The Farm
Friday, September 28, 2007
Here's a tidbit from Alan Tonelson, a fellow at the United States Business and Industry Council:
"Wal-Mart certainly does lower the cost of living for American consumers by offering low prices, but it also lowers the standard of living, because as jobs leave the U.S., the country's wage level gets lowered, too. And so we're no better off than we were before."
Thought it was worth mentioning.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
We're starting work on the last big construction project before winter. And the winner is...the barn! Here's the current southern wall of the barn. This is the side that gets the most sun and rain. I replaced the middle section two years ago (there should be one more slat, but it's a long story why it's not there - OK, not so long, here goes: the barn design calls for each of the three sections to be populated with 2"x6"x12' spruce tongue and groove boards. IMO, spruce is too soft to span that length, resulting in the severe twisting evident in the picture above in the first and third sections. The middle section was just as bad, so I replaced it with 2"x6"x12' douglas fir. T&G doug fir needs to be special-ordered and when I got the load, one of the boards was too twisted to use. I cut it to relive the twist and all was well. Still, I wasn't happy with just replacing the 12' sections with doug fir. So I also had the vertical h-channels made (visible in the middle section). This summer, I put up the h-channel in the middle, effectively shortening the span to 6'. Unfortunately, I was careless in cutting the twisted 2"x6"x12', so the two pieces were not 6' each, and unusable in the current configuration. So that's why there's a board missing.)
Aside from the buckling of the remaining sections, in the winter, the rain is driven by prevailing winds against the south side. Even under ideal conditions, i.e., all three sections replaced with doug fir, there's still a gap at the top of the wall of about 4 inches. This, as far as I can tell, is by design. The boards are supposed to be slipped in at the top of the edge h-channels and dropped into place. Accordingly, there would be no way to place the last board to fill the 4" gap. We tried ripping 2"x4" boards to precisely fill the gaps, but the resulting structure was still not water-tight. The next effort (which can be seen in the photo) was to lap a 1"x6" over the gap, but this proved to be ineffective as well. The underlying spruce walls continue to buckle away from the 1"x6" and the center section (now removed) was still not water-tight. I suspect that this barn is not oriented correctly and that one of the sides with an overhanging eave should be presented to the prevailing winds.
So, the plan was to affix an overhanging awning to the frame of the south wall. The overhang would protect the walls from the rain. A good plan: simple, inexpensive. Then, we got to thinking. If we're going to put an awning on that side, it might be nice to store some stuff under the awning: maybe some hay, feed, that sort of thing. Clearly, though, if we're going to put hay or other perishables under the awning, they would need to be protected from the rain that gets driven by the southern winds.
I guess we'll have to wall in the awning, then, and make a proper room out of it. So that's what we're doing. The tractor work is done, leveling out the 10' section we decided to enclose. So that's the haps, man.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Things are going well with Vegas and me. DW was kind enough to come to my lesson this week and take photos. Whee. He's a good boy. I'm considering entering a show next month. Better get rolling on that if it's going to happen, though.
Look out, Monkey!
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Yar, it's been so long since we updated. Lots of new stuff to report. First, lineup changes:
- Vegas, a 16.2 hand Trakehner/Thoroughbred gelding (ouch!). Our current crew of little girl sized horses were getting tired of lugging me around so we got a more substantial fellow. I'm really excited about him: my first horse :-O
- Monkey, a 1.2 hand DMH Tuxedo. We've been interviewing for the position of Emergency Backup Kitten for a while and we do like our tuxedos.
Pretty cool, what? There's more stuff going on, but, for now, here are some more photos: Vegas, Vegas, Vegas, and Vegas.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
I got your back, darling...I'll take over for a day.
What can I tell you? Hmmmm... hmmmmm..... Oh yeah! We're fostering kittens again. Right now we have four semi-feral kittens in our upstairs bedroom. They are probably 5 weeks old and very hissy and scared. We hear them bombing around like a herd of elephants at various times during the day. We also go visit with them and try to socialize them to people, but they really aren't interested. At least they know how to use the cat box and we don't have to keep them in the bathroom and clean cat shit off walls of the bathtub twice a day. That was fun. Real fun.
My two riding horses are in various states of disrepair. Miles was diagnosed with pedal osteitis a couple months ago, so no more jumping for him. Sigh. We never did even get to a show...Colin holds that honor. He's got a fancy kind of shoe in front, but I don't really like them - or at least I don't like how they were applied. And his medial-lateral balance is off, too, but the farrier thought there wasn't enough hoof to work with so he's waiting for the hooves to grow out a bit. I'm going to have my (new) regular farrier work on them next week.
Paddy has the on-going crack saga in his left hind. It is driving me crazy and is one of the reasons I switched farriers - for two years my old farrier wasn't able to fix it - we'll see if the new guy can. I put pictures on a horsey-bulletin board and got some comments about the balance of his feet so at least I feel like I have a game plan. I'm also taking him to the vet clinic for x-rays on Saturday to check out the balance of the bones inside the foot. Cha-ching!
But I'm sure that's all boring for you. So let's see, some spicy news...Pico is sitting on the couch farting next to me and whoooo boy it is not pleasant.
We're still waiting for Barley to ...dare I say it...kick it - have you ever had a pet that you just didn't like? My conscience keeps me from giving her away or taking her to the pound, but that dog drives me nuts and I have to admit I will probably not be too sad when she's gone. I'm such a bad person, I can't believe I just shared that.
We've got a busy social season planned - dinner with neighbors last night, drinks tonight with the same people + two more, a progressive dinner party with 18 of us on Friday night, the following weekend a holiday party, the weekend after that another holiday party. I've never been so busy!
Work is sucking because it is the holidays and we're very busy. I miss my old holiday work schedule of the closed office between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Those were the days, indeed.
Peeee - eeeewwwwww! Pico!!!!
Gotta go!
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Rats, so, I blew it already. I was supposed to blog every day and I missed yesterday. No great honking surprise, I guess. Anyway, here's something for today. It's cold here, brrr. It's been dropping down into the 20's at night. Maybe not hugely cold for some of you, but that's about as cold as it gets here. It really makes me feel bad for Susan when she goes out to feed the horses in the morning. Worse, when she gets up, she lets in a draft of cold air under the covers.
Cold or not, one of the projects I'm working on now is a deck for the side of the house. It's a little more complicated than I can handle, so I've got the help of Phil, one of our neighbors, and a buddy of his, Mark. To place its location, let's first step briefly into the Wayback Machine.
In the beginning, there was this (no, not Kenya, nor even a little bit of snow, look into the background). This was the location of, as Vernon (Mr. Altman, to you, Sonny) so aptly named it, the "White Trash Pool", more formerly known as a Doughboy. We moved the pool to a neighbor with kids for the hard-driving bargain price of $0. This is on the east side of the house. In case it's not obvious from the photo, the grassy part where Kenya is sniffing drops off about five feet to a flat spot where lied the pool.
So, the plan was to build the World's Biggest and Most Expensive Deck Imaginable. Well, to be fair, that wasn't precisely the original plan in so many words, it's just kind of turned out that way. I'm not quite sure when we broke ground, but this picture was taken on 9/19. The viewpoint from this photo is almost the same as the one with Kenya above, so it should give you some idea of the positioning of the Monstrosity.
There are two things that make this deck:
- cool
- harder than I can do by myself
The first thing is an area designed to hold a hottub. Hottubs are not heavy, particularly. You'd get the same load on the deck as you would inviting over four of me (though why you'd want to, I can't imagine. You'd never get a word in edgewise). But hottubs on their own aren't really much fun: not, at least, until you put water in them. Then they get really heavy, like having 40 of me standing in the same place on the deck. Here's where we would stand.
The second bit that makes this deck too complicated for my little head and clumsy fingers is a walkway that runs around the perimeter. We did this to avoid an unsightly railing, which is necessary if the deck surface is more than three feet above grade. Well, just don't walk off this end in a drunken stupor. If you did, and then turned back around to look at the house, or, more likely, to curse at me and ask for a phone to call your lawyer, this is what you'd see.
Hopefully, we'll be able to finish it soon. A hottub would be just to thing to fight this non-California sub-freezing weather.
Rats, so, I blew it already. I was supposed to blog every day and I missed yesterday. No great honking surprise, I guess. Anyway, here's something for today. It's cold here, brrr. It's been dropping down into the 20's at night. Maybe not hugely cold for some of you, but that's about as cold as it gets here. It really makes me feel bad for Susan when she goes out to feed the horses in the morning. Worse, when she gets up, she lets in a draft of cold air under the covers.
Cold or not, one of the projects I'm working on now is a deck for the side of the house. It's a little more complicated than I can handle, so I've got the help of Phil, one of our neighbors, and a buddy of his, Mark. To place its location, let's first step briefly into the Wayback Machine.
In the beginning, there was this (no, not Kenya, nor even a little bit of snow, look into the background). This was the location of, as Vernon (Mr. Altman, to you, Sonny) so aptly named it, the "White Trash Pool", more formerly known as a Doughboy. We moved the pool to a neighbor with kids for the hard-driving bargain price of $0. This is on the east side of the house. In case it's not obvious from the photo, the grassy part where Kenya is sniffing drops off about five feet to a flat spot where lied the pool.
So, the plan was to build the World's Biggest and Most Expensive Deck Imaginable. Well, to be fair, that wasn't precisely the original plan in so many words, it's just kind of turned out that way. I'm not quite sure when we broke ground, but this picture was taken on 9/19. The viewpoint from this photo is almost the same as the one with Kenya above, so it should give you some idea of the positioning of the Monstrosity.
There are two things that make this deck:
- cool
- harder than I can do by myself
The first thing is an area designed to hold a hottub. Hottubs are not heavy, particularly. You'd get the same load on the deck as you would inviting over four of me (though why you'd want to, I can't imagine. You'd never get a word in edgewise). But hottubs on their own aren't really much fun: not, at least, until you put water in them. Then they get really heavy, like having 40 of me standing in the same place on the deck. Here's where we would stand.
The second bit that makes this deck too complicated for my little head and clumsy fingers is a walkway that runs around the perimeter. We did this to avoid an unsightly railing, which is necessary if the deck surface is more than three feet above grade. Well, just don't walk off this end in a drunken stupor. If you did, and then turned back around to look at the house, or, more likely, to curse at me and ask for a phone to call your lawyer, this is what you'd see.
Hopefully, we'll be able to finish it soon. A hottub would be just to thing to fight this non-California sub-freezing weather.
Rats, so, I blew it already. I was supposed to blog every day and I missed yesterday. No great honking surprise, I guess. Anyway, here's something for today. It's cold here, brrr. It's been dropping down into the 20's at night. Maybe not hugely cold for some of you, but that's about as cold as it gets here. It really makes me feel bad for Susan when she goes out to feed the horses in the morning. Worse, when she gets up, she lets in a draft of cold air under the covers.
Cold or not, one of the projects I'm working on now is a deck for the side of the house. It's a little more complicated than I can handle, so I've got the help of Phil, one of our neighbors, and a buddy of his, Mark. To place its location, let's first step briefly into the Wayback Machine.
In the beginning, there was this (no, not Kenya, nor even a little bit of snow, look into the background). This was the location of, as Vernon (Mr. Altman, to you, Sonny) so aptly named it, the "White Trash Pool", more formerly known as a Doughboy. We moved the pool to a neighbor with kids for the hard-driving bargain price of $0. This is on the east side of the house. In case it's not obvious from the photo, the grassy part where Kenya is sniffing drops off about five feet to a flat spot where lied the pool.
So, the plan was to build the World's Biggest and Most Expensive Deck Imaginable. Well, to be fair, that wasn't precisely the original plan in so many words, it's just kind of turned out that way. I'm not quite sure when we broke ground, but this picture was taken on 9/19. The viewpoint from this photo is almost the same as the one with Kenya above, so it should give you some idea of the positioning of the Monstrosity.
There are two things that make this deck:
- cool
- harder than I can do by myself
The first thing is an area designed to hold a hottub. Hottubs are not heavy, particularly. You'd get the same load on the deck as you would inviting over four of me (though why you'd want to, I can't imagine. You'd never get a word in edgewise). But hottubs on their own aren't really much fun: not, at least, until you put water in them. Then they get really heavy, like having 40 of me standing in the same place on the deck. Here's where we would stand.
The second bit that makes this deck too complicated for my little head and clumsy fingers is a walkway that runs around the perimeter. We did this to avoid an unsightly railing, which is necessary if the deck surface is more than three feet above grade. Well, just don't walk off this end in a drunken stupor. If you did, and then turned back around to look at the house, or, more likely, to curse at me and ask for a phone to call your lawyer, this is what you'd see.
Hopefully, we'll be able to finish it soon. A hottub would be just to thing to fight this non-California sub-freezing weather.
Monday, November 27, 2006
OK, so I'm going to post every day now until we're caught up. There it is, written in pixels, unbreakable.
Last Sunday (well, a week ago yesterday, so two Sunday's ago), we went to the Infineon Raceway (Sears Point, by the old way of naming things) for a half-day driving school. They outfitted us with slick-o driving suits, helmets, and a little driving physics. Then, zoom zoom, off we go.
Our first track session involved getting in a line and following the pace car. The pace car, a white mustang, just visible here, drove around the track, picking the correct line through each turn and straight-away. Our job was to follow the pace car *exactly*. Since it was a little drizzly and misty that morning, we had to stay on the pace car's line or suffer the consequences. The consequences, as some of our classmates found out (just couldn't follow directions, could they?) were a "little thingy", so defined as a spin where you don't make contact with anything.
So the pace car chose the "line" and we followed like little zippy fast ducks. Since, as I mentioned, the track was wet, we started out on the "wet line", which is a little higher through the turns. The "dry line" right down low (here and here), which we got to follow later as the track dried up, is very slippery when wet due to deposited rubber and oil.
After our first track session, we piled into an SUV driven by one of the instructors. He took us around the track again showing us where to accelerate and where to brake and why to stay off the dry line when the track is wet. To show us that, he had us get out in one of the turns and just shuffle our feet along the track in the dry line. It was literally as slippery as ice.
After one more follow the pace car and one more short lecture, we were back in the cars for solo sessions (no pace car). We weren't allowed to pass each other, but, since they spaced us out at intervals of several hundred yars, the situation didn't present itself anyway. This was our fastest and funnest session yet.
The cars we drove were open-wheel formula cars. They had about 125 HP, which might not sound like much, but the car itself weighs about the same as a heavy motorcycle, so that works out to be plenty fast enough. We got going to about 100 MPH on the fastest part of the track, which seemed like plenty fast enough. It was kinda like sitting in a very very fast bathtub. It was a whole lot of fun and we learned a lot about driving bathtubs. I found it interesting how cerebral racecar driving really is. There's a lot of physics you have to keep in mind to avoid "thingies" and "demolition" (a thingy with an unhappy ending). I wonder if it'd be more interesting to watch racing on tv now?
