Dryer Sheet

Tonight I was sitting on the floor in the family room giving Penny a bit of attention. She seemed to be obsessed with my right sleeve. I didn’t think that to be too unusual, because she’s obsessive about many things (sticks, balls, TV, etc). In short order, she extracted a dryer sheet that had been stuffed under my cuff pretty much the whole day without my noticing it. Thanks Penny! You are useful after all!

 

The Day After

I enjoyed my day today. Enjoyment started by me not getting out of bed until nearly 9:00am. That’s a leisurely wake-up time for me. I got dressed, checked the Internets, and then drove to Lowes to buy a face mask and price insulation. Insulation is quite a bit more expensive than I had remembered. Before going, I did some quick math to figure out how much more I’d need. The answer was… a lot. Luckily, it looks like an insulation purchase is a tax credit this year, so I’ll get all that back. But I didn’t buy any yet. I need to decide if I want to continue with tripled-up rolls of R13, single rolls of R38, or maybe go with blown-in. An equal length of R38 costs five times more than R13, so even after tripling the R13, it still only costs 60% of what R38 would. I haven’t done the math on the blown-in stuff yet, but it looked roughly equivalent to R13. I guess a lot of people wouldn’t even bother with R13 vs R38 since there’s a tax credit involved, but it would bug me to know that I could have done it for so much less, even if “the government” is paying for it. Newsflash – the taxpayer is the government, and I’m a taxpayer. Anyhow – no decision yet.

When I got home I donned a face mask and hung another four rolls of insulation. By then it was time for lunch, so Va, Beth, and I went into Concord. After we ate, we went to the church and changed the Cradle Roll room over to the Christmas program. Then we came home again.

Tonight I have to get ready to teach my Sabbath School class, plus I have to polish up a sermon (I have the pulpit during the worship service).

 

Stuffed

It would be safe to say that I am not hungry at the moment. We went to our neighbor’s house for Thanksgiving and had a pretty good time. Poor Penny stayed home alone, but she had plenty of exercise earlier in the day. I had taken her out for a bit and kicked the ball around, and then a little later I finished raking the yard. All the while I raked, she would bring me the soccer ball, and I’d kick it into the woods for her. Then she’d tear off after it and bring it back again.

Then Daniel (our neighbor and David’s friend) came over, and he and David took Penny down to the pond for a bit. While they were off doing that, Beth had gotten out the Easy Bake Oven. I helped her with that, and we made a miniature yellow cake which we shared. As soon as we polished that off, we put on our coats and walked up my trail through the woods and over to the neighbor’s house.

They love Va’s chocolate pie. Daniel decided to have dinner at his Dad’s house (our neighbor) rather than at his Mom’s house because he was told Va would be bringing pie. Mmmm. After dinner we played some games, and then we came home again. Penny was beside herself with joy.

 

Extra Slow

Today was excruciatingly slow for me today at work. Beth was off from school, so I was able to go in early. I wanted to get there an hour early and leave an hour late to make up for leaving early Monday and Tuesday. As hard as it was to get up early, it was even harder to stay there past my normal quitting time. I was about the only one in the building. I was the last one out of the garage.

Just before it was time for me to FINALLY leave, Va called me. She wanted me to stop at the grocery store to pick up a few things. Normally, this is not a problem. But today is Thanksgiving Eve. There is a high-falutin’ grocery store outside my office window and across the street, and I had noted that the parking lot was packed all day. People couldn’t even get into the lot and were backing back out onto Main Street. And yet… Va wanted me to go to a grocery store.

There’s a much more blue-collar grocery store across the other street, so I went there. But I knew better than to drive there. The parking lot was a madhouse, so I walked. It was pretty bad, but not as bad as I had expected. Maybe bracing myself helped a little.

Stoopid Joke Time: This morning when my former supervisor (who is Canadian) got in, I poked my head into his office and wished him a Happy Columbus Day. He got it. If you did too, congrats (it helps to be Canadian). If you want an explanation, press “more”.

 

486

This is post 486 on this blog, and if you’re a geek, that’s a number with a bit of meaning, since it’s shorthand for one of Intel’s microprocessors – the predecessor of the Pentium. It was more formally known as the 80486. And of course, this leads into a story that plumbs the depths of dorkdom.

About 15 years ago I got in my car to go to work and happened to notice my odometer. A quick estimate told me that when I got there, it would read 80487. That was almost cool. And then I realized that if I took a shortcut over a dirt road during part of my commute, it would shave off about a mile, and I would achieve geek odometer Nirvana. So that’s what I did. This is only noteworthy because of what happened next.

It just so happened that we were having a bit of an ice storm that day. That was unusual, because I lived in Virginia at the time, and we didn’t get ice storms every other week. Actually, we kinda did that year, but that’s beside the point. I gingerly turned onto the dirt road, and it was exceedingly slick. I was tooling along at about 2MPH when I met an oncoming vehicle. I gently nudged the steering wheel. The nose edged around and then kept edging until the car was perpendicular to my intended direction of travel. The oncoming pickup missed me by a hair, and the front end of my car slid into a ditch.

I was somehow able to back it outta there though. Don’t ask me how. It hardly seems possible in retrospect. Then giving up on geek odometer Nirvana, I eased back out towards the main (paved) road. That’s when another car turned onto the dirt road. I watched in slow motion through my rear-view mirror as that car’s passenger-side wheels slid into the ditch. There was plenty of traffic on the main road, so I had plenty of time to sit there and watch. The car carried two people, a man and a woman. The woman was driving. The man got out, went around to the back of the car and pushed. The passenger-side wheels stayed in the ditch. The car moved unhelpfully forward. I realized that it would be pretty easy to get it out of the ditch if the guy would just push the front of the car to the left instead of pushing the car forward, but he persisted. Sigh.

I shut off my engine and got out to help. I took two steps and found out exactly what was making the road so slick. The ice on the road was covered with about a quarter inch of water. On step two my foot slid right out from under me and I did a dramatic face-plant on the road. Yup. In a quarter inch of water. I was pretty soaked. “You OK?” he yelled. “Yeah” I replied, picking myself up out of the frigid puddle. Then I went over and gave the front of his car a nice shove and it popped right out of the ditch.

What to do next? I sat in the car and considered my options. If I went home, I imagined it unfolding like this:
Va: “What happened?!”
Me: “Car slid into a ditch and I slipped and fell into some water covering the road.”
Va: “Were you hurt?”
Me: “No.”
Va: “Was the car damaged?”
Me: “No, it’s fine.”
Va” “Where did this happen?”
Me: “On that dirt road that connects Rt 50 to 606.”
Va: “A dirt road? What were you doing on a dirt road during an ice storm?”
Me: “mumble mumble, eight-zero- four-eight-six, mumble mumble.”

I didn’t have the heart to imagine that unfolding any further. Instead I cranked the heat and the A/C on full blast and went on to work. The heat dries out the clothes and the A/C dries out the air. By the time I got to work, I was plenty dry enough, thank you. I vowed to never tell anyone what had happened. And then I immediately told everyone I knew what I dork I was anyhow. A story that good HAS to be told!

In other news…
We sold the last of our fruit tonight. Whew! We only had five boxes left when we started, and those were gone in two hours. Now I’m thinking we should do this again next month, only expand to two more stores. I think I could safely order and extra 36 crates if we did that. However, that will be pretty close to Christmas, and it might be difficult to get Pathfinders out then. On the other hand, it gives the parents time for some last-minute shopping if they drop them off with us. I’ll have to poll them and see

 

Fruit Stand

Tonight we set up our fruit stand at the exit to Sam’s Club. It was tough going at first. NOBODY wanted oranges. But soon enough people did start to buy it. I shouldn’t have been surprised that everyone who did buy fruit opted for the quarter cases. That was the only size that ended up selling. Period. Luckily, that’s also the most profitable size for us to sell to, but we have to sell a lot of it. We brought 12 cases with us. We sold about half that in 24 transactions.

The kids had a system going after a while. One would stand near the door, make eye contact, and say “Would you like to buy some oranges?” More often than not, they would say no, and that’s when two more kids would say “Happy Thanksgiving!” That almost always brought a smile (but not always).

I was hoping we’d have sold it all in the first night, but that didn’t happen. Looks like we’ll do it again tomorrow.

 

Raked

Today Va took the kids in to have their portraits made. That left me at home with Penny. I decided that we should see if we could find a geocache I had looked for with Beth a week ago. Only this time I read the description before setting out. I found it with no problem and logged it.

Then we came home and I began raking the yard. I hadn’t been raking long when Va and the kids got home. I finished raking the front and then moved to the back. I rake by laying a tarp over the yard (in an unraked section), and then I rake a three-foot swath onto the tarp. Then I move the tarp back another three feet. I only take 3′ bites because that way I don’t have to rake the same leaves twice. When the tarp is full, I haul it into the woods and dump it out. I managed to get half the back yard raked and then it was time for lunch.

We went to Olive Garden. We took both cars because the boys and I were going to stay in Concord for a Pathfinder meeting, and Va and Beth would go on home. We got to the meeting early so I could work on the computer lab at the school.

Katrina (the teacher) had told me about a couple of websites that needed a plug-in. After some digging, I found that they needed Shockwave. From what I can tell, there is no Shockwave for Linux, so that’s not going to work. Oh well. I also messed about with the new static IP I had ordered and turned on some port forwarding so I could log into the terminal server from the outside. I tested that when I got home, and it works, yay! Now I can perform remote maintenance.

People trickled in during the Pathfinder meeting and picked up their fruit. I didn’t check to see how many people still haven’t picked theirs up, but I don’t think it’s very many. Most of them are people I work with, I guess, and I will pick theirs up in the morning and bring them into the office.

 

First Delivery

Today has been a long day. We went to church, and then after the services Va had an Adventurer meeting. I helped her set up, and I cooked some mac-n-cheese for some of the refugee kids (and my own kids) that go to our church. They don’t usually bring food to a potluck, and that is entirely understandable.

The Adventurer meeting ended at about 3:00pm, and the fruit truck was due to arrive at 5:00. So rather than drive home (30 minutes) and then drive back (another 30 minutes), Jonathan, Beth, and I went geocaching. Va went on home, and David hung out at the church with his netbook surfing the web.

The geocache was on the other side of a pond that I am convinced was built to be an artificial wetland. We walked around it and about the time I decided we were at ground zero, Beth found the cache. Even before I had started looking! Then we hustled back to the church to wait for the truck.

It was a short wait. Beth wrote a few things in her blog while we waited. She had also written a little this morning which I found pretty funny.

When the truck arrived, Jonathan, David, and I were the only able-bodied people there. Several had told me that they had intended to help us unload, but none had yet arrived. I directed the truck to park in the back, and by the time he stopped the truck and opened the doors, people started to arrive. At first they came in a trickle, but then in a torrent! I didn’t count them all, but I feel confident in estimating the number at about 25, and that was just the people from our church. We were also the drop point for the church in Manchester, and they had plenty of people on hand as well.

The truck was unloaded in record time. I think this was the most people I have ever seen at a fruit-truck-unloading. We began sorting the fruit and dividing some of the crates (we sell half- and quarter-crates in addition to full ones). Va had printed out some mailing labels for me that had people’s names and their orders on them. Cheryl took on the task of applying the labels to the boxes, and pretty soon everyone who was there and who had ordered some fruit had gotten theirs.

And all the while this was going on, other church members were arriving and buying more. I had bought an extra 28 cases of fruit, and as of this writing, I have only 14 left unsold. We will take that to Sam’s Club Monday evening and try to sell the rest of it. I am quite confident that people will snap it up too, but that remains a matter of faith.

After all that was sorted out, Jonathan, David, Beth, and I headed over to Taco Bell and had some dinner. I was pretty tired by then. We had a nice time together though, and then we came on home. Penny was glad to see us (and very excited).

Tomorrow we have a Pathfinder meeting, and will (hopefully) have the rest of our customers come out then for their fruit. I will probably spend the morning raking the yard, as it needs it pretty desperately. The leaves are off the trees and the snow has not yet fallen. What better time for is there raking?

 

Penny Hates TV

Penny, our Border Collie has a thing about the TV. I’m not sure what it is, but when anyone is sitting in the family room and gets up, Penny goes into full alert in case we’re headed to the living room where the TV is. Usually we’re not. We watch very little TV at our house. But when someone does turn on the TV, Penny goes into a frenzy. She’ll pick up one of her toys and shake it violently as she spins around in circles.

Then we found that we don’t even have to turn on the TV to get her to do that. I think David was the first one to aim his empty hand (mimicking a remote) at the TV and say “dvvvvv” (which is the noise the TV makes when it comes on). Penny went wild.

There are several other things that will trigger this response, including the following phrases:
“Can I watch TV?”
“TV”
“Where’s the remote?”
“Video”
“DVD”
“dvvvv”
“Curious George”

Aiming a cell phone does this too. Or aiming an empty hand. We don’t even have to be in the same room as the TV. Sometimes we’ll do this just to make Penny look like an idiot. Va says we’re being mean, but I see it as letting Penny perform one of her “duties” for us. It’s no less useful than some of the other things she does for us (stick collection).

Every morning when I leave the house to go to work and drop Beth off at school, Penny always darts out ahead of us, rounds up a soccer ball (or a basketball), and brings it to me. If I ignore this, she will as often as not manage to wedge it under one of the cars. I have popped more than one ball by running it over. So now I am always sure to kick it into the woods for her. I usually kick it once, then put my laptop in the front seat. By then, she will often have the ball in the driveway. If I try to leave then, there’s a good chance I’ll pop yet another ball, as they are pretty hard to see in the driveway when I’m backing out.. So I put the keys in the ignition while she brings the ball to the garage. Then I kick it back into the woods as hard as I can. She tears after it, and I dive into the car, start the engine, and back out. Then I buckle up. Penny will watch with a big smile on her face as we leave, satisfied that she has done her most important duty of the morning. Then she’ll take care of her other “business” before asking Va to let her back in the house.

Such is life with Penny!

 

Winter’s Coming

We are on the threshold of winter here now. It often falls below freezing at night now, but then it gets warm during the day. It won’t be too long before it stops doing that, and then we’ll have our first snow. After that, we’ll start having ice dams on the roof.

Ice dams are caused when the heat from the house melts the snow, but the air temperature above is still below freezing. The snow melt runs down the roof until it gets to the eaves which overhang the house. Because the eaves are hanging over the edge of the house, they do not get warmed by the house. So the water freezes. This builds the ice dam which can cause water to back up onto the roof and stand in a pool. Then the roof leaks.

Last year I installed some eave heaters to melt the ice off the eaves, but running those cost us something like an extra $120 per month. Ouch! We turned them off rather quickly. That is neither a green nor a financially sound way to attack ice dams. It is better to keep the roof cold, so that’s what I started working on tonight.

Our attic floor is insulated, but we have a stairway leading up there. Our attic is very large and open with a subfloor, and we store gobs of junk up there. The door to that stairway is not insulated, and the heat from the house whooshes up almost unimpeded. When the snow on the roof melts, it always melts right above that stairway. When we bought this house, I also bought several rolls of insulation for the attic, because I wanted to finish it out. Unfortunately, I bought the wrong kind, and lots of it.

I bought rolls of R13, which is great if you want to insulate a wall built with 2×4’s (meaning a 4″ thick wall). Our rafters are 12″ wide though, and I found after buying all this stuff that it’s not legal to insulate it with only 4″ of insulation. I hauled all this insulation to the house in a moving truck that we used to fetch our things out of storage (while we had it), so taking it back was not going to be an easy thing to do. Instead, I asked the building inspector if I could just slap three layers of R13 insulation up there, which would take me to R39 (basically). He said “no problem.” But I never got around to doing that.

The next thing to consider is that it is very important to leave an airway from the eaves to the ridge vent. This keeps the underside of the roof at the same temperature as the upper side, unless you have a blast of heat whooshing up from the stairway. If you just slap the insulation against the underside of the roof, all kinds of bad things happen. So I bought some styrofoam panels made for just this reason. These get stapled to the underside of the roof, and the insulation goes on that. The styrofoam panels provide an airway, and all is good. I hung about half of these a couple of years ago, and that’s where this project stalled. Tonight I unstalled it.

I went up there after dinner and hung two layers of insulation between three of the rafters. It still needs a third. I did this by unrolling the R13 and folding it in half, then wedging it between the rafters and stapling it in place. The third layer will follow later. After I did three rows of this, I counted rafters and rolls of R13. I’m going to need another two dozen rolls. But maybe I should get some R39 instead of R13, I dunno.

My plan is to put up two layers for now, covering as much of the roof as I can, and then go over it with the third layer. I think that having the entire roof covered with two layers would be better than having some covered with three and some covered with zero (at least temporarily). I need to plan out how I’m going to do this though (buy more R13, or get some R39? How much?) Also, I may get a tax credit for buying insulation. Can’t get a tax credit for the stuff I bought five years ago.

Three rows is not a lot of progress, but I ran out of time before I needed to get Beth to bed. Also, it’s hard work and about wore me out! If I can add three rows per night for four nights a week, I should have this whole thing zipped up before Christmas. Or maybe that’s how I will spend my Thanksgiving break, who knows? Anyhow, this should greatly help both the heating bill and the ice dam problem. And it’s long overdue.

Don’t think I’ll be able to work on this any tomorrow, and before I start again, I want to get some dust masks and find my safety goggles. Maybe wear gloves too. Insulation is nasty stuff!