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WEEK 40 2021
Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week
Saturday - A decent day, though it is starting to get warmer.
I went out and started on the little border wall for the sage bush in the enclosure. I did have a wall there once, but I used the lumber for another project, so I decided to redo it, and even make it a bit better, with a plank on top, rather than just the retaining walls.
I collected up my lumber, a bunch of 2x6's and 2x8's that I'd bought recently (and that was already starting to warp), measured and started cutting. After a while the saw was binding so bad that I went and used acetone to try to clean the PT gunk off the blade. That would help for a single cut, then the circular saw would bind up again.
I researched, and there are special Teflon coated blades for PT lumber. I mentioned this to Tim and Dave, and they both said that it was the saw, and not the blade. It is a very old saw, and has trouble with simple pine boards, so I'll probably buy one tomorrow whilst shopping. And maybe a blade or two for the 10" power miter saw, which currently only has an abrasive metal cutting blade.
Anyway, knocked off around noon, already tired.
Book #54 was A Symphony of Echoes (St. Mary's #2), by Jodi Taylor. Not bad.
This was an interlibrary load book, that I picked up along with a few other from Quartz Hill Library. This is the first successful interlibrary loan for me in a while, they've reduced the hold period to one week, then they send the books back if you haven't picked them up. I got burned a couple of times by this, but just have to pay more attention to emails from the library.
Week 40, Books so far, 2021:
Friday - A decent day.
The undergarments I ordered the other day arrived. And a few other items.
Thursday - A nice day. Nice enough that I sat out back and had lunch outside.
I received a text from S: her alarm had been going off in the old Toyota, so she called around and took it into a shop. She brought a loaf of home-made banana bread, which the owner and workers were delighted to get. In fact they refused payment for the alarm fix!
My present to myself, the used Baader-Hyperion Mk.3 8-24 zoom showed up, looks very nice, extremely well packed!
Since it was clear and calm I went out in the late evening, it worked very well. I was going to use the 5se, but the batteries were nearly dead. The the C8, but the corrector was filthy with dust from our storms earlier in the week it turned out.
I finally settle on the 4" apo, and it was nice, very sharp and easy to use. But with only 714mm of FL it was a bit under-powered, with a max magnification of less than 100x. I could try a Barlow, but that's something for another night.
Wednesday - Rather pleasant. Smazey, but with blue tints. The winds died down overnight, and the temperature dropped as well.
Working on various bits of paperwork for retirement-age issues.
I talked to S for a few minutes. We had planned to get together in town, but we are both behind on the app bits we were going to talk about, so we put it off until Sunday.
Of course that also means my haircut isn't until then. It's getting bad: I'm using a comb for the first time in a while, so I have that nice comb-over effect. The alternative is to have it stand straight up.
It also means, since I haven't repaired the washer, that I'm fast running out of stuff: I had planned to borrow her washer to do some laundry. Instead I scrounged around and found what I needed, and also ordered a couple of items from Amazon.
I finished Naomi Novik's new Scholmance book, after re-reading A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) in the last few days.
Book #53 was, therefore, The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik. Excellent, with some twists and turns that I wasn't expecting!
Tuesday - Warm and smoky.
Chores:
I pulled the window a/c unit out of the master bedroom. It is so loud, despite claims of being quiet (and truly, except for the one in the west office it is that quietest unit I own) that I rarely use it. And the transmitted noise of the howling winds of the last few days, 40mph, made it impossible to sleep in there.
It is so very, very, very much quieter in the room with it removed, and with some backing rod used as sound deadener in the gaps. The wind, cars, dogs, are almost inaudible.
I did have to vacuum up handfuls of silt and sand that had crept in around it, on the blinds, on the sill, on the floor.
Another chore was that I also redid a couple of the guys on the tree's in the front, that I had just redone a week ago. Some were still pulling on the trees and abrading the tree bark.
Nothing like 40mph wind to show you where you went wrong.
I also ground through some end-of-month and quarterly paperwork, which involved a lot of paperwork triage, spread out across the floor, much to the cats delight.
Naomi Novik's latest, The Last Graduate, showed up. I must have pre-ordered it, though I don't recall doing so. Anyway, I knew it was coming so I have been re-reading the first book, to refresh my memory of what was happening.
Glad I did. I started TLG, but it was late and I went to bed before getting more than a few chapters in.
Monday - Warm and smoky, though not as bad as this weekend.
You know, I forgot to list an e-textbook read a few weeks ago.
Book #52 therefore would be iOS 14 programming for Beginners: xxxx, by Ahmad Sahar. It was OK, just a quick intro to Swift and the UI stuff.
I bought a used Baader-Hyperion 8-24mm zoom eyepiece from someone on CN. This is about as good as they get, and it was less than half price for this Mk.3, which has exactly the same optics as the current Mk.4 model, supposedly has a more definite "click" at the preset stops, but in a slightly clunkier form factor. It should show up in a few days.
I also ordered a brake rotor for astronomy. Heh.
Basically my $30 Vixen Super Polaris has a 60mm diameter hub on the bottom. If you have a steel plate with a 60mm hole in it then you can use it on the top of a pier for a permanent scope mounting. And it turns out that a brake rotor for a Chevy Sonic from 2014-2019 has exactly that size hole in it. You can pay up to $130 for a vented light-weight model, but for this project I went with the lowest price non-OEM solid rear, $16 and $8 shipping.
The hub fits perfectly. In fact, once painted (it is cast iron and will rust if looked at sideways), it's going to be quite tight.
Sunday - Hot and smoky. The wind varied all round the compass at different times, and from zero to 20mph.
I actually woke up late, because the smoke kept the sunrise from happening until about an hour later than usual, when it rose above the smoke.
I didn't do too much, it was hot and smoky by the time I finished my morning chores.
Speaking of chores, there was part of a rabbit's leg on my patio in the morning when I went out to throw some birdseed. Just laying there, no puddle of blood or tracks. Possibly dropped by a buzzard or hawk?
The neighbors invited me over for some brats, and to watch the SF- game. It got off to a slow start, but what an ending. Aaron Rogers and the Packers use 35 seconds and no time outs to come from behind and win!
It was supposedly an astronomy viewing night last night, at the Prime Desert Woodlands. I've joined the club, paying $8.33 in prorated dues for the rest of the year, but I forgot to go. It was pretty windy and somewhat cloudy, not sure that they would have been there anyways.
