Tag Archives: house cleaning

2015/09/27 (N) Super-Harvest-Blood-Moon Eclipse

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We were up at 7:30 AM.  I got dressed to work and made coffee.  We had our usual breakfast and coffee and then got busy.  I worked in the bus while Linda picked up the house.  We had company coming in the early afternoon and wanted the house and the bus to be presentable.

I sanded the wall behind the sofa using the Porter-Cable 1/4 sheet palm sander we bought yesterday at Lowe’s in New Hudson.  I started with 80 grit paper, switched to 120 grit, and vacuumed up as much dust as I could see.  I then gathered up tools and materials and put them in the garage.  I wanted the steps to be safe so I removed the three rusted screws from the old step between the copilot floor level and the main floor level and temporarily reinstalled it.

With Linda’s assistance we put the sofa platform back in place and screwed it down.  We moved the desk pedestals out of the way and I brought the bases out from the garage.  We set the bases in place, put the pedestals on top, spread them apart, and inserted the connecting cover that goes between them.  We aligned the parts so they looked OK but did not screw them back together or to the wall and did not put the temporary plywood top back on.  We removed the painter’s plastic and towels from the chairs and disposed of them or stored them as appropriate.  Linda vacuumed thoroughly and then I took the vacuum into the house.

I showered, shaved, and dressed while Linda vacuumed in the house.  I was settling in to work on my iPad when she informed me that the display on the main thermostat was blank.  I assumed initially that it needed a new battery but it turned out that this thermostat does not have a battery, at least not one I could find ad replace.  This thermostat controls the heat for the living room, dining room, and kitchen and the air-conditioning (cooling) for the entire main floor.  It is also Wi-Fi enabled so we can monitor and control it via the web when we are away.  We are not running the furnace or the A-C at the moment so the loss of this unit was not a crisis but it was still troubling.

I did not want to get involved in diagnosing and fixing this problem at that exact moment but I checked the other three thermostats to see if their displays were working.  They were, and since all of the thermostats get their power from the same transformer it was clearly not a failed transformer or open circuit breaker.  Thus it appeared to be a power supply problem to this particular unit.  I tightened the wire connections on the solenoid valve for this zone but that did not fix the problem.

At least three possibilities occurred to me at that point: 1) the thermostat had failed, 2) The power is routed to the A-C air handler before going to the thermostat and a wire/connection got disturbed when Rebecca was in the attic, and 3) the solenoid had failed and was no longer passing power.  Although the system is simple enough I am not an expert on how it is wired so there might be other possible explanations and I did not have a way to determine the likelihood of each possibility.  Cooler weather is coming this week so I will have to get this resolved in the next few days.

I settled in to use my iPad to finish Friday’s blog post, write Saturday’s post, and start today’s post.  Bill, Karen, Mike, and Catherine showed up around 2 PM.  Bill and Karen are members of a couple of bus groups we belong to and Cathy is Bill’s sister.  They are from the greater Toronto area of Ontario, Canada and are staying at the Jellystone RV Park in Frankenmuth from mid-September through mid-October.  After greetings all around Bill and I went to the bus so he could see what we have doing while everyone else settled in.

When Bill and I came back in everyone else was sitting on the deck behind the house munching on grapes and pretzels while chatting and swatting hornets.  A week or so ago we left one of the hummingbird feeders on the table and the hornets had discovered it.  Even though we removed it and fogged the area this morning they kept returning.  Linda had me fetch the fly swatter from the bus so we could deal with them more effectively.  She brought out some of our ICE brand fruit flavored water.  Our guests had not seen this product before but seemed to enjoy it.  At least they each finished the bottle they had selected.

Linda started final dinner preparations with Karen’s assistance.  Dinner was cheese burgers, vegan potato salad, and collard greens Cole slaw.  Linda bought real beef patties and real cheddar cheese for our guests but everything else was vegan, including our burgers and cheese.  She cooked the burgers on the grill but we ate inside.  Linda made a frozen chocolate torte for dessert and served it with fresh strawberries.  We did not realize that Catherine does not eat chocolate or strawberries so we felt bad that she did not get dessert even though she said she was not hungry at that point.

We retired to the living room to sit more comfortably and continue chatting.  Jasper appeared from wherever he had been hiding (sleeping) and made friends with everyone.  Tonight was the rare conjunction of a Supermoon, Harvest Moon, and a full lunar eclipse that was also a blood moon.  It was cloudy at sunset/moonrise but gradually cleared off.  When Bill, Karen, Mike, and Catherine were leaving at 10 PM the eclipse was near full and fully visible we watched it for 15 minutes during which time the last wisps of clouds moved off to the north leaving a clear, star filled sky with a large, dark, reddish moon.  The next full eclipse of a Supermoon occurs in 2033.  I will be 81 then and fully intend to see it.

We relaxed for a while, reading and writing and checking on the moon, before going to bed.  By 11 PM the earth’s shadow was passing and the sun was once again illuminating the left edge of the moon.  I checked again at midnight and the eclipse was mostly passed.  It had been cloudy most of the day and we were fortunate that it cleared off in time for us to see this relative rare event right from our yard.  Relatively dark night skies is one of the advantages of living a little ways out in country.

 

2014/07/09 (W) vCard Magic And Adult Tonka Toy

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This morning when I turned my computers on there was an update available for Adobe Creative Cloud so I let it download while we had breakfast using our new Corelle dinnerware.  Adobe updates are either very large or their servers are very slow or both.  Whatever the reason, their updates seem to take a very long time to download and install.

A couple of the landscapers arrived at 8:00 AM and resumed work on the front stairs.  It was overcast at dawn but the clouds were forecast to clear by the afternoon with temperatures in the low 70’s and zero chance of rain.  That would normally be a perfect day to work outside, if the ground wasn’t saturated with water from the recent rains.  They worked on the front stairs until lunch time, took a short lunch break, and then worked a little longer.  When they quit for the day they had all nine of the large precast steps installed and the crushed limestone base built for the brick paver sidewalk.  I think they left because there wasn’t anything else for them to do at our site until they either had some additional materials (slag and paver bricks), more crew members (for moving dirt in wheelbarrows or digging trenches by hand), or dry enough conditions to get the excavator around back ( to trench and set boulders in the retaining walls).

Linda decided not open more boxes today and focused instead on deep cleaning the kitchen, including the freezer/refrigerator, stove, and microwave and getting things ready to go to the recycling center and the Salvation Army donation center and resale store.  While all of that was going on I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and got to work on my computer tasks.  I checked my e-mail using my new ASUS laptop computer.  Everything looked OK, so I started reading and replying to e-mails on the new laptop.  That was a major milestone in that I am now committed to using the new machine as my primary computer.

With that transition in mind I spent much of the morning copying files from my old laptop to both the old and new NAS units.  I then copied critical files having to do with my websites and photographs from one of the NAS units to my new laptop.  Getting the new laptop setup with everything I need will take quite a while, but that’s OK as it also affords me the opportunity to move over only those things that I absolutely need when I need them.

I installed the vCard Wizard (vCard4Outlook) add-in without difficulty but the installation of the Duplicate Killer add-in failed.  I checked the 4Team.biz website and then e-mailed their support address.  My ASUS is running Windows 8.1 / 64-bit and apparently my Outlook 2013 is also 64-bit.  According to their website the vCard Wizard add-in supports the 64-bit version of Outlook 2013, but the Duplicate Killer add-in only supports the 32-bit version.  One of my reasons for buying vCard Wizard was that I figured the companion Duplicate Killer program from the same company would work better with it than it would with a vCard converter from another company.  If I had realized it wasn’t compatible with my configuration I could have pursued other options.

I sync’d my Palm Tungsten T3 to my old Dell laptop and then did a vCard export of all my contacts and moved it to the ASUS laptop via one of the NAS units.  From there I was able to import all of my old Palm contacts into the Contacts folder in my Personal Folder, creating duplicates if/as needed.  The Personal Folder is a carryover from my previous conversion from MS Outlook Express to MS Outlook 2007.  I am a bit unclear about the distinction between the “address book” and “contacts” within the context of MS Outlook and I am not sure I have accomplished what I intended to accomplish with vCard Wizard.  I have accomplished something for sure–my Palm contacts are now clearly in my Outlook 2013–but I thought they would be added to my address book, which does not appear to be the case.  Perhaps I chose the wrong destination folder?  More research is needed.

By 4:30 PM it was obvious the landscapers were not coming back today so that gave me the opportunity to practice using the Kobelco 35sr excavator again.  I worked for about 90 minutes digging more junk out of the woods just southwest of our house and adding it to the pile I started on Monday.  Think bricks, cinder blocks, railroad ties, landscape timbers, dimensional lumber, cut up tree trunks and large downed tree limbs and you will have the picture.  In addition to the bucket for digging and transferring material, the excavator has a claw “thumb” that can be closed to hold things in the bucket, like tree limbs, or pick things up, like boulders and cinder blocks.  It turned out that the bucket/claw combination are much stronger than a cinder block; I broke several trying to pick them up.

By the time I parked the machine and turned it off Linda had dinner ready.  She made a salad of dark greens with almonds and grapes and a barley, split pea, lentil risotto with carrot, red onion, celery, garlic, and a few chopped up greens.  We finished the bottle of Merlot we bought at Whole Foods on Saturday.  At $3 per bottle (750 ml) it was competitive with box wines like Franzia, and of comparable quality.  Although slightly dry for my taste, it was a good accompaniment to the somewhat savory dishes Linda has made this week.  I would be tempted to stock up at that price if I liked a bit more than I do.

After dinner I edited photographs on my new computer for the first time.  They will appear in the various blog entries starting with July 1st, which I will also edit and upload using the new machine.  Although the transition to a new computing platform always feels awkward for a while, and there is desire to return to the comfort of the old familiar one, from here on out I will be focused on making the ASUS my primary computing platform.

 

2014/01/17 (F) Campfire Music

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Today was a day for chores and relaxation.  I did the laundry while Linda tidied up the inside of the coach.  Various RV authors have said that the best way to learn about the area where you are camping, or intend to go to next, is from the people in RV parks and campgrounds where you stay.  And the best place to meet those people is often in the laundry room.  Today I had a long conversation with a fellow Williston Crossings resident with Alaska license plates on his truck while we were both doing our laundry.  He had traveled extensively and was a wealth of knowledge.

For lunch we had the vegan version of one of my favorite sandwiches: crunchy peanut butter and “mayo” with lettuce and pickle slices.  I used to make this sandwich with Miracle Whip.  (I was raised with Miracle Whip and have never cared for the taste of real mayonnaise.)  The vegan version of the sandwich uses “vegan mayo”, of course, and it is an acceptable substitute although it lacks the characteristic tanginess of MW.

It dropped below freezing again last night under clear skies, but rebounded quickly with the sunrise and topped out in the mid 60’s.  Linda sat outside in the sun and worked on her needlepoint.  She needs the light to see what she’s doing, and she likes sitting in the sun.

We ate dinner around 6:00 PM–left over angel hair pasta– and then went to the fire pit for the Friday evening campfire.  Kevin already had the fire going but we were early enough to get two of the rocking chairs.  By 6:45 PM all the chairs and benches were occupied and there were a few folks standing.  There were four guitarists playing and singing in various combinations.  Their selections tended to be country and folk, but they all played and sang well, and the rest of us listened, talked quietly, or sang along as we sat in the glow of the campfire.  It was too dark to photograph and we did not record it on our smartphones so you will just have to take my word for it; it was a warm and thoroughly delightful experience.