Saturday - Not much going on. Writing
out some checks for the quarterly taxes, gave the car a light wash. I
should wax it too, but was caught up in some other things and never got
around to it. Maybe I'll just run it through one of the wash 'n wax
places for now. Didn't clean the interior, either. Oh well, better than
it was!
Friday 8 June
2012
Friday
- OTR. More looking at drawings, doing preliminary redlining, and so on.
On the road home, a bit after 4:00pm. Didn't arrive in Lancaster until
after 7:00pm, three hours to go about 100 miles. The I-14 was jammed,
there was an accident on both shoulders of the northbound lanes, and I
suspect something besides the usual Friday traffic and the accident was
going on, but it cleared up after Soledad Canyon.
The cat was happy to see me, but not frantic, which is good.
I didn't have time to do much on the boat, but I picked stuff up and
put it away and threw asome way and took away a lot. When I use it like
a hotel it starts to look like a college kids dorm after a while. Cruft
just accumulates. I meant to clean, vacuum and paint, but never got the
chance this trip.
Apparently another hobo chose my sleeping bag to die. Taking it back to Lancaster to be washed.
I hope (plan) to go sailing with the Sea Scout on Sunday, so I wanted
things mostly in order for then. I assume we'll drive down early Sunday
morning, perform a couple of quick maintenance items, go over some
safety stuff, and probably motor towards the islands until the winds
pick up. They've been weak, and I probably wouldn't recommend trying to
sail in them normally; but he's off to the Chesapeake for cruising in a
couple of weeks and wanted to get some more practice in boats,
particularly one's bigger than the 15' daysailers they usually practice
around Marina Del Rey in.
Thursday 7 June2012
Thursday
- OTR. Working on this and that for the UG stuff.
Wednesday 6 June 2012
Wednesday - OTR. Office work,
getting drawings in order, talking about how to do them. Putting
together Excel files of defects, lengths, channel types, etcetera,
etcetera.
The transit of Venus was yesterday, last for another 105 years. My
welding lenses weren't dark enough, supposedly you need a #14 to be
safe and mine were only #10. I wasn't sure how they are rated, does
stacking two #10's give you a #20 or a #12 (i.e. linear or log or ln
scale)? When we searched for a local viewing by an astronomy or science
club there was nothing closer than Goleta. Huh.
Instead we used some binoculars to project the image on some paper, and
because of the magnification you can clearly see the disk of the planet
in transit:
Venus in transit, 5 June 2012, Oxnard Ca.
Tuesday
5 June 2012
Tuesday
- OTR. Well, got up at four, on the road before five, arrived before
eight at the designated site. Unfortunately we didn't actually start
work until about eleven in the morning... It was good to get that last
inspection done, though it was a brutal slog through a very low (4')
section.
We did discover the manhole that we couldn't find before - the city had
paved over it but the asphalt had cracked in a nice circle over it.
From below we had see that the manhole barrel was full of bats, perhaps
a hundred, so we didn't mess about with trying to open it. I took a
long GPS reading on it, and we are essentially done with field work,
though there will probably be some follow-up here and there.
Monday 4
June 2012
Monday
- Working around the house again, but this time mostly cleanup. Did the
wash, did the dishes, did some shopping, did the bills, talked to the boss, cleaned the counters, vacuumed
downstairs, and cleaned up the garage to the point where I can park the
Explorer inside again.
I even managed to get a junk guy to take the old swamp cooler chassis
and a couple of other bits of stuff away, free. I gave him the old
motor, which probably has $20 worth of copper windings in it, but it
means I don't have to schlep this stuff to the dump!
From about noon until 3:00 I was at a friend's house, helping them get
their industrial type orange juice squeezer going. This was pretty
cool, despite a kind of Rube Goldberg look to the mechanism. You simply
put the oranges - whole - into a bit at the top, and the machine feeds
them into a cutter, one by one, which cuts them in half, then turns
them face down on a mandrel, and squeezes them with a cup that comes
down, then ejects the peels down a chute in back. It's rather hypnotic
to watch, and the orange juice, once we had it adjusted and set up
right, was delicious. There were a couple of small rollers missing (it
was a thrift store find) so I just cut a couple lengths of 1/4" steel
rod, rounded the ends, sandpapers them, and it worked beautifully. Very
cool.
Work tomorrow, early, I'm beat, so I need to get to bed early tonight!
Sunday 3 June 2012
Sunday
- In morning I did sprinkler patrol, running each line and checking for
bad sprinkler heads. There were several in the front yard, and several
in the back yard. It was hot out, so a nice pair of swim trunks and a
hat for shade, and my Tiva sandals was the uniform of the day.
Later, after lunch, I spent several hours building tomato plant "cages"
out of wire mesh from Home Depot. This mesh, sold in 7x4' sections for
concrete reinforcement makes for nice cages after a bit of work with
nippers and channel locks. I ended up with lots of little cuts on my
hands, but they are built, put into place, and held by wire against our
prevailing west winds (which are predicted to gust to 55mph later in
the week).
In the evening I met up with friends at Vince's Pizza & Pasta, and
we adults talked while the kids went crazy with all the little games
they have in back!
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: The partial solar
eclipse as projected by an oak tree, Ojai, May 2012.
