Time, tide and formation wait for no man

07:58 Saturday, 23 May 2020
Words: 288

It's been a busy week here at Nice Marmot World Headquarters.

I have been persuaded to seek political office! This entails, as one might expect, a certain amount of paperwork and an unfamiliar maze of rules and regulations.

There's kind of a boot-strapping process to run for office. Since this is such a late start (last day to qualify is June 12), I have to submit a filing fee to run. Since I'm running for for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives, here in district 17, that filing fee is $1800.

Once you file the paperwork to declare yourself a candidate, you may then name a campaign treasurer and identify a financial institution to handle your campaign account. As luck would have it, you can name yourself as your treasurer, because it's a fair amount of work and also a fair amount of exposure if you get it wrong.

I've been stumbling my way through all that, coached and assisted by some committed activists, so it's not like I don't have help.

There will be a campaign web site, eventually. That takes money, and a debit card. I need to get the qualifying fee first though, and I've put in $500 of my own money to get started. I hate to ask folks for cash if I'm not willing to put up my own.

Anyway, this is a marker post so that the home page isn't just a test post.

Here's a link to my DonorBox fundraising site. I will have an ActBlue account, but they take longer to get set up and that process is underway.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day, and if you're so inlined, hit up the donor page and pitch in!

I ❤️ NY

07:38 Friday, 23 May 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 68.79°F Pressure: 1016hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 0mph
Words: 1261

Did that title without spaces around the heart, and with. What's the proper kerning for an emoji? Seems large.

It has been raining pretty much constantly since Wednesday. Tuesday was nice. I flew the mini 3 and walked around the property using the Seek app to identify plants and trees. It was a bit cool, 54°F about 12° below normal, but clear. Since then "blocking" has kept it solidly overcast and wet, and mostly in the 40s. Is this what Britain is like?

I am tired of the rain, but I haven't soured on our decision. It's soooo quiet here. No leaf blowers, no lawn mowers, no pressure washers. The other day, a wild turkey wandered across the front "lawn." Last night, three deer wandered across. A pair of robins are nesting in the flood lights above the side door. A rabbit lives under the shed and apparently likes the rain about as much as I do, as I haven't seen it since Tuesday when it came out to enjoy a buffet of tender plants here and there in the driveway and around the garage.

Yesterday was recycle day, so I loaded a big pile of cardboard and some cans into the truck and drove them down to the transfer point. On the way there I spotted a flock of wild turkeys in a corn field not far from the house.

When I got to the transfer station, I pulled around to the dumpsters and the guy is talking to someone in a pickup ahead of me. Truck pulls away and the guy says, "She said, 'That's my neighbor!'" I didn't recognize the truck, but apparently it was Lisa, our neighbors to the south. I think the guys' name was Ken, I told him I'd probably forget, but he lives just around the corner apparently. Nice guy.

After dropping off the recycling, I headed into the village to get some dinner. I was tired of eating alone at home. I stopped at The Hungry Burd (Because it's "Burdett." Get it?) and the place was nearly empty except for three women seated at a table and the host/server. It's a seat yourself anywhere sort of place, so I picked a table near the ladies to chat a bit.

I mentioned I lived up on South Hill Road next to Ray and Lisa Combs, and the older woman said, "Ray's my cousin." Small towns, gotta love 'em. The cook was seated with them, and she was the woman's granddaughter. Had a beer, a nice fish sandwich and a little conversation with the ladies.

I've got to start writing names down, because I've already forgotten hers, if I ever got it. But she's snowbird, traveling to Florida for the winter. I've told everyone I've spoken more than a few words to that we were relocating here from Florida, and nobody seemed surprised or thought I was crazy.

On Wednesday, I met with a guy from Martin Water Conditioning, kind of a big outfit from northern Pennsylvania. Jeff was from Pennsylvania, so it was a bit of a schlep up here. The water softener business is kind of, I don't know, icky? It's kind of like buying a car. A lot of claims, a lot of patter.

Jeff had started out as a service technician and moved into sales. They're Kinetico dealers, and Kinetico is a water softener brand. The quote we got was a lot higher than the system we installed in Florida, but Jeff was a really nice guy. Fedex dropped off the workbench I'd ordered from Home Depot, and I had the guy just leave it on the side porch. Thing weighed over 100 pounds. As Jeff was leaving, I went to drag the box into the house (it was getting pretty wet), and Jeff says, "Let me get that for you." I guess he thought I was old or something! Anyway, he brought it in for me which was nice.

I spoke with Mitzi about the quote, and we thought it was high but we were going to go with the "basic" system. Jeff told me that when we build the new place here, they will come out and move the equipment into the new house, and it can provide softened water for both houses. That was something that had kind of crossed my mind, how we were going to use the same well for both houses. But everyone has told me we can't use the same septic tank for both houses. Anyway, I'm sure there'll be a labor charge, but we may add a reverse osmosis unit at that point. There's also a UV disinfecting system, but that requires a bulb change every year. I'm not certain how enduring that supply chain will be, so I'm unconvinced at the moment. Probably no worse than reverse osmosis membranes. Resin lasts a long time, and I can probably stockpile a couple of changes, enough to last me the rest of my life, and a decade beyond. Sediment filters are lower tech, so maybe they'll be available, but I'll likely stockpile a bunch of those too.

In any event, feeling somewhat anxious about our choice, I spent yesterday morning doing a deep dive on water softeners. Can't say I'm an expert now, but I'm a bit more confident we made a good choice. Kinetico is an American company and all its products are built here, and the prices probably reflect that. It does have some unique design features that may preserve the resin media longer, and use less salt. (I don't think salt will be a logistical problem. We live near a salt mine.)

I was worried about the iron content of our water, but he convinced me that the softener could handle it, and my subsequent investigation seemed to confirm that. The county test has us at .2ppm iron, while his in-home test came up with .6ppm. That'll vary somewhat because of all the rainfall we've been having. I ran one of those Home Depot little test strips, and the color matched the .3ppm swatch on the chart. A softener should be able to handle anything less than 10ppm.

I learned there are two types of iron in well water, ferrous and ferric. Ferrous is "clear water" dissolved iron. It turns into insoluble ferric iron when it oxidizes, which it will eventually do. Over time, that's what turns the inside of your dryer orange, and all your white laundry, which I know from experience growing up.

So I called Jeff and told him we'd go with the basic system and they'll be out here next Wednesday to install it while I'm still here. That'll be nice.

I'm going to drive up to Mom's place tomorrow, after I dump the trash at the solid waste transfer station. That's about three and a half hours on the road. I plan to spend the night at my sister's, and I'll visit with Mom again on Sunday morning, heading back here Sunday afternoon, hopefully avoiding a lot of Memorial Day traffic.

Haven't made any progress on painting the interior of the garage, but maybe I'll do something about that next week. It's uncertain when this weather will clear out. If it turns nice, I may just do some exploring. The garage isn't going anyplace.

And the beat goes on...

Oh, just noticed I'm going to have to dig into the weather code for the marmot. That data is for Florida. It's 45°F here, about 24° cooler than what this post is showing.

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It's a Journey

07:24 Saturday, 23 May 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 49.78°F Pressure: 1027hPa Humidity: 87% Wind: 9.26mph
Words: 508

I feel as though I've been neglecting the marmot. The new house is consuming much of my attention, and it's a bit exhausting.

We're learning a lot of lessons that we will almost certainly never need to know again, so I'll pass a few along here in case anyone reading the marmot wants to design and build a house.

Here's a tip: If you're using a designer to draw plans, and an engineer or architect to sign them, make sure they use the same CAD software. Or plan to add about $1K to the cost of the review when the architect redraws the plans.

It's a long story. I'll spare you.

AKMA posted a wonderful story the other day.

The weather today is remarkably similar to the weather reported on this day a year ago. Wet and rainy. The weather data in the current posts is correct for this location.

It was nice yesterday, so I spent a lot of time outside with the weed-whacker, cleaning up here and there. The construction driveway has created a couple of islands where the mower can't reach, so we'll need to get those with the weed-eater. The county came by and mowed the side of the ditch nearest the road, so I went down into the ditch and cut down the growth in the center and the side nearest the lawn. I only did the right half of the property, divided by the driveway. I'll do the other half when it stops raining.

I'll miss The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I never stayed up to watch it at night. We don't have cable here, and our over the air reception is minimal, but I watched it nearly every morning, at least his opening monologue.

I'll never watch whatever it is CBS is replacing it with.

I got an email yesterday from Amazon that my Prime subscription would expire tomorrow. That made me happy. I haven't bought anything from Amazon since February when they started that little mini-boycott. Screw Bezos.

Again, I'll encourage anyone who hasn't already done so to remove all retail apps from your phone. Sure it makes it convenient to shop, but they're gathering so much more data about you just from having the app on your phone. You can always visit the web site using your browser and shop that way.

I went to my first Sustainable Hector meeting the other night. Starting to stretch my volunteer muscles around here, get to know some people. They had a Watershed Forum presentation the next night, talking about hazardous algal blooms. Can't seem to get away from those. There's a dumpster day/swap meet coming up in June that I'll volunteer at.

We got our permit from the watershed protection department. Had the septic tank pumped out, peered into it and decided it was functioning properly (I should hope so!), so now we get to put another one in for the new house and tie it into the existing sand filter.

Anyway, the beat goes on...

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