in a week and see how it looks after we get back from Florida.

This morning's effort was quite a workout. My watch seemed to think I was on the elliptical. By the time I got the hoses put away, it had recorded 584 "active" calories expended, and 104 minutes of "exercise." All I knew was I was beat. Came in the house and took a shower and repaired to the recliner. Feel pretty recovered now, though my hands are kind of weak and achey.

I will say that all that effort is a welcome distraction from the unfolding catastrophe that is America under Trump. So I guess I'm grateful for it.

Also got the Maverick's vehicle inspection completed yesterday. I'm street legal now in New York.

I told Mitzi I think I'm going to go ahead and pay the flood insurance premium. It's a bet I hope to lose, because I sure wouldn't want to win it. But if I don't do it, I could wind up regretting it for a very long time. A flood loss now would be unwelcome no matter what, that's one of the reasons why we've left Florida. I know I can afford the premium, and I know I can't afford a flood, so it's not that tough a call. It's just annoying because you have to pay the whole year's premium all at once. There is a way to make monthly payments, but you're still obligated to pay for the entire year. You can transfer that coverage to a new buyer, with them taking over the monthly premiums, but if they don't want to, you're still on the hook for them.

C'est la vie in the 21st Century.

The beat goes on...

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Pearl Crescent

16:57 Wednesday, 3 September 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 78.3°F Pressure: 1009hPa Humidity: 40% Wind: 10.6mph
Words: 265

Cleaned up most of the left side of the formerly overgrown area. As I raked up debris, I kept finding more roots. I could pull some of them up easily, but others I ended up using the loppers to just get as much as I could. Grape vine roots and more Morrow's. That stuff is everywhere. Hopefully we'll be able to keep it in check if we get some grass down and mow it regularly.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to run to Home Depot early because we're supposed to get some rain on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Kind of a shame, because Watkins Glen is hosting their annual Grand Prix Festival that weekend. Last year we were up here closing on the place and receiving some furniture, and while we were unloading the trailer, old classic sports cars were driving by the house. Dozens of them, or more. They just kept coming.

We have this year's program, but they aren't clear about the route, apparently it changes from year to year. But we'll be ready if they drive by again, especially with all that extraneous vegetation cut down.

Anyway, I want to get some grass seed, and hopefully a few bales of straw and get that area seeded before it rains.

That butterfly is supposedly a Pearl Crescent. Tiny thing, maybe the size of a quarter. I didn't think I'd get a shot of it because these things never stick around while I go get a camera. Shot this one with the OM-3 with the 12-200mm zoom. Cropped and slightly edited in Photos.

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The Third of September

08:25 Wednesday, 3 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 58.32°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 81% Wind: 5.7mph
Words: 443

Jack Baty writes the kindest things. Thanks.

It's already 0830 and I'm just now getting around to this. I blame Colbert. He's back from summer vacation, which got me sucked back into YouTube. Then I need to check my forums (fora?) for the latest. Then the RSS feeds.

But here I am.

Hand is still sore, but the wrist feels better. I have chores I need to do, but I'm kind of undecided about what to do first. Priorities? Meh. We're retired. They're not going anywhere. The most pressing thing on my calendar was getting the Maverick its state vehicle inspection, which I've got on the calendar for Thursday, a day before the 10-day grace period ends.

I need to get another board for a shelf in the garage, and the brackets. I want to get some wood for a birdhouse. Apparently cedar fence pickets work well. So a trip to Home Depot is in the cards. The rocks still need to be picked up, and the debris bagged. I've got to finish ripping out the interior of the shed and bagging up all that stuff. I could use a walk.

I don't know. Raking and rocks I guess it'll be.

I'm also jonesing for playing with my Apple II computers. They're all down in storage. I ordered a pair of XDrives by JD Micro from MacEffects. They will allow me to boot an Apple II without any cables or drives hanging out the back. My //c computers have an overall smaller footprint, but they don't have the RAM expansion (beyond the stock 128K) or an accelerator card, so playing with Apple Pascal isn't as much fun.

I don't have any place to put either machine, but maybe if I get busy I can get the shed cleaned up and fixed up before it gets too cold? I don't have power in the shed, but I can put one of the "solar generators" in there. (Lithium battery and inverter.) In any event, it suggests to me that I need to get down to storage and move the Apple II stuff from the back of the unit so that I have some prayer of accessing it once the rest of our stuff gets here later this month.

At least I'm not bored.

I finished the Colossus book. I was a bit disappointed because it didn't go into any detail on how Tommy Flowers designed the machine. That would have been interesting. It was a wealth of information on German communication networks during the war, which was somewhat interesting, but not what I'd hoped the book was about.

Well, better get to doing something.

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September the Second

07:05 Tuesday, 2 September 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 53.2°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 5.5mph
Words: 712

First post of the month, though. What news, you ask? Not much, I'm afraid.

The weather has been marvelous. Cool, sunny, dry. Can still work up a sweat easily, out in the yard trying to pull up grape vine roots. I've been trying to clean up the area where we had all the weeds and Morrow's Honeysuckle cut down. Eventually (soon), I'll put some grass seed down. There are a lot of rocks I need to get picked up though, so hopefully that area will be safe to mow once it starts growing.

Mitzi's hummingbirds may have migrated, there's been no activity around the feeder for the past few days. Canadian geese are flying south, which is something I remember from when I was a kid here. I'd see flocks in Florida from time to time, but they're more prevalent here.

There were four or five Morrow's on either side of the culvert at the end of the driveway, and I went down there with the sawzall to kind of cut them down to the ground. Got a little careless and the blade jammed, which with a sawzall means the body of the tool keeps reciprocating violently, which my wrist wasn't necessarily prepared to absorb. It's sore, but hopefully it'll improve quickly.

I wake up in the morning and my hands are stiff and sore, though they seem to limber up quickly. A lot of vibration with the hedge trimmer, weed-whacker and sawzall, plus gripping them tightly, probably does a number on them. There was a bit of wire fence that an apple tree at the back of the property had grown around, which I cut around when I was removing the fence. Our neighbor used his tractor and bush hog to cut down all the weedy growth at the back of our property and his, so I went up there yesterday to clean up around the apple tree, a sumac and another Morrow's (there are two, but one is definitely on his property) with the hedge trimmer. I used a Gerber multi-tool to cut out the little chunk of fence the apple tree had grown through. So my hands were especially stiff and sore this morning.

My neighbor has a transit, so one of these days, now that the weeds are down (they were very tall weeds), he's going to set it up and we'll sight it down to the property pin at the north end of the property and then put some stakes in along the back line. Haven't heard from the surveyor with the pdf overlay yet.

The house in Florida hangs over us like a cloud. More for Mitzi than for me. I'm ready to go to township and learn what all the requirements are for building another house on the property, but she doesn't want to do anything until the Florida place is sold. Why that is, I can't say. I'd like to know all the rules before we begin to choose a design or floor plan, and there's no harm in getting out in front of that question.

I'm back to considering a battery solution for home backup power. The best location for a generator is not ideal. It'd be right outside our bedroom, for one thing. And it would have a pretty large footprint together with the propane tank, and all the services are right at that location as well, which we'll have to do some tie-ins with the new place so a generator would have to be moved at some point.

A battery would be silent, can be mounted on the wall off the ground. The downside is capacity, both in terms of power output and kWh. It'd take two batteries to provide enough continuous power to the radiant heat boiler, and if we had another 30 hour outage, we'd be without power for some of that time. I don't have a good feel for the duty cycle on the radiant heat boiler. If it's not too cold out, I think the mini-split could keep the place warm enough.

But I'm still inclined to go with a battery/inverter solution at this point. We'll see.

Anyway, time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking (into the future) and the beat goes on...

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