Saturday - Well, up in Martinez. The
house looks OK, my brother turned the heat on so it's not damp and
cold. Not much changed - I was under the impression that the bathroom
had undergone demolition before remodeling, but all they'd done was
pull off the wallpaper. Sink, shower, commode all are still in place.
For which I give thanks - my fifty-something knee's are not really up
to squatting over a hole in the floor....
Traffic up was decent, but it was raining lightly the last 100 miles.
When I arrived the neighbor's little dog started barking at me. When I
left Lancaster the neighbors little yapper was going off at me. Ain't
life grand. What is the appeal of these miserable little mutts anyway?
Get a cat, or get a real dog, that's what I say.
Book #4 was Kris Longknife: Defiant. Yeah, I know, but these are cheap and on the Kindle, so it makes it too easy.
Interesting. I see that every book this year has been a Kindle edition. Well, it is the 21st century.
That said, during this weeks' clearnup I found my old Radio Shack
cassette player under one of the debris piles, so I can listen to some
of the hundreds of books on tape I have. I should probably rip them,
perfectly legally, to MP3, for backup. Tapes don't last forever after
all, and MP3's would be easier to carry along on a long sailing trip.
Which brings to mind another to-do for the boat. When the bilge filled
in the last rainstorm it over-topped the fuel tank. I believe the vent
is at deck level, but what are the chances that water got in there
anyway? I should probably drain the diesel - you can get little pumps
for that. In fact, given that the fuel in there is a couple years old I
might donate it to a friend with a diesel car, and just put new clean
diesel in. Another chore...
Friday 7 January
2011
Friday
- More work about the house.
I did go over with some friends to look at a leak in a rental kitchen.
Their tenant had reported that water was bubbling up under several
tiles in their kitchen, and indeed it was. The house is raised well
above the street, and there were no water-filled planters next to the
foundation, but we think we saw a leak in the garage wall nearby.
Perhaps it is flooding from there - a plumber will have to be called.
Hopefully it isn't a pipe broken under the slab.
I used the Roku to watch Season 1, Episode 1 of Psych.
I'd never quite seen how it started, I don't follow it much. Annoyingly
I lost internet connectivity half way through, and had to reboot the
router, then reconnect and fast forward to where the stream had
stopped. I thought there'd be a bigger buffer, but apparently it's just
a couple of minutes?
Thursday 6 January 2011
Thursday
- More cleaning. Since there appears to be no work in the immediate
future I'll probably head up to Martinez tomorrow or the next day, and
do some work on the house.
Book #2 was Kris Longknife: Mutineer. Kind of average space opera stuff, easy to read, hard to remember...
Wednesday 5 January 2011
Wednesday
- mostly just cleaning house, still. As one gets rid of the easy stuff,
then other stuff comes to the fore. One thing was to go through my old
shirts and clothes in the master closet, and start tossing. As someone
who rotates shirts on about a 7 day schedule, 100 shirts or so is
ridiculous. I think I tossed over 50 that were ugly, torn, too small or
just too ugly to wear. Some are from college, a couple were probably my
fathers...
I suppose I could donate them to Goodwill, but then it'd be a half hour out of my day driving over and dropping them off.
Not much else to say, I don't know where the rest of the day goes. Keeping busy pretty much every minute of the day.
Book #1for 2011 was Lords of the Sea,
by John R. Hale. It goes into a lot more detail about the Peloponnesian
War(s) between Athens and Sparta. Very interesting. The author goes
into some detail about the strategy of the two powers - Athens ruled
the sea and, when Sparta and her allies sortied forth on land they
would attack behind the lines. As a strategy it sort of worked, but an
interesting side effect was that the Athenian naval forces, trireme
galleys for the most part, were manned and rowed by the lower classes
and they demanded a share in the rule of the city, and hence the
democratic impulse was strengthened.
Recommended.
Tuesday 4 January
2011
Tuesday
- One thing was to toss unwanted stuff, old books I'll never read again
(paperback Star Trek stuff,etc), newspapers, magazines and such. This cleared up a
lot of space and I was able to (almost) shelve all the books.
I then continued with the Great Filter for another four hours, and
finished with twelve legal sized boxes of stuff to be tossed, and two
to keep. A quick trip down to the UPS store was a bit of a spirit
dampener - they want $1/lb, and each box is about 22 lbs. And their
shredder is slow, you have to hand feed, it isn't a question of just
dumping stuff into a bin. So, I'll have to come up with a better
system, burn them or something. Rent a chipper?
The cats, by the way, had zero interest in going outside into the snow....
There was nothing on teevee, so I used the Roku to watch Sky King Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Fun, but the soundtrack volume varied wildly, I had to keep the remote
in my hand and turn the volume up/down continually. Perhaps the audio is
designed for surround-sound or something?
Monday 3
January 2011
Monday
- Beginning the New Years cleaning attempt. The downstairs areas are OK
after several days of picking up, not great, but acceptable, and now
it's time to tackle the rooms upstairs. There are essentially four, not
counting the bathrooms, and three are well nigh impassable.
Some of it is unshelved books, some old documents and reports, some is
stuff from my fathers' that I haven't had the heart to sort and box.
But it all needs to be done.
In addition there is, in the master walk-in closet, about twenty years
worth of old mail and correspondence that needs going through, and the
bulk to be tossed or destroyed. Some might actually pre-date my moving
into this place back in the early 1990's. I've been avoiding even
thinking about it, but it needs to be done. The first step was to bring
a lot of boxes downstairs, and then start sorting; saving personal
items and mail, tossing the vast majority of stuff. There is so much
with personally identifiable information that a shredder will be
needed, but my little personal unit just isn't up to the job, I'll have
to take it to UPS or a shredding service.
This took over eight hours, and I'm not done yet...
In the evening I went over friends, and had a nice dinner with a
great lasagna. I had to work for my supper - I removed the decrepit
versions of Norton and McAfee infesting their PC and installed
Microsoft Security Essentials. I also left AdAware on there, for now.
Sunday 2 January 2011
Sunday
- We do have a nice snowfall starting, and predicted to continue
overnight, which is fun! It started about lunchtime, and as I had lunch
with friends at Famous Dave's it continued to fall, the flakes getting
larger all the time:
Snowfall from the car, after lunch. Still not sticking...
By late afternoon the snow was sticking, at least on the grass:
And by mid evening it was sticking to the streets, as well - see
picture below.
Other than watching the snow fall, just relaxing in the evening, doing
minor chores. Not much to say.
Picture of
the Week
Photo
Notes: A
snowfall in Lancaster, Jan 2, 2011.
